i entrusted this donkey with my life

I'm not sure why ‘ass’ is an insulting and demeaning term.  And the term exists in almost all languages.  Bengalis scold each other with a scoffing “gadha naki?” when they refer to someone being an idiot, i don’t know how many guys I’ve referred to as ‘asses’ and the kids in my classes  scrunch up their faces and mutter a despicable “hamarr” to whoever it is that they are furiously pissed off at.  Of course you can always call someone something that’s much worse than an ass, but really, these animals, fellow donkeys, should be praised.  They are probably one of the most resilient and strongest animals around.  In India, I’d see lines of donkeys slowly walking by with the kid responsible for keeping an eye on them occasionally striking them on the side with a thin narrow slender stick or a tree branch, and these eeyore like donkeys trot along, with a giant sturdy canvas bag like thing swung over their backs carrying literally tons and tons of bricks that no human being could every carry.  Lifting up 5 or 6 pieces of bricks is probably  a challenge for most, but I’d see these donkeys carrying 50 or 60 pieces, just slowly trotting along. 

One of these donkeys, one in Petra Jordan, not in Udaipur, India, carried me up almost a thousand steps up the edges and swerves and sometimes smooth and sometimes rough and choppy curves of an ancient mountain up to the very top, to the ancient site, supposedly the most worthwhile spot, to the Monastery, an age old architectural wonder perched on the very top of a mountain in Petra, the red rose city.

The hike up to the Monastery, the very last stop in Petra was sped up to a 20 minute hike instead of an hour long one riding on the donkeys.  We were pressed for time. Our day in petra had begun at noon and starting from the entrance and making our way to the top of the monastery had already taken us to 6pm and we wanted to be back by 5.  We actually got done around 7ish, after every bit of our physical strength was exhausted and we were all wiped out.

“A rose red city half as old as time” is how the city of Petra was described by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt after it was rediscovered in 1812.  And since then this stone city, which arguable stands uniquely with no other  contesting place on earth resembling anything like it, has been brought to your western eyes by movies such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and if you go to Petra now, you’ll see small shops with the Indiana Jones hats, and young boys riding horses egging on tourists to ride through the city with “Indiana jones” style horses.  I gave in. not only did I buy the touristy Indiana jones hat, I also rode the freakin horse.  It was pretty darn fantastic.

 UNESCO calls it one of the most precious cultural properties of man’s cultural heritage and BBC says its one of the 40 places in the world you have to see before you die.  I intentionally try to avoid reading up on things I’m going to see before I see it because I want to view it with fresh eyes and then go back and learn about what I saw.  Sometimes expecting something to be wonderful makes it as wonderful or not as wonderful depending on your perception and really takes away from the inherent aesthetics and history of what is in front of you, and I don’t want to see world wonders with anyone else’s eyes but mine.   

Without having a preview or trailer of what it’s about,  I was pleasantly overwhelmed with what I saw that day.  I was literally wide eyed.  As a person who is exhilarated by bright colors or colors of the earth,  especially natural hues blending in together and dancing in harmony  on the steep natural sides of giant boulders in an inimitable way, I drew into Petra because of its unique blending point of an immense natural wonder meeting man made genius.  Most wonders of the world are either one or the other.  Man made or natural.  Petra is a simultaneous composition of both.  In the past year, alhumdullilah, I was fortunate enough to see the Taj Mahal as well as the Great Pyramids of Giza.  And as crazy as people may think I am, Petra beats them all.  The Taj Mahal is glorious and the Pyramids are breathtaking but Petra is  a journey  and not a destination point like the others.

 The stone.  The sheer stone city, the red stone, with swirls of colors, the ancient grooves, pillars, structures,  tombs, buildings, sacred burial sites, just sitting there, waiting for your eyes to feast on and wonder what kind of world this city must have existed in when it was originally built is mind staggering.

The rising sides of the steep carved mountains majestically shade over the narrow path in between (and by narrow I mean only several feet wide in certain spots) which provides a calming, and soothing cool walking entrance to the contrasting scorching and blistering bare and sunny trek beyond the Siq. The Siq is the official entrance to Petra, a natural gorge.  It’s absolutely breathtaking.   I mean just look at this thing :   

You are literally walking in between a natural split.  The swirly red stone, and the looming two sides of the crack provide shade that you wont find for the rest of the walk in Petra.  At the end of the gorge is the Treasury or the Khazneh, which is a massive construction carved in the 1^st century.   As I stood in front of the face of this structure, I was at awe trying to imagine what this must have looked like 2,000 years ago if it looks like this now.   I must say, I just knew before going to Petra, that going to Petra is the thing to do if you go to Jordan but I had no idea what that meant.  I had no idea that it basically meant going on a journey to “rediscover” an ancient stone city.  It’s not a single monument or a single destination spot, but it’s an actual lost city.

By the end of this trip, my feet were blistered.  The most memorable part of the day was a slight detour that our group of seven took.  We started climbing a mountain and were told that the very top was a sacred burial site.  And we kept on climbing, not knowing where it ends really.  And we climbed for a good hour at least.  I was drained and exhausted but the view from the top was something that I will never forget.  Not only could you see all of petra from a birds eye view but you could see unbelievable terrain.  And looking closely at the panoramic breathtaking view, you could see things like shepherds herding their animals and going down sides of mountains.

