"I will slog over this endless road to its end.
Until my heart stops, I will slog over this endless, endless road
with nothing to lose but the dust, what has died in me, and a row of palms
pointing toward what vanishes." --Mahmoud Darwish
sixpointed stars line
the streets of my childhood memories
cut from crude yellow felt and
sewn loosely on jackets or
spraypainted on the gray doors and shopfronts
of those who once lived
among them
i remember the early shock of
human cruelty how i
spent three days sobbing in
the dark of my room
wishing we'd blow ourselves up so
cockroaches could rule the world
instead
last week i saw the
same stars again
not yellow like sunlight but
painted crudely in black on
green metal doors and shopfronts in
a crowded muslim market to
proclaim the claimed right
to dispossess those who once lived
among them
i have burned this star
off my skin again and again
like one removes a jailhouse
tattoo scarring my flesh with
the ends of lit cigarettes
and acts of compassionate sacrifice
but still i taste the
bitter smell of humans
like bile at the back
of my throat
and no amount of prayer can
erase the stench of us
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
untitled poem
somewhere else
i passed through fields once
simultaneous in their green
lushness and
barren stark light
from the window of the train i
watched children peek from
behind ruined houses and
pressed my hand against the glass
to touch them
the man sitting across from me saw only
garbage slipping across the grass
mumbled something about
people who don't know how to
throw away their trash and apparently
want to live in their own filth
got irritated and moved away
when i insisted that
disenfranchisement looks an
awful lot like laziness
and i wondered how neatly trimmed
his life would be without that
coat and the latest gear
without the chance to feel better
than someone else
without the chance to throw
his own trash out the window of the train
Drowning in Mixed Metaphors
"It is possible to practice meeting the world, rather than regarding it as an object of knoweledge, to leave behind the desire to appropriate experience, and begin to think in terms of relation. Levinas says that ethics is a response to the face of a stranger that "summons me, questions me, stirs me, provokes my response or my responsibility." This stranger is anyone other than ourselves. We don't write "about" the Other or another, purporting to capture, describe, render, or represent Otherness. We write out of our encounter and out of our being marked by it."
--Carolyn Forche
A white dove lands on a water cistern on a rooftop across from our apartment building in Nablus. It might just be an albino pidgeon or something--I'm not sure doves actually thrive in this environment any more than humans do. The irony is almost too much for me; the bird stands on a building raided by the Israeli Defense Forces only two weeks ago, and there is nothing peaceful here. Even at night, the sounds of Israeli Humvees, barking dogs, and occasional gunshots and explosions disturb and threaten. I would like to write a pretty, hopeful poem about the proverbial white dove carrying its olive branch, but here the olive tree, still a symbol of land, is far from a symbol of peace.
Even in Noah's time, the olive branch was symbolic of land, and at its heart it remains so in Palestine and Israel today, as land is at the root of this conflict. Palestinians are are kept from their olive orchards by restricted roads they can't cross. Trees are uprooted and moved onto Israeli lands as a regular practice, so that thousand-year-old olive trees are appropriated from families who can trace the original plantings back to their own family trees. Olive orchards are razed to make way for Israeli settlements, and an estimated two million trees have been cut down to make room for the separation wall which divides communities and even individual families. Israelis plant trees to erase the presence (and absence) of former Palestinian villages; even Yad Vashem, the most important Holocaust museum in the world, sits inside the Jerusalem Forest, land which was once a thriving Palestinian village (I remember putting my quarters into little cards at synagogue as a child, proud to make the world greener and totally unaware of how those trees were being used to erase the lives of others).
In South Mt. Hebron, Jewish settlers sneak onto Palestinian lands and cut down their olive trees, trying to ruin their livelihoods enough to chase them away. Two months ago settlers were even caught on film attacking a Palestinian family with axes, an incident which made international press thanks to videocameras their neighbors had been given by activists to help document such raids. Our guides show us a film in which an old orthodox rabbi shouts obscenities and throws stones at Palestinians he claims have stolen his wheat. When reminded that it's the sabbath, he justifies his violence with lines from the Old Testament, and I find myself feeling sick. In another film, 10-year-old settlement girls shove Palestinian girls to the ground as they try to leave school, while Jewish boys in orthodox dress throw stones at the girls who manage to escape. And I find myself drowning in metaphors, smothered by the contrasts, lost as I try to figure out whether fighting for peace has ever led to anything but more violence.
