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..
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