And now for the last loop before entering Israel. Many people will have heard of the “Israeli passport stamp stigma”, whereby an Israel stamp in your passport will impede entry into any number of Arab countries. The Israeli immigration people won’t stamp your passport if asked not to do so, and we ask them not to do so. Then the questions begin.
Before arrival Gillian and I are not sure how to play this. The easy solution is just to say we are tourists, but our passports are riddled with Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese entry and exit stamps. Vasco da Gama’s logbook is a guide to the ports of the Holy Land. On board, our library is breathing in to cope with books about the region and its religions, not all of them well disposed towards Israel past or present. We had already decided to play it straight and go through the third degree.
“Why so many trips to Arab countries?” The immigration officer is a tall, healthy-looking young woman, with long and straggly mousy hair, heavy in breast (starboard breast crowned by her department’s badge), full in tooth and zappy in air. One thing though - and do pay attention, 007 - is that as her badge is on the starboard breast one would expect her to be a southpaw, but no, she writes right handed. Most curious. Someone must have pinned it on for her. Unless she did it in the mirror. Long night. Ah yes, “Why so many trips to Arab countries?”
“I’m writing an historical travel book about Asia Minor one hundred and fifty years ago - before Syria, Lebanon or Israel existed,” I reply.
“And you, ma’am?”
“I’m the photographer and video person.”
“What is your book about?” she asks looking me closely in the eyes.
“Mark Twain, the American travel writer. He was here in the Ottoman times.”
“Oh, Mark Twain, I know all about him. He’s neat. Sounds like a great project.” She closes our unstamped passports with a toothy lunge and says, “Very well, enjoy your stay.” We chat aimlessly about this and that for a few minutes, the subtext no doubt an extension of the interview. So much for the third degree; I am rather disappointed that all the carefully rehearsed answers will have to stay in the unused excuses drawer.
Why no third degree? Why no awkward questions? Why no checking on my mother’s maiden name and Gillian’s father’s occupation (just as well on that, he was a spy)? Maybe it was the way I kept my eyes on her teeth, resisting all temptation to head south. But maybe there’s a finer answer: as I will discover over the coming weeks Mark Twain is a bit of a folk hero in Israel.
Why so? Well, you may have noticed in the first three chapters that he was none too impressed by the Arabs extant and wasted no time saying so. (Note to the faint of heart and correct of politics: worse is to come in the chapters ahead.) Over the years the Israeli Ministry of Information has frequently used Mark Twain’s quotes from The Innocents Abroad as proof of how Israel “has made the deserts bloom”. Schoolchildren are shown what the great American writer saw in Palestine then, and to contrast and compare what he might report about Israel now.
By early afternoon we are tied up at the Carmel Yacht Club, our umbilical cords of electricity and water connected to the dock. A deep siesta consumes the hours of lost sleep from the overnight passage. In the early evening a taxi takes us to the car hire station, and a piece of junk called a Kia Rio takes us back to Vasco da Gama, sundowners, showers and sleep.
Early the next morning, still discombobulated by the irregular sleeping patterns, two keen Strathcarrons, one new Ferguson - a young Italian Israeli, Bruno - and one reluctant Kia Rio are heading up through north-central Israel, across into the Golan Heights, up to the old border with Syria, past the landmine signs and burned out tanks, then north to the UNDOF station and the new border with Syria. We stop on the main road we saw from across the border, and look down onto the UNDOF checkpoints and watchtowers just below and the flattened remnants of old Quneitra close behind.
We drive up to the main gate. On the Syrian side the two soldiers by the barrier were loafing around in the shade playing backgammon. When we pulled up one held his hand out for our paperwork and, still sitting, waited for Samir to get out of the car and give him our documents while allowing us to photograph. Samir gave them a tip as one does. Now on the Israeli side there are four spick-and-span sentries standing to attention as we arrive. Bruno explains that we just want to drive a couple of hundred yards up to the UNDOF checkpoint. Why? I explain we are hoping to meet our caravanserai that had passed through here one hundred and forty-three years ago, turn around and follow them out - for the sake of the footsteps. Gillian holds up her camera and smiles.
