| Mideast Travels |
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Coasting Clear 
Photo by Jen Judge
“How much petrol do you have in the car?” he asked in heavily accented English. He had one of those typically brusque demeanors that Israelis often pick up after extended periods in the army with neither happy memories nor significant career gains. I had about an eighth of a tank. The attendant nodded: “Are you feeling lucky?” I shrugged my shoulders uncomprehendingly. If I was feeling lucky, he explained, I could take the steep road back down through the mountains, build momentum, and then coast all the way to Tel Aviv to retrieve my key. "And if I’m not feeling lucky?” I asked. “You can buy a round-trip bus ticket,” he replied. “But tomorrow is Shabbat, and nothing will be running, so you’ll have to stick around.” This was an abhorrent option. My patience with Jerusalem— with its busloads of overweight pilgrims from Huntsville, Alabama, and its sweaty yeshiva thugs who hacked you to death on the basketball court—was exhausted. What I wanted now, what I really needed, was to cross the border into Egypt, where I planned to spend as much time as I could underwater, snorkeling along the coral reefs of the Red Sea. The deciding factor, however, was my traveling buddy, Manders. In the three years since we had graduated from college, things had gone precipitously downhill for both of us. I was in the early stages of my career as a freelance writer and wasn’t getting much work. The few stories I did manage to line up typically involved warring religious zealots who would rather die than sit down together for a cup of coffee. As for Manders, he had often quipped that he would follow in Hugh Hefner’s footsteps and enter the “skin industry.” He had done just that, quite literally, when he landed a job selling human skin—collected from cadavers—to burn victims. He was visiting me during a business tour; tragically, Israel’s never-ending cycle of bus and disco bombings created a grisly and thriving market for such a product. In short, both of us were in dire need of an escape, which was precisely what Egypt promised. |
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