girls gone feral

I was hoping he'd make it until I got there in the morning. My mother was the only one with him at the time. He started breathing heavily and then just stopped. It was very peaceful. It's a good thing my mother was there, even if he didn't know she was there (it's not too clear) - he really did not want to die alone.

Per his request, he'll be cremated. The memorial service won't be for another month or so, they think. He has family around the world and they are going to schedule it so that people can make plans to fly here.

I am not particularly ready to be consoled by how good the death was, or how ready he was to go, or how he had a full life. I want my grandfather. I have been lucky in that, until now, I've never lost a close family member. But that also means that this is all new to me. I don't feel like I really know what it means for him to not be here.

While in Jerusalem I walked a couple of times past a crumbling, ancient Muslim cemetery. It was clearly very old, and also very much in disuse:

From Israel 2009 #2

( more pictures )

From Israel 2009 #2

Across the street was a building under construction, which the tour guide identified to us as the Palace Hotel - an old hotel that's recently been gutted from the inside, and will be rebuilt with the facade intact.

The guide spent a lot of time talking to us about how great the hotel would be when done, but I spent all my time ignoring him and taking pictures of the cemetery. There were what appeared to be Jewish graves in it as well (note the star of David):

From Israel 2009 #2

I thought perhaps they were two old cemeteries that were partially divided. You can't see in these photos, but there is a street that runs through the two halves of the cemetery, which would be a natural dividing point between Muslim/Jewish sections.

So imagine my surprise that upon reading further about how people are actually trying to build a museum of tolerance on the site of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, I realized that it was the same cemetery I took photos of (note the reference, in comments, to the Palace Hotel).

I'm sort of speechless. I actually think everyone here is acting pretty badly, not just the people trying to build the museum - for one thing, the highest members of the Muslim clergy were perfectly happy 60 years ago to sell part of the cemetery to build a hotel on it, and never complained when, almost 50 years ago, a parking lot was built on the same exact location they're trying to build the Museum of Tolerance on; this article seems to suggest that the museum will not actually encroach on any part that is still cemetery, it will only be on the part that's currently a parking lot. That said, the people complaining now aren't exactly the same people who didn't complain 50 years ago: It's a new generation that can legitimately have different priorities.

That said, for fuck's sake, this is not how you build a Museum of Tolerance. You do not propose to build it on the former cemetery site of a prominent minority with whom you have a rather contentious relationship, then, when they object, resolve it through litigation. While in Israel a number of Israelis I talked to said, with varying degrees of pride or matter-of-factness, that Israelis were not "politically correct" people and this is possibly why Israel has such a "PR" problem. When they weren't native speakers of English, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, figuring that they didn't realize how dismissive their word choice was - Israeli culture is pretty unpolished in a bunch of other ways, and they could have been referring generally to that (a friend of mine who now lives there says that American table manners are much stricter, and that sort of frightens me). But some of them were born in the United States, and I really kinda wanted to punch them in the face. I hate the use of "political correctness" as a dismissive term for what should be called regular human decency.

Oh, and this is clearly not a matter of one culture just valuing cemeteries more than another: if anything, Judaism is far more concerned with maintaining the sacredness of cemeteries than any other Abrahamic religion, which is why you'll read in the above-linked articles references to the ultra-Orthodox community complaining bitterly about this, and significant wads of cash being expended for "teumah pipes" to channel ritual uncleanliness away from the site (wtf?), presumably so that Kohenim can visit. There was a relatively similar incident in Prague, when Czech authorities built a building that encroached a bit onto the Old Jewish cemetery. The community was enraged. There is a plaque there, apologizing for it (but the building is still there).

Also, even if nobody else cared, I would. I love old cemeteries. Just looking at how it is now, full of grass and weeds and semi-toppled headstones, is very sad. Clearly something needs to be done about the cemetery even if nothing is built there (or near there). It is badly damaged already, and has vast swaths of completely empty, overgrown space. But I really loved this cemetery, partially because it was the first time I'd seen Muslim headstones (the two-towers motif is really awesome), partially because I'm just really into such things. Clearly I should have joined this protest, in full goth regalia, with a sign saying "I JUST REALLY LIKE GRAVES!"