The two American vice presidential candidates just agreed they stand with Israel, and Palin almost made me throw up with "I'm so glad we both love Israel--what a wonderful thing to agree on!" I honestly want to be sick. I want to move to Cuba and teach literature classes at the University of Havana. Drop off the map. I am not so hopeful as you are, my friend.
Life here is the same as always. Too much correcting to do, too many times teaching the same thing every day, too much urgency to be somewhere else. A friend is dying of cancer in Cuba and I can't even send her money because the U.S. Treasury finally nailed me (only blood relations can send Cubans money). I miss Nablus. Maybe I just miss FEELING more all the time. Thinking more. I don't exactly live in a country known for deep thought anymore.
Fall is coming; the leaves are starting to turn, the days are shortening. Cold creeps in under the door. Sometimes I feel like I hear the call to prayer in the early evening, but it's just memories resonating through my head. I'm sure I'll be ok in the long run, but I too am in a crux moment. If it weren't for my nieces, I'd have hit the road a long time ago, and I am once again challenged to figure out how to keep living in this country, creating change from the inside without going insane at the idiocy of it all.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Just Call Me JiJi
"I have found that the land is fragile, and the sea, light; I have learned that language and metaphor are not enough to restore place to a place.... Not having been able to find my place on earth, I have attempted to find it in History, and History cannot be reduced to a compensation for lost geography."
--Mahmoud Darwish, in memoriam, 1942-2008
It is our last night in Nablus, and a crowd has gathered at a local hotel for the first poetry reading the city has seen since before the 2nd Intifada in 2002, featuring Saed, Falastine and me (Saed keeps calling us "fugitive poets"). I'm more nervous than I expected to be; I haven't done a public reading since 1994, and I'm intimidated every time someone refers to me as "the poet." Saed bustles around while Mark and Michael help set up the LCD projector so we can run RJI's Poetry of Witness slide show during the break. Falastine, who is giving her very first public reading, hovers close to my elbow and asks about the poems she's chosen, looking for reassurance. I am spent, tired, and nervous, and I suspect I don't do much to soothe her.
My nerves are shot, as I'm sure my letters have suggested; after five weeks living in this complex society and oppressive situation, I feel sapped of energy, guilty to be able to walk away, and sad to have to go home. Relationships here have been complicated and have covered every inch of the gray area: young men in my class are attentive and sensitive, making me miss teaching boys after 9 years in all-girls education. Outside on the streets of Nablus, young men around the same age constantly stare and harass us verbally, even though we've been so careful to cover ourselves up. Mark, Michael and Mohammad offer comfort and connection but avoid physical contact because of Islamic law; it's been a month since I've had a real hug from a male, as it's all quick handshakes if they touch me at all. Saed is the only one to break right through this physical isolation, quick to give me high fives and even place a hand on my shoulder when he can tell I'm struggling with something.
The hall is packed when Dr. Nabil begins his introductions, and then I'm doing my thing, talking to the crowd about the power of poetry to bring people together and leap over boundaries of communication and ideology. Mark smiles at me reassuringly, and I can feel myself warming to the crowd. He told me the other day that I seem angry, and he's right; I've felt increasingly angry, especially since my visit to Hebron, and I haven't been able to snap out of it. Saed told me he thinks I'm not actually a cynic, that I think I'm a pessimist but that I'm actually a heartbroken optimist, heartbroken to encounter so much human badness. This, he says, comes from my intrinsic belief that we are capable of good; otherwise, why would I be so upset about it? But even with his unflagging optimism, Saed hasn't been able to convince me that people are actually good at heart; even he started talking about cutting people's hands off when I had my butt pinched a week before our departure. The capacity to avoid violence and act with compassion seems like a fantasy still, a bedtime story we tell our children so they won't be so scared by the explosions they hear in the night, a naive claim made by Anne Frank right before other humans gassed her.
And then I feel something shift in the air around me. The call to evening prayer begins to echo through the empty streets outside and enters our event like a perfect background melody, and the room feels resonant suddenly, everyone pensive and watching as I read the hardest piece I've chosen, my angriest piece in years, "Another Endless Road." Mark told me the poem suggested the Israelis had won a huge victory if I so connected Judaism with Israeli statehood, and I feel mildly ashamed as my anger settles on the crowd and reverberates in the air around us, as I let myself realize how right Mark is. My "no amount of prayer can erase the stench of us" weaves in the air with the call to evening prayer, and I feel sorry I still can't believe, moved as I am by other people's faith.