The donkey.  I was reluctant to do the donkey trip up to the monastery.  But you realize when you’re so close to something so ancient and so amazing, if the only way to do it in time is to ride a freakin donkey, you will get on the donkey.  So I got on the donkey and held on to dear life as it went up.  And going up, as its feet trotted up the broken uneven steps, sometimes missing them completely, sometimes brushing your body against the rugged mountain, I kept on thinking about how much fun going down the mountain would be..  At that point, going up that high on this animal, with nothing but a rein on my hands, which meant absolutely nothing, I realized that one wrong move would have me tumble to, well, death, or a lot of pain at least.  There was no other option but to hold on, reallllllly tight, and trust this animal completely and let go of any fear, any discomfort, or worry, because there was absolutely no point in doing any of that.  All you could do is trust, and let go,  and just enjoy the ride going up and somehow safely come down again to level ground. 

-----------------------------------------------

leaving you with a poem about Petra which won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry in Oxford in 1845 :

Petra

John William Burgon

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,

by labor wrought as wavering fancy plnned;

But from the rock as by magic grown,

eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!

Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,

where erst Athena held her rites divine;

Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,

that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;

But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,

that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;

The hues of yough upon a brow of woe,

which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,

match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,

a rose-red city half as old as time.

Part II - Umm Rami

I got to this job via the place that I eventually found to take Arabic in (finally!!!).  now was it the several series of emails that i sent to the University of Jordan that led me to find this Arabic course? no. was it the slew of emails that i sent out to 'language' centers that i found out about via google? no.. was it the asking around friends and kids who are taking summer courses that led me to find an arabic class? nope.

it was the lady that brings me coffee twice or three times a day, whom i can barely communicate with because my Arabic is as weak as her English is, but someone that I share a silent, but loving respect with, who just took me out, after finding out that I do wish to study Arabic over the summer, not just vegetate in my room and drink her coffee, walked with me for 15 minutes to take me, literally, inside the registration office of the Modern Language Center right in the area where I was staying, which I had no clue existed.  She waited while I enrolled, and walked back with me with an understanding smile.  

Umm Rami (mother of Rami), kind of a silent figure that I smiled to for the first couple of days here, somehow tended to my needs without me ever asking for it, and half the time noticed me not taking care of myself way more than I even did.  She saw the clothes that I had spilling out of my duffel bag resting behind the door, and without saying anything, dragged this heavy wardrobe closet thing out from another room and into my room, saying to Suzanne (who knows English so she is the middle woman translator) that " I don't like her clothes on the floor, please tell her to put them in here", or her coming into my room and asking why I haven't asked for laundry and insisting that I hand over SOMETHING that needs to be washed, and neatly having it folded on the corners of the bed the next day, or worrying that I didn't eat all day, so coming into my room and giving me a plate full of those cheese pies with a beaming "Sahtain!" (arabic way of saying "bon appetit"), or being like "why haven't you asked for something cold?? when it's so hot outside today" and then bringing over a cold glass of Tang.  and mid day, and around 3pm she'd always bring in a small cup of that strong Arabic coffee stuff.  The thing with that coffee is that I know Arabs love it. 

     Typical Arabic Coffee presentation

                  The Stuff I drink

But I'm Bengali.  and we drink a lot of tea, i mean a lot. but when we Bengalis say "tea" we mean like 75% milk and 25% actual tea and like 3 teaspoons of sugar.  so this Arabic coffee stuff, straight up espresso, real coffee thing WITHOUT milk, is a bit too much for me to take.  In fact I hate it.  I want my milk concoction.  But Umm Rami makes it every day, twice a day, and I can't throw it away because she'll see it.  So, I drink it.  And honestly it's not too bad after the bad taste is gone and you swallow the whole thing like a quick shot.  My non-alcoholic self actually has a fun time pretending that it's a shot glass.  And after a couple of weeks of having this stuff a couple of times a day, I can actually drink it without making too bad of a face.

This was pretty incredible, and I can't wait to continue my Arabic, so that I can speak to Umm Rami, but she told Suzanne that her family is all over the place, and they are all either displaced or refugees or in some situation where they can't see each other and that she knows what it feels like to be alone in a country and not know anyone and how much being helped can mean.  At first I didn't realize where this was coming from, but after ruminating for a while, I realized she was referring to me, and it was honestly too sweet to think of how she embraced me under her wing..after recognizing me as a refugee lol.

So, the point being.  this lovely woman not only led me to my job, but also to a productive summer of Arabic learning like I had originally wanted.  I feel utterly blessed and humbled and just...damn. God is too cool.  People in your life, no matter what their role, how big or small they might seem on the surface, are just, honestly guiding angels.

part I Teaching

OH. MY. GOD.  the total adrenaline and high of bouncing around in a classroom came back today and I came back to my place absolutely beaming, totally high off the energy (this cumulative energy of students that just rubs off on you).  it feels freakin amazing to be in a classroom.  i came back to see Suzanne, the front receptionist lady, super excited about how much i loved my first day, gave Umm Rami, the super friendly, mother figure, wonderful woman that she is, who usually tends to everyone in the office giving them coffee or tea or tang, a giant hug and a kiss and a box of chocolates, that i really just had to pick up on the way home (there's a giant chocolate shop on the walk back that i just never noticed before) and Suzanne was radiating the beam saying "wow I really envy you!".  DAMN it feels REALLY good to have a job that you absolutely love.  i kind of forgot that i loved it.  i reeeeeeeeally love it :)  i can't explain what it is, and i can't tell you what it is, and if someone saw me teaching in a classroom they probably wouldn't know how much  i was loving it.  but it's a pretty special job. :)

