Pt1 - 18: TIBERIAS

 

We were the only travellers and two of only five civilians aboard a full bus bound for Tiberias on the western shore of the Galilee. This might sound like insurance against any nasty surprises along the way but the bottom line is buses are prime bomb targets in Israel, especially if they happen to be carrying a platoon’s worth of Israeli military.

The trip was slated for three hours but it quickly became apparent that our Death-or-Glory driver would have us in Tiberias early or never. The route took us back through the crossroads at Jericho then straight up the Jordan Valley on Highway 90. In light drizzle we raced north through vineyards and date and banana plantations for an hour then, after a fifteen minute pit-stop at a place called Yalit, the country abruptly changed. Green stony hills pocked with caves appeared on our left while on the right, behind the fence marking Israel’s eastern defence perimeter, the even greener Jordan Valley spread across to the Jordanian hills shrouded in white haze. Large birds, cranes and egrets, grazed at leisure in the grassy fields smeared with buttermilk daises and snowbells. After Bet Shean healthy looking citrus and fruit orchards took over.

As if on cue the rain stopped just as we rolled into Tiberias around lunchtime. I left Tess sitting on our packs at the bus shelter, more a bunker than a transport hub, and set off to find accommodation.

I burned off more than an hour inspecting dives that made me nostalgic for the luxury of the Hashimi only to find a comfortable, modestly priced room with a bar fridge, CNN and a smiling receptionist just 50 meters from the bus station on the way back. Meanwhile, Tess had her own small drama.

No sooner had I wandered off than a man approached her speaking animated Hebrew. “English?” she said. He shook his head and waved her to follow him urgently. It evidently didn’t occur to him to help Tess with all our gear so following him was easier said than done. She struggled to a waiting room, empty but for a ping pong table and an old fellow who must have been the cleaner. He had no English either but understood enough to clarify the matter by going “War,” then, miming a mushroom cloud, “Boom!”

Just then a younger Israeli couple came in and started playing table tennis. The way Tess described it sounded like another scene from an Absurdist play. The guy danced around returning impossible shots with the greatest of ease. He played on as he explained: “…’s ok…(forehand lob with topspin)…only a bomb scare…(overhead backhand)…be over in 10 minutes…(forehand smash into the back wall)”. Great, Tess is thinking, after all these years we’re going to die apart.

The young guy was right, it was a false alarm. It reminded me of the good old days when a few high-spirited buddies of mine had our school evacuated with a bomb hoax. The big difference, of course, is that here it’s serious shit; only yesterday we’d learned of a fatal café blast in Tel Aviv. I can’t imagine a bunch of Jewish kids laughing into their beers about the time they cleared out the bus station in Tiberias.

We settled into our first floor penthouse and stepped out onto the streets of Tiberias. I love the name of this place, there’s an imperial ring to it. I always think of I, Claudius and remember the Emperor Tiberius who, though he tried in the early years of his reign, finished up a dissolute and wanton tyrant idling out his debauched days on the isle of Capri while the sinister Sejanus ran the empire from Rome. Alas, Tiberias didn’t live up to its romantic resonance. It was fun instead.

We’d lobbed on the festival of Purim which celebrates a Jewish liberation of sorts from the Persian King Ahasuerus. Under the influence of a nasty piece of work called Haman Ahasuerus ordered the death of all Jews in his kingdom only to discover his beautiful wife Esther was Jewish. He had Haman executed instead and the Persian Jews lived to suffer another day. On Purim the Israelis dress up in gaudy costume and take to the streets in as near a carnival spirit as you’re ever likely to find in this otherwise stern, no bullshit country.

This afternoon the small city was alive with kids wearing tinfoil armour and false beards and adults with painted faces and wildly dyed hair. There was a merry atmosphere down on the promenade by the Sea of Galilee, known locally as the Kinneret. The fast food joints were doing a roaring trade and teenagers looking like tribal punk refugees hung out along the seafront as the Macarena played over loud speakers. And it didn’t take us long to realise that for the first time in our travels we had arrived in a muezzinless town.

Our little sightseeing circuit started at the tomb of the Spanish-born Jewish philosopher and rabbi Maimonides. It was marked with one of those huge minimalist iron sculptures they’re so fond of here and I had to wear a cardboard yarmulka and light a candle for the community of rabbis interred with Maimonides. This is also where our little sightseeing circuit ended, there was nothing else to see. The crumbling Crusader Citadel was a lock-out and the few pretentious little art galleries surrounding it were closed. But that was ok, Tiberias was always going to be a base for us to explore northern Israel anyway.

The Mediterranean port of Akko (Acre) held a special significance for me. I had pleasant memories of my first visit twenty years ago and it would be the closest I’d come geographically to the kibbutz where Bastock and I had worked together as international volunteers. Given my antipathy to religion you might be wondering why I’d be volunteering on a kibbutz. I could say I was inspired by the great Socialist experiment kibbutzim represented in the 50s, 60s and 70s but my own motives weren’t so lofty and my reasons for ending up in Israel had little to do with any earnest desire for political enlightenment or cultural exchange. The kibbutz programme just happened to be the cheapest way for a penniless uni student to get overseas at the time.

The story of that 1977 trip, which also encompassed Greece and Italy, could fill its own book, but we’re in Israel now and I’m getting all nostalgic for the kibbutz. Bastock and I washed up in a place called Hanita in the highlands on the Lebanese border a few kilometers inland from Rosh Hanikra. Basically, the heavily fortified kibbutz was a frontline military base in the middle of an active war zone. Our six week stint was lively to say the least. When we weren’t clearing rocks from vast fields, hitting the dirt as low flying war planes screamed north on deterrence missions, picking citrus and avocado or working in the machine shop we were doing bunker drills. New Year’s Eve fireworks were a riot of tracers accompanied by a berserk, pocking symphony of small arms fire. It was a long way from the somnolent suburbs of Sydney and I frankly loved it.

