An Israeli colleague asked me, if invited, would I come to a conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A few moments of hesitation were the only interlude between his offer and my affirmative response. "Who would ever say no to a chance to go to Jerusalem?" I said. But truth be told: I did hesitate.
Earlier, when I had forwarded the announcement for the conference to my academic department, I received a series of angry e-mails from colleagues and graduate students for violating the boycott against Israeli academic institutions. My response then and now to my colleagues, as an academic, a pacifist (mostly) and a supporter of the Palestinian cause for dignity and self-determination, is that I abhor the behavior of the State of Israel towards the occupied Palestinian populace. I am also no friend of the Zionist movement, and have always maintained that it is one of those insidious European imperial ideologies, among many others, which was specific to the cultural and social pathologies of 19th century Europe. It had some appeal in the early 20th century - a perverse era of European imperialism, anti-Semitism and fascist viciousness - but it is way past its 'sell by' date.
Academics, however, have to defend and maintain spaces of free and open exchange of ideas, otherwise our trade cannot exist. We cannot exclude scholars from debate and discussion because of the bad behavior of their governments. If that were to be the criteria then I, as a Pakistani, like many others, would probably be one of the first candidates for exclusion. There is no end to these politics of exclusion, and the end result of such politics is fracturing of the very foundations of the academic enterprise. So I would go to Jerusalem-and to Al-Quds it was that I headed.
My reception at the cavernous Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport was less than enthusiastic. I politely requested the very attractive young lady at Immigration to not stamp my passport. In Israel, if you request that, they stamp a piece of paper with your entry and exit stamps and hence there is no record of your ever having visited the country. This is good for me because many of our brotherly Arab countries and Pakistan as well (helpfully for the paranoid Zionist narrative) tend to deny entry to anybody with an Israeli immigration stamp on their passports. What is not good is that that raises all sorts of flags for the Israelis and they want to know why it is that you would rather not have an official record of their hospitality. So as expected, I was ushered into the secondary inspection room, to be interviewed by an immigration officer for about an hour. The officer was all the more excited to learn that I was a Pakistani traveling on a British passport. Answering questions about everything and anything regarding my family, history, friends, contacts, Pakistan and two hours of waiting, finally got me my entry stamps into Israel. I was lucky: there was a young American woman of Palestinian descent who was sitting in the room for two hours when I got to the inspection room and was still there when I left, as was a French NGO worker.
The interview process for me was reasonably friendly, with some cute interrogative techniques thrown in there for good measure to throw me off balance and reveal the truth about my possible unflattering disposition towards Israel, or inadvertently admit that I was not who I said I was. I guess everybody has to earn their living; and officials who work in bureaucracies tend to think they are damn clever at doing it. My investigator was as cocksure as one gets when one feels the steel of power in one's spine.
Jerusalem is like the Hindu deity Agni. Like the fire god Agni who is the messenger to other gods, Jerusalem has plenty of iron and fire in its past and present, and it is after all the staging post for communion with the Abrahamic God. But as a Hindu travel companion in Jerusalem reminded me-"tum sala [You silly] Abraham followers have one God who plays favorites amongst you-there are enough gods and their Jerusalems for us Hindus to not have to fight over them." True-we Muslims and them Jews and Christians have only one Jerusalem-and it is the tale of my communion with the place and the ideas of it that I wish to narrate in this essay.
The food is absolutely, ridiculously and stupefyingly good, expensive and plentiful in Israel and Palestine-that is unless you are a rice eater. The Israeli populace, despite its extraction from 122 countries, generally seems to be partial towards bread as their main source of carbohydrates-something that they share with their antagonists, the Palestinians. The portions are also huge in Israel. I was to learn this relatively early at dinner in the legendary King David Hotel in West Jerusalem. A single food order in Israel can easily feed three, and me and my friend ordered three modest European food portions. Needless to say it was a struggle, especially since the food was so good that it seemed sinful to let it go to waste-and that's not the only thing that evokes sin in Jerusalem, which is the capital of religious traditions centered around the original original sin! Jerusalem's key sin for me is its falafel that I fear has left me with the perpetual lament when tasting chickpea balls anywhere else that they are just not the same as in Jerusalem.
