Returns and Departures

Back in Palestine, with a little bit of perspective.

Simon and I had a great trip back to Maine; now that I don't live there, my home state, with all it's green   and moisture, always has a lesson or two for me. But more on that later.

We had a fun (if tiring) stop-over in Kiev, Ukraine on our way back, due to a layover so long that it turned in our favor. After some crowded subway rides we made it to the heart of the city, a cobble-stoned ascent to St. Andrew's monastery, which raises it's many gold domes high above the old Soviet-era block buildings of the country's capitol. A walk and one local brew later, we were at St. Michael's, then St. Sophia, all massive complexes of pastel colored stone with gold caps, all beautiful if not for that sort of dead air that fills most old large churches.

We arrived at the airport at what we thought was a very responsibly early time, but as Israel would have it, we were the last ones on the plane. We unknowingly flew on an Israeli airline for our second leg, which meant three hours of security in the Ukraine, before ever stepping foot on Israeli land. They questioned us, checked our bags, pulled down our pants, and generally poked and prodded every nerve that might show our bad intent. It culminated in the confiscation of my laptop and a few other things for further inspection while we flew to Tel Aviv. They even took my pillow, which admittedly is decorated with a picture of the Dome of the Rock, but is otherwise fairly harmless and decidedly not a bomb.

In Tel Aviv we were welcomed warmly with another three hours of questioning. Apparently they find it hard to believe that two young foreign men would want to work and live among Arabs for longer than we already had. Of course we had a lot of grace, keeping in mind that our questioners had most likely never met an Arab, but have only had their friends blown up by the worst of them. Our first interrogator was a terrifying woman with shiny glasses who actually made me feel like I was up to mischief.

We've spent the last week in a rather unique state. It's Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and their society makes a drastic shift in the work, meal, and sleep schedule. Lucky for us we're still on American time, so we go to bed around 3:00 or 4:00am with no problem and wake up around 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon. Most jobless youth operate the same way, drastically reducing the pains of fasting during the day.

Simon spends our jobless days socializing, as he's want to do, and I read. I've found that I'm not quite any good with a language barrier - disappointing for a linguistics major - so I sit in our sunny apartment,  reading Christian books over the noises of some really irritating poultry and children who seem to have no life except screaming at each other all day. I'm a hermit huddled in some lonely corner of Palestine while the chaos of Arab culture knocks on my windows and door.

Yesterday was a long journey to Tel Aviv to retrieve my things, none of which was a weapon, apparently. It was nice to do something, but very expensive and quite stressful. I'm no good at figuring out buses and such, but I got to finish a book, The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. Highly recommended. I finished the last bit in traffic between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, despite the unhappy baby and grumpy New Yorky Jew on a cell phone that shared the shuttle with me.

Now I'm settling back into old routines. I hate old routines. I'm starting to get bored, a situation that is made more daunting by the fact that one of my jobs fell through, and the other will provide less hours than I had hoped, thus limiting my income to 'barely livable.' And by 'barely livable' I mean I can eat and pay rent just fine, but a plane ticket home will be difficult to afford for a long time, and any traveling or leisure activities are seriously constricted.

I do love Arab culture, I really do, but it's very difficult to access it at a personal level. I want to move from anthropologist to societal member, but the language will take years, and I just don't have fun without being able to communicate with other human beings. I'm getting a good taste of what it must be like to be deaf or mute, and it's not to my liking.

This is the lesson that my recent trip home taught me. There are things I value in America that have nothing to do with culture; I'd be just as happy here as there if I could make friends, but it takes so much more work. Simon, who doesn't mind constant superficiality as much, doesn't really feel the pinch, and I'm jealous of him for that. He moves through awkward or difficult conversations like they're his natural environment, but I'm like a whale in the Sahara.

Simon has, actually, gained some fame. You could ask quite a few people about "Wisam Alhimouni," and they would reply "Ay, Wisam, al-ajnabi helwu! Axi inta!" (Ah, Wisam, the wonderful foreigner! He's my brother!). He's probably among the top 10 most known people in Hebron, and I'm his shy cousin, his humble ankle dog. And I say that with no bitterness; it's lovely to see someone find where they belong. It's of course true that any two travel partners will have different experiences, and our case is no exception.

