By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
Flying into Tel Aviv airport some thirty years later, I could not help recalling the crisp prose of Shahab Nama, the little Shahab-mystique created by Ashfaq Ahmad and Mumtaz Mufti and various other details of that bygone era, which has simply vanished in the dark corridors of history.
The Holy Land in 2009 is filled with different ground realities. Yasser Arafat’s Fatah has become an ally of the Israeli government, his own rise and fall has become almost irrelevant and the heady days of kafiya-clad hijackers and the daring but symbolic acts of holding passengers hostage at airports have evolved into full-fledge, real life blood-spattered nightmarish scenes of violence. The Holy Land is still bleeding, but the suffering and the continuous degradation of human life has become a “norm,” rather than an event—a norm that no one is interested in reporting about.
Tel Aviv rises from beneath the wings of the plane. Passengers are asked to buckle up and we land in a rather expansive airport with its various zones of security carefully hidden from view. Three young uniformed security women look intently at me as I walk pass them. One of them comes forward, points to her identity batch hanging by a string around her neck and asks for my passport. Well-prepared for it, I hand over my passport. She is no more than 18 or 19, her face still has the last glow of childhood innocence, but she already holds a machinegun and is no more able to see me as a human being, but an icon, clad in long abaya. My outward appearance is immediately identified with a stereotype she already knows well and hence has no need to look at me as an individual—only as a “type.”
A few questions later, I proceed to join the lengthening queue in front of the immigration desks. The staff is older, efficient, and professional, but a bit slow. Passengers wait. I look around: there are a lot of Indians: labour, software engineers, businessmen. They stand out among the crowd of European visitors and Israelis returning home.
“Why are you coming to Israel?” I am asked by the women in her twenties without a smile but without any stern and harsh tone—something different from what I had experienced during my previous three trips to the Holy Land when I had used the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge along the Jordanian border as a point of entrance. I give the well-rehearsed answers: the meeting of the world religious leaders, the visit to Al-Aqsa. “Are you planning to go to the West Bank?” “No,” there is no time for that.”
A few more questions and finally a smile appears on her face just when I begin to ask her, during a pause, not to stamp my passport. “Do not worry,” she says, “I will not stamp your passport.” Then she stamps on a piece of paper and hands over my passport with that paper inside. “Have a good stay.”
“Thank you.”
The paper is taken away as I pass through the metal gate leading to the arrival hall. Collecting my luggage I leave the security zones which had separated me from the rest of the world since my departure from Toronto some 16 hours ago. Travelling by air has its own space: one is removed from the rest of humanity by visible and invisible corridors of security and insecurity: between the moment of entrance into the departure zone of an airport and exit from an arrival gate, one is a virtual prisoner.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I see three young men standing in front of the arrival zone; one of them has a paper in his hand with my name on it. He is wearing a Yarmulke (colloquially, kippah), the small cap orthodox Jewish men wear when not wearing a fedora (The soft felt hat with a fairly low crown creased lengthwise and a brim that can be turned up or down). We greet each other. His name is Adir. He has the saddest eyes I have seen in a long while.
There are a few other participants whose flights had arrived at the same time: three Indian Christians who had travelled by Royal Jordanian Airlines, one Indian Muslim who had travelled by Turkish Airlines and two Americans coming on European airlines. We are all taken to a van and then driven to the Sea of Galilee (Bahira Tibria in Arabic), also called the Lake of Gennesaret, Lake Kinneret, the largest freshwater lake situated deep in the Jordan Great Rift Valley (which appeared through the separation of the African and Arabian Plates). It is partly fed by underground springs, although its main source is the Jordan River which flows through it from north to south. There is a sense of holiness all around: it was on the shores of Lake Galilee that Prophet Isa, peace be upon him, spent much of his short life on earth. During his time, the area was dotted with settlements and villages around the lake and there was a lot of trade and ferrying by boat. It was from the shores of Lake Galilee that four of Isa Alayhis-salam’s Companions came: the fishermen Simon and his brother Andrew and the brothers John and James. One of the most famous sermons of Prophet Isa, peace be upon him, the Sermon on the Mount, was delivered on a hill overlooking the Lake and many of his miracles mentioned in the Bible took place here: his walking on water, calming a storm, and his feeding five thousand people.
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com