My first class had no desks, and my book that I have to use, (yay it comes with a dvd) is a conversational book for English from 1991.  It physically pained me to conduct a lesson on the awfully pixalated, fro-haired, poofy skirted 90s 'trendy' girl character's dialogues and the dudes straight legged white jeaned strange pick up lines greeting.  Like most of everything that happens to me these days, I had no idea what to expect.  I was just nervous with the prospect of teaching for TWO entire hours, when in Ramallah I struggle with the 40 minute blocks.  So this was my first class : no desks, just those white plastic chairs in a room.  How many students? 42.  this officially beats what I thought was the worst number of students that I'd ever seen, which was my own class back in elementary school in the inner city public schools of Brooklyn (what up P.S.152) boasting 35-37 students per class.  This might be funny to some of you, a nightmarish hell to others, and just absurd to most.  My youngest student in this class, is 6 years of age.  And my oldest student is 24.  in. the. same. class. 42. students.  I am covering..kindergarten through University aged kids. in. the. same. class.

The second class, thank God, is just 20 something number of just the older kids.  What's interesting is that I got the textbooks for that class 5 minutes before class and was told that by day 10 (as in 9 days from now) i have to give them a midterm exam on the first 3 units.  Shock news to me that I was actually in charge of teaching a crash course curriculum,  when i was getting hired yesterday  I was told I'd just be teaching conversational english and that I could scare them by threatening to give a test but not really give one.  well that story changed today! lol. regardless, i was thrilled to teach a class where there are no fights, where the kids are actually sitting down, and I can actually talk and teach.  something that was rare in Ramallah I felt.  Honestly, SubhanAllah and a thousand Alhumdullilah's for a great day.

back in the classroom

the 2 week lull in Amman somehow abruptly ends today.  The super nice lady here who has taken care of me like i'm her daughter found me a language center to go to and start taking Arabic classes.  When I showed up to the center, they thought I was there for English lessons until I opened my mouth at which point they told me the cost of the Arabic program followed by asking me if I wanted a job.

And they said "great you're interested! do you have time to take the test?" so i took some 3 hour long proficiency test and then was told that I start working "TOMORROW" as in TODAY.  Back to the classroom for me (I'm both nervous, excited, jittery and anxious to face a classroom full of faces, where things going wrong or right is dependent on a split second neglect sometimes).  Now I'll be teaching intensive English, each 2 hour long lectures/classes/conversation for 2 class periods a day, and then taking a 2 hour long arabic course in the evenings.  And this all happened in a day! Whaaat!

wish me luck

I shamelessly admit that I only care about football once every 4 years

I shamelessly admit that I only care about football once every 4 years during the World Cup Fever.  I am definitely one of the masses when it comes to the World Cup.  I haven't watched  a match since the last World Cup, I have no strong allegiance to any team or to any country, minus picking a team to root for only at the beginning of the match  (most of the time the underdog team, because it's more fun) and cheering and rooting them on and getting fully absorbed into the world wide frenzy, and becoming one of the trillions of pairs of eyes glued to the field and that darn soccer ball.   I do however wish to see a non-european/non south american team win (not happening this time).  The world cup, even for someone that doesn't know a thing about sports, has been twisted with strange turns of events, with random absurdities from refs not counting or counting legitimate goals to Brazil's fallout to Germany's cutting speed slaughtering Argentina out of the running for the Cup.

I must say experiencing the fever is much more eventful, much more enthused, much more exciting and much more fun outside of the States.  Restaurants and cafes are jam packed.  Yesterday my friend and I were turned away from a couple of restaurants because it was completely full before rushing over to another cafe where we dodged being turned away only because of the kindness of the cafe host squeezing in 2 seats for us. We stayed an extra three hours to catch the next game, trying to avoid the whole trying to find a spot again.
I wish America was equally enthused about this instead of ruminating in their egocentric bubbles of self-absorption where a semi-comparable energy is exerted for the Super Bowl, which is just America playing hand football and the "world series" for baseball, again just America playing, or for basketball..again which is  just America playing.

Because this frenzy takes over every 4 years, it certainly makes you think of where you were 4 years ago and makes you wonder about where you'll be 4 years from now.  It becomes a landmark in time.  Last time, I was lucky enough to be in Singapore, and this time around, I'm experiencing the game watching obsession in the Middle East.

Ramallah.  The dichotomy of a modern hip and "urban" (i put urban in quotation marks, because really Ramallah just started getting street signs last month, before there were no street signs) capital center of Palestine, undoubtedly the most liberal place, with clubs and coffee shops made very international friendly  can easily make one forget that there are refugee camps down the road or that it's a city under occupation.  Quite easily going to some of the nice cafes in town, you could forget where you are, and only "see" the nice presentation of the shops, the delicious meals, and the hospitable waiters scratching down your order and then bringing the food to your table.  Sitting at sandwich shop, I could easily close my eyes and literally feel like I'm eating lunch in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Not getting all the games at home on our TV exposed me to a number of cafes in Ramallah that I hadn't gone to before.  Y and I went to see one of the beginning games at the French and German Cultural Center, then come another game night when we went to see it in a pretty hip place called Beit Aneesa, and then to another place called Snowbar (not Snow Bar, but snowbar, which means pine nut in Arabic).  Beit Aneesa had waiters running around tending to the fully packed arena, down to the floor where me and Y were squished sitting amongst a throng of giant Brazil fans (all internationals) cheering on the match and enjoying a mug of beer.  Snowbar, damn, that place, is this incredible cafe, that reminds of me of an enlarged Cafe Driade on crack on Franklin Street back in Chapel Hill (for those that know where it is, tucked away, underneath trees, with a very earthy, humble and non-conventional cafe shop feel), completely surrounded by Pine trees, people relaxing in giant crowds on nicely furnished tables and chairs, puffing on the flavored smokes of sheesha and watching the game on a giant screen.  Really, I haven't been to a place that nice even during my college years in North Carolina. It's a surreal escape.  Ramallah, arguably, itself is a surreal escape, which at times is consoling and at times extremely disturbing.