Another realization is that I do love foreign countries, but it's false to think that living abroad constantly provides the excitement of tourism. That was my real misunderstanding moving here; life is life, no matter where you live it, and the things that sustain a man are far beyond his surroundings. I find myself in extreme and unique surroundings, but with none of the things that sustain me: family, friends, a church, percolated coffee.

There is one sustenance, though, which has been poured on me in gallons in the last week of my return: Jesus. I'm reinventing my faith, delving into classic Christian disciplines like meditation and study, and they are producing all the rewards that their practitioners have described. My feet are directed towards God and my own soul, and I'm reassured that that is a good direction to be traveling. My skin is itching for a change of situation, but my soul is home. My heart is uncomfortable and restless, but that just drives my mind to Jesus more and more, which is a benefit.

Shorts

Even men aren’t allowed to wear shorts in public.

The call to prayer happens five times a day, but in Hebron it’s not exact. There are actual men with microphones inside the mosques doing the chanting, and they usually all go off within a five minute period. If you’re near enough to several mosques their different chants sound cacophonous, but one alone is quite beautiful. Some cities have a timed, pre-recorded call that goes from all the mosques at once.

They think it’s weird if we don’t wear socks. Simon’s feet get a lot of stares when he wears his loafers.

Wedding parties are crazy. The first one I went to was a few hundred men packed to the front of a stage dancing like crazy, with lights and foam and energy drinks (one of few Islam-approved stimulants). Us foreigners were popular. Half a dozen times a man snuck up and tried to stick his head between my legs to get me on his shoulders. I got good at clenching my knees immediately when I felt someone’s face try to force its way in. I only failed one time and had to ride bouncing above the crowd for a few minutes. But at least I wasn’t a part of the triple-stack; that looked dangerous.

The closest alcohol is in Bethlehem, because that’s where Christians live. They also operate the only disco and, purportedly, strip club.

Men will hold your hand or play with your hair while you talk. It’s kind of nice.

Abraham’s Tomb is in Hebron. It’s a large half-mosque half-synagogue that is supposedly the resting place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives. The Jew’s control about 60% of it, but leave 40% for the Muslims, which means some of the Patriarchs live in different sections. Even though an American-born Jewish settler massacred 29 Muslims there in 1994, Simon and I are allowed to enter both sides without a problem. (But they do always ask us our religion).

Small children beat the life out of each other, but they almost never cry, probably because the typical parental MO is ‘Ignore.’ They also entertain themselves with deflated soccer balls, sticks, burning masses of cardboard, and corn. Until they turn 14; then they play Counter Strike in the net cafes.

There are two types of street food: falafel and shwarma. This is a disappointment from Mexico, where you can pass ten different snacks on one block.

Last night Simon and I ran into the typical crew before our house. Simon ended up with the 20-something dudes, and I found myself sitting with a dozen ten-year-old girls, all holding my hand and stroking my hair and pinching my cheeks and asking me questions in Arabic. They asked me my parents’ names and what I do for work, and they kept wanting me to sing for them. I felt like a creeper, especially when a father came out of the house nearby. But he didn’t even bat an eye, just came up and shook my hand with a smile, then invited me in for coffee.

The main dish is makluba, a large platter of spiced rice, chicken, and cauliflower (or eggplant, if you’re feeling crazy). Change a couple ingredients and it’s called mansaf, and cross the border to Saudi and it’s called kapsah. But it’s still all rice and chicken.

Lebanese apparently don’t eat makluba because they’re fancy.

Arabs call a man who is controlled by his wife a “rabbit,” and a man who controls his wife a “lion.” They have a saying: Better to be a happy rabbit than a sad lion.

If you live in the States you don’t really know what a fig is.

Parents think something is wrong with their child if he doesn't like to be held by a stranger. Sometimes toddlers can be found wandering the neighborhood.

