A Tuesday Afternoon

Every Wednesday I lose my voice  But it’s great because if it’s Wednesday that means that the toughest day of the week, Tuesdays :  7 classes, as in nearly 7 hours of lecturing/talking/yelling/teaching/on your feet emotionally plummeting and skyrocketing dealing with kids/, day is over.

Tuesday this week  I realized, at the end of my last class, that I hadn’t seen Salem’s mom in nearly three weeks.  Last year, he was one of my 3^rd graders (now 4^th grade), for some reason really rebellious, he’d always act out, and he never spoke a word of English.  His concerned mom, now a close friend and a sister like figure, came in one day to talk to me and tell me about this kid, who was born in Philadelphia, USA, but for familial reasons had to come back to Palestine.  Her flawless American accent had thrown me off and had shocked me. The kids at school would make fun of him because he spoke with an American accent, so he completely shut down and stopped communicating in English.  His mom and I made a deal, that I would work with Salem, to not only work on his language skills but also his behavior and attitude towards school.  Her exact words to me were “my son is American.  If there ever is a time when he can go back to America or we visit the States, I want to know that my son can be picked up from Palestine and dropped off in the middle of anywhere in America and communicate with anyone and everyone and not feel like a foreigner”.   I would go to his house almost three times a week and spend hours with him, not as a teacher, mostly as a friend, and hear about his wild stories of being the most bad ass cop saving the world from evil.  I discovered , as strange as it sounds, that he had literally turned off this emotional switch, and now it was fully reactivated and he was playing and laughing with me and communicating with me with perfect ease.  It was strange and beautiful because I literally had done nothing nor ‘taught’ him anything, we would just sit and chat. Or read stories.  Or play games.  And his mom would come back surprised that all of that would take place in English.  And she’d always be perplexed, slightly, and ask what I did, and my response would always be “absolutely nothing. We just read..kind of”.

Monday was mother’s day, so I figured I could show up at Salem’s house to say hello with some flowers.  Flower buckets cluttered the streets in light of mother’s day.

I walked in to find both Salem and his mom super busy super cleaning for a super number of guests who were going to come to their house in the next hour.  As soon as I walked in, she saw that something was wrong with my voice.  “Are you sick?”  “No” I laughed “just teaching, it’s tuesday”.  In mid conversation she hurried to her kitchen and came back with a spoon full of fresh honey just scooped out of this giant honey jar, and it was in my mouth, the whole glob of spoon filled honey, before I realized it or could say anything.  I struggled to move my mouth, it was so much honey and it had exploded my taste palettes so suddenly and the sweetness and the smooth stickiness of it made the attempt of getting any word out, such as “whoa”, come out really comical.  Real honey is like real heaven.  And it tastes so different from non-real honey.  It was just too much in too little time and as I was struggling to ‘eat’ all of the honey, Salem’s mom kept on going about how my voice would be fixed in no time with this and how great fresh fresh fresh honey is for your health and then she scrimmaged in her cupboard and got out this yellow container filled with sticks of herbs inside.  “you know zataar right?”  “of course!” I said, ‘that stuff is awesome!” 

  “Well this is zaataar farsi, Persian zataar, you take this, put it in boiling water, and you’ll feel great” and she put the container in a bag and it was in my hand.  I had literally been in the house less than 10 minutes and hadn’t even taken off my jacket, and already had two remedies.

It didn’t stop there.  “why did you not take off your jacket? Come eat lunch with us”.  “no I should really get going”  She looked at me with almost a ‘are you serious? Are you stupid?’ look.  “My mom made Makhluba yesterday, I can fix you up a plate right now,  you sure you don’t want it? and we have fresh yogurt and goat yogurt. Salem go get the goat yogurt! I think she’ll like it! (turns back to me) you sure you don’t want a plate. It’s right here.  We’re all going to eat, eat with us”.   How can one refuse?

