Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [45]
It was the voice of God.
I looked up and said, “Subtle.”
It was over. The camera lay alone on the slab of rock. Other tourists began to gather around. I looked over at my wife and friends. They were glaring at me smugly, as if justice had at last been delivered.
I went to pick up the camcorder. It was really broken. The start button was all bashed in. I couldn’t even shove it up Sony’s ass anymore. What would I say? “I was holding it and it just started crinkling in on itself. I don’t know. You take it. It’s creepy.”
I was standing on the altar, cradling the camera as if it were a child. I looked up into the sky that once harnessed the gods and demons that have defined spiritual belief for millions of people for thousands of years, and it was empty and red and beautiful. My camcorder was dead. There was no face of God in sight. I realized deep within that I knew nothing. I stood on the altar and I felt naked, stupid, and a little used. I was a cosmic doofus, a sucker, a mark. Sony and God had been waiting for this to happen. I had been set up, caught in the middle; I was the catalyst and the punch line of a biblical struggle between good and evil. I blew the dust off of my camcorder, put it in the bag, and slouched slowly down from the altar point. It was done. I didn’t get the job. I was free.
I had one more day to indulge in my vacation. We drove back down through Jordan and Elat, down into the Sinai to a small town on the coast of the Red Sea called Terebin. Oriella had visited there when she was a child, and it was still part of Israel. It wasn’t so much a town as it was a dirt-cheap, run-down, low-rent tourist outpost. There was snorkeling and pedal boats, strewn garbage, dusty sand, broken-down trucks, stray dogs, and camels. There were three or four small, one-story hostels in a row. In front of each hostel was an open seating area with pillows, couches, low tables, and thatched roofs right at the edge of the water. Bedouin men served you as you sat. Mint tea, hummus, and tabouli.
We checked ourselves into a hostel. I was shattered and had surrendered. I felt the way the town looked. My spiritual journey was over. I hated my camcorder, and I wasn’t too happy with God or myself. Once we got settled in, we went out to sit. I tried to get reacquainted with my wife and friends.
While Jim, Kim, and Oriella were talking, I stepped away and pulled one of the Bedouin guys aside. I looked into his eyes and pinched my thumb and forefinger together and brought them to my lips and made the toke sound, the sucking in a joint noise, the universal sign language for “Can you get us some pot?”
He looked at me and said, “Yes, I get for you.”
I said, “That would be great.” I thought if I could score some reefer, it might make up for what an asshole I’d been the entire trip, and besides, I needed the relief.
It must have been about two in the afternoon when he told me he could get some. We snorkeled, rode the pedal boats, ate twice, napped, and chatted, but still no pot. Around seven I was getting irritated and every time I saw the guy, I kicked my chin up at him with the secret What’s up with what we talked about? head jerk. He would say, “I get. I get. No worry.”
I eventually gave up hope and settled into a cranky disappointment that my wife could not understand. I told her I was trying to get us all some pot and it didn’t pan out. She was pissed that I hadn’t told her earlier.
It was like one-thirty in the morning. It was our last night in the Middle East. I was lying outside on the ground, looking up at the stars of Egypt, festering about a pot deal that didn’t go down, when I felt a tug on my arm. It was the little Arab guy. He said, “It is time.”
I shook Kim, who had dozed off. I said, “Honey, it is time.” Oriella was still awake, so she came with us. Jim was out