Two Cracked Heads and a Terrible Tuesday

I saw Sleiman (4th grade), with his scrunched up eyebrows, pouted face and clenched fists, sitting in the main office chair with his feet dangling, looking at the ground, as 3 adults were screaming at his face.  The secretary of the school, an otherwise smiling, sweet, soft spoken woman, was scolding him with full force exasperated rage.  Two other teachers were also taking turns yelling at him.

Minutes before, as I was making last minute photocopies of some worksheets, I saw a crying child run into the same office accompanied by the Math teacher, who had a tissue pressed against the kid's face.  Not his face, his eye.  I recognized him, though I don't know his name. I knew he was Maher and Mohammad's (twins) younger brother, who was freaking out, because he had a busted head, and the injury was right above his eyebrow.  With the clamor of the teachers, the crying kid and the photocopy machine, I couldn't make out anything of the story, except that the name Sleiman Izz was being repeated over and over agian.  "damn, my sleiman?" I thought, realizing it was my 4th grader Sleiman who gets into trouble almost daily, almost in every class, and he's been 'kicked out' of the school several times now.

The last time I had taken him to the office was when he took out his pant strings and had playfully tied it around his friend's neck in my class, and by the time I realized what was happening the friend was choking, unable to breathe.  The kid behind him took out his small pair of scissors and tried to cut it off.  I'm not sure where this reaction and instinct came from, but within seconds I had stormed over to the other side of the room where they were. "BACK OFF!" and I had taken a pair of scissors to cut off the string from the child's neck so that he could breathe.

So here was Slieman again.  In the office.  Though I felt really terrible looking at him sit in the office with adults screaming down his face, I had absolutely no idea what to do.   He's been talked to by the school 'social worker', the principal, his mom, i've had discussions with him, with the principal, and his dad, he's been suspended, kicked out, punished, everything.  His answer is always the same when you ask "why did you do this?" "they hit me first!".  It's like he never understands the gravity of bad actions, or the fact that pushing someone is bad, punching someone is worse and busting open someone's head is really really reeallly bad.  for him, his reactions are all the same, and no matter how many times people explain things to him, he repeats the same things over and over again. during break, the other kid had done something (hurt Sleiman's fingers or something) and Sleiman threw a can at the kid's face.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, the secretary came back into the office and sat down next to him, to talk to him softly to ask what happened.  Sleiman burst into tears and by that time the bell had rung so I had to leave to go to my 7th straight class of teaching.

On my way, I saw the back of another kid's head.  Carolene's brother.  Carolene is a really really super slow student I have in 5th grade, who doesn't know much of anything,  (the only thing she knows how to say is "Hello teacher!" and "Goodbye teacher!' and had to repeat grades a couple of times now).  Her brother's head was bandaged up in the back, a spot the size of a fist, with gauze and bandage.  Yesterday, he had busted his head open after prancing around, hitting other people, and jumping around and falling and hitting something sharp, and then he was taken to the hospital.

Yesterday I had a skype chat session with some folks back in the States, it was my first time doing something like this.  I had mentioned that the kids here fight a lot and that the fighting is violent.  I had grazed over the topic, and was reminded after the session was over, by my best friend, that it's important to distinguish how the violence and the fighting that I see here is different.  Kids fight in the States too.  People don't really get a picture when you say "the kids are really bad".

This week is no different than any other week, things like this happen daily and weekly. it's just somehow this kind of exposure to school violence like this leaves me less and less shocked each time, until someone reminds me that it's worth mentioning and pointing out what it is that as a teacher I actually do see in school everyday.  and that it's not normal.

Zamzam Water and Kisses

A lot of people ask me why I don't teach in America.  "If you love it so much, why not America? And if you really did want to teach, why travel so far away and leave home? Why here?"

Well let me tell you why. You know why? Because in America I wouldn't have students showing up to class excited to share a cup of Zamzam water ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamzam_Well ) with their teacher, that their grandparents brought back for them after completing the Hajj.  Nor would I have students who start class only after they give me a kiss on the cheek  Nor would I have students that I can be affectionate with. Showing them both kinds of parental affection: extreme kuchi koo cutness lovy dovy love to encourage them, and strict, reprimanding, scary, yelling, firm,discipline to straighten them up.