In the meantime we’d made a few excursions from the kibbutz; to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve where I got horribly pissed on Arak in Manger Square and woke up in a convent graveyard; to the Golan Heights in the shadow of Mt Hermon and, on a rare day off, to Akko under our own steam.

Back in the present, Tess and I arrived in Akko on a luminously clear morning and ambled down through the undistinguished new town to the old walled town on the promontory. The view from the ramparts of the Tower Gate took in a wide sweep of the azure Mediterranean rippling gently in a benign breeze. The briny air was a treat for the lungs and filled us with a new vitality. A few hundred metres off shore lay the remains of the colourfully named Tower of the Flies which had once stood at the end of a long breakwater built during the Hellenistic period and served as the original lighthouse for the small harbour. Now it’s just a small pile of rubble that looks like the sort of place you’d chain intractable prisoners to rot in the sun.

Akko was a much coveted port and far more prominent during ancient times than it is today. Conquests go back as far as the Egyptians, who lost it to the Phoenicians, who lost it to the Greeks, who lost it to the Romans, who lost it to the Arabs, who lost it to the Crusaders, who lost it to the Arabs again, who lost it to the Crusaders again, who lost it to the Italians (Venetians, Genoans, Pisans), who lost it to the Ottomans. When the music finally stopped the architecture of old Acre reflected a charming pastiche of styles dating mainly from the first Crusader period, which makes it a very agreeable place to spend several hours meandering around.

This we duly did, resting occasionally in the shade of leafy courtyards. We strolled along the western seawall, pausing to watch the swell break along its base from the English fort and inhale the salty air like a pair of old sailors too long away from the sea. As we wandered down towards the lighthouse at the southern tip we came across a unique sight. The front yard of a small house was decorated with the most eccentric horticultural display I’ve ever seen; at first I thought it was a collection of large potted turds until I crept across the road for a closer look and discovered they were colossal brown fungi, some of them half a meter wide, bubbling out of concrete containers. The owner caught me snapping a photo and eyed me as though I was strange.

We sat on the deck of a restaurant leisurely licking enormous ice creams and gazing idly at the remnants of the Pisan harbour, which consists of a single stone wall about a meter thick with a doorway at the top and stairs leading into fresh air. The sound of the swell gurgling around its base lulled us into a serene trance and kept us there for ages. When we did manage to tear ourselves away it was to continue along the promenade to the Kahn el-Umden, which was under extensive renovation, and emerge into Venice Square beneath the Ottoman clock tower built in 1906. Fishing boats bobbed lazily in the peaceful little marina and the promenade was littered with nets, pots, floats and the detritus common to every fishing harbour. Further on, we wandered through the modest souk which catered mainly to the tourist trade, although the vegetable and spice stalls with their sacks of bright orange lentils, cream chickpeas, green bay leaves, rice and a thousand fragrant herbs did a steady business with the locals.

Then entirely by accident we stumbled upon the Citadel Museum with its subterranean Crusader city. This was new. The only museum I visited in ’77 was the jolly-sounding Museum to the Heroes of the Jewish Resistance which houses a gallows where members of the Haganah were executed by the British during their mandate. The Citadel has only been excavated recently and the museum newly opened. Although we had a bus to catch at 4pm and the admission price was a little steep we took the plunge and discovered to our delight that an audio guide was included in the tariff. Determined to make the time count we set off at pace for the Knight’s Halls.

Most of the Crusader buildings of old Acre were filled with rubble by the Ottomans to provide the foundations of their own structures and it’s this fill that’s been removed to reveal the splendidly atmospheric chambers of what had variously functioned as a Crusader dormitory, refectory and meeting hall and an infirmary run by the Hospitallers. Heavy squat pillars supported a high vaulted ceiling with reinforcing buttress arches, and here again was the absence of trumped up trickery to entertain the masses. It was as though the knights had walked out just yesterday, although they probably wouldn’t have left the place quite so clean. The rest of our little tour passed in a bit of a blur as we raced through rooms representing different eras, including the elaborate Sultan’s marble bathhouse, but we handed in our audio guides feeling pretty satisfied we’d gotten value for money.

The coastal strip between Akko and Haifa is a continuous conurbation of new barrack-style settlements clinging to the inland hillsides overlooking a ribbon of light industry on the plain below. This aggressive development is typical of the Israelis; the proliferation of mobile phones, flash cars and designer fashions reflects the country’s prosperity, not to mention US support and the billions funnelled in through the diaspora. We made our connection at Haifa – the Israeli bus network is even more efficient than their security, if that’s possible – and debussed in Tiberias a little after six.

We treated ourselves to a bottle of 1994 Israeli Cabernet Sauvignon from the Supersol supermarket – and a very quaffable drop it was too, bearing in mind we’d spent the last few weeks in a culture so barbarian you couldn’t find a red to save yourself nor, and this is the sign of a lost civilisation if you ask me, an edible cheese. We repaired to the park on the waterfront and ate shwermas from the best stall in the whole universe. I can’t remember if I’ve actually described a shwerma (spelled any number of ways depending where you happen to be in the Levant), so here goes: Rip the top off a warm, freshly baked pitta. Line the deep pocket with a condiment of your choice – chilli, pickle, hommus etc – pack a layer of spicy lamb or chicken in, then an assortment of salad and/or tabbouli, more meat, more salad then top it all off with hot fries. Shwermas take various forms and there aren’t many places that’ll let you build your own, but the Tiberians know how to do it right. Muchly sated, we retired to our comfortable room to work our way through the wine and catch up with CNN until we nodded off into a deep, restful sleep.

Next time: Safed, Megiddo and the Golan...