Middle East Travels
I wanted to get a sense of what it was like to live where Jesus once lived, to stand where He stood, and breath the air He once breathed. I've always thought it would be something special to visit the Mount of Olives overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem and other prominent places of the bible in Egypt and Greece.
The issue of displaced Palestinians since 1948, and the present day country of Israel, was something I wanted to have a better understanding of. I was curious to know what the living situation was like in the "Holy Land." No one in my church community, or anyone else I knew for that matter, seemed to know anything other than what they read in the newspapers about the Middle East situation in 1987. I wasn't tied down with debts and I didn't feel as though I'd been accomplishing much at the time. It seemed to me that someone in my Christian neighborhood should have a relatively good understanding of the current living situation in the land that we all read about so much in our bibles. Not as a journalist, or as a news reporter, or a rich kid, but as a Christian, I went...
The president of the Bible College I once attended told me of a person in Jerusalem who would be able to help me find a place to rent in the Jerusalem vicinity for a while. I wasn't making much money at the time, but I didn't have many bills to worry about either. I had an older Ford pickup truck that I sold to pay for the plane ticket. With my VA compensation coming in each month, I figured I'd be able to survive and stay there for at least a few weeks. I got seventeen hundred dollars for my truck which was enough to pay for a thousand dollar round trip airplane ticket to Tel Aviv, Israel. It had a limited three month return on it. The whole trip then, couldn't exceed three months, unless of course I could come up with enough money to pay for another ticket to get home on. I was able to squeeze about six hundred dollars out of my VA comp. each month to cover the rent wherever I was... Realistically, there had to be places where I could stay other than at five star hotels... With seven hundred dollars left over from the truck money and some odd jobs here and there, I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't be able to have enough time to accomplish what I needed to do. My bank agreed to send me the six hundred each month when I notified them where to send it overseas. It looked like a piece a cake! As long as nobody was shooting at me, I was good to go...
American money during that time was worth more in the Middle East than it was here in America. An American dollar was worth about twenty-five cents more in Israel. In Egypt, American money was worth twice as much, so you could live pretty good on American money there. The dollar, or drachma, in Greece, was worth just a few cents less than the American dollar.
The thought of going overseas made preparations for the trip an enjoyable experience. I bought a large carrying bag made out of canvas with a long strap on it that I could put over my shoulder. I knew I'd be doing a lot of walking. I didn't have many lose ends to take care of before I could go, so there wasn't much I had to worry about. I had a friend drive me to O'Hare airport in Chicago to catch a plane. It had been several years since I'd passed through the airport in Chicago and was unfamiliar with the layout of the different terminals. Unfortunately, we used up a lot of time trying to find the right terminal and consequently made it there just in time to board the plane on this Israeli, El Al Airline flight.
In the process of hurrying into the flight terminal at the last minute, I was viewed as a questionable passenger by security. As a result, the authorities took it upon themselves to put me through a very lengthy and exhaustive interrogation process. I was raked over the coals three different times by three different sets of interrogation specialists... Needless to say, I was pretty stressed out by the time I boarded the plane. It's usually the plane ride that gets me nerved up, but the interrogation process they put me through had me wound up about as up tight as I could get. It reminded me of the way I used to feel before making a combat assault in Vietnam, when my stomach would get all tied in knots. Looking back, this must have been similar to the way the VC felt when we interrogated them out in the field...
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