Taxi Madam?

“ Just go to the line of big yellow Mercs, ask for Al Khaleel, Arabs don’t call it Hebron. Once you get through the checkpoint outside Hebron, call me on your mobile and I’ll talk to the driver and give him instructions on where to drop you.”

Oooo..Kay! I can do this. Plot and execute my journey from Ramallah to Hebron/ Al Khaleel via the West Bank transport system without a word of Arabic. I can do this. The words of encouragement and direction were from my colleague, Sahira who had invited me to spend Eid with her inexhaustibly extended family in the Hebron area. Goddamn it I intended to get there and experience the whole nine yards of Islam’s biggest festival within the bosom of a Palestinian family.

I was the first passenger for my driver, having left my digs early to find the Merc rank and give myself plenty of time to get acquainted with the vagaries of the Palestinian equivalent of a Falls Road Black Hack service. But these lads on the West Bank win hands down, no contest. I had surrendered myself to a transport system sans speed restrictions, sans any rules of the road, few road markings and as for indicating- well that’s for wimps!

While sitting in my car, (I was beginning to think of it in the possessive, having spent the best part of an hour waiting for it to fill) I took some time to take in its fallen- on- hard- times interior. An iron bar separated the driver and front seat passenger, (me) from the six others on the two back seats. My seat kept sliding every time I moved my ass, so I settled for a yogic position of stillness out of necessity rather than familiarity. In fact the whole trip was a lesson in reaching and grasping for dear life to my core tranquillity- who knew I had one?

Then we were off, well nearly, the pre- Eid traffic was gridlocked around central Ramallah. Regular, prolonged use of car horns have neatly substituted for the absence of any traffic flow system. Not that anyone pays any attention to the car- horns but it produces an endearing caucophony to accompany the chaos. The main road out of Ramallah is a rally-driver’s tetesterone-fuelled dream, diving and pitching with abandon past run down businesses and rubble strewn, rubbish-laden streets.

The drive to Al Khaleel should take 45 minutes- but that was in the good old days when the logical route was through Jerusalem but now Jerusalem must be circumvented and the checkpoints accommodated, all of which takes at least 2 hours, 3 hours when the Israelis are having a bad hair day.

Once past the first checkpoint, the driver put his foot down and the landscape outside began to blur, I reached in and tugged hard at my inner tranquillity willing it to last the course. Just as I thought I had lost the battle, I noticed the Merc’s speedometer stayed static at 20km, even though the speed of sound was about to be broken. By the time halfway into the journey, that the car climbed the 80 degree hill out of the Valley of Fire and began to nonchalantly overtake a 16 wheeled HGV on a hairpin bend I had transcended into some kind of outer body experience and was at one with the universe. Although it may have been the next universe as I seemed particularly close to entering it.

But I not only got there, I also got back and the post traumatic stress has been well and truly ameliorated by the most wonderful 4 days in between where; I got adopted- twice, gave stunted English lessons in return for bad Arabic ones, drank what seemed like sixteen types of tea, partook of my first (and hopefully not my last ) hubbly-bubbly, laughed until I almost peed myself, went cucumber –picking, ate Middle-Eastern, home-cooked food fit for the Queen of Sheba, nervously mangled the traditional greeting for Eid in front of 10 local elders, got kissed so often I was walking around on a permanent high and found a whole community of friendship and welcome that has made me feel very, very privileged. But that’s a whole other story.