Salem’s grandfather came in, on his cane, limping slightly, but just like always, with his twinkling smile.  “Ahlain Fahmida! Keefik? Shu akhbarik?”  (welcome welcome fahmida, how are you, what’s new) and he sat down with me and we started talking about Libya.  He asked if I knew of the number of Bangladeshis who were deported from Libya.  And as I’m eating the delicious meal,  I was enjoying the fact that Salem’s grandfather,  probably a character who is dignity defined, is speaking to me in all Arabic, with no trace of any English syllable, confident that I am understanding.  It’s really sweet and touching because it emanates a feeling of ‘you’re a part of our family’ not the ‘foreigner teacher’.  I told him that I went to visit Sabastia last week, a village outside of Nablus, and how gorgeous it was, the hills, especially in the flowers!  He told me only in Spring time will you see it like this, and he told me to go to Tulkarem and Jenin and told me how beautiful Spring time in Palestine was.

The conversation was refreshing, pleasant and heartwarming.   It also made me realize the push and pull and tug of war relationship I have with the Arabic language.  I am at a place where I can understand a significant portion of conversations, but getting my mouth to synchronize the words and string them together to create the symphonic beauty of the language that I hear is o so challenging.  During recess I get my students to help, and they are very kind, and there are a couple who linger around the teacher’s room to see if I’m around and then they stop to see if I need help with Arabic homework.  We practice, in reverse roles, where I let them be my teachers.  And they are quite the phenomenal teachers.   

Mother's Day and Political Prisoners

This year it didn’t feel that awkward  to get the red carnation from a student who said Happy Mother’s Day to me early in the morning, before the 1st period of class.  It was sweet, really cute, and the kiss that followed made me overwhelmed thinking of how much things have changed between my students and I.  The teacher’s room has a giant wooden table in the middle, and at any given time you can find teachers sitting around it, grading or chatting, or huddling over the heater (toaster oven heater as I call it).  This morning I walked into the room to find a giant vase of flowers of all kinds in the very center of that table! It was a gorgeous bouquet dedicated to all the female teachers of the school! And everyone greeted each other with “Kul Sana wa inti Salmeh” May every year be well for you (roughly translated). 

I loved it.  I love what this feels like.  Last year I was so thrown off getting a mother’s day greeting from a student, but this year I graciously accepted it.  It’s like a communal recognition to women, for mothers who already are and mothers who will be, and the greeting reaches out to both of them alike.   

It was awesome to see one of my closest friends gleam with her twinkling smile at her small bouquet of flowers and it was equally pleasant to walk home with a couple of flowers sprouting out of my purse. 

Palestinian TV, for some reason, is a channel that I realize I don’t watch that much (I am usually glued to Al-Jazeera International) but my new roommate and I flipped through it tonight, and what I saw touched another chord.  Hundreds of women gathered carrying framed photographs of boys, and men..their sons.  The rapid Arabic I’m still not quick enough to grasp when I’m watching a report, so I ask my new roommate what’s going on.  “Those are all the mothers of the political prisoners who are in Tulkarem, and they gathered to commemorate mother’s day”.  Then there were mothers of professional workers, mothers from different backgrounds, mothers working in different fields, all gathered in the same fashion, with a photograph framed, held in their hands.  Some talking rigidly, some with full emotion, some patriotic, some sad, some proud, some blank.  I don’t know what this term ‘political prisoner’ means. Why are they called that? From my background, when someone says prison, I am conditioned to think they did something bad (not anymore).  When someone says, political, I think super pro-active (not anymore).  In the situation and context where I am now, it’s as if all the right people are in the prisons and all the wrong people are out.  These men in the prisons did not necessarily do anything political, the fact that they are Palestinian is what is ‘political’. 

What is deleted from the dialogue, if there is ever one, about these prisoners is the realm of emotions and sentiments.  You want to know anything about political prisoners? Look up statistics, how many  women, how many men, and how many children are taken to jail and made to serve months or years for committing no crime at all.  They will come in numbers, and the numbers will have years.  

There are currently 750 prisoners who are held in Israeli jails without charge or trials.  Since the year 2000,  2500 CHILDREN have been arrested.  These numbers become numbers, to add to the statistics of 'human rights violations'.

