It's for this reason, if no other, that Anglos in Israel have taken to calling the Interior Ministry, which in Hebrew is "Misrad haPanim" the "Misrad al haPanim", "al haPanim" being a Hebrew phrase meaning "terrible".
But since I'm living in east Jerusalem now, I was obliged to go to the Interior Ministry office on Wadi Joz street, an entirely different sort of affair. Finding the address itself was an exercise in futility, given that none of the Interior Ministry webpages seems to provide the necessary information. Or, in most cases, even to load properly in a web browser. At last, I called a cab and said, "Misrad haPanim bemizrach", which worked just fine.
On the plus side, the officials saw me the same day I arrived. And the building itself is new and reasonably easy to navigate. That said, it felt like the worst elements of American bureaucracy mixed with the apparatus of a police state. It's one thing to pass Israeli soldiers on the streets of east Jerusalem. During Ramadan, their barricades were a constant feature of the neighborhood. It's something else altogether to be sitting in a crowded room full of Palestinians waiting for hours for their number to be called while troops of security guards in gray uniforms patrol through with their machine guns.
I sat waiting for the 90 numbers ahead of mine to be called, surrounded by screaming children and throngs of people who would surge forward to a desk the minute it became available, only to be rebuffed by the cold stare of the secretary sitting behind the security glass. One man in particular, who looked exactly like John Turturro in The Big Lebowski made a point of working up and down the bank of desks for the full five hours I was there. I was frustrated, wondering why these people would try, despite the obvious futility of it all, to subvert a barely functioning system. Then I heard one of the security guards tell another "ein lanu machshevim", "We have no computers". Suddenly I realized why the numbers weren't being called and the secretaries were all away from their desks. For two hours I sat in the midst of this sullen mob waiting for the whole machine to begin grinding forward again. That the florescent lights overhead would periodically go out and then flicker on again didn't help matters.
Finally, I noticed that one desk at the far end of the room had a small handwritten sign. Approaching it, I read "Visa Renewal for Foreign Passports Only". I had wasted two fruitless hours waiting in the wrong queue. This desk was not regulated at all, but thankfully, those waiting were all English speaking Palestinians or Europeans. This common exposure to the conventions of Western bureaucratic practice was enough, apparently, to inspire a vestigial level of spontaneous organization. Hovering near the desk, I was drawn into a huddle of people and given my place in line and then deputized to help shoo off anyone who tried to jump ahead.
At last, I had my shot. The secretary had a difficult time understanding the difference between "study" and "research". To renew my student visa, she apparently needed me to say I was "studying" at the Institute. It didn't quite fit what I'm doing here, but I said the magic words. Silently, she handed me a blank sheet of paper and motioned for me to scratch out a supplement to the official letters I had with me. Doing so, I was handed a receipt and told to come back in two weeks for the visa.