In Amman, as I've been trying to situate myself for the last couple of weeks, boasts a fair number of cafe shops, especially on a popular international hang out street called Rainbow Street.  Loads of american college kids hanging out there.  Several very goofy named restaurants, for instance "Shwarma-mama" or "Shwarmize it" and an ice cream place called "Licky Licious".  You'll see pubs and giant gay cafe hang outs like "Books At Cafe" which is a ridiculously nice place, with giant expanded rooms, and sitting areas. Each of those separate components of the Cafe could be a restaurant by itself, and it has a nice little bookshop underneath the pub and the cafe.  Their nightly screening of the games takes place outside, with a semi view of the city of Amman or at least one of the hills with the twinkling lights of buildings behind the giant screen which is situated on a wide platform that's made to look like a football field.  Pretty nice and fabulous.  Except hanging in places like this will quickly burn a seething hole in your pockets! Jordan is expensive.

Germany's victory led a couple of kids with a giant German flag draped over their backs to go around singing crazy German songs.  While the Argentinian fans had a sad droopy faced mass exodus.  Can't imagine the tension that's coming up for the Semi-Finals! and what's going to happen when the games stop? a huge part of my Amman experience will definitely be gone.

paws for this one

cats just scurry out of those big public trash disposals and scamper away and catch you by surprise for a second long fleeting moment, when you dont expect anything four legged, fuzzy or living to just pop out of those bins as you walk past them.  but theres tons of cats, no so much in Ramallah, but loads more in Nablus.  One of those Nablusi cats got pretty darn lucky, in fact luckier than most Palestinian human beings, as luck met chance and the kitty captivated an international's heart with something that the locals could not give a crap about: it's kitty cuteness.  

street kids in nablus beat cats and play with them and toy around with them or pelt stones at them to pass time, and entertain themselves.  now of course this sounds absolutely horrible to us, people not living under an occupation or in a developing country, where cats are creatures of companionship, endearment, and again cuteness. We like to hug them, and pet them and stroke them and make them a part of our family ( i don't, i can't stand cats).  We don't beat cats, we take them to animal doctors, give them medicine, buy nice food for them and heck even dress em up sometimes.  Come to think of it, cats and dogs in America are probably luckier than the majority of human beings around the world.  Anyways. That's beside the point.  The point is, in Nablus a cat's life is a life of struggle.  They live in a city where the people have lived through atrocious amounts of trauma, plagued by war for decades. 

This is actually my rommmate's story. When she was working in Nablus, she found a tiny kitty stuck in a hole in the wall, whimpering, scared out of its wits. Albeit not being a cat lover, M saved the cat.  And promptly handed the kitten over to the other internationals working at the school, and the kitty was adopted by a couple of american girls.  Peebs.  the cat even got a name, and for about a year lived inside the apartment with these americans in a little bubble of its own, saved from the dangers of the Nablusi streets and the children, reared with love and affection.  Then one day, it came time for the internationals to go back home, back to America.  What would happen to this cat? It would die if it was let loose in Nablus again, it has absolutely no survival skills to combat unloving, unaffectionate attention from the townspeople.

it was decided that the cat needed to go as well.  My roommate somehow became the one responsible to carry out this mission.  What exactly was the mission you may ask.  The Mission : To prove that this was an Israeli cat.  Not a palestinian one.  So that it could board a plane and go home..to California, USA.

Now what does this entail? here goes.  Maggie had to arrange for the cat to come to Ramallah from Nablus.  That was an amusing journey because no one had a cat carrier, but someone did have an old bird cage, so maggie put the cat in the bird cage and sneaked it through the checkpoint.  sneaked it again through the checkpoint to take it to Jerusalem.  we were kind of worried as to how the soldiers would react...to a Palestinian cat in a bird cage trying to pass a checkpoint.  Would they shoot it because it's palestinian? Would the cat not be allowed through because it's Palestinian? Would it be harassed? Held up? Detained? Arrested? Because all of those things happen to people.  But no, the soldier thought the cat was cute and let it pass without any qualms.  again, the luck of this cat surpasses the luck of the people.

Next : in Jerusalem Maggie had to prove that the cat was Israeli and that it needed a check up.  Her skillful fabrication skills linked with her incredibly friendly non threatening demeanor got the job done.  Then came another step.  Finding a cat carrier for the plane.  Maggie went to the store and I think struggled to find one, but ended up finding a bag, the only one left that was going to be Peebs'.  A camouflage bag.  

The trusted cab driver for the internationals in Nablus, along with all the locals that these internationals knew, were acquainted with and friends with, were partially amused and partially laced with outrage and jealousy.  This cat was going to America.  Most of them could not dream of that fate.  Heck, many of them can't even go to Jerusalem, a town that is 43 miles away from them. 

