24/1/97

Demo City

Donג€™t try driving in Jerusalem until youג€™ve checked the news.

    I live in south Jerusalem. I work in north Jerusalem. My best route home is north, through Lebanon, over the Polar Cap, back down the other side of the globe to the Cape of Good Hope and up Africa, which gets me to the back entrance of south Jerusalem.
    It's longer, but you avoid all the traffic.
    A traffic jam, like everything else in this city, is political. In New York or Athens or Yokneam, when you get stuck behind a long line of cars, it's usually only because there's a long line of cars in front of you. Jerusalem's not like that. Uh-uh.
    Like the other day.
    I was leaving the office when Herb stopped me. "Did you read the paper today?" he asked.
    "Yeah. Betar won. So what?"
    "The front page, dope. Kibbutz Naג€™an had a bad nana crop."
    "Jeez, I must've missed that story."
    "You don't get it, do you? The farmers are furious about the weather. Theyג€™re blaming Bibi."
    "Couldn't we discuss this another time? I'm on my way home."
    "Let me make this simple. Naג€™an is a bastion of the Left. Theyג€™re not going to let the Likud get away with this. You know what a pack of Israeli farmers does when it has nothing to do? It demonstrates. Which means if you make a right turn onto Yirmiyahu you'll probably sit in traffic for an hour while the farmers lob wilted peppermint."
    "I see," I said. "So I should go left on Yirmiyahu."
    "Of course not. Go left and you'll run smack into a haredi riot. Don't you know what parsha it is this week? It's Beshalah, and it's a Thursday, and they're about to read the part of the first part of the parting of the Red Sea. Every year on Red Sea Thursday they riot, didn't you ever notice?"
    "The truth, no."
    "Tell you what," Herb said. "I'll guide you. Give me a lift home, it's on your way."
    "Where do you live?"
    "Ma'aleh Adumim."
    "Are you nuts? That's northeast, halfway to Tiberias, and I'm going southwest..."
    "... Precisely where Teddy Stadium is, right? Like you said, Betar won. Every time Betar wins a game there's a noisy victory parade. Honking, flag-waving, Mercedes-driving dumdums clogging up the road for blocks."
    "But my wife's waiting for me..."
    "You can call her from my place."
    We got in the car. I threw 'er into drive. The tires squealed as I shot out to Yirmiyahu and defiantly made a right. I was gonna show Herb: I was gonna strand this know-it-all Ma'aleh Adumimnik in remotest Gilo.
    "By the way," he said, "did you stock up on provisions?"
    ג€œWe do have a supermarket in Gilo,ג€ I snorted.
    "No, I mean in your car."
    We were making speedy progress. "Hah!," I said. "We're moving."
    "Sure," said Herb, "only because all the cars in front of us are turning off and going the other way."
    That's when I got a whiff of the burning tires. It didnג€™t smell like Naג€™an nana.