The streets of Nablus are lined with posters of fallen martyrs, young boys no older than my students, many of whom hold guns and are honored for their violence. On the other side of the wall in Hebron, Israeli soldiers around the same age finger their triggers while they look at my papers and search my bags suspiciously, and they are no friendlier when I tell them "Ani Yehudit," I am a Jew, even as the words catch in my throat and choke me with disdain. A small group of Palestinian men walks by as the Israeli police write down our names and passport numbers just for walking, just for being there; one Palestinian catches my eye and I see solidarity in his gaze and the slight nod we both hope the soldiers won't see. Settler boys with yamulkes and prayer strings hanging from their waists stop to gather stones on a hill above us and all I want to do is stop thinking, stop noticing the hypocrisies, find a way to become hardened and accustomed like those who live these realities daily. We leave through Hebron's old city, nets above our heads holding back the garbage Jewish settlers drop down onto the Palestinian market. An Irishman working in Ramallah tells me the settlers have switched from throwing garbage to pouring urine and acid out their windows since the nets went up.
There is too much hatred to take in, and each time I see the wall, painted with Ghandi's face or lines that compare walled-in Palestinian villages to the Warsaw Ghetto of World War II, I find myself more confused about how any of this is supposed to be godly or bring peace. Walls have never helped; across the globe humans have built them again and again, and all they ever do is increase the chasms and violence between us, separating us from the Other until we forget we were once the same people. This country looks like Swiss cheese on maps now, the wall splitting lands and winding in circles, not really keeping Palestine and Israel separate so much as complicating all movement and enforcing so-called security. We are reminded in Hebron that the new maps are three dimensional, Isreli-controlled roads going over Palestinian villages, Palestinian roads tunneling under Israeli ones, Jewish settlers living above Muslims. It's too late for a two-state solution, and one state would require a change of heart I'm not sure humans are actually capable of anymore.
Activist and writer Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, describes Israeli policy in terms of an apartment building much like the one the dove landed on in Nablus. All the rooms are more or less autonomous, although one can expect regular visits from the IDF to make sure things are running according to their rules inside. Outside those rooms, Israel controls the doors and hallways completely. Ariel Sharon said Israel would "squeeze Arabs like a giant pastrami sandwich." And I don't know which is harder: knowing that my cultural family tree is the bread, the ones who police hallways and doors, or trying to live in these tiny sealed-off rooms, finding myself at the meat of the sandwich with the feeling that nothing I can contribute will ever be enough.
Sitting on Saed's porch watching the late afternoon sun kiss the white stone and turn it gold, I see another white dove fly overhead. We have this freedom, Liz and I, and even with the checkpoints and hassles that turn a 15-mile trip into a five-hour ordeal, we know we can come in and out as we want to, American passports in hand, even if they grill me at Ben Gurion Airport about why I was in Hebron. Saed is waxing philosophical as always; the Koran, he tells me, doesn't condone any of this, and neither does Jewish scripture. He has known many Jews horrified to discover good values being applied in such hateful ways, and most Palestinians feel the same way about those who twist the Koran into a justification for violence. Both religions teach us to give of ourselves to fulfill the needs of others, requiring us to respond when others are oppressed. I linger in the sounds of the call to prayer which echo around us, mesmerized as always by its beauty and devotion, my memory bringing up the image of bowed heads and backs in crowded mosques. My upbringing taught me to want the peace I hear in this melody, a lasting peace that brings justice for everyone, even if it's as impossible to reach as the dove over our heads. And we sip at our tea and listen, none of us really able to understand how devotion to a loving God could be used to justify separation and hatred where brotherhood and coexistence might once have been possible.
--Carolyn Forche
A white dove lands on a water cistern on a rooftop across from our apartment building in Nablus. It might just be an albino pidgeon or something--I'm not sure doves actually thrive in this environment any more than humans do. The irony is almost too much for me; the bird stands on a building raided by the Israeli Defense Forces only two weeks ago, and there is nothing peaceful here. Even at night, the sounds of Israeli Humvees, barking dogs, and occasional gunshots and explosions disturb and threaten. I would like to write a pretty, hopeful poem about the proverbial white dove carrying its olive branch, but here the olive tree, still a symbol of land, is far from a symbol of peace.
Even in Noah's time, the olive branch was symbolic of land, and at its heart it remains so in Palestine and Israel today, as land is at the root of this conflict. Palestinians are are kept from their olive orchards by restricted roads they can't cross. Trees are uprooted and moved onto Israeli lands as a regular practice, so that thousand-year-old olive trees are appropriated from families who can trace the original plantings back to their own family trees. Olive orchards are razed to make way for Israeli settlements, and an estimated two million trees have been cut down to make room for the separation wall which divides communities and even individual families. Israelis plant trees to erase the presence (and absence) of former Palestinian villages; even Yad Vashem, the most important Holocaust museum in the world, sits inside the Jerusalem Forest, land which was once a thriving Palestinian village (I remember putting my quarters into little cards at synagogue as a child, proud to make the world greener and totally unaware of how those trees were being used to erase the lives of others).