So the morning of Maggie's flight From Tel Aviv to the States came, and there went Peebs, peeking from a camouflage bag, hiding its true Palestinian identity to pass through Israeli security to start life anew, in America.  

 Meet Peebs: 

From Nablus: 

To Cali:

it's just beautiful land

i never think about the fact that i'm american until i cross her borders and i'm elsewhere in the world.  i guess you dont think about your "nationality" until it has to be used somehow either because it's under threat, it can save your butt or you need to justify it to someone or something else.  in everyday normal homeostatic way of life, there's no need to think about the labels in your passport.

the labels in my passport had become an obsession.  because it certainly mattered and dictated my moves, quite physically.  one of the many reasons why i decided to move to palestine, is because to an extent i was fully conscious of the sheer value of my american passport and the privilege and mobility it provides, so much so that personally for myself it didn't seem any less than  a moral obligation to do everything in my power to use it, to quite literally see the world with it (as much my broke teacher's pay allows me to).  My so called American-ness is like 90 percent of my identity now.  I can move in and out of cities in Palestine claiming to be a lost tourist from Israel just because I have an international passport, I can go into Israel and pretend that my life in Palestine doesn't exist, just because of my passport.  And I can certainly leave Palestine largely because my passport is American.  

I failed to realize how complicated this relatively small part of the world known as the Middle East really is, even though i considered myself an aware individual before coming. it's not a lie, you might think you know, but you really don't know the extent of how screwed up and beautiful this place is until you are here and things are staring blatantly at your face.  Each border that you pass matters, and it asks you where else you have been, and the labels and stamps in your passport matter, a lot.

To live in Palestine, I have to prove that I live in Israel.  To enter Palestine, there is no Palestinian stamp, since it's not a real country, you are dependent on the Israeli entrance and exit stamps, and the three month tourist visa (at most) that will allow you to essentially sneak into Palestine and illegally live/work there.  There's only three countries in the Middle East that accepts an Israeli stamps in your passport : Turkey, Egypt and Jordan (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong).  The following list of countries will not accept your passport if it has the Israeli stamp : Bangladesh (WHAAAAT!!!), Algeria, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, UAE, Malaysia, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait.  I don't know if I'd venture out to Somalia or Libya or Djibouti or something, but the fact that I CAN'T says something.  Also let's look at this list : Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Gaza strip and a few others.  These countries are "enemy countries" for Israel, and visiting these countries, WHETHER you have an Israeli passport or a Foreign one, as in even IF you are ISRAELI and you have visited these countries, if there is anything on you that indicates you have stepped foot into these places, subjects you to legal prosecution. 

I guess because most of my life has been spent in North America, inside the United States, and since North America is not exactly known for boasting the most number of countries, to me another country is really far way (minus Canada and Mexico) and it really is a distant thing to traaavel.  But here now that I'm in the Middle East, I feel squished.  Everything is just so close and so small. And rules change and bounce around as soon as you cross borders.  To my american friends, its like every state within the US being a bitch about every other state border that you might have crossed and making you wait at state borders because something seemed off and goofy about where you had been previously.  and going through your State border history, and every state border leaving a permanent mark on your 'resident id' that you had been there.  

I wanted to go to Syria to study Arabic this summer.  If you look at the enemy list, there it is right there, Syria is on the enemy list.  Going to Syria means deleting the part of my life that has known Israel/Palestine, and coming back to Israel/Palestine means deleting having anything to do wtih Syria.  It's doable.  Just stressful.  Anytime there are rules, what's important to know is that there are ways to break them.  And like a pothead friend of mine had told me once "everything is legal, until you're caught".  I can't believe I actually use that motto now. 

I got a second passport in  lieu of my desire to go to Syria.  and then I flew into Amman from Ben Guiron, the airport in Tel Aviv, solely because after careful calculation (by this i mean obsessing over routes for weeks) i realized flying in is the only way that would hide where I was coming in from (Israel).  Ben Guiron was a tough one, but doable.  I was on high security terrorist alert and went through their pretty intensive security measures before being "cleared".  I can't get over this, among the many many thigns they checked, they went through my hair for a good 10 minutes with gloves on, like those sterile surgeon gloves.  do people hide explosives in their hair? really?  that's just a snipped of the Ben Guiron experience :)

After a couple of days in Jordan, I ventured out to the Syrian border and they took one quick look at my American passport and denied my American butt (a month ago, they'd give visas at the borders, but supposedly the rules for Americans changed where now you have to get permission to enter aka the visa from Washington DC)

So now I'm in Jordan, in Amman.  for how long I have absolutely no idea.  The plan is to go back to Palestine, but that is still up to chance and luck. 

Last week, I met up with 2 Tarheels and went to Umm Qais with 2 other friends.  We stopped to see the Sea of Galilee.  From the mountain in Jordan, you can see this Sea, which belongs to Israel, but the source of the water is the Jordan river which obviously is in Jordan.  It's a complicated area (even just this small piece of area : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Galilee ) the point is,  I wasn't too phased by the fact that I was standing physically in the country Jordan, but I was looking at Israel, and West Bank far in the distance, and to the other side of me was Syria, somewhere where I wasn't allowed to go in, and way in the distance I saw mountains that belongs to Lebanon.  I guess I wasn't phased, because all I saw was really beautiful land, and in the natural order of things, the land didn't inherently come with borders.