The words air, zipper, and neck are all naughty words in Arabic.

The Arabs here don’t enjoy experimenting. They don’t have a large variety of food, all the music videos are all exactly the same, and the men all dress very similarly; they don’t have bro and hipster and prep and emo, they just have Arab male. There are three types of tea: sweet black tea, sweat black tea with mint, and sweet black tea with sage.

One of our friends has a scar on his cheek. He told us that he fell on a flower when he was younger. When we asked how that could possibly have given him a permanent scar, he said “It was a Palestinian flower.”

Tel Aviv

I was excited about my first trip into Israel. Like most expats in Palestine I don’t agree with a lot of their practices towards the Palestinians, but I don’t possess a lot of the hatred or bitterness that most pro-Palestinian foreigners have. I understand there’s a difference between the actions of a government and the attitudes of the people, so I was excited to interact with the actual human beings on the other side of the wall, behind the guns.

Let me just start by saying that I still think there are good people in Israel. Smart people that want peace instead of occupation, or at least wouldn’t mind being friends with some Arabs. I might have met some of these on my trip to the coast, but Palestine seemed pretty far from the lives of most of the people I interacted with.

It took a taxi, a bus, a train, another long bus, and another taxi to get to Tel Aviv. Even during our brief pit-stop in Jerusalem I could tell that I had really entered a different country. A lot of the sights are the same – sandy flat-roofed buildings and hills, hills, hills – but the people are completely different; the smiling faces and "Welcome"s in Hebron were replaced with Western clothing style and aloof attitudes (and the occasional Hasid walking stiffly among the hipsters). We joked that even the employee working at Information was curt and unhelpful.

We got to Tel Aviv around 10:00. It is, not surprisingly, an incredibly Western city. It has the atmosphere of Tijuana, the ethnic diversity of Marseille, the hospitality of Boston, and the moral philosophy of San Francisco. Everyone is physically attractive, and after the conservative dress of the Arabs the clothing struck me as scandalous. 

We’d come to Tel Aviv to celebrate our friend Ditte’s birthday. Our group included six Danes, two Aussies, one Indian, and us Americans. After checking into our hostel we went to a crowded half-restaurant half-bar and had some hotdogs and beer, and then some free shots for the birthday. Hebron being a fairly conservative city, this was my first liquor since British Airways. A month was apparently a long enough time to forget how much I dislike it.

After the restaurant we took cabs across town to the club district and I sat and watched while my friends danced. It felt just like home and the few times I’d been to a club in the States; my friends dance and I sip beer bored and tired in the corner like an old sailor.

At around 3:00am the two Americans split and headed back to the hostel to get the best sleep of our lives.

Simon and I woke up around 8:30 to get the free Nescafe and pastry in the hostel lobby, then headed immediately for the Mediterranean, only two blocks from where we were staying. All the Danes were still sleeping off the dancing, and it seemed like the rest of the city was doing the same, because the beach was pretty empty. We waded, swam a little, and sat. From the old stone buildings of Jaffa on our left to the new hotel towers on our right, the water was the perfect blue-green that I’d seen in pictures.  Without a doubt, no contention, the beach was the best part of Tel Aviv.

We woke our friends and headed to the planed breakfast at Benedicts, an American(-ish) style restaurant where I had the only real cup of coffee in Palestine. Then, off to the gay pride parade.

Halfway through the procession of human flesh it struck me how this culture wasn’t really living up to the ideology of the original Zionists. They envisioned a Jewish state, but these weren’t really Jews; they are Europeans with Jewish grandmothers. I kept thinking "Why are you even here? What is your goal in taking Israel?" Even aside from the celebration of sexuality, the general attitude of the city doesn’t embody many of the traditions of Judaism, and here in the capitol of all places. Tel Aviv isn’t more than a Western colony in the middle of Arab territory, with no cultural contribution except a little hat some men wear. Other than that, they seem completely willing to buy into Western culture whole-sale.

