An Undignified Day at the Dead Sea

The soft, silky, black clay squishes through your toes as you step into the Dead Sea.  There's no sand like there is in other beaches, it's just clay.  You have to be careful to make your steps as you get into the water because your feet sink into this clay, sometimes slippery and sometimes planted right in, molding into the clay.  Picking up a handful of this stuff, you feel like a kid, playful and excited to smear the black clay all over your body, which literally makes it look like you are smearing on a new layer of garment on your bare skin the clay is so dark.  The blacker the better.  Standing at the  lowest point on earth, I saw other people, east asian tourists, americans, rusisians and israelis at Kalia Beach, relaxed, enjoying a great time by the sea.


For me, it was one of the most undignified days of my life that I don't think I'll ever be able to erase from my mind.  I was trying to love what i was being told to love, "look you float! you can't drown even if you tried, you'd actually have to try to drown", "look how much fun this is!".  for someone who doesnt know how to swim and has full fledged panic attacks in water if my feet are not planted and not touching the ground (I'm sorry, im not a fish, it's the most unnatural thing to do for me, and I frankly feel like I'm going to die), the fun was ok.  No splashing, no putting your head in the water, and no swimming, were some of the rules, because it's the saltiest body of water on the planet, and it's the Dead Sea, nothing lives in it.  In one brief moment when I felt like i lost control of my legs, I thrashed some water and got some in my eye.  it burnt like hell, imagine pouring straight up salt water into the insides of your eyes.  So much for a beach.

The only fun thing is the mud. And it's fun wondering at the natural formation of it, the clay and the salt.  The fact that this particular beach is an Israeli ONLY beach (foreign passport holders also welcome), that Palestinians are prohibited from entering and that we were sitting there, in such an utterly disgracefully segregated, racist, supremacist place, had me feeling revolted and sick to my stomach.

The man who drove us on the orange van straight from ramallah, asked us at the crossroads "do you want to go to this beach or that beach".  kalia beach is one that one of us had been to before, so we opted for that one.  pulling into the parking lot, we saw two cars with Arabs be turned around.  the driver told us "hoon Arabs mamnuya, and there Arabs masmuh".  Arabs are prohibited here, the other beach down the road is where Arabs are permitted.

The fact that we willfully entered through its gates to deal with the rude service, and overpriced tickets and towel service, to sit in a place, watching all these human beings enjoy the beach and the water, where Palestinians are prohibited blew my mind away.  We work in palestine, we deal with palestinians, we love palestine like a home, but here we were at a place where palestinians are prohibited, because we wanted a beach fix, to sit under the sun, to look at water, to 'relax'.  i felt disgusted and felt little pieces of dignity be stripped away.  It felt like i had stepped back in time, pulling out a historical memory from my mind that I only imagine from books, where segregation looks like photocopied pages from history books with signs from the civil rights era : "Blacks Only" and "Whites Only".  And here I was in 2011, sitting at the beach where the "lower breed" of people are prohibited from entering. "Israelis Only"

we left in the morning, excited, to leave from Ramallah to go to Jericho.  Fridays are slow, the orange fords which stand congregated in an empty parking lot, had its drivers sitting and talking lazily, as they were looking for passengers.  buses/vans only leave when they fill up.  the jericho ford van driver gladly took us 3 foriegners and took off to Jericho, 3 passengers was probably the best he could do for a Friday.

more coming soon..

Basel

Bassel Ezz's father stands outside the door 5 or 6 minutes before the last bell is going to ring as I am still teaching.  He's mulling over his prayer bead being rolled around, each single bead at a time, between his fingers on his left hand.  Basel Ezz is suddenly insanely sharp and alert and during these last 5 or 6 minutes, after having seen his dad stand outside through the little square glass window on the classroom door, frantically writes down the ten sentences that he was supposed to copy down from the board.  The quiz had started as soon as the class started, 40 minutes before, and everyone else had finished, and were too busy, excited, packing up their things to go home.

