Reflections on the Holy Land

This land is my land

During the day the sun is searing and temperatures can get up to around 50 degrees, and then as evening falls, and you would expect the temperature to drop, it actually starts rising as the hot winds from the desert blow in. From almost any point you are surrounded by steep, stark hills, filled with so many ridge lines caused by erosions the hills look they have been scribbled all over with the erratic strokes of a thick black pen in the hand of a hyperactive child. In the narrow gaps between the hills, a few small plains and the coastal strip, there is shimmering white sand that the sun heats up all day that it is too hot to walk on, and the wind whips up at night that in the morning it looks like an impenetrable mist, and everything is covered with it. The few roads that cut across the land are like snakes, swinging back and forth as they find the gaps between the hills and rising abruptly from small planes to narrow passes then dropping down almost as quickly. The wind grows stronger and stronger, whipping up sand and the odd plastic bag here and there, you can imagine it only took a couple of years for it to wear down the hills as it blasts across all you can see, wearing everything in its path down like sandpaper.

As we ride along in a taxi the German guy sitting next to me surveys the landscape and comments, "Huh, its hard to believe they fought a war for this place". I take it he is referring to the Israel-Egypt war, but really people have been fighting for this land for pretty close to eternity Jews (Moses), Christians (Crusaders) and Muslims (the 4000 horseman). It is pretty clear they weren't fighting for the view.

Ships in the desert

I finally managed to leave Cairo and head east, and on the way to the Sinai I saw a most spectacular sight. After I went through the tunnel under the Suez Canal I watched out the bus window as we drove along the road the surreal site of three or four huge container ships, apparently stuck in the middle of the desert. All around there was only sun bleached sand, and a few hills in the background - no water or trees to be seen. The view from the bus meant I couldn't actually see the water in the Canal, so the ships appeared to be just sitting there slowly melting in the sun, and I couldn't help think of them as camels, the ships of the desert !!!

On the way to the Dead Sea

I headed out of Amman down to the Dead Sea (which Jordan shares with Israel) through the hilly, tree-less sun bleached, desolate, dry and rugged hills that are the Holy Land and was struck by the similarity between here and when I was getting about in the Kimberley. Perhaps because I had been wearing my Noonkanbah t-shirt the night before and explained what it meant to a curious Englishmen I suddenly had one of those flashes of insight about the similarities between two very different Holy Lands. As we descended down the road what looked like desolate country is filled with holy places - Mt Nebo on the left (where Moses is supposed to be buried) Bethany over Jordan - where Jesus is supposed to have been baptised, on so on. In between these places live people who go about their daily lives without paying much attention to these special places, which to the outsider don't appear to be much.

In the Kimberley much more time has passed since most places gained their significance from a religious system that most people don't really understand, and their aren't too many signs pointing them out, and people go about their everyday lives without apparently paying much attention to the special places, but they are important none the less. Just like in the Holy Land, they are places of pilgrimage that would upset the Gods to tamper with or destroy.

I think the analogy is a good one, especially for good Christian kids like me who paid attention in religious education classes and absorbed some of the reasons behind the significance of biblical stories because it gives you a little understanding of the importance that people, both Australian aboriginals and others, place on certain places, the way that people can live around and manage sacred places, and an idea of the universality of the relationship that people have with the land upon which they live.

Swimming in the Dead Sea

As the sea came in to view , covered in a thick haze the steep, red hills in the background in Israel were barely visible. The water is a dark grey colour - almost black, and is very still, the whole place is eerily quiet.

Some fast facts - the Dead Sea sits 400 metres below sea level (as you come down the road from Amman you pass the most unusual sign which reads YOU ARE NOW PASSING SEA LEVEL) the Dead Sea is around 40 percent salt (most seas are around 4 per cent - which interestingly is about the same as your tears and amniotic fluid) - it has no outlet so the water evaporates and the salt remains. The Dead Sea really is dead and is dying - it is true !!! The water is so salty there isn't any fish or much aquatic life getting around. Also, Jordan doesn't have much water so it tries to stop as much as it can running off in to the Dead Sea, so it is shrinking. The Dead Sea is bloody hot and quiet - I arrived at around 8.30 and it was already forty degrees.

However the most amazing thing about the Dead Sea is swimming in it - because of the combination of low altitude and high salt levels when you get in the water you float like you are in space - standing in the water over my head the water only came up to my armpits - I was so buoyant that I couldn't but help poke out of the water - even when I tried bobbing up and down the water only reached my shoulders !! No need for treading water here. Lying on my back almost my entire body was out of the water, and there is no effort required - you really can lie there and read a book.

Swimming is almost impossible, you just can't get in to the water enough to pull yourself along - not that you would want to try - a bit of water in your eyes would ruin your whole day. All the little cuts and scratches I had on my feet started to sting from the salt, although it is nowhere near as bad as guide books warn. The benefit of the salt is that once you wash it off with water your skin feels soft as a baby's.