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My life in
If you are one of the five people who read this journal regularly, you may have been wondering why it’s taken me so long to write another entry. This time I actually have a legitimate excuse. The same afternoon that I finished my last journal entry, I flew to Israel for a nine-day pilgrimage to the cities of Haifa and Akká, the two most holy places on earth for Bahá’ís. I am not going to get into the minute details, because I’m not naïve enough to think that everyone who reads this wants to know what the oranges at the House of Mazra’ih taste like, or what it feels like to walk up the terraces of Mount Carmel while staring up at the Shrine of the Báb (physically and spiritually breathtaking). But if you do want to know those things, believe me, all you need to do is ask. My pilgrimage was, I can say unhesitatingly, the greatest nine days of my life.
The airport in
I flew Jet Airways twice, a domestic Indian carrier that took me to and from Bombay on my way in and out of Israel. My initial expectations of domestic flights in India are now utterly shattered, after being dealt their first blow when I took a Sahara Airlines flight four months ago that brought me to Bangalore for the first time. The service on these flights is just fantastic; the food is great, they bring you a moist towel before takeoff, and the flight attendants are polite and attentive. So much for the image of a giant metal tube with wings, which is what appeared in my head before I came to this country.
In the Bombay airport I was rigorously checked by an El Al official, an Indian Jewish lady named Yaffa with a tough-as-nails stare that could make you forget that you’re actually not a plane hijacker. Through my life as a traveler I have been blessed with an American passport and a pseudo-Irish spelling of my very Arabic first name. The Israelis, however, are the only ones that take the security questions to the next level. When they bust out the What is the origin of your last name, sir?, that’s when I know that somebody is going to be looking through my toiletries for bombs. These security conversations are often annoying but also pretty entertaining. When I tell them that I am an Iranian with Jewish relatives in Israel, they are invariably suspicious. Apparently no one at El Al has been told that there are Iranian Jews in their country. This is forgivable; the relationship between the two peoples is only several thousand years old, so news may not have spread yet. This is in addition to the members of parliament, famous singers, and even the former head of the military of this country who are Iranian Jews… but maybe those people are just shy.
Being a Bahá’í, I am convinced, is the only thing standing in between me and a cavity search when I visit this place. The Israelis have a good impression of the Bahá’ís from the waves of polite and cheerful pilgrims that arrive every couple weeks. But the El Al folks also find it strange that one could be a Bahá’í and have Jewish relatives; apparently marriage between people of different faiths is also an impossibility. Justifiably, I’m asked to prove I’m a Bahá’í, which I do by producing letters, showing ID cards, and explaining the theological meaning of the necklace I’m wearing. Strangely, after I’ve proven this I’m still checked for at least another hour, a waste of time and resources considering the first and last instance of Bahá’í political violence was in 1852[*]. Do I sound frustrated, or just pretentious? Let’s move on.
I took two-and-a-half days in Israel before my pilgrimage to spend with my family members there. I have met them a few times before, both in Israel and the US, and they treat me like a close relative, even though I’m only a third cousin or something like that. On Friday night I enjoyed a delicious and overwhelming Shabbat dinner with the whole family, which included piles and piles of Iranian, Moroccan, Spanish, and Israeli food and desserts. The next day I spent with my cousin Ayelet and her husband Oded, as we took a trip out to the city of Nazareth, not for any sight-seeing reasons, but simply because that city has “the best hoummus in Israel” (which proved to be true).
The next nine days, of course, were my pilgrimage.
I will never be able to explain this experience properly. I have added some photos that might show
the sheer beauty of
It was plainly depressing when I finally left