In South Mt. Hebron, Jewish settlers sneak onto Palestinian lands and cut down their olive trees, trying to ruin their livelihoods enough to chase them away. Two months ago settlers were even caught on film attacking a Palestinian family with axes, an incident which made international press thanks to videocameras their neighbors had been given by activists to help document such raids. Our guides show us a film in which an old orthodox rabbi shouts obscenities and throws stones at Palestinians he claims have stolen his wheat. When reminded that it's the sabbath, he justifies his violence with lines from the Old Testament, and I find myself feeling sick. In another film, 10-year-old settlement girls shove Palestinian girls to the ground as they try to leave school, while Jewish boys in orthodox dress throw stones at the girls who manage to escape. And I find myself drowning in metaphors, smothered by the contrasts, lost as I try to figure out whether fighting for peace has ever led to anything but more violence.
The streets of Nablus are lined with posters of fallen martyrs, young boys no older than my students, many of whom hold guns and are honored for their violence. On the other side of the wall in Hebron, Israeli soldiers around the same age finger their triggers while they look at my papers and search my bags suspiciously, and they are no friendlier when I tell them "Ani Yehudit," I am a Jew, even as the words catch in my throat and choke me with disdain. A small group of Palestinian men walks by as the Israeli police write down our names and passport numbers just for walking, just for being there; one Palestinian catches my eye and I see solidarity in his gaze and the slight nod we both hope the soldiers won't see. Settler boys with yamulkes and prayer strings hanging from their waists stop to gather stones on a hill above us and all I want to do is stop thinking, stop noticing the hypocrisies, find a way to become hardened and accustomed like those who live these realities daily. We leave through Hebron's old city, nets above our heads holding back the garbage Jewish settlers drop down onto the Palestinian market. An Irishman working in Ramallah tells me the settlers have switched from throwing garbage to pouring urine and acid out their windows since the nets went up.
There is too much hatred to take in, and each time I see the wall, painted with Ghandi's face or lines that compare walled-in Palestinian villages to the Warsaw Ghetto of World War II, I find myself more confused about how any of this is supposed to be godly or bring peace. Walls have never helped; across the globe humans have built them again and again, and all they ever do is increase the chasms and violence between us, separating us from the Other until we forget we were once the same people. This country looks like Swiss cheese on maps now, the wall splitting lands and winding in circles, not really keeping Palestine and Israel separate so much as complicating all movement and enforcing so-called security. We are reminded in Hebron that the new maps are three dimensional, Isreli-controlled roads going over Palestinian villages, Palestinian roads tunneling under Israeli ones, Jewish settlers living above Muslims. It's too late for a two-state solution, and one state would require a change of heart I'm not sure humans are actually capable of anymore.
Activist and writer Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, describes Israeli policy in terms of an apartment building much like the one the dove landed on in Nablus. All the rooms are more or less autonomous, although one can expect regular visits from the IDF to make sure things are running according to their rules inside. Outside those rooms, Israel controls the doors and hallways completely. Ariel Sharon said Israel would "squeeze Arabs like a giant pastrami sandwich." And I don't know which is harder: knowing that my cultural family tree is the bread, the ones who police hallways and doors, or trying to live in these tiny sealed-off rooms, finding myself at the meat of the sandwich with the feeling that nothing I can contribute will ever be enough.
Sitting on Saed's porch watching the late afternoon sun kiss the white stone and turn it gold, I see another white dove fly overhead. We have this freedom, Liz and I, and even with the checkpoints and hassles that turn a 15-mile trip into a five-hour ordeal, we know we can come in and out as we want to, American passports in hand, even if they grill me at Ben Gurion Airport about why I was in Hebron. Saed is waxing philosophical as always; the Koran, he tells me, doesn't condone any of this, and neither does Jewish scripture. He has known many Jews horrified to discover good values being applied in such hateful ways, and most Palestinians feel the same way about those who twist the Koran into a justification for violence. Both religions teach us to give of ourselves to fulfill the needs of others, requiring us to respond when others are oppressed. I linger in the sounds of the call to prayer which echo around us, mesmerized as always by its beauty and devotion, my memory bringing up the image of bowed heads and backs in crowded mosques. My upbringing taught me to want the peace I hear in this melody, a lasting peace that brings justice for everyone, even if it's as impossible to reach as the dove over our heads. And we sip at our tea and listen, none of us really able to understand how devotion to a loving God could be used to justify separation and hatred where brotherhood and coexistence might once have been possible.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Balata (for Mohammad)
he leads me through
his streets, tripping slightly
on the leg they pulled a
bullet from
snapping photos of shade and light
against grafittied walls,
of smiling children with
long eyelashes and even
longer wish lists.
stopping to buy sunflower seeds which
he shares along the way
the tough buzz cut and
dangling cigarette give way to
his brotherly hand clasping a boy's
neck sweetly
a soft look in his eyes and a certain
pride in what he
captures with the lens.
i recognize street corners and
walls from his photos, even
a face or two
and when i see a field i know
he smiles and says yes,
this is the place you wrote
a poem about
the spot where our lives came together.
words are incomplete
inadequate to capture
the slant of light along the
bough of a lone tree, too small to catch
purple blossoms falling into
puddles, drifting down beside
brief touches of green in
a sea of stone and
cement, unable to erase
the stench from this life
nor the smile from his face as he
shows us his home.
