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The trip from the border takes us through lush quilts of farmland and fields of bobbing sunflowers - the sorts of Edenesque flourishes that make the words “Promised Land” sound like more than just snazzy PR. We drive through tidy suburbs with orange-tiled roofs and leafy yards, little girls pedaling their bicycles down the street, plaits of hair swinging from their pastel-colored helmets. If there’s any sure-fire sign that I’m a long way from the rest of the Middle East, it’s the fact that it feels like I’ve dozed off and woken up in Poughkeepsie. There are terriers scampering down the street, late-model sedans in more than a few driveways. I’m half-expecting a Mr. Softee truck to come coasting down the avenue, playing a cheerful, off-key jingle while a gaggle of screeching kids follow.
With the bus making tracks to Nazareth, I fall in with a group of Israeli backpackers on their way back to Haifa. They’d spent the past five days hiking across the Jordanian desert, the sort of vacation that was, I’m sure, every bit as pleasant as being sodomized by a tractor trailer. Still, they’re a chatty, friendly bunch, pulling me along as we change buses
in Beit She’an and offering tips on how to spend my time in Israel. In Haifa one of them flags down a local bus and exchanges a few words with the driver in Hebrew. The guy gives me a once-over and shrugs - his face all but says, “I should feel sorry for the poor
goy?” - but then he smiles and says, “Welcome to Israel,” before pulling into traffic. I stagger toward the back of the bus, my pack lurching from side to side, a full ten hours after I’d left Amman in the morning.
Because of this peculiar end-around - I’d expected to be in Jerusalem two days ago - I don’t know what to expect from Haifa. I’d quickly thumbed through a few pages in my guidebook on the bus from Nazareth, straining my eyes against the dwindling daylight. When I arrive under the cover of dark, the city’s lights twinkling and spilling down the hillside, I’m not entirely sure where to begin. My hotel’s on a dark, quiet side-street downtown, in an area that has a shell-shocked, slightly sinister air. I check in and make tracks to the stylish German Colony nearby, where the
al fresco dining and waitresses in snug tees are welcome reminders of the civilized life I’d long ago left behind.
In the morning there’s a commotion in the dorm, a flurry of activity at half-past six that has a certain weary scribe grumbling into the pillow. It takes just a few minutes of bleary-eyed investigation to get to the bottom of things: It seems that lovely little Haifa - its houses sloping down Mt. Carmel, toward the bustling Mediterranean port - is a spiritual mecca for the
Baha’i, five million of whom are scattered across the globe, and three million of whom seem to be causing a ruckus in the en suite shower at this very moment. I’m sharing the room with no less than seven pilgrims who have arrived for the start of a 10-day retreat. For someone who’s never heard of the Baha’i Faith, let alone signed onto a pilgrimage, this is hardly the best way to make its acquaintance. The pilgrims are brushing their teeth and blow-drying their hair and gargling at unnatural volumes, carrying on for all the world like a pack of pre-teens getting ready for Spring Fling at Warren G. Harding High.
Later in the day I’m cornered by a few of these guys in the lounge, their voices subdued with pious rapture, little pinwheels of light spinning in their eyes. It doesn’t take much for them to get worked up, and before long they’re all but foaming at the mouth as they gush about Baha’u’llah, the group’s plucky spiritual leader - a man who, admittedly, faced so much persecution in his luckless lifetime that even I’m sort of rooting for his rebirth.
Touched as I am by their piety, slightly moved by the sight of grown men giggling like schoolgirls at their own good fortune, I can’t help but listen to their sermons with a combination of embarrassment and sorrow. While I can toe the party line on religion as much as the next guy - balancing my own Godlessness with a heartfelt appreciation for the faith of others - it doesn’t take brass balls to tip your hat to the great monotheistic religions, pillars of faith that have taken their lumps for centuries and still come out the other end with their combined followers a few billion strong.
But what to make of these Baha’i, their
numbers hardly enough to take on Kansas, Rhode Island and the Dakotas in a fist-fight? If the Baha’i have indeed chosen the one true faith - the fulfillment of the teachings begun by Judaism, Christianity and Islam - why have so few people figured it out? And can someone like Norm - a sweet, bewildered old Oregonian who practically needs GPS to tell his ass from his elbow - somehow stumble upon a road to salvation the rest of us have missed?
Yet here they are, sharing dried-out slices of pizza in the hotel garden, the blossoms bursting over their shoulders while they talk up Baha’u’llah like he just made gold bullion from a can of E-Z Cheese. For whatever inscrutable reason, they have their odd faith the way the rest of us have 20/20 vision or acid reflux. Bless their hearts! Still, I’m reminded of the busload of Maccabi Haifa fans I saw driving into town a few days ago, their green scarves and pennants flapping from the windows. Though they lacked the good luck to be born into the football aristocracy, they would root for the team they were dealt with all their hearts. And so
it goes for the Baha’i, laboring away amid the marginalia of faith, the chords of their hearts quivering a quixotic rhapsody, in the shadow of the Christs, the Mohammeds, and the FC Barcelonas.
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Erik
non-member comment
When it comes to Baha'i...
Haifa ain't got nothin' on Wilmette, IL Just down the road from Alison's hometown... http://farm1.static.flickr.com/87/225633907_9207e634bb.jpg?v=0