The Garden

the best part about my apartment is without a doubt the garden that Georgette, the landlord, has planted. when you enter the gates of the house (she lives in the giant 2 story stone house, and we live in this back cottage sort of apartment), there's about 5 or 6 big rose plants, a jasmine tree,  a giant lavendar bush, another night jasmine tree, and other plants which fill up the spaces in between whose names i dont know.  circling around the back, directly behind our bedroom windows, is a patch of garden with fresh Zataar, tea herbs, mint, different flowers (like those giant giant lilies), and more things which i dont know the names of.  and in the main garden that we look out to whenever we sit in the back, is a giant almond tree, a handful of big lemon trees, some fruit trees, and several rose bushes  I feel like the richness of the garden alone is the thing that makes me feel like i live in luxury.  everything in the garden and our lives parallel to it living in this stone old fashioned house/cottage has a kind of co-existance that I'm not entirely familiar with.  The appreciation and love for it is something that I hadn't known or learned before. My mom back home is famous for her gardening skills, and she grows a wide number of vegetables.  She has to tend to the dirt, buying bags and bags of fertilizer and mulch to make the ground 'healthy' enough for her patches of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and a like five different types of chilli plants, eggplants and different kinds of spinach and herbs to grow. its funny how much money you have to dump on the ground to get 'natural' things to come out.

Here, stuff just grows.  not just grows, but grows in a way that i'm just not used to, and in a way that is almost enchanting.  sitting outside in our small outside patio place, the serenity that you feel is so soothing, it makes everyone fall in love with this place.  Sometimes I feel pampered.  When I go to work every morning, I have to brush my hands against the lavender to get a nice whiff of it to start my morning. the jasmines have been in full bloom for the past couple of weeks, and those tiny flowers have the biggest sweetest aroma that is just too lovely.  i walk to school, with a couple of jasmine flowers, and i just cant stop smelling them.

i was walking to school the other day with my roommate T and i had a couple of jasmine flowers in hand, and i asked 'call me crazy but i really dont think flowers in the States smell this good'.  she looked at me and said "you're going to miss this place a lot when you leave.  you should remember every step that you take up this hill to work every morning so that when you close your eyes back home, you can be back here again".

Is it bad that the first time M and I were walking around the garden trying to figure out what all the plants and trees were, I had no idea what these things looked like in real life.  For instance, when I think lavender, I either think light purple or I think one of those highly overpriced small aromatherapy bottles in  Bath and Body Works, that's supposed to make me sleep better or something.  So when I saw the lavender stems for the first time, long dusty green stems with small rigid leaves with vertical flower buds at the very tip of them, I had no idea that you had to brush your hands against the stem to get the seeping aroma from the leaves onto your hands.  In fact if I had seen this lavender bush in passing, I would have thought it was weeds and shrubs or something and wouldn't have even bothered trying to smell them.

  When the roses would come in full bloom, I would think about how much a collection of those would cost in the States, and I would feel pampered knowing that the flowers came out of OUR garden for FREE.  giant blooming roses, of all colors, lavender, yellow, red, yellow with orange tipped petals, peach with bright pink tips,  birght vivacious pink and pure white, all of them grow in our garden.  There would hardly ever be day when M and I didn't have a 'bouquet' of flowers in each of our bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen table.

and so many times I would think to my self that all of the worlds problems, all of the solutions to these problems can be found inside one of these beautiful flower petals.  I wish I could explain what I mean by that. But when you are surrounded by a peaceful serenity of the natural gifts of nature and you see the inimitable perfection that it is and how comforting it is for you, you as a person also being a gift of nature, every problem that is man made seems ludicrous and foolish.

New Perspectives

For the last couple of weeks, M and I went from living as 2 people in our house to 4.  T and Y moved in, a week separated from each other.  We always had house guests at our apartments, most people that found M on couchsurfers, random travelers and backpackers who are bouncing from one place to another who need a roof to stay under and a floor to sleep on.  They'd spend a night or two with us, we'd give them a glimpse of our lives and then they'd be gone.  I became so used to having random people just visit our place.  It's funny, back home in the States, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with this, I mean we are taught to be absolutely obsessed with "safety" and being "careful", which always feeds into an underlying message of never trusting anyone until they give you a reason to trust them, instead of the other way around. But the funny thing about travelers or traveling is that you don't need all the introduction and background and a mental security check for you to open up to each other. When you meet another fellow traveler you realize what a fleeting and temporary encounter it is, and (from my experience) you treat each other with patience, curiosity, kindness and generosity.  Sometimes you discover yourself pouring out things about yourself that your best friend probably doesn't even know.  Again, probably because subconsciously you know that chances are slim that you're going to see that person again and also because there is a sense of freedom when you present yourself as a stranger to a person that has no history on you. and often you discover a lot about yourself through your own dialog. 


The first set of couchsurfers we had hosted were two British guys, who were here doing an internship.  They stayed over for a couple of days and we even trusted them to stay at our apartment for the entire week and a half that M and I were out of the country in Egypt for.  From then on, we had a pair of German girls, a French couple, and lo and behold a Russian-American Jew who came to Israel on  Birthright trip who wanted to see the 'other' side.  Bless his heart.  M and I literally spent a ten to fifteen minutes laughing thinking of the irony, and we made sure to tell this kid that he can not mention that he is a Jew and we asked if he was even aware of the occupation (as most Americans are not).  When he got here, the first thing he said was "well I'm not dead, that's a good start.  They (friends in Israel) told me that I'd get shot the moment I step out of the bus. 