(Done as a snapshot poetry assignment I gave to my students)
his streets, tripping slightly
on the leg they pulled a
bullet from
snapping photos of shade and light
against grafittied walls,
of smiling children with
long eyelashes and even
longer wish lists.
stopping to buy sunflower seeds which
he shares along the way
the tough buzz cut and
dangling cigarette give way to
his brotherly hand clasping a boy's
neck sweetly
a soft look in his eyes and a certain
pride in what he
captures with the lens.
i recognize street corners and
walls from his photos, even
a face or two
and when i see a field i know
he smiles and says yes,
this is the place you wrote
a poem about
the spot where our lives came together.
words are incomplete
inadequate to capture
the slant of light along the
bough of a lone tree, too small to catch
purple blossoms falling into
puddles, drifting down beside
brief touches of green in
a sea of stone and
cement, unable to erase
the stench from this life
nor the smile from his face as he
shows us his home.
(Done as a snapshot poetry assignment I gave to my students)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Moving Toward Being
Every time I enter my classroom in Palestine and ask my student Anis how he is, he always gives the same reply with a huge, enthusiastic smile: "Seeming but not being." The first time he said it, I was amused; by the third or fourth time, I knew he was trying to communicate something about himself. "Seeming but not being" was even how he introduced himself on the phone when he called in the second week of class to admit he'd lost the reading packet for my poetry course. There is identity wrapped up in his words, a sort of nonexistence he can express in no other way. He smiles throughout class, quick to note (and occasionally fabricate) references to Greek mythology and classical literature, quick to interpret and sometimes assume. When I asked my students when they wrote, most said at night or only when inspired, but not Anis. "Always," was his response, and he proved it by reading the lines he'd just penned during our discussion.
Perhaps there is something in poetry and other artistic expression that can move us past seeming and into being, and as I reach the halfway point in my course at An-Najah, I am beginning to understand what writing means to these young people. Poetry is therapy, a self expression so priceless that they share their work more often and more openly than my students ever have in America. When I ask how much an audience matters, they widen their eyes and seem surprised by the question. Even Majida, one of the most timid about her work, insists that poetry is written to be read, to be heard and understood by another. And when my colleague Michael says the difference between a journal poem and and a public poem is the presence of an audience, they all agree vehemently that there IS a huge difference when one has an audience. My students seem to have great urgency behind their work, and as Majida recites a three-page poem in Arabic entirely from memory, her eyes half shut and staring into the middle distance, I am humbled and awed, watching her come to life before an audience even when I know it scares her half to death.
Falastine, who just graduated from An-Najah, writes her work entirely in English; Mark once called it her "message in a bottle to the world." Falastines writes in her non-native language because she knows who she wants her audience to be, just like Majida confronts the terror of reading her work because it matters to be heard. I meet Falastine first by phone, and am drawn in by the poetry of her words and the timbre and resonance of her voice. My students in America, I tell her, are in love with her writing, have read and reread her poems and even written poetry in response. There is a short silence on the other end of the line. "So we aren't working in isolation, then," she says finally. Falastine lives in Nablus, the only city in Palestine entirely sealed off by Israeli checkpoints, which means that isolation is more than just an emotional concept for anyone growingup here. Those Nablusi with permits to enter Israel can do so with great difficulty,waiting in lines for hours and enduring harassment and questioning from the IDF; those without permits can never leave at all. So having an audience breaks through those roadblocks and barriers, bringing Falastine from seeming into being, from seeming heard to really being heard.
Mohammad Faraj, a photographic journalism student, has provided the photography for a wide range of RJI projects, and he was staggered to hear how fully his work was being understood and appreciated by students in the U.S. The first time we met, I told him I'd been waiting two years to meet him, and he seemed skeptical and asked why. I told him that his photos were changing my students' lives, and just like Falastine it took him a moment to respond. The tough guy facade disappeared and his eyes looked damp; all he said was "So maybe I HAVE done something important with my life, then." Later, I show Mohammad my Independent School article filled with his photos, and we peruse the Poetry of Witness project in which my students wrote poems from his photos. He doesn't seem to know what to say, just repeating "Wow" and "I am so moved" again and again. He shows me around Balata refugee camp, his home, and he points out the kids my students have seen in photos, the graffiti-covered walls they've written about. When we pass the field I wrote a poem about he says nothing, smiling warmly when I recognize it on my own. For him it's not about words, but photos are his words; having an audience to view and absorb them creates meaning not just for him, but for the smiling children who run up to us constantly to shout "Welcome." Mohammad hasn't left Nablus in seven years, so knowing that his photos are out there speaking for him and his neighbors is like having a passport, if not quite so actually liberating.