Mamila in West Jerusalem, where I was staying for the first few days, is the poshest area of Jerusalem. Well-heeled Israelis throng the trendy eateries and shops in Mamila Mall overlooking the walled segment of the old city between Jaffa and Zion gate-the latter known as bab-e-nabi-Daud ('The Door of Prophet Daud') in Arabic. It is a rare pleasure to sample the veritable United Nations of food on offer in the eateries representing the culinary heritage of all the countries that the Jewish population of Israel hails from. (My personal favorite is the delectable shakshuka, a Tunisian-origin breakfast dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce.)
There is a higher proportion of Hasidic and other Jewish sects distinguished by their dress in Jerusalem. Even the most seemingly secular establishments have the Yaer Emanuel hand-washing pitchers by their wash basins to cater to orthodox Jews, who would not wash their hands with tap water. Many of the West Jerusalem taxis have darkened rear windows and mirrors to meet the privacy demands of orthodox Jewish passengers, who according to some Christian and Muslim drivers don't patronize non-Jewish taxi drivers. The overt Jewish religiosity is ubiquitous in dress, symbols and culture and encapsulates the politico-cultural and ideological tensions in the secular Jewish State of Israel. I could not help comparing it with my own Land of the Pure, where overt symbols of piety inter alia mehrabs, beards, tucked-up shalwars, pathological fear of female sexuality, mosques in the middle of the roads and green areas, and brassy Aazans and naats at dawn, could not possibly leave anybody in doubt about the religious leanings of Pakistanis. And just in case somebody is still not sure, we start every formal event with a recitation from the Quran-something that our twin religion-based polity of Israel seems to avoid but only thanks to its hollow secularism.
Living in Mamila, one could be forgiven for thinking that Israelis are generally a well-off lot. There are of course poor neighborhoods in West Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. The present Likud government did usher in a "Reaganomics Revolution" in the historically highly socialized and regulated Israeli economy during its first stint in the 1990s. The result was a strong increase in GDP growth rates, very high concentration of wealth among less than 25 families and massive increase in poverty rates. Beggars are not uncommon even in high-end areas like Mamila.
Israelis want to be liked. In every restaurant and cafe I was asked by friendly Israelis about my impressions of Israel and offered pre-emptive apologies for the inconvenience I must have suffered as a Pakistani entering the country. All of them said that security concerns are a reality in the country and surely I understand. A frank late-night conversation with one such Israeli of Yemeni descent was indicative. He was intensely curious about my Pakistaniness and along the same lines lamented how his heritage as an Arab Jew is a blind spot in the dominant nationalist-cultural narrative of Israel. But along the way it didn't take much for him to also descend into a paranoid diatribe about how everybody hates Jews and the only place where Jews could be safe is Israel.
The perception that everybody hates Jews was articulated frequently in my conversations with graduate students and colleagues in the academic conference I was attending. Many of those rational, thoughtful, enlightened Israelis betrayed a deep angst about their country's occupation of the Palestinian population. The foundational Zionist narrative is sacrosanct, except for some ultra-religious Jews for whom the existence of the State of Israel is an abomination. There is, nevertheless, a general inability to comprehend that perhaps the Israelis' Arab neighbors don't hate them just because they are Jews but because of what they did to form the state of Israel and what they are continuing to do.
Jerusalem is a united city today-at least in theory. A hyper-modern tram runs the length of the green line that used to separate the Jordanian-administered part of the city from the Israeli part until 1967. East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel, though nobody in the world recognizes that annexation. Even the Israelis don't seem to recognize it: why else would the Israeli military need to patrol half the city in full military regalia?
[To be continued...]
this guy is pretty smart we should get him as the Pakistani PM.
