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| View of Beit Sehour, on the walk to and from Bethlehem |
Our view overlooks Beit Sehour with its steep winding
streets and sand colored houses. It is Friday, and we sit on the window ledge to
breathe in the night. Cool, scentless breeze, consistent horns in the distance,
and echoes of shouts and laughter. Sitting
here on our second day, facing each other with the window to our side, it seems
we’ve already worn grooves in the cushions.
Where did this journey begin? In New York, or Massachusetts?
On Muki’s dorm-room bed last October when we both felt the need for some
perspective? Did it begin when we heard back from the Holy Land Trust that our
volunteer applications had been accepted and we would be working with their
partner organization the Palestine News Network—or maybe that was just when it
first felt real. Perhaps the journey began at some indiscernible moment, like
between when a seed is dormant and when germination begins. It is both one
specific point in time and a series of smaller ones that are linked by something
that is only visible once the first touch of green has reached sunlight. But for the sake of this story, let’s begin
in Cape Cod.
***
***
It was Tuesday, July 23rd. We woke at 4:45am
after a few restless hours of sleep, departed at 5:30 and made it to the
Braintree subway station by 7. The train
to Boston was full of the usual crowd – commuters plugged into music and
phones. Little eye contact. Got to South
Station 13 minutes before our bus was supposed to depart, both had to pee, each
with a large backpack on our back and a smaller one on our front, waddle-ran
our way to the terminal and slipped on just in time. Arrived in New York City at noon or 1 and
managed to ask our way through Penn Station to the correct train that got us to
JFK by 2 or so. Our plane was supposed
to leave at 6:30pm, but we didn’t board until 8 and taxied for more than an
hour before finally taking off. That was
how we first bonded with Robert (roll the ‘r’s, emphasis on the ‘e’ and drop
the ‘t’), who had been visiting his 2 year-old granddaughter in the states. He didn’t speak much English, and we knew
zero Polish, still, the three of us managed to laugh about how we were
evidently driving to Warsaw. When the
drinks came by Robert got a Bloody Mary- “kvava
Mary” he said. Muki was surprised about Vodak and tomato juice and all the
drinks were free, so we decided to try one. Robert showed us how to dress it
with salt and pepper, and we all clinked plastic cups. It was just enough to
knock us out and we slept through till breakfast.
***
Our little white gecko friend is scurrying from one couch to
the other. We found her yesterday, our
first day, behind the mattress on the window ledge, along with a fat hairy
spider. We tried to kill the spider with a shoe but it jumped, and we jumped
and it ran under the couch where it has not been seen since. Ghosty, on the
other hand, has been sighted multiple times and we’ve written her a few
letters, which Muki reads aloud in the hopes she will hear them. They go
something like this: “Dear Ghosty, please eat more mosquitos.” (To be fair
there aren’t very many and they’re only out at night, and we now have a little
light bulb thing that effectively gets them stoned.) Now the call to prayer echoes through the
hills of Beit Sehour. Outside and across
the valley shines a large neon red and yellow cross. Around town we’ve seen a few bumper stickers
and other signs that have a crescent moon with a cross- representing, perhaps,
the community of Beit Jala, Beit Lahem (Bethlehem) and Beit Sehour—three towns
that blend into each other and have a mixed Christian and Muslim
population. After our walk home today,
when we noticed the crescent and cross signs, Muki turned to me and said “you
know, you hear so much about conflicts between Christians and Muslims-
especially in African countries and in the US and Europe- but then being here
you realize that none of the conflicts are about faith. Its all about politics
and power.”
We arrived in Warsaw on Wednesday morning. The day was a
chilly grey, and there were flowers everywhere.
Little stands with bouquets for sale, window boxes with geraniums, and one
elderly woman selling small bunches of golden and yellow nasturtiums. After
waving goodbye to Robert at the baggage claim, a smile wrinkling up his whole
face and a little “good luck,” we caught a bus to the city center. We had
around 7 hours to explore the city before heading back to catch our 11pm
flight. A young man told us to alight at the stop by a roundabout with a single
palm tree in its center. A palm tree in
Poland.
***
This morning our hosts invited us up for breakfast before we
headed to the office for a brief orientation. The house is owned by an elderly
couple, and our apartment is just below them.
Their daughter is visiting with her 6 and 8 year old girls, who live in Malaysia,
and previously Texas. Breakfast was a
spread of eggs, hummus, hobbs, (what
is called ‘pita bread’ in the US), homemade jams, olive oil, cucumbers and za’atar, a powdered spice mix with
oregano and sesame seeds. As we ate, Mary,
the daughter of our hosts, sat with us.