Margaret Atwood refers to Turkish author and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk as "...narrating his country into being," and perhaps my students and Mohammad are doing the same--for both their country and themselves. My friend Michael complains about programs that just put a disposable camera into kids' hands, expecting self expression to change their lives, and he's right that this alone is not enough. Self expression can't change the realities of incursions, curfews, isolation and violence these kids are growing up surrounded by. "Seeming but not being" is where they live and who they are. But seeming like they have an audience and actually being heard are two different things, and at least I can ensure the latter is actually the case. Without words myself, my poetry stagnates as theirs comes to life; only Falastine can express what it means to live this way:
Nomads we will always be
Living in words
With nothing living inside of us
Nothing within
And our search will go on
Find your words and swords
And I'll be looking for my home
A margin, where words can grow.
Perhaps there is something in poetry and other artistic expression that can move us past seeming and into being, and as I reach the halfway point in my course at An-Najah, I am beginning to understand what writing means to these young people. Poetry is therapy, a self expression so priceless that they share their work more often and more openly than my students ever have in America. When I ask how much an audience matters, they widen their eyes and seem surprised by the question. Even Majida, one of the most timid about her work, insists that poetry is written to be read, to be heard and understood by another. And when my colleague Michael says the difference between a journal poem and and a public poem is the presence of an audience, they all agree vehemently that there IS a huge difference when one has an audience. My students seem to have great urgency behind their work, and as Majida recites a three-page poem in Arabic entirely from memory, her eyes half shut and staring into the middle distance, I am humbled and awed, watching her come to life before an audience even when I know it scares her half to death.
Falastine, who just graduated from An-Najah, writes her work entirely in English; Mark once called it her "message in a bottle to the world." Falastines writes in her non-native language because she knows who she wants her audience to be, just like Majida confronts the terror of reading her work because it matters to be heard. I meet Falastine first by phone, and am drawn in by the poetry of her words and the timbre and resonance of her voice. My students in America, I tell her, are in love with her writing, have read and reread her poems and even written poetry in response. There is a short silence on the other end of the line. "So we aren't working in isolation, then," she says finally. Falastine lives in Nablus, the only city in Palestine entirely sealed off by Israeli checkpoints, which means that isolation is more than just an emotional concept for anyone growingup here. Those Nablusi with permits to enter Israel can do so with great difficulty,waiting in lines for hours and enduring harassment and questioning from the IDF; those without permits can never leave at all. So having an audience breaks through those roadblocks and barriers, bringing Falastine from seeming into being, from seeming heard to really being heard.
Mohammad Faraj, a photographic journalism student, has provided the photography for a wide range of RJI projects, and he was staggered to hear how fully his work was being understood and appreciated by students in the U.S. The first time we met, I told him I'd been waiting two years to meet him, and he seemed skeptical and asked why. I told him that his photos were changing my students' lives, and just like Falastine it took him a moment to respond. The tough guy facade disappeared and his eyes looked damp; all he said was "So maybe I HAVE done something important with my life, then." Later, I show Mohammad my Independent School article filled with his photos, and we peruse the Poetry of Witness project in which my students wrote poems from his photos. He doesn't seem to know what to say, just repeating "Wow" and "I am so moved" again and again. He shows me around Balata refugee camp, his home, and he points out the kids my students have seen in photos, the graffiti-covered walls they've written about. When we pass the field I wrote a poem about he says nothing, smiling warmly when I recognize it on my own. For him it's not about words, but photos are his words; having an audience to view and absorb them creates meaning not just for him, but for the smiling children who run up to us constantly to shout "Welcome." Mohammad hasn't left Nablus in seven years, so knowing that his photos are out there speaking for him and his neighbors is like having a passport, if not quite so actually liberating.
Margaret Atwood refers to Turkish author and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk as "...narrating his country into being," and perhaps my students and Mohammad are doing the same--for both their country and themselves. My friend Michael complains about programs that just put a disposable camera into kids' hands, expecting self expression to change their lives, and he's right that this alone is not enough. Self expression can't change the realities of incursions, curfews, isolation and violence these kids are growing up surrounded by. "Seeming but not being" is where they live and who they are. But seeming like they have an audience and actually being heard are two different things, and at least I can ensure the latter is actually the case. Without words myself, my poetry stagnates as theirs comes to life; only Falastine can express what it means to live this way:
Nomads we will always be
Living in words
With nothing living inside of us
Nothing within
And our search will go on
Find your words and swords
And I'll be looking for my home
A margin, where words can grow.