T also found us through the listserv that circulates through the international community in Ramallah, because she needed a place to stay as she was planning on spending the summer working on her Arabic.  Her entrance into my life in Palestine has been nothing short of a blessing.  I didn't found out until her second day here, that she was actually Muslim.  And I remember feeling this wave of happiness, I know that sounds silly, because I was so eager to talk to her about issues that puzzles me so much here, and to engross in discussion.  Finally, I was getting a Muslim view, a Muslim perspective that I had been lacking.  It's so strange, it's not a lie when people say that you really don't realize what you have until you don't have it anymore.  At UNC I was so used to having Muslim friends all around, people who were genuinely interested in questioning faith and understanding the answers using logic, knowledge and curiosity.  I just didn't have that here, and I felt so suffocated.  When I discovered that T was a Muslim convert (from Florida), my thirst for discussion grew.  Honestly Muslim converts put "real" Muslims to shame.  


A week later Y moved in.  A Palestinian American experiencing Palestine for the first time.  That was an eye opening for me.  I realized how much I didn't know about Palestine, I realized how emotional seeing this land can be for someone with Palestinian blood, and as goofy as this sounds, I really realized that I was not Palestinian.  As much love as I might feel for this place, I will never know what THAT feels like, the feeling of returning home, and on the same not I won't really ever get what it feels like to know that your ancestors come from this part of the world but for generations the land and the people here have been imprisoned.  The first night Y was here, we went around town, and SHE introduced me to the snacks that you typically eat for breakfast, how you prepare certain breads, what snacks to eat, she was communicating with everyone, completely familiar to the culture in a way that I will never be.  Seeing Palestine, or experiencing it with someone of Palestinian descent suddenly shifted my entire view of how I look at this place, it made me realize how much I don't understand.  Just like I couldn't teach someone how certain smells of flowers and fruits from Bangladesh soothes me and makes me feel at 'home'.  So through Y's presence I became more cognizant of my international identity within the Palestinian context.  When I speak to Palestinians, either they struggle to speak to me in English or they are happy that they can practice their English knowing that I am an English teacher, or I struggle to squeeze out a few Arabic words.  But I don't have mobility in the language like Y does, it's a very different kind of connection and experience.  


I guess it goes to show you should never allow yourself to think that you know (or you've gotten the 'full' story, or that you really understand something) because you dont know what you dont know, and once you get a glimpse of that, you start realizing how much there is to learn, how much room there always is for growth.  I feel so grateful that I can see Palestine in a new light, appreciate certain tastes, smells and sights through Y, who knows so much more about the people, the land and the culture than I've learned in the past six months.  


To be continued..

Ground Zero - Nablus

I didn’t know how I felt about it the first time I tried it, it was just …inteeeresting.  Hot melting cheese, subtly sweet, with a orange beaded crusted top dripping with the sweetest sugar syrup, all cut into this giant square piece of dessert that makes you feel like you ate a brick by the time you are finished.  The first time I had it was in Dearborn, Michigan. Then I ate it in this fancy restaurant in Ramallah, and it was alright, nothing great, still interesting.  And then I had it again in Ramallah, when a colleague brought it over, and I discovered that there are 2 kinds, one that is soft on top and one that is crunchy and I realized that I am definitely the crunchy fan.

And then last week I had Kenafa in Nablus. Fresh kenafa.  Like the dude had this giant circular flat pan of melting cheese over fire that he flipped over right in front of us exposing the bottom orange crusty layer and then he waited a few seconds before pouring the sugar water all over the hot kenafa.  You cant get fresher than that, watching it be made all in front of you! we all oooohed and aahed and the guy was tickled, looking at us like “get a grip on yourself, I do this about a hundred times a day”.  It was Nablusi Kenafa, where kenafa originates.  The kenafa capital of the world. It was mouth wateringly delicious, no longer interesting, but probably one of the best desserts, ever.

That Kenafa shop was our last stop that day, and we ended the long, emotionally exhausting mentally straining tour of Nablus on a sweet note. We were a group of roughly fifteen, mostly composed of Bir Zeit University students, myself and Y (my friend from UNC who just arrived to work in Ramallah for the summer, currently living with me in my apartment).  T, my other roommate, organized this tour for everyone.  Last year she worked in Nablus for 3 months.  Nablus arguably is the real deal Palestine.  Ramallah is definitely not, Ramallah is like the NYC of Palestine, a complete bubble, it’s liberal, it has a night life, and we don’t hear gun shots every night nor is there a nightly curfew because Israeli soldiers are rolling in with their tanks, getting ready to ‘monitor’ the city during the night hours. Nablus is that.  T’s experience in Nablus working on a project introduced her to phenomenal people, one of whom is a friend of hers, a guy in his early 30s who was a medic during the invasions of 2002, during the second Intifada.  He has seen more, experienced more, than your brain can fathom.  He is the one that took us on this tour, of the old city of Nablus, telling us stories about nooks and crannies of the city, stories from only several years ago. 

I had walked through Nablus a couple of times before and I remember the gloomy feeling in my heart because as beautiful as the hustle and bustle of the old city markets was, authentic in many ways than Ramallah will ever be, posters of fighters who were killed, martyrs are plastered all over the city.  Maybe if you don’t know what they are, it’s easy to ignore, but knowing that these young men were killed, who came from this city, I don’t’ know its heavy. You wonder about their age, their story, their families as you stare at them and they stare at you from these walls.