WE STOPPED an approaching motorcyclist and asked her what's going on. It seems that a kilometer down the road somebody ran over a cat. The SPCA was holding a vigil at the site, and it got ugly. A few guys from Kach started heckling, and just as soon as the reporters arrived, a carload of left-of-center radicals pulled up and began a hunger strike in support of nonkosher meat imports. Then an unemployed Russian pianist turned up with an armful of retreads and set them alight while shouting abuse at the government. That set off a counterdemonstration of environmentalists, which sparked an anticounterdemonstration by antidisestablishmentarians. I wondered how the papers would get all that in a headline.
    I made a U-turn. A block later I found myself behind all the cars I had been driving behind in the opposite direction. Someone in a white Subaru honked impatiently. It didn't help.
    "Up there!" Herb exclaimed, pointing to a driveway. It led to a little-known side street that looped around and brought us right back to the parking lot where we work. 
    "Might as well stay, get an early start on tomorrow."
    I went out the back way.
    I looked left, I looked right. Nothing happening. Just some people at a bus stop. Just some people with placards at a bus stop they were burning down.
    "Islamic Jihad?" I asked Herb.
    He shook his head. "Not their style. By the looks of it I'd say Jewish Jihad."
    I made a right, then a left and found myself on the Ramot Road, where haredim were throwing stones in the name of God, to mark the anniversary of the Ramot Road stone-throwing campaign. I figured if I could swing wide around the trouble I'd find some open road.
    I did. Right into Shuafat. Right into an angry demonstration against ... us. We came under a hail of stones thrown in the name of God. Suddenly I yearned for traffic, and shot back out to the main road, almost running through a police cordon.
    "Jeez, would you look at that!" I said. Some people were promenading down the middle of the street lugging huge wooden crosses on their backs.
   "That's right, I read about this in the papers," Herb said. "I should have remembered. The First International Congress of False Messiahs. First they march around the Old City walls, then they march on the walls, then they jump off the walls."
    I tried to back up but it was too late. We were hemmed in. I sighed, turned off the ignition and waited for the parade to end or the world to end, whichever came first. I turned to Herb. "Quite a day, eh?"
    "I've seen worse," he said blandly. "You remember the First Jerusalem Marathon? From all over the world they came running to make our lives miserable. Did the municipality learn from that? Nah. The very next year, they scheduled the Second Jerusalem Marathon on the same day as the First Jerusalem Royal Visit, when King Carlos came riding into town, which was going on just as a mass anti-government rally was massing.
    "It's something else every day in this whacko town," Herb continued. "To move a sefer Tora from one shul to another down the street it takes 90,000 people half a day. Boy meets girl in Mea Shearim and the city becomes a wedding hall. How many Jerusalemites does it take to change a light bulb? Two: one to change the bulb, and one to set up the police barricades.
    "We can't celebrate unless everyone else suffers. The Jerusalem March during Succot, the classic-car rally, Independence Day, Land Day, May Day, Memorial Day, Mimouna, the Makouya parade, Jerusalem Day, army induction ceremonies, Thursday night Shabbat shopping, Friday morning Shabbat shopping, the first snowfall, the first rainfall, when it's too hot, too dry, too dusty, when school's out, when school's in, when somebody forgets a bag of onions at a bus stop, whatever the occasion, whatever the reason, the result is: we can't get home. Heck, even on that one great trafficless day, Yom Kippur, the streets are bumper to bumper with kids on bikes so that you can't even walk. The only reason we don't have military parades anymore is that the tanks can't get through."
    The parading messiahs left the road and descended upon a roadside cafe for a quick nosh. I backtracked, deftly drove over the median and made for the other side of the Old City, where the Women in Black were lying down on the road to protest the Jewish occupation of Hadassah Hospital. Some drivers didn't consider them an obstacle, and drove right over them. Herb suggested I back up and make a right turn. I did, narrowly missing a fracas between Peace Now and Gaza/Jericho First.
    We crawled along for a while behind a motorcade of settlers (I knew they were settlers because they were flying Israeli flags and it wasn't even Independence Day), when suddenly Herb said: "Stop!"
    I slammed on the brakes.
    He got out.
    "What's wrong?" I said nervously.
    "Nothing. This is where I live. Thanks for the lift." And before I could say boo, he'd bounded up a couple of steps, pushed open a door and was already sitting on his porch sipping hot cocoa and waving at me. "Stop by anytime you're in the neighborhood," he shouted, and then cackled.
    I threw a stony glare at him, in the name of indignation. "How do I get out of here?" I snarled.
    "Make a right," he said, "you'll get to the Dead Sea. Keep going. Just past Masada make another right, through Arad, then follow the signs to Hebron. Keep your windows closed. You'll have to step on it to get to Bethlehem before the Christmas traffic jams. Then make a left and presto, you're in Gilo."
    "Got it."
    "See you tomorrow."
    It was a nice drive, actually. I didn't see a single placard between Ma'aleh Adumim and Masada. Passing the mountain fortress, I reflected on the momentous events of 2,000 years ago. The first great Jewish traffic jam. For the first time I was able to sympathize with the Romans.
    There were no riots in Arad, no haredi weddings in Dhahariya, no ministerial motorcades in Hebron, Bethlehem was fast asleep by the time I got there and then I saw it, as wonderful as Kansas to little Dorothy returning from Oz, Gilo.
    It was in the dead of night when I finally pulled up in front of the old homestead. My wife greeted me at the door. "Did you hear the news?" she said urgently. I hadn't. "A bulletin on the radio, a few minutes ago. The nationג€™s lumberjacks are massing for a demo against Tu Bishvat, lobbing logs onto the roads. You'd better get going or you'll be late for work."