And for all it's flaws and oddities, I don't hate Westernism. It just seems so out of place in Israel, the Promised Land, the source of so much cultural confrontation. If the Israeli youth aren't fighting for their own heritage, but are trading it gladly for someone else's, then what was the point of all the Jews leaving Europe? Wasn't the goal to separate themselves from the people around them, to unite themselves as a unique people group? Even more disconcerting, they still seem to maintain an attitude of proud ownership, not humble thankfulness.

Their entitled attitudes only ended up strengthening my belief that their grandparents were not the real owners of the Levant. People who are trying to prove ownership of something always need to act like they’re claiming it at every moment, while people who actual own something can feel free to share it.

After one day on the beach I was happy to get back to the hospitality of the Arabs.

If Americans Were Arabs

I arrived from Peru a month ago, and already I’m in love with America. Or should I say, I’m in love with the American people.

The first night, after I dropped my things off in my new apartment (a nice first-floor flat with a lot of space but little furniture), I took a walk around the neighborhood that would be my home for the next year.

It’s a beautiful area. Not for its parks or fountains or manicured lawns – actually, the streets are full of garbage – but the people, oh! The people here stop you while you’re walking just to welcome you to America. They stand outside of their businesses and on their apartment stoops and smile as I walk by, trying to catch my eye. Some even yell out their car windows as they’re speeding along, “Welcome!” Very few of them are conversational in Spanish, but they all know enough to try out “Hola! Como estas?” or “Bienvenidos!” I’m sure Latinos aren’t very common in this part of America, and they act like my presence is a real treat for them. I’m more than happy to oblige their irrepressible desire to welcome foreigners to their country. I must have shaken a dozen hands just on that first walk around town.

I’m settling into my work, and I’m even starting to know Boston pretty well, but the Americans themselves always provide me with fresh experiences. One man that owns a store near my school always spots me walking by and waves me in. He hustles behind the counter and pours some thick coffee into a small paper cup for me to drink as I walk. It tastes like asphalt, so I just chug it quick and thank him with a smile and a phony “mmmm!” I make an effort to buy my necessities at his store, even if his coffee sucks.

My neighbors in the apartment building have beautiful children that mob me whenever I round the corner of the block. They hold my hand, pull on my clothing and talk way too quickly in English. I never understand a word they say, but we share enough smiles to fill in the gaps of a real conversation.

I’ve started to make real friends with some of the older children, though. The oldest, 17, speaks pretty decent Spanish, and he’s brought me tea a few times. We drink it on the floor of my apartment since there’s no furniture. I feel bad that I can’t reciprocate his hospitality with at least a box to sit on, but of course he never minds. “This is how we used to do it, back before. We always sat on the floor to talk,” he says.

I found out there’s a coffee shop a few floors up in a building on my block, and I’ve been heading there for coffee three or four nights a week. The second I walk in, ten chairs are pulled up around me. Every American knows how to give the most meaningful smile. Even if they just speak a little Spanish, I instantly understand “You are very welcome here. Your presence makes me happy. America is beautiful, and I want to share it with you. Aren’t we lucky to be here?” 

Some do speak pretty good Spanish, and since my English is still pathetic we mostly talk in my native language. It’s struck me as a little silly that I came all the way to America to work and we still have our conversations in Spanish, just to accommodate me. But they all seem very willing to inconvenience themselves if it means we get to build a relationship. 

Tonight I went and had dinner with yet another family. I could probably fill up every evening being hosted for dinner, or at least coffee and sweets. They were so excited to show me their property: garden, orchard, balcony.

Just this week I was invited to two different weddings. “Oh, my cousin’s getting married on Friday. Come!” Americans love weddings. Every Friday the whole city is filled with the small explosions of wedding fireworks, as well as the parade of cars plugging up the main road as all the attendees swerve and honk and wave flags and flowers. 

I don’t think I’m going to get tired of this people. They value community and relationship and hospitality far above efficiency and hard work, which has come to make total sense to me. These Americans, with their white eyes and pure affection, are drawing me into themselves, filling my days and nights with so much relationship that even if I moved now I’d feel like I was leaving family.