The day before Basel Ezz had planted a punch in another kid's mouth in my class, and had given him a bloody mouth.  The recipient of this bloody mouth is a rather quiet boy, studious, and one that generally stays out of trouble.  I was livid to see this happen in my class 5 seconds into entering the room.  By this point I can't count how many times I've given impromptu lectures/classes on violence and have had discussion with my kids about why and how it's wrong.  I can't count how many ways and how many techniques I've tried with them to make them realize that it's something that Ms. Fahmida takes extremely seriously, and it doesn't matter if no body in the school cares about this, but if I find out that one of my student was beating up another kid, they are automatically at risk with their class grade.  they didn't take it seriously at all in the beginning.  some got it. after months of going at it with this, most now get it.  especially if they study for hours for their tests and automatically get 15 points taken off their major class tests at the cost of a fight.

As the fight was going on in my classroom, everyone else in the room was chanting and singing, egging on the fight.  Storming into the middle to drag out Basel Ezz and Yusuf, and furiously yelling to silence everyone, then picking out one kid and handing over the classroom marker and yelling in front of the class "if ANYBODY moves, talks, laughs, or makes ANY problem in this class while i'm gone, and your name is on the board, you are DONE!"  (what I meant by that even I don't know) and I told the kid to just write names if any body makes a single noise instead of doing their work.

Storming up into the office, I was frustrated wanting to show someone what had happened.  The social worker of the school didn't seem that moved, and instead asked me if I was free 7th period to talk.  And all I could think was, do you see this kid with the swollen face?  I need to get back to class, I don't have time for this.  Basel is not coming back into my classroom.

He gets into a fight every single day.  And everything is funny to him and everything is a game.  Last week I had 'suspended' him from my class after walking in on him beating another kid.  Suspension basically means sitting in the school office.  No one talks to him when he's sitting there, I can't talk to him when he's sitting there because I'm teaching, and when the bell rings, he goes right back to his next class to continue his games.  No one ever explains to him what he did wrong or how it was wrong and why he's being punished.  He's 10. He is capable of understanding why people are upset with him.  But he himself doesn't get upset until he sees his dad.

When I saw his dad stand outside the classroom door, my instant reaction was a sigh of exasperation.  It was heartbreaking because I knew how Basel would react.  He frantically was trying to finish his work, which he obviously cares very very little for.  After the bell rang, the father with an embarrassed smile asked me (without saying anything) what was the problem.  He looked at me with a quizzical face, hinting that I had to start the conversation.  "Your son gave another student a bloody mouth in my class yesterday and I am sorry he's not attending my class anymore.  I'm sorry but that is not something I will accept in my classroom"

Basel comes out embarrassed and scared and nervous, and his father starts lecturing him.  A couple of months ago, the father had sent a gift with Basel to give to me, and the only thing that I had thought to myself was wow... these parents are doing everything wrong..bribing is not going to help the situation.  Locking up your son in the closet is not going to help, and certainly beating the crap out of him at home is not going to help.

I knew that something was up with this kid, the first time I had startled him when he wasn't paying attention by going over to him to ask him to take out his books, and his instant reaction was to duck, taking cover under his arms, as if I was going to strike him.  It had thrown me off too..and I had told him, "Basel, just take out your books, I wasn't going to hurt you"

By the end of Basel's dad's lecture to Basel in front of me and the school social worker, basel was crying and shaking.

It's heartbreaking. I am just immensely frustrated for many many reasons.  Being in a situation, and teaching in a place with no structure, no discipline, no order and no consequences, sometimes i feel like i've ducked my head under quicksand and i'm struggling to get out. I feel like all the work and effort that I'm putting in trying to change the kid's behavior and attitude towards violence is undone and unraveled by other teachers who  hit kids, and by the lack of enforcement for any kind of consequences for kids who are being violent, both with their peers and with the teachers.

A kid like Basel needs to be pulled out for some time for an insane amount of one on one attention, something that I can't give.  He needs to be sat down and he needs a whole lot of love and encouragement, which is not something he gets at all.  He needs to talk out this violence thing, something that probably makes no sense to him or to his parents.  He needs to know that actions have consequences, something that is never enforced to him in a healthy way, both at home or at school.  In the heat of the moment during a 40 minute class block, I feel like I'm observing the situation and the scenario from several different lenses, but i'm handicapped unable to do anything at all with any of them.