But then my turn is over, and I get to sit and be the proud teacher, watching Falastine read like she's been at it all her life, and then we all laugh over Saed's yearly love disasters and cry with him over his lost mother and his many scars. It still hurts him to laugh since the appendectomy, but when Habib starts playing the aud, it's all we can do to keep Saed from dancing. Everyone starts singing and clapping; even Falastine's father, who came only begrudgingly and told Falastine last week that there was no point to her pursuits in poetry, is smiling and singing along. She and I hold hands and this is what I want to remember; this one moment is Nablus at its best. Then Saed starts singing to me by the nickname he's used since the day we met: Jiji. Within minutes, the whole crowd is singing along to the "Jiji" lyrics Saed and Qais made up the other night in the car, and I'm blushing and laughing and even crying a little.
And there is something good and right in this moment, in this life, in taking a step outside of my own life to feel angry with and for the good people I've met in this community. There is hope in this room, all of its inhabitants singing and clapping and feeling the possibilities, what Denise Levertov called "the deep intelligence living at peace would have." We have come together in the face of war and occupation to use language together, and the energy the air carries is charged with potential. Poetry is not enough; it won't feed children whose parents spend three hours at checkpoints trying to make it to jobs in towns 10 miles away. It's not going to fix life for the students who can't attend this reading because they can't get home through checkpoints if they leave Nablus too late. Poetry won't erase the days An-Najah's campus is empty because no one can get through. Poetry is little consolation for a difficult life. But I can also tell that we've started something this city needs: the opportunity to come together and celebrate, bear witness, and share a powerful moment in solidarity with one another, a moment of hope.
It hurts to leave this place that embraced me as "the poet from abroad." Ahmed, my most loyal student, looks like he's been crying when he gives me a small gift and dashes for the door after the singing is over. He wrote his first poem ever in my course this summer; perhaps there is a peaceful future to be built even in small successes. People are still gathered, talking and laughing, long after the event is over. There is hope in the air, creativity. Potential.
These are the things I will remember most: the sunsets watched over strong coffee and good conversation on Saed's porch; the teddy bear he needed to be able to laugh after surgery; planting flowers on his mother's grave; the late Mahmoud Darwish's white tulips; the enthusiasm, insights and metaphors of young poets; being offered tea by everyone we met; seeing a falling meteor up close; talking theatre and philosophy with Qais, goodbye hugs from Saed and Mohammad; and the five times a day that the call to prayer reminded me to be a better person, less angry and more peaceful.
These are the things I will try to forget, even though it's what people need to hear about the most: brothers at war with each other; women made tough and mean by life; religion used to justify violence; the sound of gunshots at night; the biggest wall I've ever seen; friends bearing the scars of torture; children throwing stones; young soldiers always walking with a finger on the trigger; being herded through checkpoints like farm animals to slaughter; failures of coexistence where so much was possible. Maybe Saed is right: I am wounded because I am so hopeful, want so badly to believe that we know how to be better humans and can strive to behave that way.
As e.e.cummings wrote, I write to Nablus: "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)." Just as you fought obstacles to let us all the way into your lives and work, we will fight on your behalf to tell the world how we found love and kindness, friendship and welcome in Nablus. Poetry will never be enough, but it's a start. May the world be a more peaceful place to live when we see each other again.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
-William Carlos Williams
--Mahmoud Darwish, in memoriam, 1942-2008
It is our last night in Nablus, and a crowd has gathered at a local hotel for the first poetry reading the city has seen since before the 2nd Intifada in 2002, featuring Saed, Falastine and me (Saed keeps calling us "fugitive poets"). I'm more nervous than I expected to be; I haven't done a public reading since 1994, and I'm intimidated every time someone refers to me as "the poet." Saed bustles around while Mark and Michael help set up the LCD projector so we can run RJI's Poetry of Witness slide show during the break. Falastine, who is giving her very first public reading, hovers close to my elbow and asks about the poems she's chosen, looking for reassurance. I am spent, tired, and nervous, and I suspect I don't do much to soothe her.
My nerves are shot, as I'm sure my letters have suggested; after five weeks living in this complex society and oppressive situation, I feel sapped of energy, guilty to be able to walk away, and sad to have to go home. Relationships here have been complicated and have covered every inch of the gray area: young men in my class are attentive and sensitive, making me miss teaching boys after 9 years in all-girls education. Outside on the streets of Nablus, young men around the same age constantly stare and harass us verbally, even though we've been so careful to cover ourselves up. Mark, Michael and Mohammad offer comfort and connection but avoid physical contact because of Islamic law; it's been a month since I've had a real hug from a male, as it's all quick handshakes if they touch me at all. Saed is the only one to break right through this physical isolation, quick to give me high fives and even place a hand on my shoulder when he can tell I'm struggling with something.
