Trip to Israel

We returned to Cairo, from our Christmas trip to Israel. It was a trip full of insight into the interaction of religion, politics, geography, culture and the simple vagarities of life all mixed together. This picture is probably the most photographed in all of Jerusalem. It shows the Temple Mount, a mosque with a golden dome, along with the many Christian churches that dot the Jerusalem landscape.

The curent day Mosque is built on the site of an ancient Jewish Temple. This Temple was the holiest of holy places for the Jewish people because it housed the Arc of the Covenant--the tablets given to Moses containing the word of God. The Temple was destroyed by the Romans and the tablets scattered or destroyed--no one knows what became of them. They are lost. All that remains of the Temple is the foundation--the famous west wall, affectionately called the Wailing Wall. It now is the a most holy place and designated as a synagogue with its own rabbi. At all hours of day and night people come to the wall to pray.

The most famous church is probably the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the site of the Cruxification. It is at one end of the Via Dolarosa, which was the road Christ walked from his imprisionment to his cruxification. Along this street and in the church are the 14 Stations-of-the-Cross; those places where something significant occurred along the way.

More about our trip in future posts.

Women Only

This sign designates where women wait for the Women Only cars on the train. There are several cars on each subway train allocated for women only and some for women and families. Men, husbands and young male children, of women passengers are allowed on these cars. The Women Only cars have a red designation over the entryway of each car, and the family cars have a green designation.

On many of the subway platforms there are special police that patrol the women-only area preventing men from getting on these cars. Up until last night I was only aware of them standing guard over the women-only area on the platform. But last night I saw these police in action.

A woman friend and I were coming home from a dinner party on Zamalek. We got on the women's-only car and were astounded by the number of men on the car. Somehow these men had gotten by those platform police.

(Here I must interject that the women's car is always cleaner and smells nicer than the other cars, so it is no wonder that some men might prefer them, not to mention the opportunity to pick-up an interesting conversation, and perhaps, make a new friend. )

Older women were arguing with some of the younger men aboard, and things were getting heated and loud. We couldn't understand their conversation, but figured out the gist of it from the body language and tone of voice. Those women wanted the men out of the car. The men didn't want to leave.

Several stops later, police boarded the train, banging their nightsticks, yelling and making lots of noise. It was a raid! We just sat there wondering how this was going to play out and impact on us. We had no idea what was going on.

The police never came more than a foot into the car and then jumped off. Whatever they yelled, the message was clear. The women sat tight and the men scattered, tripping over themselves as they ran to make a fast exit from the train.

After things died down, you could sense that the women on board were thankful for the raid. My friend and I speculated that perhaps someone called the police to alert them to all the men aboard our train. We will never know.

The rest of the trip home, was in a true women-only car, with nary a hint of testosterone.