Tourists

Just got back from three glorious but rain-soaked days in Venice. I'll write more tomorrow, after some sleep, but for now I will write this first post, as it is almost the end of the three hours till my wash is done (as you may know from earlier posts, it is that long a time commitment to do one teeny load of wash, with no dryer. I have now timed it!).

There were so many tourists in Venice, and watching them everywhere reminded me of the wonderful two-part poem by that title, from the late great poet Yehudah Amichai:

Tourists

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.

They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on the top of Ammunition Hill.

They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.


Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower. I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists were standing around their guide, and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head."

"But he's moving, he's moving!"

I said to myself: Redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important, but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."