Life is a Trip (8 page)

He mused about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He explained that Israe
l
ite Samaritans cover their faces when they say the names of the foref
a
thers, because they are so holy. He gently ran his open hand, palm fa
c
ing inward, over his eyes to illustrate what he meant. I was hyperventilating with excitement. I felt as though time di
s
solved and I was in the desert, engaging with someone from the family of Moses.

He spoke about the revered matriarchs of the Bible, the ten plagues, and the golden calf. He made the events seem as though they had happened yesterday or perhaps a few years ago. We chitchatted about Joseph’s dream interpretations, N
o
ah’s ark, and Lot’s wife who looked back when she should have looked forward. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned something about a camel.

“Ah, camel,” I said. “I once ate one in a Bedouin tent. It was tasty, actually.”

The High Priest stiffened. He set his jaw.

“You ate camel?” he asked me, incredulous.

“Sure. I guess you could say it was like very tender roast beef. Soft and succ
u
lent. A bit of a meaty tang. You should try it sometime if you get tired of chicken,” I joked.

The color drained from the High Priest’s face. It drained from the face of the deputy High Priest. It drained from the faces of the High Priest’s family.

“You ate
camel
?” the High Priest repeated. The words bounced off the walls and slapped me in the face.

“I shouldn’t have eaten camel?” I asked in a small, insecure, parched voice.

“Eating camel is worse than eating pig!” pronounced the religious potentate.

It was at this moment I knew I had crossed a line. I wasn’t sure where the line was, but I was on the other side of it. The Samaritans are all extremely observant and one hundred percent kosher. They won’t even eat certified kosher food outside of their homes in Israel or America because it’s not kosher enough.

“I didn’t eat a lot of it,” I said, trying to backtrack. “Maybe half a camel steak. Probably more like a third. I’m sure I didn’t even like it. I left a lot of it on my plate. I just pushed it around with my fork and sort of pretended I was eating it. Now that I think back, I probably spit it out.”

The High Priest shook his head. I heard him talking about penitence—that I would have to do something to atone. I looked around the room, drowning in a sea of disapproval.

I fumbled inside my beige leather bag and extracted my see-through wallet. All eyes were on me. I rifled through my money and came to a bill that was given to me for luck during a classical opera in North Vietnam.

“Please, take this,” I said, proffering the bill. “It has brought me a lot of good fortune. Now it’s yours.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I have a coin collection and this is a good addition.” I am sure he thought I was nuts. A consumer of camel han
d
ing him a Vietnamese dong note to atone.

“Sir, I just want to say that . . . well . . . I won’t eat camel again. The next time it’s offered to me, I’ll pass. I promise.”

The High Priest nodded, but our intimacy was gone. I had blown it. Over a hump-backed steak in a Bedouin tent. I had insulted my host with my gut. I was a culinary criminal in his eyes.

And then, just when I was deflated enough to skulk out of the room, the High Priest smiled. “It has been very enjoyable talking T
o
rah with . . .
with . . . a camel eater,” he said.

“Please, sir,” I answered, “a repentant camel eater.”

He laughed. I laughed. The deputy High Priest laughed. The family laughed. Soon we were all cackling. After I left, I heard that the High Priest asked how the camel eater was, and if she had gotten home safely. I suppose that meant that he couldn’t forget my sin, but he was able to forgive me.

He was a wise man, the High Priest Elazar. He taught me that I can unwittingly screw up and commit a cultural faux pas out of ign
o
rance. I can offend someone’s sensibilities by what I say, the clothes I wear, and even by what I eat. But it takes a man of substance, of wi
s
dom, to leapfrog over condemnation to compassion.

Recently, I was in a restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A waiter was fu
m
ing because he had spent a lot of time helping two young
foreigners understand the menu and order. He had even brought them free
sop
a
pillas
and honey to dip them in. Then he had advised them on where they could go for a hike. When they exited the restaurant, they had not left a tip.

I immediately thought about the High Priest and decided to speak to the o
f
fended waiter. I told him I sympathized with him, and su
g
gested that maybe in the young men’s country, tips were not the norm. He spewed out a cranky epithet or two and then shrugged and said maybe that was true. I heard him tell the woman who worked the cash register that he had been stiffed, and then he added, “Maybe in their country they don’t give tips.”

I smiled inwardly. The waiter did exactly what my role model in a turban did on the Mountain of Blessings. He was insulted, but he chalked it up to a cultural miscalculation, and forgave it.

As I write these words, I have learned that the High Priest just passed on. I am honored that I got to meet and spend time with him. I was feeling very sad about his death when I received an email from my dear Samaritan friend Benny Tsedaka. He, too, was sad, but he closed his missive by saying that “We all must pass. Only God is Ete
r
nal.”

