Pinatuboed in Jerusalem January 1992 When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines two years ago, closing the U. S. Subic Bay naval base more effectively than any phalanx of Filippino politicians, meteorologists in Jerusalem predicted this would be a cold winter in Israel. They got that right. We like to've froze our butts off. I took my Korean graduate student, Soon-Wook Kim to a meeting in Eilat, Israel, at the tip of the Red Sea, across from Jordan, just above the Egyptian border and upwind a bit from Saudi Arabia. Going to a meeting always involves some pre-trip buzz, preparing talks, hotel and travel reservations, arranging travel support from some grant wooed from the taxpayers. An Israeli friend, Atara Yaari, was visiting in Austin and working on a collaborative project. She volunteered the use of her flat while we were in Jerusalem. In return, I volunteered to re-patriate a couple of suitcases for her. In my paranoia to be able to calmly face security, Israeli or otherwise, I insisted on putting some suff in one so I could respond with a miniscule bit of honesty at the standard questions. "Did you pack these bags? Have they been out of your presence since they were packed?" As it was, the Delta agent just blithely checked them through to Tel Aviv. A bit too casual for my taste. As luck would have it, since our luggage was otherwise carry-on, the Israeli contraband suitcases were the last off the plane. I put on my honest American tourist look and wheeled them past the green "nothing to declare" sign with no problem. My old friend and colleague from postdoc days, Zalman Barkat, was patiently waiting for us. He went to fetch his car, a red rental I later deduced was supplied by the army, and we loaded up and headed for Jerusalem After forty-five minutes, we arrived at Atara's flat, a town house off a tiny lane. Her fourteen-year-old son Rami greeted us, stowed the suitcases, and showed us around. The place had a living room, dining area, kitchen, four small bedrooms and a bath downstairs, another living area, master bedroom, and bath upstairs. We were introduced to the two sinks and two cabinets with the two sets of dishes, one "meaty," one "milky," typical of a khosher kitchen. We tucked our stuff in two of the downstairs bedrooms and then went off to eat some dinner. We went to Middle Eastern kosher restaurant Zalman frequents and stuffed ourselves on pita bread and assorted dips and goodies. Zalman dropped us back at the flat around ten local time, Yahweh-knows-what body time. Despite the fact that we set the thermostat before we left, the place was freezing on our return. Even better, there is no hot water, an agony since we are both travel-lousy and were anticipating a nice warm shower. We washed up in cold water and crawled into bed. Jet lag arousal kicked in for me about 5:00 a.m., 9:00 p.m. body time. I rolled around and finally got up in the cold and dark about 6:00. I washed up in the cold water and found some bread for breakfast washed down with some instant coffee. Kim got up about the same time. A heavy smoker but very conscientious, he ducked outside for his first drag. It finally occurred to me that the lack of heat and the lack of hot water were probably related. Maybe a pilot light was out. Soon-Wook and I found the small gas furnace unit upstairs and it was firing away with great, even excessive regularity, heating its little heart out. It just wasn't doing any good. I looked for a circulation pump or something, but since there was a feeble heat in all the radiators I finally deduced that all was working, it was just inadequate. These places just weren't built with Pinatubo in mind. Rami called about 7:30 and apologized. He forgot to tell us about the red switch in the pantry closet that turns on the hot water! Zalman drove us to Hebrew University where we had more coffee and chatted with friends. It had been cold, windy and partially cloudy in the morning. It started to rain as we went to lunch and snowed briefly while we were there. This is the Middle East! Same latitude as Austin. It continued to rain as Zalman drove us back to the flat. There we found a note from Atara's oldest daughter, Michal, saying she did not know we were there, she had invited a friend, Anet, to stay through Saturday night, and hoped it would be okay. What the hey? It was her house, and there was plenty of room. I went in to take a nap and heard Anet come in. I went out to be civil and said a brief hello. I did not get a solid impression in that first pass. She was tall, my height, had a very short, almost butch, haircut and a fatigue-type jacket. I took her to be an army type, but, thinking on it later, I never saw an Israeli soldier, either male or female, with such short hair. I went back to my nap, arose about five, and worked on my talk for a while. Another friend and colleague, TT (his computer login name) Tuchman came to pick us up for dinner. Having hauled my umbrella 8000 miles, I left it behind and got soaked. TT drove us back around 11:00 and we walked into a one- woman maelstrom. Anet had made herself at home. The liquor cabinet was open and a bottle was on the table. An ash tray was full of cigarette butts. Despite this, Soon-Wook continued religiously to smoke outside. Dishes were on the stove and in the sink. I did not dare look closely to see if the rules of kosher-dom were respected. Hard to believe. Best of all, the radio/tape deck