Reflections from Palestine
"I know that when I stand before God on Judgement Day, I shall not be asked the question posed to Cain--where were you when your brother's blood was crying out to God?" --Imre Bathory, Righteous Among Nations, Hungary
We sit among men outside the tea house of the oldest men's sport club in Nablus. Our new friend, poet Saed Abu-Hijleh, professor of Political Geography and Founder/Director of the Center for Global Consciousness, reassures us that we're ok if we're with him. He's "kind of a big deal," it seems, and gets away with informal female friendships because he did his studies in the U.S. We drink hot mint tea; it's 10:30 pm, and soon the group will race to their respective homes so that they're off the streets when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) enter like clockwork at midnight (they do their staging in front of our apartment building, so believe me, these nightly incursions are not an invention of Al Jazeera). But for now we sit and sip tea, the crowd of men around us rapidly expanding, philosophizing about life and humanity.
Earlier that evening, sitting on Saed's porch and watching yet another brilliant Nablus sunset paint the white stone homes and hills in golden reds, I ask Saed whether he thinks humans are inherently good or bad. His own mother was shot by the IDF during the 2nd Intifada in 2002, just sitting doing embroidery on her front stoop with her husband during curfew, having committed no crime. And yet Saed tells me he thinks there is both good and evil inside every human being, and that good always has the chance of winning out over bad. He laughs a bit sadly, still deeply grieved over his mother's murder. "I could have become a fighter, could have joined the resistance after her death, but I can't even kill a spider--I have to sweep them gently outside, and I don't even step on ants." He takes us upstairs to show us the bullet holes in the front window, which they've covered in clear packing tape to preserve history. He fingers a deep chip in the stone wall: "This one hit just above her head," he tells us, and I marvel that anyone could have enough goodness in him to avoid vengeful violence. If this had been done to my mother, I'm not sure I could have taken the moral high road.
At the tea house, Saed asks his friends my question about good and evil. I look at his kind face in the streetlight outside the ancient building, still amazed that anyone could remain so positive in such circumstances. As he translates my question, I remember his poetry homework for my class the day before:
Three bullets hit me when I was fifteen,
The pain was unbearable,
Difficult for you to know what I mean...
I was tortured on my wounds when I was sixteen,
They whipped with electrical wiring,
Put me in a room full of sewage,
But I came out clean!
I am deep in thought as the men discuss my question in Arabic. How could I have turned out so cynical with so few difficult life experiences, while a man like Saed remains so hopeful with so much evidence of human barbarity still scarred into his skin? His friend Quais, a sort of self-proclaimed philosopher with the scar from a bullet wound on his throat, insists that there are both bad and good people, but he surprises me by claiming he sees no grey area in between. "How do we make sure goodness wins, then?" I ask, really hoping he has an answer I might live by, and Saed smiles appreciatively as he translates the question.
Quais sips at his tea thoughtfully. First, he tells us, we have to let ourselves really listen to each other, not just with our ears but with ALL our senses. God gave us more than one sense for a reason, he tells us, and we need to learn to use them all, to listen with our eyes and our hearts, even to smell each other before we can claim to know one another. Laughing a little, Liz and I move simultaneously on the same instinct and sniff at ourselves, quickly reassuring everyone that we smell just fine, and the whole crowd of men laughs. But even as I laugh, I know why his point matters. We can't use all our senses to know each other unless we are among one another, physically present beside each other. The media gives us something to see and hear, something incomplete at its best and inaccurate at its worst, but to feel another human's heartbeat and to smell his goodness and inherent humanity takes being there. Being here.
I shake my head. "God, I really am a cynic," I say bitterly, though only Liz hears me. Saed's friend goes on. "Quantitative accumulation creates qualitative change," he says. "A few drops of water in a glass and we can no longer call it empty; enough drops, and we have an ocean. This is how goodness can win," he tells us. I am reminded of Margaret Mead's claim that a few committed individuals can change the world and are the only thing that ever has. And I sip my tea in the hovering darkness, listening deeply to the goodness around me, and I feel the world changing, if only briefly, if only for a small group of committed individuals outside a tea house in Palestine.
*For more information on the death of Saed's mother and the subsequent media
storm and investigations, go to http://www.remembershaden.org/.
