The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Even though I knew the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin would confront me with some of the feeling of people disappearing, the reality was eerie. I sat at the southeast corner and looked at the square block of randomly shaped stone in front of me. Between the uneven stones were uneven pathways. The pathways were sometimes a few feet lower than the stones they passed between, sometimes they were twenty feet lower.

As people walk through the narrow paths between the stones, they appear, disappear, reappear and disappear again. Heads pop up 50 feet away then they are gone. I did not know the people in front of me, they just appeared and disappeared. Kids seldom showed up. So I would see a man walking and then see two little heads for a moment. Then those heads would disappear. Then the father would disappear.

Here is a video that will let you see what I saw.

A Moving Experience Thanks to Jerusalem's Arab Quarter

The trip to Jerusalem was my first in a desert since leaving Iraq in 2010. Four days after I arrived in Iraq, the combination of low humidity and exercising in 120-degree heat left me terribly constipated.  The cure was Metamucil every day for the rest of my time in Iraq.

I arrived in Jerusalem the morning of Wednesday, July 5. On Friday, I rode downhill from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. It was nearly 25 miles of downhill, 16 miles steeply downhill. Then in 95-degree heat, I turned around and rode back up the hill--for more than three hours into a 20mph headwind.  I drank all I could, but when I returned after dark I was dehydrated.  And it was Sabbath. All Jewish-owned businesses were shut down. So I walked to an Arab-owned store and bought Gatorade.

But it was too late.

On the Sabbath morning in I woke up in the same state I was eight years before in Iraq: badly constipated in the way only the desert can do to me. 

I am unable to move, so to speak......and it's Sabbath so all the Jewish businesses are closed. Google maps said a pharmacy was open in the Arab district a mile away. After an uncomfortable walk,  I had to ask the young Arab woman behind the counter for Metamucil.

Huh?

Enema?

Huh? 

Then I held my stomach and bent forward. 

"FLEET!" she said loudly with a smile. 

The old Arab woman next to counter smiled knowingly. The clerk sped to the back. When she returned I said , "Two." She smirked. She got another. Usually they ask about shopping bags for purchases here and I don't take them. She put my purchase straight into an opaque bag. I thanked her.

On the way back I stopped at a second pharmacy. The young clerk did not recognize the word Metamucil, but the older pharmacist knew "FIBER!" 

Also loud. Also funny for everyone else. 

Even funnier was that he reached straight for the Israeli brand of fiber. I was clearly an American Jew since I knew no Hebrew and was shopping on the Sabbath.

In an hour I was cured and rode 40 miles up and down a different hill after drinking a lot of water before, during and after the trip. 

I could not even add up all the ironies of having this problem while I was part of the army that invaded an Arab country, then going to Arab pharmacies for the cure when eight years later I am in Israel. 

There are so many jokes I thought of about my condition, I would be wiped out if I made them.

Visiting German Historic Sites with Two Coptic Christians from Cairo

The Altar at the Cathedral in Worms where Martin Luther 

was tried for heresy nearly 500 years ago.

When Cliff and I visited the first Concentration Camp, the Cathedral at Worms and the Jewish Cemetery, a young couple from Cairo joined us. Mariam and Sameh are Coptic Christians. Sameh is a gastric surgeon. Mariam is pursuing a Ph.D in math education. They were staying in a guest house at Canaan also. Mariam had visited Canaan several times before, but this was Sameh's first visit.

The Cathedral in Worms.

On the long drive to Worms Mariam told us about their life in Cairo, their Church community and the work they do. They love their home and their community, but the longer they talked the more thankful I was to hear that they have skills that transfer well to other cultures, up-to-date passports and no kids.  They said things that eerily reminded me of things I read about victims of the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing who could not quite believe the worst could happen to them, and that their neighbors could be complicit.

After a while I asked, "Do you worry about living under an Islamic dictator in a country that is home to the Muslim Brotherhood?" Mariam said she tried to put the danger out of her mind and continue her work and studies, but that the recent bombing of a Church not far from theirs she could not ignore. A very close friend lost her mother in the blast and many friends.

As we walked around the city near the cathedral, Sameh told me about how he came to specialize in gastric surgery. Mariam was quite animated about her future work teaching math. I was happy to hear they saw the future so brightly, but I could not shake the foreboding I felt thinking about their future in Egypt.

They left Canaan two days later, the morning Cliff and Dmitri and I went to visit the former East-West German border in Fulda. At one point I was telling Cliff and Dmitri about my admiration for Ariel Sharon as a tank commander in the '73 Arab-Israeli War. Cliff said, "It's a good thing we didn't come here with Mariam and Sameh. They have a different view of that war than you do." Of course, he was right. They are Egyptians. They are real patriots, working to make their country better, so they think the '73 War was a tragedy in the same way I see it as a great victory.

In "Survival in Auschwitz" Primo Levi describes an inmate who earned the Iron Cross for gallantry under fire in World War I, but was killed in Auschwitz. He was a patriot. I so hope I am wrong and Mariam and Sameh have a wonderful life in the city they love. In a way, I will be like the families of soldiers back home. Families who saw a bombing in Mosul on the news were worried their soldier was injured, even if the soldier they love was hundreds of miles away. When terror against Coptic Christians is in the news, I will be thinking of Sameh and Mariam.