Muki asked “are there protests that happen here?”
She replied, “In Bethlehem? No, not anymore. It used to be
that there were Israeli guards here, and there was a curfew. There were protests then, and a lot of
senseless violence. There was a boy in our family, he was 17 years old, and one
day he was standing at his window, inside the house looking out the window and
the Israeli soldiers shot him straight in the head. He dropped dead that same
moment. It was during the curfew time, and he was in the house just looking
outside. That was around 1999.”
***
In Warsaw we walked on cobbled streets between ocher houses,
trying various cheap Polish foods and turning to each other every few minutes to
gasp “is this real?” Eventually we headed back to the airport. As we walked toward our gate we stopped by
the nearest bathroom. Next to the ladies
room there was a door with a picture of a person showering on it. We looked at
each other, shrugged, and opened the door. Inside was a private room with one
shower, a toilet and a sink. Dropping
our bags we locked the door, laughing the whole time and took an excellent
shower, unsure if the door was supposed to have been open. Refreshed and giddy, we used the remaining
time to delete our Facebook accounts and rehearse our story again. A tale about
how we were traveling through Israel to visit family and friends (thanks to my
Dad’s list of connections there, we could back this part up) for about seven
weeks, and had no interest in the conflict or visiting the West Bank. Our
nerves were ringing as we boarded the plane, the worst part of our journey being
in sight, but we managed to sleep until landing, courtesy of Polish Air’s
refreshments. Arriving in the Ben Gurion
Airport at 3:50am on Thursday, we went straight to wash up before having to
face Passport Control.
***
At breakfast, Mary continued her story. “I want to take you down to the piece of land
my parents own. It’s outside of Bethlehem, a beautiful piece of property. When
they built the Wall it went straight through their land, putting most of it on
the Israeli side. We went to visit the
remaining piece a few years ago. My girls were young, and it was a lovely
afternoon. Then this Jewish soldier came
over to us, asked ‘what are you doing here?’ I was furious, I told him ‘this is
our land, we’re having a picnic.’ He was like ‘we saw someone throwing rocks.’”
Mary scoffed, “I was so mad. There I was with my young daughters and my elderly
parents on our own land, most of which they had stolen, and here he’s accusing
us of throwing rocks. And they won’t let us do anything with the property now,
since it’s by the wall. We can’t build, can’t plant, nothing.”
 |
| Breakfast in our apartment, at the window seat |
We were in the line for “All Other Passports,” when we approached
the brunette Israeli guard in a bulletproof box. We slid over our passports- mine from the US,
with Jewish middle and last names, and Muki’s German passport with her string
of Muslim names, passed from grandfather, to father, to daughter. Silence. Keys clicked. Muki said “this is the
most beautiful airport I’ve ever been in.” The officer replied “what is your
father’s name?” She gave it. “And your grandfather’s?” “Well, I never knew
him,” she said, “but I think his name was Mohamed,” emphasizing her American
accent. The woman turned to me, “what are you doing in Israel, visiting friends
and family?” “Yep” I replied, “and seeing the sights.” A minute passed. She
slid my passport through with a 3-month visa card tucked between the pages. “I
need you to wait over there.” She pointed to a closed-off area. “I’m confused, is everything OK?” Muki tried
to act surprised, playing the role of a tourist. “Security check, ma’am.” She kept Muki’s
passport and we walked to the room. Three women were already there, chatting in
Arabic. It looked like they’d been there for a while. It was 4:37am. We waited.
***
When we first arrived at our apartment on Thursday
afternoon, the little girls brought down a bowl of fruit for our table. Figs, grapes, and apples. “These are all from
our trees outside.” I bit into a sweet grape, and the bitter taste of a seed assured
me that all of it was real. Our abode is
150 years old, cement floor, dome ceiling, one large living area and a smaller,
but still large, kitchen with an adjacent bathroom. The large window faces west, with a broad sill
where we sit and eat and write. It was
home by the end of our first meal. The Last Supper hangs on one wall, and a
small shrine with aging pictures of Mary and Jesus tell us that our hosts are
Christian. An old Mercedes sewing machine serves as a table by the pale yellow
door and all the walls are white. The kitchen cabinet is filled with different
sets of small tea cups- maybe thirty cups in all.
