Surfin' the Casbah: The Haifa surf crew

Before I could walk in the door of the Port Inn--the cool guest house I'm staying at in Haifa, Israel--a man came up to me with a cell phone and his "buddy who surf's" on the line. "When can we meet up?" the voice on the phone politely asked. "It is not big today, but there are some fun waves out there." "Well," I said with a most eager voice, "let’s meet up at the huge hotel on the beach and go from there." And what a day it proved to be.

(This is of one of "the guys" making a nice Mediterranean style turn.)

It was not long till I became integrated into this northern Israel surf community. After a few hours of Mediterranean wave riding and surfboard swapping, we went to one of the guy’s houses for a nice cup of cold juice and an hour of profound relaxation. (The sea here is very salty--not to mention the sun is more intense than in Australia--so it is important that we all drink water and relish in the shade in between surf sessions.)

Soon, however, one of the Israeli surfers said, "Hey, I saw an old British-looking anchor a few hundred meters out to sea the other day. Wanna go get it?" And because none of us had anything better to do, we barreled down to the sandy shores of the Mediterranean with paddle boards and rope to fetch this iron object.

(At least we thought it was British. Does anyone have academic authority Mediterranean anchors? Hehe.)

Perhaps my favorite part of this day was when I was sitting on one of my new friends rooftops drinking some more of this strange yet delicious fruit juice. I had noticed earlier in the day that this young man, likely in his twenty's, had an Arabic accent. I asked him about it and he said, "Nam (yes in Arabic), my father is Palestinian Catholic and my mother is Dutch. In fact, we've always wanted to write a surf story about our 'mixed community' here in Haifa. Both Jews and Arab are friends and surf here together." I gasped at his remark, this is exactly the kind of story I want to write for The Surfers Journal! “So,” he said, gesturing with his welcoming hand, “take good notes and make sure to write our story so Americans can read it.”

(Lee, the Baghdadi Jew on the left and Rafuf, the Palestinian-Dutchman on the right. To the untrained eye, one might not even be able to tell who is who in this picture. Haifa is one of the few cities in Israel where Arab and Jew live (and surf) side by side.)

As we left the hospitality on the kind Arab’s rooftop, one of the Jewish Israeli guys gave me a ride back to my cheep guest house. Stopping suddenly somewhere along the road, I asked my Jewish friend what we were doing. He, a tall, strong, Baghdadi Jew looked at me with his deep-set eyes and said: "Do you see that mound of grass? During the Second Lebanon War a Hezbollah rocket landed right there and blew a hole in the ground. See that building over there? That is the house I ran next to after the rocket came. This is why we surf here; the fuckin' stress of this place wears on all of us."