We sit among men outside the tea house of the oldest men's sport club in Nablus. Our new friend, poet Saed Abu-Hijleh, professor of Political Geography and Founder/Director of the Center for Global Consciousness, reassures us that we're ok if we're with him. He's "kind of a big deal," it seems, and gets away with informal female friendships because he did his studies in the U.S. We drink hot mint tea; it's 10:30 pm, and soon the group will race to their respective homes so that they're off the streets when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) enter like clockwork at midnight (they do their staging in front of our apartment building, so believe me, these nightly incursions are not an invention of Al Jazeera). But for now we sit and sip tea, the crowd of men around us rapidly expanding, philosophizing about life and humanity.
Earlier that evening, sitting on Saed's porch and watching yet another brilliant Nablus sunset paint the white stone homes and hills in golden reds, I ask Saed whether he thinks humans are inherently good or bad. His own mother was shot by the IDF during the 2nd Intifada in 2002, just sitting doing embroidery on her front stoop with her husband during curfew, having committed no crime. And yet Saed tells me he thinks there is both good and evil inside every human being, and that good always has the chance of winning out over bad. He laughs a bit sadly, still deeply grieved over his mother's murder. "I could have become a fighter, could have joined the resistance after her death, but I can't even kill a spider--I have to sweep them gently outside, and I don't even step on ants." He takes us upstairs to show us the bullet holes in the front window, which they've covered in clear packing tape to preserve history. He fingers a deep chip in the stone wall: "This one hit just above her head," he tells us, and I marvel that anyone could have enough goodness in him to avoid vengeful violence. If this had been done to my mother, I'm not sure I could have taken the moral high road.
At the tea house, Saed asks his friends my question about good and evil. I look at his kind face in the streetlight outside the ancient building, still amazed that anyone could remain so positive in such circumstances. As he translates my question, I remember his poetry homework for my class the day before:
Three bullets hit me when I was fifteen,
The pain was unbearable,
Difficult for you to know what I mean...
I was tortured on my wounds when I was sixteen,
They whipped with electrical wiring,
Put me in a room full of sewage,
But I came out clean!
I am deep in thought as the men discuss my question in Arabic. How could I have turned out so cynical with so few difficult life experiences, while a man like Saed remains so hopeful with so much evidence of human barbarity still scarred into his skin? His friend Quais, a sort of self-proclaimed philosopher with the scar from a bullet wound on his throat, insists that there are both bad and good people, but he surprises me by claiming he sees no grey area in between. "How do we make sure goodness wins, then?" I ask, really hoping he has an answer I might live by, and Saed smiles appreciatively as he translates the question.
Quais sips at his tea thoughtfully. First, he tells us, we have to let ourselves really listen to each other, not just with our ears but with ALL our senses. God gave us more than one sense for a reason, he tells us, and we need to learn to use them all, to listen with our eyes and our hearts, even to smell each other before we can claim to know one another. Laughing a little, Liz and I move simultaneously on the same instinct and sniff at ourselves, quickly reassuring everyone that we smell just fine, and the whole crowd of men laughs. But even as I laugh, I know why his point matters. We can't use all our senses to know each other unless we are among one another, physically present beside each other. The media gives us something to see and hear, something incomplete at its best and inaccurate at its worst, but to feel another human's heartbeat and to smell his goodness and inherent humanity takes being there. Being here.
I shake my head. "God, I really am a cynic," I say bitterly, though only Liz hears me. Saed's friend goes on. "Quantitative accumulation creates qualitative change," he says. "A few drops of water in a glass and we can no longer call it empty; enough drops, and we have an ocean. This is how goodness can win," he tells us. I am reminded of Margaret Mead's claim that a few committed individuals can change the world and are the only thing that ever has. And I sip my tea in the hovering darkness, listening deeply to the goodness around me, and I feel the world changing, if only briefly, if only for a small group of committed individuals outside a tea house in Palestine.
*For more information on the death of Saed's mother and the subsequent media
storm and investigations, go to http://www.remembershaden.org/.
First Impressions--Palestine
"I ask you to remain with us for my sake, not yours. If you leave, I shall forever be ashamed to be a member of the human race." --Dr. Giovanni Pesante, Italy. The Righteous Among Nations, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
I sit in the office of Public Relations at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, sweating in my requisite long sleeves and pants. "Welcome home," Dr. Nabil Alawi tells me, smiling and extending his hand in spite of Islamic law. I take it and smile, presenting him with a book of Colorado photographs and accepting a pin which joins the Palestinian and University flags. The office is bustling; everyone smiles, shakes my hand, says welcome, and I'm relieved Liz is good at remembering names, as we meet 20 eager, smiling Palestinians in the first half hour. But Dr. Nabil's words are what stay with me, hanging in my mind in spite of the heat and any misgivings I had about coming here. All anxieties are gone, even as he speaks of students who have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. "Welcome home."