The hall is packed when Dr. Nabil begins his introductions, and then I'm doing my thing, talking to the crowd about the power of poetry to bring people together and leap over boundaries of communication and ideology. Mark smiles at me reassuringly, and I can feel myself warming to the crowd. He told me the other day that I seem angry, and he's right; I've felt increasingly angry, especially since my visit to Hebron, and I haven't been able to snap out of it. Saed told me he thinks I'm not actually a cynic, that I think I'm a pessimist but that I'm actually a heartbroken optimist, heartbroken to encounter so much human badness. This, he says, comes from my intrinsic belief that we are capable of good; otherwise, why would I be so upset about it? But even with his unflagging optimism, Saed hasn't been able to convince me that people are actually good at heart; even he started talking about cutting people's hands off when I had my butt pinched a week before our departure. The capacity to avoid violence and act with compassion seems like a fantasy still, a bedtime story we tell our children so they won't be so scared by the explosions they hear in the night, a naive claim made by Anne Frank right before other humans gassed her.
And then I feel something shift in the air around me. The call to evening prayer begins to echo through the empty streets outside and enters our event like a perfect background melody, and the room feels resonant suddenly, everyone pensive and watching as I read the hardest piece I've chosen, my angriest piece in years, "Another Endless Road." Mark told me the poem suggested the Israelis had won a huge victory if I so connected Judaism with Israeli statehood, and I feel mildly ashamed as my anger settles on the crowd and reverberates in the air around us, as I let myself realize how right Mark is. My "no amount of prayer can erase the stench of us" weaves in the air with the call to evening prayer, and I feel sorry I still can't believe, moved as I am by other people's faith.
But then my turn is over, and I get to sit and be the proud teacher, watching Falastine read like she's been at it all her life, and then we all laugh over Saed's yearly love disasters and cry with him over his lost mother and his many scars. It still hurts him to laugh since the appendectomy, but when Habib starts playing the aud, it's all we can do to keep Saed from dancing. Everyone starts singing and clapping; even Falastine's father, who came only begrudgingly and told Falastine last week that there was no point to her pursuits in poetry, is smiling and singing along. She and I hold hands and this is what I want to remember; this one moment is Nablus at its best. Then Saed starts singing to me by the nickname he's used since the day we met: Jiji. Within minutes, the whole crowd is singing along to the "Jiji" lyrics Saed and Qais made up the other night in the car, and I'm blushing and laughing and even crying a little.
And there is something good and right in this moment, in this life, in taking a step outside of my own life to feel angry with and for the good people I've met in this community. There is hope in this room, all of its inhabitants singing and clapping and feeling the possibilities, what Denise Levertov called "the deep intelligence living at peace would have." We have come together in the face of war and occupation to use language together, and the energy the air carries is charged with potential. Poetry is not enough; it won't feed children whose parents spend three hours at checkpoints trying to make it to jobs in towns 10 miles away. It's not going to fix life for the students who can't attend this reading because they can't get home through checkpoints if they leave Nablus too late. Poetry won't erase the days An-Najah's campus is empty because no one can get through. Poetry is little consolation for a difficult life. But I can also tell that we've started something this city needs: the opportunity to come together and celebrate, bear witness, and share a powerful moment in solidarity with one another, a moment of hope.
It hurts to leave this place that embraced me as "the poet from abroad." Ahmed, my most loyal student, looks like he's been crying when he gives me a small gift and dashes for the door after the singing is over. He wrote his first poem ever in my course this summer; perhaps there is a peaceful future to be built even in small successes. People are still gathered, talking and laughing, long after the event is over. There is hope in the air, creativity. Potential.
These are the things I will remember most: the sunsets watched over strong coffee and good conversation on Saed's porch; the teddy bear he needed to be able to laugh after surgery; planting flowers on his mother's grave; the late Mahmoud Darwish's white tulips; the enthusiasm, insights and metaphors of young poets; being offered tea by everyone we met; seeing a falling meteor up close; talking theatre and philosophy with Qais, goodbye hugs from Saed and Mohammad; and the five times a day that the call to prayer reminded me to be a better person, less angry and more peaceful.
These are the things I will try to forget, even though it's what people need to hear about the most: brothers at war with each other; women made tough and mean by life; religion used to justify violence; the sound of gunshots at night; the biggest wall I've ever seen; friends bearing the scars of torture; children throwing stones; young soldiers always walking with a finger on the trigger; being herded through checkpoints like farm animals to slaughter; failures of coexistence where so much was possible. Maybe Saed is right: I am wounded because I am so hopeful, want so badly to believe that we know how to be better humans and can strive to behave that way.
As e.e.cummings wrote, I write to Nablus: "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)." Just as you fought obstacles to let us all the way into your lives and work, we will fight on your behalf to tell the world how we found love and kindness, friendship and welcome in Nablus. Poetry will never be enough, but it's a start. May the world be a more peaceful place to live when we see each other again.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
-William Carlos Williams
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Another Endless Road
"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
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
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.
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