The Day of Catastrophe

Today is an important day in the history of Palestine, so I thought a quick, informative post might be in order.

Today is Yawm an-Nakbah, the Day of Catastrophe celebrated by Palestinians in concordance with the Israeli Independence Day (which came yesterday). This is the day Palestinians remember the beginning of their displacement.

Just as Christmas is symbolized by a tree and St. Patrick's by a shamrock, Nakbah Day's token is a key. This is in remembrance of the house keys Palestinians took with them as they closed their doors for the last time back in 1948.

Before 1948, the year Israel made the land theft official by declaring statehood, the Arabs used the word nakbah, or 'catastrophe,' to refer to the year 1920, when European powers dismantled the former Ottoman Empire by dividing it up into states as they wished, with no regard for linguistic or cultural affiliation. (That's also the reason why half of Afghanistan speaks Farsi and half Pashto, half of Pakistan speaks Pashto and half Hindi, and why the 30 million Kurds, instead of ending up with their own country, got distributed into the corners of a half dozen nations where they became an outcast minority, to this day remaining the largest people group without its own state).

The continuity if the word nakbah  isn't lost on me; for the last century it's been used with sadness and bitterness to refer to history-shaking acts of Western imperialism. When I put myself in the place of the Kurds, Pashtun, Berbers, and the handful of other people groups that got squashed by the former British protectorates, I start to understand a little of the violence. And especially when I put myself in the place of Arab Palestinians, who still live on the outskirts of their former homeland, looking in as illegal Israeli settlers eat up more and more of it.

This year's Nakbah Day has added significance. Hundreds of Palestinians taken prisoner by Israel, purportedly without cause, have been on a hunger strike for 76 days, and today is the day they break their fast. In support of the detainees, many Palestinians have changed their Facebook profile pictures to one of a nameless blindfolded prisoner (which I've posted at the top of this page).

There will be protests and marches and chanting. Some years, the IDF meets the protestors with tragic results.

So today, my prayers are for peace in Palestine. I'm praying for an end to acts of Arab violence against civilians, as well as an end to Israeli tyranny. I hope that Americans, among other Western countries, can begin to reconcile for the conflict we've helped cause by offering words of peace to God.

Bethlehem

I’d wondered if Bethlehem was going to be a spiritual experience for me, just like the Wailing Wall is for Jews and Mecca is for Muslims. I certainly don’t believe that one particular place on earth can elevate a man nearer to the face of God, that one mountain or temple or city can bring his ear closer to my lips. Still, this was the city that God picked as the birthplace of Jesus, and that was cool.

I did have a spiritual experience, but not the one shared by most pilgrims. What I felt was sadness. Or more than that, maybe. It felt like heartbreak.

Our entrance to the Church of the Nativity was through a four-foot stone door called the Door of Humility; every visitor through this door is forced to bow as they enter the oldest continuously operating church in the world, theoretically paying respect to God as they pass through. But, as Simon commented, “there’s not a lot of humility on the other side.”

The church is a large dusky room of thick stone pillars and a dark wood ceiling, with Byzantine murals high up on the walls, faded gold lanterns strung from gold chains in the ceiling, and a long line of Westerners packed down one side of the altar. They were waiting to see where Jesus was born.

We had a Palestinian with us, so we got to skip past the guards at the exit of the grotto and meet the line as it funneled out.

Inside the small, hot, richly decorated grotto the tourists took their 15 seconds each with the spot on the floor designated as Jesus’ birthplace. Hundreds of thousands of kisses have worn the silver and stone around the site. Some visitors bent into the hearth-like shrine and performed the ritual good-naturedly for a camera behind them. Other picture seekers knelt and gave two thumbs up with a big smile. Most people just glanced and moved down the line.

I felt constricted all of a sudden, burdened, like dozens of thick blankets had been piled on top of me. I wanted to get out of the gold and candles and marble and paintings and red fabric and wood. I needed to stand under the perfect Bethlehem sky and send a prayer to God that wouldn’t be obstructed by all of the religious trappings.