was playing at ear- splitting level. This was presumably to overcome the inconvenience of the fact that the radio was downstairs but Anet, rather than taking one of the remaining small bedrooms, for instance Michal's, had helped herself to the upstairs living area and, presumably, master bedroom. I did not have the courage to look. She bopped down the stairs to inform us that she was having "about ten friends" over for a "meeting" tomorrow, Saturday, night starting about 5. I got a better look at her then as we stood in the foyer and chatted. She turned out to be 30-something and Danish. She stood on the cold stone floor in dirty-looking, bare feet while I stood, fully clothed, shivering. She had on leotards below and a loose bodice piece, cut away on the sides revealing a sagging but ample, free-swinging bosom. By way of conversation, I asked her what she did, still thinking she might have recently mustered out of the army. She gave me a curious, neutral, look. I belatedly got anti-bourgeoise vibes, and began to apologize for attempting to label her by "what she did" rather than "who she was." Not to worry. She proceeded to tell me in exuberant peroration. "I'm just loving life," she began and then continued in a gout of new-agisms that nearly washed me away. Turns out she is a "Rainbow Person". Same bunch took over a small town in Colorado last summer. She had bummed through India studying with some yogi, returning skin and bones nearly starved to death to scarie the bejusus out of her mother. This time she'd traveled in a car caravan through Europe to Greece, then by boat to Haifa and down through Israel, where they have been "swinging naked in the trees" and trying to bring love to everyone in the country. There was lots of talk of the circle of power and love, the oneness of all. I asked whether anyone was evil, as opposed to just bad. She said the Devil was good because he absorbed all the evil and left God free to do good work. It was original to me. At some point she asked if the radio were too loud. Trying to be not unfriendly but facetious, I said it would be nice to have it off by 3:00 a.m. since we did intend to sleep. Big mistake. Maybe it's not wise to be too subtle with a Rainbow person. Not this one. Soon-Wook took his first hot shower. I was too exhausted and just went to bed. The music did not stop. At some point, I realized she had made a conciliation by moving the radio upstairs. It was not at all clear that she turned the volume down. I was tired and sort of slept in fits and starts with my pillow wrapped around my ears. Soon-Wook said he did not sleep at all. He also identified what she was playing. A Prince album. Over and over and over . . .. Soon-Wook hates Prince. Already did. Blessed silence finally fell at 5:00 a.m. Jet lag snapped me up about 7:00. I had my hot shower and breakfast. Zalman arrived a bit later to take us on a tour of the Old City. It was raining. We walked through a long Roman walkway twenty feet below ground that had been newly excavated since I had last been there in 1980. Then we went up onto the old walled city above the Wailing Wall where there are two famous mosques. This was the site of a riot where several people were shot a couple of years ago after Arabs above threw rocks on Jews below. We first went into the silver domed Al Aksa, a huge active mosque with carpets all over the floor. One has to remove one's shoes and I thought in the back of my mind that my new Rockports were somewhat exposed amid the reams of tourists walkware. Then we went to the gold-domed Dome of the Rock, the most sacred mosque in Jerusalem. This mosque encloses the very rock on which God is supposed to have ordered Abraham to sacrifice his only son. It is also where Mohammed had his vision. Very sacred to everyone. We again piled our shoes amongst the tourists' and went in to examine the marvelous carvings and the rock with its blood troughs for more routine sacrifices. We emerged in about twenty minutes and I knew instantly that my shoes were gone! We went ahead and pawed through piles of shoes. Zalman even patrolled around looking for "suspicious characters." We were near the closing of the mosque at 11:00 and waited while all the tourists and their shoes cleared out. The piles of footwear thinned as I stood in my soggy socks. Finally there was one pair left. A run-down pair of cheap, black running shoes in about size 9. Made in the USA. The Muslim guards were very concerned and let me back into the mosque to examine a few shoes there. No luck. I tried on the sneakers but they really pinched. Zalman has slightly smaller feet, so we swapped, he wore the leftovers and I wore his and off we went. Not clear what happened. The owner of the black sneakers may have been the culprit. Or maybe some other pair was first swiped and each victim took another pair, a thought that occurred to me, but I could not bring myself to do it. I imagined some poor Arab, but my Israeli hosts came down hard on that. They pointed out that Arabs have a very strong sense of hospitality that such a theft would violate since I was, in a sense, a guest at their mosque. In any case, no one had ever heard of anyone losing a pair of shoes despite the thousands that have been through the cycles over the last few decades. Just my luck. I headed for Eilat with cold, Pinatubo-soaked feet, and Rainbow music echoing in my ears, but I knew I had a story for the friends back home.