Sunday May 30^th : I learned that Nablus is not just known for their delicious Kenafa.  They are also known for their soap factories.  Most of which were blown up by Israelis, leaving nothing but rubble.  We passed through one part of the city that I’ve passed through before, and Maroof (the medic) stood there telling us that that spot where we were standing, an empty field, was the site of one of the bigger soap factories.  The Israeli soldiers had tied up and blindfolded Palestinian young boys inside the factory, and then dropped a F-16 bomb on it as the boys were inside alive still.  The end result was flesh, blood and a destroyed factory.

When I say that the city is being destroyed, I don’t know how to exaggerate that enough or to convey that it is not an understatement.  Nablus used to boast 42 soap factories, now there are 2 left in the city. The city was in lockdown for nearly 10 years, meaning that no goods were allowed in and nothing was allowed out.  The checkpoints were closed, which means nothing is going in.  how do you live like that? I don’t know.  In America our constant supply of goods and services is something that we take for granted soo much that I don’t think we can imagine what this means when a city is in lockdown for almost a decade, none of us know how to imagine that even.

Invasion of 2002: walking around the city, when actually pointed to look, really look at the walls, I saw perforations, hundreds and hundreds of them, the walls are covered literally with bullet holes.  I don’t know how to convey what it feels like to be physically be in standing ground, to stand where this much violence took place, because you wonder about the people, the human beings that were shooting these bullets and the people that it was aimed at, because bullets have no other purpose than to kill.  We walked under an arch, and M the medic stopped us to tell us that that spot was where 150 dead bodies were lain, all shot dead.  As a medic, they were not allowed to dispose of the bodies.  The Israeli soldiers wanted the dead decomposing bodies to just stay there in the street because they would do their rounds and come back around to do a head count of who they killed and shoot them again in the head to make sure that they were dead.  Mcandidly told us that it took 3 days straight to wash all the blood off the street.

We stopped abruptly at a random spot.   M and his best friend J stopped to tell us about a secret path that they used to take when they had to carry a wounded person back to this small room where they would apply gauzes and bandages and do basic medical things.  They described one instance when they heard gunshots and saw a boy shot on the ground and as they were going to pick him, the soldiers kept on shooting at them instead.  Jihad at that time being only 17, froze in place and couldn’t move out of fear.  Maroof had to go back to get him and together they carried the body through this secret passageway.  They took us through this narrow path, that weaved in thorough a building and out into the main street of the old city.  Even in broad daylight and sunlight, it was dark and we had to crouch and watch our steps on the uneven stairs and steps and walk forward.  I don’t know how they did this at 2 or 3am in pitch black darkness in the dead of the night.

M continued to tell us about their ‘hospital’ room which was basically a makeshift room with basic supplies.  He told us that it was basic medicine that they used to have, and they used to go door to door to see families.  Several times as they were inside soldiers would come inside to demolish everything in the room, leaving htem with no supplies again, until they were able to somehow gather more.

Then they took us to what used to be a very nice museum, boasting the roman history of Nablus.  The place was absolutely destroyed.  I kept on thinking of what could have been.  In a perfect world, if the city was intact, its hard to imagine why tourists from around the world wouldn’t flock to its beauty, history and its gifts (like the best kenafa in the world).  Nablus is one of the world’s oldest cities, having existed continuously for 4 thousand years (THE oldest city in the world is also in Palestine, a city called Jericho).  

It’s the largest city in the west bank.

The city, with its stone walls, arches, reminiscent of roman architecture, narrow cobblestone passageways, situated by mountains on all sides, houses and buildings sitting on the curves of those mountains, I realized is standing currently on a foundation of resistance against annihilation.  Getting off the mini van (the public “buses” here are small orange mini vans called a “service” (pronounced serveeeeese) which usually drops you off at the center of town, what will take your breath away is the view.  High mountains covered with replicas of white stone buildings. I always take a moment to appreciate it, because it truly is a sight.  It’s a conservative town.  There are 2 or 3 restaurants where women are allowed in.  most places are hangouts for men only.  There are a lot more women covering their hair then you see in Ramallah.

Passing through demolished homes, factories, museums in scattered parts of the city I couldn’t escape the thought and the feeling.  It was a familiar feeling in an odd way.  The kind of heaviness that was taking a foothold in my heart was the same feeling I had felt when I had seen Ground Zero for the first time.  The destruction site of 9/11 was somehow this devastating feeling that Americans and people around the world sympathized with.  However, walking around in Nablus, it feels like since the occupation, countless ground zeros here are ignored. But more than ignored, they are tarnished, the deaths are displayed to the world as barbaric terrorists being killed for someone elses ‘security’and their families are never shown, their stories are never told.  I don’t know how Americans would feel if someone shoved it in their throats that all the people that died in the twin towers deserved to die.  Feels awful doesn’t it? that’s how the rest of the world sees Palestinian deaths to many degrees. 

Before leaving Nablus, I saw an especially enlarged poster of a martyr.  T told me that it’s his house under the poster.  I saw a woman and a kid, and T told me that it’s his widowed wife and his son.  That was the hitting point for me, and I couldn’t shake it off.  I couldn’t believe, this young boys’ face that is plastered all over Nablus, that that was his wife and son that I was looking at. 

I hope no one thinks that I personally condone suicide bombing.  I think it is a ludicrously ineffective violent act that is a huge tragedy.  However, people should know the cities that people who are forced to take this action are from and what their stories are.  If America wages wars left and right after one ground zero..  imagine years and years of never knowing liberation and being surrounded by ‘ground zeros’. 


more about Nablus during the invasion : http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/rgiacaman4.htm