C
hetumal, in the southern Yucatan peninsula in Mexico,
just a few hours away from the international pla
y
ground of Cancún, is where I went to prison. I was able to gain entrance because I collect prison art. You are probably wondering why I collect prison art and why I wanted to enter the prison. There is a long answer and a short one. The latter seems most a
p
propriate here.

I have never really been interested in the mainstream. Actually, most people are fascinated by the mainstream, so the mainstream doesn’t need my interest. What makes my ticker beat faster is disco
v
ering voices, people, places, realities that are not generally known. And serious offenders fall into that category. The stories of how and why they descended into the bowels of crime make great films and books but, in real life, the general feeling is that convicted criminals are mo
n
sters and they should be locked up and punished.

This would be fine if it worked. The perps would learn their harsh lessons out of sight of the rest of us. But, as we all know, one day the prison gates open and the perp is free. If he and we are lucky, he has had a change of heart, and he becomes a productive member of soci
e
ty. If he has learned little inside the prison except how to be a better criminal, then nothing has been gained and plenty has been lost. In fact, we are all the losers.

Behind every criminal face is a human who once was a bouncing baby, gu
r
gling with glee, and aching to be loved. Then, something happened. Each story is different, provocative, sad, and disturbing. Needs were denied or not met, the env
i
ronment was violent or cruel or indifferent, and feelings with no healthy outlets were expressed in u
n
speakable acts. I learned this when I volunteered for six years in a juvenile detention facility, and I spent time with some baby-faced serious o
f
fenders who were shockingly young and others who had already logged years in a life of crime and were on their way to chronic crim
i
nality and incarceration.

Beneath the machismo, the drugs, the gangs, there are human b
e
ings who—although they no longer gurgle with glee—are often still capable of love, passion, pain, remorse, and creative output. In the d
e
tention facility I met frightening thugs who wrote tender, sensitive p
o
ems and created imaginative, highly expressive art.

Courts, judges, juries, and innocent victims are much more capable than I of dealing with issues of guilt, judgment, and sentencing. What interests me is getting a glimpse into a criminal’s heart and fin
d
ing a place, however tiny, where there is authentic feeling and sensitivity. To my mind, this is where hope for healing, reh
a
bilitation, and redemption lie.

We all know that prisons are most often like the dark nights of the soul—rife with pain, hurt, rage, humiliation, isolation, revenge, and desperation. But believe me when I tell you that rays of enlightenment shone on that medium-security pri
s
on in Chetumal. It started at the top and trickled down to all those who are inca
r
cerated.

The prison director, Victor Terrazas Cervera, walked around the garden-like inner courtyard of the prison unarmed, in shirtsleeves. He stopped to play with the prison’s pet coatimundi (which looks like a cross between a raccoon and an antea
t
er), and chatted with inmates, all of whom wore street clothes.

“Aren’t you concerned about violence?” I asked Victor.

He grinned and answered, “There is none.”

“This is a prison. You have serious offenders. There have to be incidents of v
i
olence.”

“I can assure you that there hasn’t been any violence in ten years.”

He led me to a small, two-room arts and crafts shop. The bare, cracked, white walls were covered with paintings; mobiles hung from the ceiling; sculptures, wearable art, and jewelry were perched on rough-hewn shelves; and brightly-colored hammocks were displayed on wooden looms. All of the work was made by inmates.

A few of the incarcerated artists were milling about the shop, an
x
ious to make contact and talk about their work. One of them held up a Ferris wheel fabricated from pieces of scrap metal and Coke cans, another proffered a Maya-themed pain
t
ing, and a third was the proud artist who had produced a bracelet fashioned from large, chunky beads. A shy man, who looked down, stood next to two hand-woven purple and blue hammocks which he was selling for $50 each.

“In New York, that hammock would cost you $125,” said the shy man’s friend, who was also an artist. He pointed out his latest work: a papier-maché sculpture of a vintage, single-engine plane.

The buildings were run down, but the prisoners were pumped up. They made and sold multi-hued hammocks, wooden furniture, jewe
l
ry, picture frames crafted from plastic sleeves on soda bottles, and i
n
ventive toys. They took art workshops and sold their creations to the public in the small gift shop I visited. A few of the finer artists were even provided with their own studios.

On the grounds of the prison were a massage room (where very inexpensive Reiki and Swedish treatments were available) for physical stress, garden areas for meditation to relieve mental and emotional stress, and, for one dollar, inmates could spend a night with a spouse or partner in an on-site love motel—as long as they brought their own bedding and TVs or DVD players if they wished to use them. In the morning, they were required to leave the room in the condition they found it in.