Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [40]
I was so sad. My wife and friends tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. They had no idea of the scope of the problem. How it could affect the future of the world.
The next day we stopped at the Sea of Galilee. It’s more like a lake. They have waterskiing and bars and restaurants on the beach. We waded out into the water and went swimming. While no one was looking I made a sad attempt to walk on water. It didn’t work. The people who were sitting at the bar on the patio behind me laughed. It’s a very awkward thing to be caught trying something like that.
I felt vulnerable and scared without my camcorder. I felt out of control, ungrounded as we headed up into the north again to visit my wife’s friend Elana, who lives on a settlement.
As best I can tell, settlers, whether they are secular or nonsecular, are basically pioneering nationalists who go up into the middle of nowhere, build a few houses, call it a town, and enable the Israeli government to say, “We can’t have Arabs up there. There are already Jews in place.”
We get to the town of four houses. It’s up on a ridge. It’s isolated and desolate. We get to their house, where the mood is somber and full of a commitment I don’t get. I wanted my camcorder to work. It protected me from engaging with my immediate experience. It gave me purpose. I couldn’t handle the unmediated reality of Israel. I realized I’d much rather watch it at home on my VCR in my apartment in Queens. There, where Christians, Jews, and Muslims live under one roof with very little difficulty, unless there’s a boiler problem, when we rise up against the Dominican landlord, but that’s a completely different political struggle.
I was really beginning to unravel.
“Why do you live up here? Is it safe? What do you guys do for fun? How do you get food up here? Do they fly it in? I didn’t see any restaurants. Where do you rent videos? Where’s the mall? I don’t understand why you live like this. Where are we going to sleep?” I ranted on in mild panic.
“We have no room here because of the kids,” Elana said, “but we’ve reserved you guys a room at a hostel in Sachnin, the Arab city down the road.”
“Arab city?” I said. “Arabs? Aren’t they the bad guys?” I’m not racist. I was just nervous and ill informed.
“They’re Israeli Arabs, not Palestinians,” Jim said. “It’ll be fine.”
“Fine. Right.”
On the way to Sachnin I kept picturing how easy it is to die in Israel. We could be driving down an isolated road and some masked men could stop the car and drag us out. “Bism Allah! Bism Allah!” There would be guns pressed to the backs of our heads and we’d all be executed and left to rot as a political statement.
I didn’t want to go out that way. I don’t want that kind of press. “Funnyman Marc Maron dies in mysterious Israeli border dispute outside Palestinian territories. Everything was just finally starting to turn around for Marc when he was caught in an ambush dot-dot-dot.” I’m not that committed.
When we got to Sachnin, the road seemed to weave around for miles. There were no stores, no lights, no gas stations; no familiar brand logos lit up to show signs of life and hope. We pulled into a dirt driveway alongside a large three-story stucco house. The top floor of the house looked unfinished because there was no glass in the windows. A man came out to greet us. The “hostel” was the redone basement of his house.
Everything seemed to be cushioned. The walls, floors, and ceiling all seemed to have a pillow-like feel to them. I couldn’t sleep. My heart was racing, my mind was pacing. It was like a hundred and ninety degrees and there were bugs crawling on my face. I felt like slamming my head against the wall, which would’ve been okay, since it was cushioned.
In the morning we all went up to the top floor of the house, which, as it turned out,