Missing Haifa

We have some friends who will be leaving to go on their Baha'i Pilgrimage at the end of February. At the end of February it will be one year since Bart and I were on our Pilgrimage and how I yearn to be there, now.

I loved the snow here. I love my family here and adore my grandchildren. We enjoy our Baha'i community. Bart likes his work and I like school. Our hearts ache with hunger for the middle east.

When we hear the call to prayer resonating from a television program tears sting my eyelids and I see the cobblestones of Akka's streets. People scurry this way and that as people seem to boil out of buildings into streets already teeming with masses of humanity. Side streets so very tiny you hardly can believe it is a street until you see a tiny Citroen barrelling down it with a motorcycle passing it on the side! Pedestrian right of way? Never heard of it!

The very best pressed honey nut brittle was outside of the Al Jazzaar Mosque. We spent a whole day walking those blessed streets of Akka, cobblestone by cobblestone, the one time prison city by the sea. Bart bought a bedoin headress there and looks quite tribal Arabic when he is in full beard. The sun beat down so hot that day that children were jumping from the ramparts into the sea for money from the tourists. I laughed and Bart gave them handfuls of change they may or may not have been worth dollars, I cannot remember now. The children obviously thought the I should have squealed and told them to stop because the jump did look spectacular (I'll dig out the photos) but I knew they wouldn't be doing it if they hadn't a hundred (or thousand) times before. Bart peaked over the side and commented that it was still quite a feat!

It the evenings, before listening to a member of the Universal House of Justice speak to the pilgrims, we would walk to a falafel shop and have the most scruptious falafels with fresh pita bread made before your eyes and the best tsatziki sauce and hummus. Fresh avacados with every meal and as much grapefruit and oranges as you could eat.

Of course, the main attractions for Baha'is, are the Shrines. I am someone who has not had an easy road with my "religion," yet my faith has remained pure and confident. I may not understand myself but there is within me a core that is so strong and sure that I am left in marvel at this feature. I know it through meditation. What some would call prayer, some introspection. I know faith. I know assurance. I know there is a Divine Being and I have never felt It more strongly than a few times while on Pilgrimage. Someday, if we should meet face to face and the moment is right I may be able to convey to you my experience. It is too private for a blog, or at least for me here and now.

The center of Haifa is called "Hadar" and it is where most of the commercial parts are located. They don't really cater to the tourist trade, here, but we found great places to eat and a market to bring food back to the hotel. We always thought we would have another day to do our shopping and ended up getting people postcards and things from the airport at 4:30 am on the morningn we left, we just ran out of time. Baha'is who do not work at the World Centre (or visiting family working there) can only stay in Israel for 2 additional days. Basically because it is for the best, worldwide, with the strain the way it is between religious denominations and Baha'is are forbidden to use their religion as a point of contention. Please, be careful of how that is said. Not the principle's of the religion, etc.. Another blog entry, maybe.

When we travelled about Haifa (and weren't on the tour bus) we often took a sheroot or a taxi. A sheroot is a taxi van that doesn't go where you want it to but rather has specific destinations with very few stops in between. Sometimes it seemed that they were independently run. But we went all the way to Akka from Haifa for about $5.50 so it was a HUGE bargain. A travel site has this to say about the underground transportation (which we took numerous times):

Moving between the top and bottom ... you can also go from the city to the Carmel [top] in only 8 minutes by taking the Carmelite. I'm talking about is a funicular subway, which is probably one of the few of its kind in the world. This fun and interesting way to get from one point to another was opened in 1959, and while it was closed for several years due to disrepair and lack of funds to fix it, it's now open again for your convenience and enjoyment. The Carmelite has six stations - the lowest one being "the city" and the top most being the Carmel. Since this is a subway, it goes totally underground. And because it climbs a hill, it's very step-like in its build, traveling at an average of an 8o angle. The tunnel is 2000 meters long, and climbs a total of 268 meters from the city to the Carmel and travels an average of only 28 kilometers per hour. Before the renovation, there were drivers on these but now they're totally automatic and computerized. Throughout the tunnel there is only one set of tracks except for a spot in the middle where there are two sets. It's at this point that the two trains (one going up and the other going down, of course) pass each other on their journey. If you're ever in Haifa, I recommend you go on the Carmelite just for the experience, even if you don't need to get from one spot to another via this type of transport.

The friends we met! Oh, I am half afraid to even try to name any in case they ever found this remote little site and thought I had forgotten them! I haven't, on most days I remember everyone's! We met up with 225(ish) people from about 100 countries/states. Only two others from Oregon that we had known from before this trip. That large group was broken down into smaller groups of 25 for morning or afternoon tours and then, when you weren't on a tour you arranged your time yourself with friends you met. When we weren't at Baha'u'llah's Shrine at Baji we were combing Mount Carmel with our new found friends Karin (from Cape Town, South Africa), Parissa (from Perth, Australia), dearest Bonnie and Serge (with the lovely hair from Quebec), Jack from Hawaii, our friends from Slovania (names just flew out of my head), as well as from the family from Spain! Ack, there was the young couple that scared us all so much when they put their passports in their knapsacks and their knapsacks in the luggage compartment under the bus which angered the 15 year old with the machine gun who stopped the bus and wanted to see ID!

Even that, machine gunned youngsters guarding the bus stops I forgot until just this moment, doesn't make me want to stay away. I crave the pictures coming to my mind's eye of that world. I can dredge up, at a moment's notice the vivid colors of the market place, from the burkha's the older women wore and the dresses of the younger ones to the cloths covering the stands and the flags flying overhead, to the gems worn intertwined in the silvers or goldwork of fine jewelry, ornate heargear or tableware. My ears ache to hear the cacaphony that comes from so many different languages being spoken in a sing-song voice, almost becoming a symphony of well tuned intruments deliberately playing out a secret concerto for the tourist with the discerning ear to hear.

We hope we have the opportunity to one day return.