What the numbers, stats, and prison names don’t include is the fact that each and every person who was put in jail without charge or trial was separated from their family, unjustly.  Without reason. For an unknown amount of time.   And they had to lose years off of their lives. What is deleted from our understanding of political prisoners is the human emotion of a mother being separated from her sons or daughters who are serving indefinite amount of time in prison. The psychological trauma that the family faces, all members no matter how young or old, is not observed. The psychological trauma of that prisoner being released and coming back to a halted adulthood is not observed.

Recently 5 settlers were stabbed to death, and it was gruesome.  Instantly checkpoints were shut down and the West Bank was sealed off.  300 Palestinians were detained.  Three hundred Palestinians were detained in prisons within a day.

A couple of days later we find out that it was not a Palestinian, but a Thai immigrant worker who had committed the crime.  Yet the arrests continue.   There are channels and news sources all over the world willing to cover the deaths of the 5, however, rarely any talking about the violations imprisoning, torturing, killing, displacing hundreds upon hundreds. 

For more information about Palestinian prisoners : http://www.addameer.org/detention/background.html

i hate checkpoints

My eyes are fixated on the dusty green semi rectangular light that is not lit.  The metal turnstill has two people sandwiched inside, stuck.  Patience is running short and everyone waits, hoping that this small green light will light up, which will mean that the turnstill will turn, which means that 3 or 4 more people can go through the turnstill, put their belongings in the conveyor belt located about 5 feet from the turnstill and step in front of the soldiers behind the heavy glass window, to show their id.  Before getting to that point, tens of people are waiting in crowds inside this space, the best way to explain what this space looks like is to describe it as a metal caged corridor.  There is metal everywhere and you are stuck inside.  Waiting in front of the turnstill, waiting for that stupid light to turn green.  What’s taking so long? Why does the light turn green only once every 10 minutes and why does it let only 4 people through? Nothing, the soldiers are just taking their time, switching on the green light for a split second, and then chatting with their buddies or talking until they feel like switching it on again. Meanwhile, men, women, kids, elderly, Palestinians of all ages are standing in the metal corridor, waiting.

If you want to get to Jerusalem  (no longer the West Bank but Israel) from Ramallah (the West Bank), this is what needs to happen.  (Back in the day Ramallah used to be a suburbs of Jerusalem, and the distance between the two places is a mere 6 or 7 miles).   You catch the bus from Ramallah, you get to Qalandia checkpoint to get to Jerusalem.  As you near the checkpoint, traffic increases and cars and buses are lined up and people slowly start getting off from the buses.  The cars go to another line, where they are stopped one by one, the drivers need to get off, open the trunk and all doors so the entire car can be inspected. The passengers from the bus get off and they go inside the metal barred corridor, crowding and huddling together, standing in front of a turnstill.  When they are allowed to go through the turnstill, they put all their belongings on the conveyor belt, go walk through a metal detector, stand in front of the soldier to show their id, they are questioned, when the soldiers are done, they then take their belongings, then walk through another turnstill, exit the metal barred corridor and get on the bus again, wait for it to fill up, and then drive adjacent to the Apartheid Wall and continue the drive to Jerusalem, another 25 minutes away. 

The part from huddling together in front of the turnstill to getting through the turnstill takes the longest.  3 or 4 people max get through at one time, every 10 minutes.  At least a 40 minute to an hour wait, depending on how many people had been waiting before you including all the people that came down with you from your own bus.  Sometimes the soldiers don’t like how you walk in through the turnstill, so after that long wait, they might ask you to go back through the turnstill into the huddle of people, and came in again, to repeat the process. 

