Same time next year

My mom used to rave about this movie. It’s a romance between two married and otherwise faithful people whose decades-long affair consisted of an annual weekend tryst. The moralist in me has a hard time seeing the romance in this arrangement, but I digress. Anyway, my mom and I finally rented the movie one weekend, and I’m pretty sure we both fell asleep. Some things aren’t as good as we remember…. I was a little afraid that would be the case with Palestine.

Happily, it isn’t. In fact, some things are even better (the Arabic coffee, for instance, or the weather).

I can write this now, having slept off my intense disappointment and anxiety following my arrival. Israeli security interrogations…still no fun, and I wasn’t prepared for them on the way in. Also, Ben Gurion is one of the few places I’ve encountered in which being a young, waspy woman traveling alone is looked upon with suspicion, rather than vague concern. Thank goodness I didn’t have an ISM affiliation to hide, or I really might have wet myself. And I’m only kind of kidding.

No matter how innocent you are, it’s enough to produce a panic attack, if not a screaming fit, when a security madame absconds with one’s passport.

After a long Nesher ride and what I’m pretty sure was an exploitative cab fare, I arrived…to living quarters sans phone or internet.

That was when the crying started.

A few machinations later, I had a phone, but I’m still working on the internet.

On the upside, I awoke (around noon) to turtles and chickens and filtered water and real coffee. Some things are better after a year.