We are told to wait. There are phone calls. We are still waiting. The sentries are still standing to attention. Heat shimmers off the tin roofs. A spruce new uniform wanders into the guard-room and they all look through the window at us. Another phone call. After twenty minutes I figure that dragoman Mohammed bringing up the rear would have passed by now. I jump out into the heat and ask the sentry for our passports, Bruno turns us around and we follow Mohammed up the hill. Even in the Kia Rio it doesn’t take long to catch him up. Our footsteps are re-joined. The Detour has lasted five days, give and take an hour or two.
5: The Golan and the Galilee
Our new Ferguson/driver/dragoman is Bruno, the son of our biblical advisor in Jerusalem. His father, Massimo Fornaciari, is quite a cause célèbre in Israel: born into a high Catholic family in Turin, he converted to Judaism after studying theology at university. He now teaches theology at the Hebrew University. He claims he saw the Pauline light on honeymoon but Bruno later tells us that he only says that to placate his wife who remains resolutely Catholic and slides off back to Italy22 at the drop of a kippah. Bruno has just finished university, studying Political Theory and Practice - ”anything except theology,” as he says - although I would have thought the two in Israel are hardly opposites - and is having some time off. The deal is that he drives us around for a month, “facilitates” where facilitating is needed, and then stays in our apartment in London for a month. The apartment is barely the size of a cupboard so we hope he won’t be too disappointed. After Samir’s wisdom-of-the-ancients approach to life, Bruno’s brash impatience and general cockiness is a step backwards, and anyway there is precious little translating to be done in English-speaking Israel until we reach the Arabic- speaking Occupied Territories. In spite of Massimo’s assurances, his son now tells he can’t - or won’t - speak Arabic anyway. Writing this at the end of the first day high up in the Golan Heights I’m thinking of “letting him go” - what a horrible euphemism that is, bad enough to stop me actually doing it - and trying to find a gnarled old Druze with some perspective on life and an axe to grind in his stead.
***
Mark Twain’s lack of enthusiasm for the Syrian outback continued as he crossed over into the Golan Heights, the old biblical area of Bashan, still claimed by Syria if now firmly occupied by Israel. For many Israelis this recent addition to Israel is now their favorite part of the country, their own Scottish highlands: sparsely occupied, frontier territory, weekend-able, a hill station in summer and ski station in winter.
The Excursionists left Quneitra “very early in the morning, and rode forever and forever and forever”. The route that they took, which then could be described as one “over parched deserts and rocky hills”, is now scenic in the extreme, the parched deserts now green and yellow with farms and forests, the rocky hills now graced with olive groves, vineyards and almond orchards. To make matters worse they were “hungry, and with no water to drink”.
Twain’s next entry for that day reads: “At noon we halted before the wretched Arab town of El Yuba Dam, perched on the side of a mountain, but the dragoman said if we applied there for water we would be attacked by the whole tribe, for they did not love Christians. We had to journey on.”
***
We are following Mark Twain’s 1867 route on a 1922 British Mandate map but the 2010 track runs o
ut some way below the top of a volcanic crater. The British map tells us that “Yuba” means crater and “Dam” means spring. Any pleasure we have taken solving this bloodhound detective work is tempered by the “Warning: Land Mines” signs on either side of the track. Bruno says the Syrians planted them pre-1967 and the Israelis have left them there to deter a Syrian attack. Bruno doubts if they worked even when the Syrians laid them, but just in case reverses the Kia Rio in the width of the track. Soon are we bouncing from one rock hard rock to another and take an eight-mile detour to reach the other side of the crater and the site of what was ElYuba Dam.
