tour guide

Vacationing in Israel two years ago, my family went on a two-day tour of Jordan, our first venture to an Arab nation. Our guide hustled us from site to site, but I had a moment of solitary reflection while on the Citadel in Amman, overlooking the white expanse of the stone city clinging to the hills below, so reminiscent of Jerusalem. The noises of the city were muffled by the arid air and summer heat. For the first time, the seal in my mind between Israel and the rest of the Middle East was punctured, and a question seeped through: What is this world beyond? But the moment was fleeting.

In Israel dog-bites-man is not news.
But leopard-tries-to is.
Arthur Du Mosch, a 49-year-old tour guide who made aliyah from Amsterdam 22 years ago, awoke early Monday morning to find a wild leopard in his bedroom in Sde Boker, a Negev kibbutz.
Du Mosch says the feline, which was too old to seek prey in the wild, was part of a pack that had been hunting domestic dogs and cats in the area recently, chasing the family’s house cat, Zehava, through an open window.