We pushed through the Arab Quarter and focused on the dusty ground, avoiding eye contact with anyone as if that would disguise us. It didn’t. One elderly Muslim man with a turban spat at us, his face taut with anger; another yelled profanities in Hebrew while briskly shutting his shop doors to our group. Children ran around us quickly, frighteningly, singing and dancing and sticking their tongues out at us with youthful confidence.

They could tell we were with a Jewish group. They all hated us. Everyone here. I felt my throat get tight as I realized we had nowhere to hide. We’d taken buses and walked around Tel Aviv with no issues but here, the Holy Land, here people cared. It was a deeply personal issue to them. I heard a woman wailing at us, her face stricken with grief. She blubbered something in Hebrew, her words disguised by the thickness of her sobs. Israeli Jews probably killed someone she loved. She pointed an aging, wrinkly finger at me and I wished I could speak Hebrew. I’m sorry.

I’d never experienced hate like this before. Seemingly nice people walked away from us as our group marched on, lost in the wrong place, completely by accident. We’d wandered too far to the left. We’d ended up in the very place they told us not to go. The Rabbi’s wife cried silently next to me, her pious body clutching me for comfort. “They’re going to hurt us if we don’t get out of here soon.” I’d seen nothing but smiles on her lips since being in Israel. I knew we were in trouble. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

As we quickly trotted through the cobblestoned road, trying to find our way back, I noticed the harlequin rugs blanketing the doors and windows, masking the structure underneath, as if the shops were made solely from evocatively colored Persian wool. Each rug held a different story. Each rug was hung with pride. The gold ornaments, rubies, emeralds, incense, and multi-faceted clothing filled all of the little crevices in shop windows; windows that we were not permitted to look at. 

We turned a corner and there stood a fifteen-foot-high gate armed with at least twenty Israeli soldiers. The Rabbi’s wife ran and hugged them; they let us through to the other side and we were safe in a matter of seconds. The metal ground behind us and each side was once again segregated from one another. I glanced back and saw a little Muslim boy staring at us through the cattle grid of the old gate with such eager curiosity. He did not yet know. Soon. Soon he would know.

*This story originally appeared on WorldNomads.com; I am a recent recipient of the 2014 Euro-Trip Travel Writing Scholarship. Find more details here!