Today El Yuba Dam is the very opposite of a “wretched Arab town”. In fact, nowhere better illustrates the remarkable transformation of the Golan Heights than Odem, ElYuba Dam’s replacement. Odem is a moshav, an Israeli invention with no Western equivalent, but best understood as a co-operative village where the land is individually owned; the resources to service the land are shared in a kind of semi-capitalist kibbutz. Among other enterprises this moshav is the home of Odem Mountain Winery Ltd.
To reach it Bruno has to drive us around the crater and into the National Park of Ya’ar Odem. We drive through a forest of Middle Eastern oak trees, the famous biblical oaks of Bashan, oak trees much shorter and stubbier than European ones. Later we learn that the Golan Heights used to be covered in oak trees but over the centuries the Turks stripped them bare, first for charcoal and fuel, then later to power their steam engines - the same ones quite probably that T. E. Lawrence enjoyed derailing. Apparently the Turks discovered that one thousand year-old oak tress made excellent furnace fuel, and of course it never occurred to them to replant. When Israel took over the Golan Heights in 1967 one of its first acts was to create a National Park for the oak forests and replant the hillsides with this most attractive and evocative tree.
The road through the National Park eventually leads in a cul-de-sac to Odem. Green, whole hews of it, forms the first impression; endeavor, whole rafts of it, the second. To one side are riding stables, on another four wheel drive safari quads and straight ahead the winery. A younger Kenny Rogers lookalike welcomes us at the shop. I explain what I want. He explains what I want to a phone, then points to a factory next door and says, “Go right through, my father is waiting for you.”
An elder Kenny Rogers beckons me in, and pulls up two stools. “I’m Michael Alfasi. We’re just finishing lunch. Come and join us.” He introduces his other son, Yishay, and two daughters, Zvia and Michal. “Between us we run Odem Mountain Winery. Now what do you say this place was called?”
“ElYuba Dam,” I reply.
“Not in my time. I arrived here thirty-five years ago, two years after the Yom Kippur War. It was a desolate scene. Rocks and scrubs. We got some Arab goat flocks up on the hill. That hasn’t changed. But everything else has. Me and some other pioneers formed this moshav and you can see how it looks now. Look, I was about to leave, my sonYishay here will show you around.”
Yishay shows me through a window the gleaming new stainless steel vessels and copper tubes and oak casks and unfilled bottles all lined up in rows. It is more like a laboratory than a winery. If there was a sandwich to hand it could be eaten off the floor. Yishay’s business card reads “Winemaker”.
Yishay says, “We don’t grow grapes, we grow wine”.
“So how’s it done? How can you miss out the vine stage?”
“Well we have vines of course. But what we really have here is the perfect climate, the perfect height, the perfect slopes and around here the volcanic soil. That’s perfect too. All we needed to add was water. That’s the value of a moshav. We all needed water, so we engineered it from a reservoir we created one hundred meters below. We have to push the water uphill, but we’ve got it. We yield four kilos a vine, whereas normally you’d figure two kilos.”
“And it’s still expanding?”
“Eight years ago we made seven thousand bottles and last year over seventy thousand, so yes.”
“Your brother said all the wine was kosher. How does that work?”
“It’s not really to do with the raw materials, more the add-ons, the finings and sulfates, and the casks and of course only Jews handling the product. It’s why I can’t show you around, why you had to look through the window - only Orthodox allowed inside. Although it’s an expense, it does mean we automatically pass any quality standard anywhere in the world.”
After an agreeable sampling of one of last year’s seventy thousand bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon I have to ask: “This whole Golan Heights area is still in dispute. I’ve read that under the Oslo Accords your government had agreed to hand it back to Syria, and many people reckon Oslo 2 is the only way forward. Yet your family and the moshav are investing enormously in this area.
You’ve created a kind of paradise. Aren’t you worried that the Syrians will just take land over and kick you out? That all this will be for nothing?”
