100 and 63.

We returned to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem this morning, for our final night in Israel. Late yesterday we drove to a forest beyond the Arab Quarter. There we cut down trees and built a bonfire beside a cave that was formerly a medieval burial site. The stone is still shaped to the bodies it once held.

Leaving, we were chased and stopped by the police. And on the brink of arrest, it was only when our driver produced an American passport that we were able to leave.

There is nothing revolutionary about commenting on the discrimination faced by the Arab community in the Israeli capital. Yet, having spent several days with Palestinians in the city and in the West Bank, passing checkpoints and refugee camps, mountaintop settlements and bands of marching teenage IDF soldiers. Nights and days listening to stories of families separated by The Wall, bloody military shootings of young escapees, Jerusalem taxes without Jerusalem services for those trapped on the side it is still illegal for Israeli citizens to cross into, I think perhaps my politics changed on this trip.

100 and 61

Five Hasidic Jews in bowler hats praying by the boarding gate at Luton airport. If only divine intervention were to remove the ungodly cascade of midmorning halitosis from the gaping mouth of my Easyjet neighbour.

I read: “From my little corner I can see the trolley and really want a snack”. I watched her writing in her notebook and wished she had acted upon her diary entry. Porridge or a sandwich, anything to rebrand that noxious scent.

We are in Israel, me and my little sister. Her first time in a hostel. This is it. 

100 and 59.

I am no longer working. There is no more commute. There is no longer the tangle of spreadsheets and numbers or database after database. Late nights still fade into early mornings, but then, finally, there is sleep. These are the flattest and the dullest of days and of evenings. The most pointless excesses, the wasted hours, the slowest of weeks, the excitement that never comes. The contours of dead possibility.  In seven days I am going to Israel. That will surely be an adventure.