I was raised to treat others with kindness and compassion, to care about justice for everyone, not just myself. Walking around Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on Monday, I felt compassion for what Jews have faced in the world, certainly. But I was more struck by irony and paradox than anything, and it brought back 23 years of bitterness held behind my tongue since my last visit to the Middle East. How could an oppressed people not avoid oppressing others themselves? Since when does one man's suffering justify his putting another man to death? Won't retaliation and "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" thinking leave us, as Tevye said so eloquently, entirely blind and toothless?
I know it's wrong to judge a whole culture on the basis of a few individuals; if the world worked that way, I'd be to blame for GW Bush's idiocy, and I certainly don't want that. But after an Israeli bus driver was unnecessarily mean and unkind, and after countless unwelcoming encounters with Israelis, Dr. Nabil's words resonate all the more. Students stop us in the halls to welcome us and introduce themselves; everywhere we go, people offer their help and appreciation. Dr. Nabil calls us "ambassadors of the truth," a phrase I've heard thousands of times in Cuba, and everyone smiles so warmly that I begin to feel a knot rising in my throat. After three students go out of their way to show us around and introduce us to their city, their home, I can't hold back. Liz and I enter a supermarket and I find myself sobbing. "How could the world think these people are all terrorists?!" I ask Liz through uncontrollable tears. How do the people I love continue to think this way, even, when in truth I feel safer in the kind hands of Palestinians than the rough hands of Israelis?
In the evening, Liz and I enter a small sweets shop up the block from our flat. The man, who was trying to close, waves us in with a smile and practices his English on us. He sends his son around the counter to give us each a chocolate-covered almond after we've made our purchase, but when he presses the boy to say "My name is Hussein," I can see the child blush beneath his beautiful olive skin. "Welome to my shop, my city, and my country," the man tells us, smiling widely. I do feel welcome, and I do feel home.
If I can't see people for who they really are, if I don't stand up for what is right and just in the world, I will spend the rest of my life feeling ashamed to be human, as I have since this very paradox broke my heart and my faith 23 years ago.
I sit in the office of Public Relations at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, sweating in my requisite long sleeves and pants. "Welcome home," Dr. Nabil Alawi tells me, smiling and extending his hand in spite of Islamic law. I take it and smile, presenting him with a book of Colorado photographs and accepting a pin which joins the Palestinian and University flags. The office is bustling; everyone smiles, shakes my hand, says welcome, and I'm relieved Liz is good at remembering names, as we meet 20 eager, smiling Palestinians in the first half hour. But Dr. Nabil's words are what stay with me, hanging in my mind in spite of the heat and any misgivings I had about coming here. All anxieties are gone, even as he speaks of students who have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. "Welcome home."
I was raised to treat others with kindness and compassion, to care about justice for everyone, not just myself. Walking around Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on Monday, I felt compassion for what Jews have faced in the world, certainly. But I was more struck by irony and paradox than anything, and it brought back 23 years of bitterness held behind my tongue since my last visit to the Middle East. How could an oppressed people not avoid oppressing others themselves? Since when does one man's suffering justify his putting another man to death? Won't retaliation and "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" thinking leave us, as Tevye said so eloquently, entirely blind and toothless?
I know it's wrong to judge a whole culture on the basis of a few individuals; if the world worked that way, I'd be to blame for GW Bush's idiocy, and I certainly don't want that. But after an Israeli bus driver was unnecessarily mean and unkind, and after countless unwelcoming encounters with Israelis, Dr. Nabil's words resonate all the more. Students stop us in the halls to welcome us and introduce themselves; everywhere we go, people offer their help and appreciation. Dr. Nabil calls us "ambassadors of the truth," a phrase I've heard thousands of times in Cuba, and everyone smiles so warmly that I begin to feel a knot rising in my throat. After three students go out of their way to show us around and introduce us to their city, their home, I can't hold back. Liz and I enter a supermarket and I find myself sobbing. "How could the world think these people are all terrorists?!" I ask Liz through uncontrollable tears. How do the people I love continue to think this way, even, when in truth I feel safer in the kind hands of Palestinians than the rough hands of Israelis?
In the evening, Liz and I enter a small sweets shop up the block from our flat. The man, who was trying to close, waves us in with a smile and practices his English on us. He sends his son around the counter to give us each a chocolate-covered almond after we've made our purchase, but when he presses the boy to say "My name is Hussein," I can see the child blush beneath his beautiful olive skin. "Welome to my shop, my city, and my country," the man tells us, smiling widely. I do feel welcome, and I do feel home.
If I can't see people for who they really are, if I don't stand up for what is right and just in the world, I will spend the rest of my life feeling ashamed to be human, as I have since this very paradox broke my heart and my faith 23 years ago.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