“Look, you can’t live your life worrying about politics. What happens if this, what happens if that? When we gave the Arabs back Gaza they smashed up all the Israeli investments. I’d hate to think of them doing that here, but you know we make alcohol so... let’s hope the mullahs don’t get here first. But in the meantime we’ll just love this land, love growing our wine on it and love being part of the moshav. We’re our own state up here, beyond Israel in a way.
So just love every second. Just in case... ”
He has a point about the vandalism. When the settlers were paid off in Gaza the Palestinians asked the Israeli forces to destroy the houses, saying they did not want or need single family seaside villas but needed land to build high-rise refugee camps. In the event not all the houses were destroyed and those left were grabbed by party leaders for themselves. No new housing for the refugees was even started on settler land. The Israeli greenhouses and farms were all destroyed; in their place Hamas installed rocket launchers.
***
Unlike the writer the Excursionists were turned away thirsty from El Yuba Dam/Odem and they pressed on higher and higher and at 2.00 p.m. they The Golan and the Galilee reached what is now known as Nimrod’s Fortress, but back then was still known by its Arabic name Qala’at Namrud, Castle of the Large Cliff. More recently Judaic enthusiasts, noting the similarity between the Arabic Namrud and their own Nimrod, have grafted the Genesis legend onto the castle - and indeed have had him buried at nearby Quneitra where we were last night. A new plaque from Genesis 10 proves the point beyond reasonable doubt: “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.”
Mark Twain was told that “It is of such high antiquity that no man knows who built it or when it was built,” but since then archaeologists have been digging and sifting and we now know it is comparatively recent, from the mid-thirteenth century. By the standards of the castles hereabouts this one had a short and peaceful working life. It was built by Salah al-Din’s nephew Al-Aziz to pre-empt the expected assault on Damascus from Acre by the Sixth Crusade. But the attack never came: by then the whole crusade movement had degenerated into a religious cover for piracy and after having spent a year in Cyprus squabbling among themselves, the by now thoroughly disreputable crusaders forsook Damascus and headed directly for the easy pickings of Egypt. Within a hundred years the last crusader stronghold at Acre, only forty miles away on the coast, had been abandoned and the castle started to fall into disrepair. When the conquering Ottomans arrived two hundred years later they used the castle as an up-market prison for disfavored officers and gentlemen.
***
The most amusing display now is the blood curdling English translation of the builders’ inscription:
The inscription dated 1275 commemorates and glorifies the construction of this castle, and for the holy cause that inspired it, and to bring Death to the Unbe
lievers who venture towards it, and to preserve the lives of those who defend it.
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, this sacred tower was renewed by the Grace of our Lord, the Sultan Al-Malik, the most splendid Master, the Scholar, the Just, the Fighter of the Holy War, the Warrior on the Border, the Heavenly Assisted, the Victorious, Sultan of Islam and the Muslims, Killer of rebellious deviators, Renewer of justice in the whole world, the Partner of the Commander of the Faithful, Orderer of this work, the Sir, the honorable Lord, the noble Sir, the great officer the Sultan Al-Zahir, the most Glorious, the most Felicitous, Lofty, the well served, the splendor of Islam and the Muslims, Leader of the Army of the Monotheists, King of Commanders in the whole world, Sultan Bilik, may God perpetuate his days.
Since then earthquakes, neglect and shrubbery have added to the castle’s woes. Twain spent an amusing, if not historically accurate, “three hours among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of the fortress and trod where the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader had rang, and where Phoenician heroes had walked ages before them.” Today the old castle has a steady stream of visitors, but compared to the magnificent crusader castles of nearby Syria this one is hardly worth a clamber over.
***
They left Nimrod’s Fortress in the late afternoon for the easy ride down to Banias, or as Twain put it: “we entered this little execrable village of Banias and camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of sparkling water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates and oleanders in full leaf. Barring the proximity of the village, it is a sort of paradise.”
Innocence and War Page 14
