In September, I accompanied my husband on a trip to Israel. I almost didn't go. His research on terrorism and invitations to present that research at conferences on security issues had taken him there twice in the past year and a half. He had expressed a desire to take me the next time he went, if he felt it was relatively safe at the time.
I could feel his desire to share the Holy Land with me, and I was excited about that possibility. However, I have a very strong self-preservation instinct, and I had seen the pictures of the shattered glass door that had been shot out about ten feet from where he had stood in a holocaust museum, something he told me about only after returning home.
It was right after a news broadcast of some unrest in Palestine that he asked me if I had decided yet whether to go with him, reassuring me that even though there was unrest in the news it was a relatively safe time to visit.
I tried to process this. What does “relatively safe” mean? I am a grandmother now, and I feel a need and desire to be there and to be part of the lives of this upcoming generation.
After digesting what I had just seen on the news, I had pretty much decided that I would stay home and do something safe like make a baby quilt. After all, when was the last time you read about someone dying while making a baby quilt?
However, equally as distressing to me as the idea of going with him, was the idea of him being over there without my tempering influence. Adventurous soul that he is, I knew he would be safer if he was under obligation to keep me safe. I called my mother, and she reminded me that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see that part of the world. She told me to go, have a great time, take wonderful pictures, come back, and tell her all about it.
“You always worry that Thom could die and that you would be alone again or that you could die and he would have to face another loss.”
“So?”
“So, worst case scenario, if you go over there and something bad happens, it will probably happen to both of you. Wouldn't that take care of all your worries?”
My mother knows me so well.
That afternoon, after doing my best to quiet my fears, and able to feel peaceful feelings after I ran my decision past The Big Guy, I told Thom I would go with him. The Monday before we flew out, I went to his class at the university, a class on terrorism. He showed his students a video of a bar in Tel Aviv called Mike's Place.
This documentary was not unlike the video on firefighters that turned into coverage of the September 11 tragedy. The taping of a documentary about Mike's Place took a similar turn as they kept the cameras rolling in April of 2003, when tragedy struck. A suicide bomber who blew himself up interrupted the taping. He was stopped by Avi, the security guard who threw himself on the bomber before he got through the door. Three people were killed and numerous others were injured. The popular gathering place on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea was nearly demolished.
Mike's Place was a target because tourists and locals could mix and mingle there. Jews, Christians and Arabs alike frequented Mike's. Religion and politics were not allowed to intrude. It is right next to the US Embassy, and English is the predominant language spoken there.
The documentary had sought to show Mike's Place as an island of tranquility in the midst of recent suicide bombings, an oasis of peace in a desert of unrest. People come there to enjoy good food and live music. “Blues by the Beach,” it says on the sign. In the aftermath of the bombing, clean up and rebuilding took place immediately. Within a matter of days, the bar opened for business once again. They held a memorial for their fallen friends, and life began anew.
Because of his research, Thom had interviewed and befriended a number of the survivors of the bombing, including Avi, the security guard, who eventually recovered from the injuries he sustained after putting his life on the line.
Our first few nights were spent in Tel Aviv. Because of Thom's stories about these people, I felt like Mike's Place was the first holy place we visited, a monument to the resilience of the human spirit, a place where a man had very nearly lain down his life for his friends. “Can a bar be a holy place?” I asked myself. At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, it is the kind of place where Jesus might have visited had it been around — full of people from all walks of life, a place that would have had the holy men of the time wagging their tongues.