At Ben Gurion we waited in the room for more than an hour
before anything happened. More people
shuffled in, mostly of Arab decent, and some also, eventually, shuffled
out. A young white man came in and
waited less than 20 minutes before he was released. We sat mostly in silence. I knew Muki was
nervous and I tried to make light conversation. It didn’t help. Around 6am an
Israeli guard came out. “Najaer” was all he said and Muki followed him. I waited.
10 or 15 minutes passed, and suddenly, Muki came back. I was relieved and
surprised. “They said to wait some more.” She said they asked her about her
family, her studies, why she was coming to Israel, what she would do here, who
she knew here, and her father’s and grandfather’s names. Another white man entered the room. He left in
less than 30 minutes. We started getting hungry. The three women who had been
waiting the entire time we were there were called in individually and as a
group throughout the hours. They told us they are Palestinian, but live in
Holland, and come down every year despite the racist treatment. One had been
held for 11 hours once, without access to food or anywhere to have a smoke. She word trendy European clothes, had a
stylish haircut, and told us she was fasting for Ramadan. They had been there
for a few hours more than us, and she hadn’t been able to take the suhoor, morning meal before the day without
food or cigarettes commenced. It is not obligatory to fast when one is
traveling, but the woman said she preferred it. Eventually they took Muki in
again. She came out after a few minutes and said they wanted my passport. Then
she came out again and said they wanted me. We were questioned together by a
light skinned woman who asked us about our families, studies, our reasons for
coming to Israel, a list of people we were going to visit, with their phone
numbers, about where we would be staying, what we would be doing, and where
else we had traveled in the Middle East.
She had us write down our US phone numbers and email addresses. Most of her
questions were curt. Most of our answers were met with a skeptical cock of her
eyebrow. It lasted probably half an hour.
She said everything was fine and she needed to process our information. Another
hour went by while we waited.
***
On the ride to Jerusalem later on Thursday it was hard to
stay awake. There were lemon groves in
the spaces between the on and off ramps of the highway, and every road sign was
in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Dinosaur cranes littered every horizon, pushing
new buildings into the soil. New gas stations, new roads, new housing
complexes. In the Old City we caught bus 21 to Bethlehem and the landscape changed
as we left Jerusalem. It opened into
hills with steep terraces of white rock, held together by gnarled olive roots. Stone
houses, built into the hills, marked the towns and cities of the West Bank as
we climbed to Bethlehem, which lies at 2,543 feet. Beit Jala, Beit Lahem and Beit Sehour extend
over a few hills, and are connected by roads and houses, making the three towns
appear to be just one. We are on the
southern end, in Beit Sehour, about a 25-minute walk from the PNN office in
Bethlehem. The streets are narrow, steep, winding, and there are random smells
of jasmine, smoke, and food cooking. Walking through houses and past storefronts
the buildings will suddenly give way to a view of the city’s hills. The
horizon, however, seems to be forever lost in a haze of dust and smoke. From afar the area seems desert-like and
barren, but walking through town there is vegetation everywhere- bougainvillea,
pomegranates, figs, cypress, grapes, oleander, limes, large fruit-bearing
cacti, olive and walnut trees, and others I don’t know by name. The flora
reminds me of southern California, where I grew up, as does the dry heat and the
pleasantness of evening.
At 8:45 Muki was called in again, by a different guard. She
was asked the same questions. When she realized it would be the same
interrogation, Muki told the guard she had already answered the questions twice
that day. He let her go, and within 15
minutes she had her passport back and we were free to leave. Then we looked at
her visa and realized it had been issued within 3 minutes of mine- 4 and a half
hours earlier. Infuriated, exhausted,
and hungry we found our bags left haphazardly near the carousel and got the sherut to Jerusalem. (Muki’s extended version of the customs story
will be posted soon.) We arrived at our new house by lunchtime on Thursday and
spent the afternoon sleeping and rearranging the furniture in our apartment.
***
This morning, Friday, we went to the Holy Land Trust office
for a brief orientation- how to interact respectfully with our landlords/hosts,
how to navigate Bethlehem and Beit Sehour, etc. From there we went to the PNN office to
discuss what we would be doing and how to do it with the young woman who is
currently the sole person working on the English portion of the website. The
introduction got us excited to work with PNN, as we realized our tasks are both
manageable and will give us a lot of freedom to also push ourselves. It was
also nice to feel like they definitely need the extra hands to boost the
English website to its full potential. We will begin work on Monday morning. Walking home from the office afterward Muki turned to me and said, “I think we just passed a bakery.” Indeed, we
discovered that on our way home is a little pastry shop that has all sorts of
sweet and floury treats for $2/lb. It will be a constant test for our will power,
that’s for sure.