 I counted how many times the turnstill turned the last time the light turned green.  Once..twice…three times..and stuck on the fourth.  Sandwiched again are two more people. “Allahu Alam” one man says (God knows all), as he gets stuck in the turnstill.  I look at my watch.  It’s been 35 minutes we’ve been standing in this cage in front of the turnstill.  I peek in front of the crowd to see a woman in a purple hijab and a mauve jilbab, who had gone through the turnstill the last go, now separated from us (the rest of the huddled crowd behind the metal barred barrier) who repeatedly has to go through the metal detector because it keeps on beeping.   Someone from our side yells out, “maybe it’s your hair pin! Or maybe it’s a clip!”.  She turns around to look at our direction, with an annoyed look.  Finally she takes off her boots, and goes through.  “She wore THOSE boots? Didn’t she know she was going through a checkpoint??? The problem is in us! The problems are in us that we don’t understand” said one man watching the woman take off her shoes and go through the metal detector, finally without it beeping.  Impatience runs high.  People are waiting.  More people are spilling into this corridor from other buses, the huddled crowd gets larger.  When the turnstill turns again, people start bickering “your bus came AFTER mine sir, I go in first!”.  “Allahu akbar” someone else says.  People push and shove because they want to be next to get through the turnstill.  Another man says “I wish the tsunami would come and wash all of us away”. 

Now it’s been 40 minutes that we’ve been waiting.  The anxiety, impatience, irritability is palpable.  And I feel myself getting angrier and angrier.  The first 15 minutes had been fine as I chatted with people I knew, trying to ignore the metal bars.  But after a while it gets to you, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to control your thoughts. 

Last time I was here, in this situation, the soldier didn’t like how a group of us had come in through the turnstill.  He wanted us to go back, into the crowd.  “he wants us to go BACK?” I had asked my roommate, who was with me, in utter rage and shock.  We had been waiting for over 45 minutes.  The handful of people being given this order were all equally puzzled, including the elderly women carrying their bags of vegetables.  The soldier, without flinching, picked up his m16 and pointed it at us.  The gun pointed towards us to make us understand that he wants us to go back.  Standing in front of a soldier, with a gun, who points it towards a group of people, knowing that he is not regarding  any of the humans in front of him as legitimate  human beings, I observed my thoughts become angrier and angrier and turn violent.  Who did he think he was? How could he so easily point his gun at us? Does he know what he has in his hands? Why are his fingers on the trigger? It’s an automated gun!  Why don’t all the people, all the Palestinians just storm the checkpoint and beat this asshole up?  And point the gun in his face instead?

 All of us quietly had gone back into the massive crowd of people behind the turnstill, to wait once more.  My blood was boiling with rage, not being able to fathom how someone could use their gun, to point it at people without a flinch. 

A year ago when I had gone through Qalandia for the first time, I didn’t have to get off the bus.  I had remained on the bus and just had to flip my passport to the page with my face on it and the page with the Israeli stamp on it and that was it.  I remember thinking “this is not so bad.  It’s like a bad traffic jam, and you have to sit for a while, that’s it”.   The last time I had to get off the bus and I was with my roommate, she told me “just pretend you’re waiting in line at an amusement park, like Disney land or something”.  And I remember thinking, hmm yeah..it’s just like waiting in line.  Like bad traffic, like a queue for something, anything else, something else that is normal.

The absurdity of the existence of checkpoints didn’t hit me until I had to look at it repeatedly, from the windows of my bus, after coming back to Palestine from somewhere else (Jordan, Egypt, Bangladesh) and re-entering the situation, I would realize the abnormal and unnatural presence of this construction, the supremacist, revolting nature of this procedure that very few people in the world have to go through, where people’s worth are deleted, degraded and reduced.  Human worth is reduced down to an ID. What color ID, what kind of ID, and the expiration date of the ID.  You can pretend you are just in line for an amusement ride, you can pretend to sing songs to make the time pass, or chat about something else, or maybe peek at the encased video camera peering at everyone in the corridor, and just wait patiently, but the pointless  80/90/120 minute procedure to get from one city to another, having to face soldiers, an apartheid wall and going through security, to get to some place 6 miles down the road is outrageous to say the least. 

6 miles.  Boy is it going to feel weird to go home, back to the States, to travel from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Fayetteville North Carolina, 90 miles apart in probably less time than the time it takes me to get through these 6 miles from Ramallah to Jerusalem.