Let your vision be world embracing
Bahá'u'lláh

On Saturday we went back to Akka with a friend who works at the World Centre. We have know Jennifer since she was three and Amy was four. They went through really rough adolescences together, ran away together at 13 and 14 and generally were singularly unpleasant.

Jen now speaks fluent Arabic and has taught in Egypt. She has matured into a lovely young woman. We laughed a lot about the past and the irony of us spending time together in the Holy Land. It was astonishing.

Jen took us to the Crusader fortress again and to the al-Jazzar mosque, where we were promptly herded out again and sent to the cistern. I guess the little man at the mosque just couldn't deal with three females, one who spoke fluent Arabic, and one man in his mosque. The cistern was smelly and nasty, but the structure itself was amazing.

The fortress was at one time much larger; the Turks reduced the size during their rule of Akka. But when you get into the cistern, you can see the hugeness of it. The groined arches and the huge blocks of stone dwarf the people walking around looking at it. I am always fascinated by the size of the steps on buildings built long ago, when people were supposedly shorter than we are now. Jeez.

After the mosque, we went to the bazaar, the suk. We ate, but Jennifer was fasting. The falafel is really to die for there. I am exceedingly fond of the pickled eggplant you can put on it. After some lunch we went into the suk to shop. We had looked at stuff in a little shop near the fortress where Jennifer knew the woman who runs it and could get a good prices. But the suk itself was so vibrant, so alive with people selling and shopping. It was crowded and jostling, just a narrow alley, lined with tiny shops. some sold junk, most had cheap household things for
sale. We bought two sets of tea glasses, one for us and one for Amy.

We spent a lot of time in the spice store. First your nose comes alive. Bins of spices and herbs, peppers, cinnamon bark, clove, dried lemon and bitter oranges, basil, herbs I didn't know the name for, lentils, beans, shelves of bottles of rose water and various flavorings. It was nose heaven. We bought candy and an eggplant for dinner. The man who ran it was enchanted with Jennifer and gave her candy and let her taste anything she wanted. He also sold halva. So we bought a couple kinds of that to share with the other pilgrims when we got back.

Then we walked back along the sea wall and out onto the further reach of it. We sat out there in the breeze, just enjoying the sea and counting waves. Jennifer pointed out the Lebanese border on one side of us. Haifa is directly across the bay, but the haze shut it out. Then we wandered back through some of the side streets, watching the Arab girls out on their roofs and the Arab boys on the streets.