Outside I found the sky, but every direction toward the horizon was obstructed by someone’s holy castle. At this religious crossroads everyone wants their tower to be taller, their symbol to be seen from farther away. But who is lifted up when a cross or a crescent moon is placed on a tower? Does God need stones to raise him higher?

No. It’s pride that is exalted. Pride is the religion of Bethlehem. It’s ironic that the sight of the most humble act in history, the birth of the God-man into a barn, is now the sight of so much banner waving, so much picture taking, so much façade and pomp in the name of religion and at the expense of worship. From what I’ve read, there’s no place in Christianity for veneration of artifacts, holy sites, or sanctified idols. The Book says that God’s earthly temple is the human heart, and the only sanctification happens in a soul that’s been forgiven. Millions of people across the world have become a mobile monument set on Christ, not on soil.

My first trip to Bethlehem has answered one of the questions I had before I left the States: the lack of humility in American Christianity is only partly a problem of culture. Mostly, I think that every human heart wants to honor itself. My struggle now is to take this broadening of vision and apply it to my own heart: to let my friendship be free and my love for Jesus grow.

I even realize that my opinions of Bethlehem are sweeping generalizations from someone who grew up thousands of miles away and has only been to the city for a few hours. That sounds pretty prideful. I guess I’m human, too. Allah akbar.

The International Community

On a trip to Montreal some friends and I went looking for a bar one afternoon (It was a little early to drink, but we were tourists; no helping it). Not too far off a main street was a worn building with B-A-R written vertically down the front, the big window filled with some potted plants that were getting a little out of control. We were tired of walking, so we decided it looked worth a few beers. Inside was one big room with fake wood paneled walls and linoleum floors. There wasn't much to look at besides a bar and some seating, and one coffee table surrounded by couches, which at the moment were filled with four or five hipsters watching a game and speaking French over coffee and open homework.

One noticed us after we’d sat down and came over smiling to see if we needed anything.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

“Nah, we just have beer, and it’s real bad.”

“Oh…we’ll take that, I guess. You have Guinness?”

“Nah man, we just got like four kinds. Wanna come see?”

We walked over with him to a small refrigerator full of 40s of cheap Canadian beer. He explained the quality of each one to us, reminding us that none of it was good. We grabbed one of each.

He sat down and chatted with us while we rotated turns with the bottles. Apparently the bar was run and staffed by a small group of college students who pretty much used it as their own hangout, using the income from working there to sponsor their homework time. It was a little rundown, almost empty, and classic. Not a family business, but a community business.

That’s where I’m working in Palestine, except it’s an English school instead of a bar, and there’s hookah instead of cheap beer. The entire staff of the school is under 25, including the director. Work ends at five but nobody leaves; we go on walks, buy food and cook it, and smoke hookah on the roof, and the school pays for most of it. Four Americans, two Danes, and a Palestinian, all living in community.

We took a walk with one of the other Americans today to a high point in Hebron (or Khalil, as they call the city in Arabic). At the top of a steep hill we heard some boys yelling to us from the top of an old concrete structure, maybe the failed construction of an apartment building. They came down and led us up two flights of stairs to the flat roof. On top the entire valley was beneath us, covered in the blocky buildings with red roofs that are the norm in Palestine. Several mosques, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and the Old City were all in sight. We could also see the only church in Hebron, a Russian Orthodox church that was built next to a "really old tree," a tree surrounded in stories (the oldest tree in the world, a tree Abraham camped under, etc.).
 

 While taking in the view I let the kids have my camera, guessing correctly that it would be grabbed and hoarded and dropped, but I figured it was about as safe in their hands as they were playing on a roof with no ledge and exposed rebar.

When we got to the street they gave us a friendly goodbye by throwing stones down at our heads. It wasn’t malicious, though, because as our coworker explained, “It’s just what Palestinian kids do; they throw rocks.” I made sure to grab one as a souvenir.