If I did that in America, I might have a lawsuit filed against me or I might be ousted from the teaching line all together.  For showing feelings.  Or not being a slave to bureaucratics.

I go through massive ups downs when I'm teaching.  It's not fun breaking up fights, or having to scream, or having to feel like you're baby sitting kids instead of teaching them.  27 kids, 40 minutes at a time, 5, or 6, or 7 times a day.  And it's not fun dealing with their tantrums or their sheer volume, which fires up your nerves into smoking, flaming, smithereens.  Or pulling them out from beneath chairs, desks or cupboards.  Or having to hear 10 of them speak to you in their loudest voices about 10 different things, completely unrelated to class.  Nor is it fun when they are angry at you, nor when you've lost your temper, for the umpteenth time during the day.  And it's really not fun grading stacks of papers and notebooks filled with incoherent, illegible scraps of writing that gives you a migraine just looking at it.  Nor is it fun having to correct every snippet of conversation kids have with you to correct their verb tenses, pronunciation, or vocabulary.

But certain moments, when you have a student who runs up to you in class, and they share something with you that is extra special to them and you see them act in the most humbling, selfless way, opening up their hearts to you completely, which then makes you realize how lucky, and blessed you are as a teacher to experience raw, pure, selfless love that most people in the world probably don't know how to experience, you understand why it was that you chose this path in the first place. They live on the tip of their innocence, volatile and sensitive, yet forgiving and compassionate. It makes you realize how much you can learn from your students, instead of the other way around.

Shaheed

november 7th, 2010

“why do people have to shoot people in the mouth? like why not somewhere else? why in the mouth” i asked my roommate exasperated, frustrated and disgustingly bewildered.  “well what happens is when you do that you make sure...” she caught the look on my face and paused to switch gears to ask “ wait was that a rhetorical question or did you actually want to know?”  i didnt actually want to know, i was just not dealing with it, it being what i had heard a mere hour before on a car ride back home. i figured, ah what the heck “yeah ok tell me”

“what happens is, you blow out the back part right here, which controls your breathing and functioning, so you make sure that the person is dead, like if you shoot someone in the brain you know you could fuck them up, you could kill them but you could also have a chance where they dont die theyre just fucked up in the brain, but putting a gun in your mouth, you are dead”

ghassan’s uncle's blown out brain was splattered on the staircase after the IDF had stuck a gun in his mouth.

I was and am still frozen.  I feel like i can’t function? why? i’m not sure.  ‘im not thinking.  im just frozen.  the only thing i’m thinking is, ok maybe it makes sense to document what i’m feeling right now, this doesnt feel right, this feels unnatural, is this real? this actually happened to them.  this actually happened to them.

i feel slightly immobile.  maybe it was ghassan’s mom’s stoic face, her sweet and calm voice as she was telling me this horrendous story as we were driving back in the car, and the warmth of this family and the jovial childishness of his grandfather that makes this unbearable. maybe it was their gracious welcome into thier family farm, their family house, and into their village, and the delicious family dinner, and sleeping on the floor with the kids sprawled all over me after an exhausting day, that makes me feel this way.  my heart is heavy and restless.  

Its restless because conflict, war, weapons, death, violence, guns, soliders, settlements, suicide bombing, murders, checkpoints, restrictions, and resistence, these are not concepts to me anymore, and anyone who has not experienced these in their own reality, only deals with these notions as concepts, not a reality. when it permeates into your sense of self, life perspective and your external world, and when it affects people you know, and even worse care about, these concepts turn into an ugly reality that you wish never existed.  
the juxtaposition of ghassan’s 8 year old free and strong spirit running around side by side with his grandfater in his village, and the shaheed pictures and portraits of his uncle hanging on the walls of practically every room was another testament to something that I feel like I've felt too many times in Palestine: witnessing the pureness and the innocence of humanity side by side, simultaneously, with the pure evil and worst of humanity.  

we were on our way home from Kufur Thalth to Ramallah and we passed a graveyard. Ghassan's mom wanted to stop for a little bit and asked all her kids to pray and recite Surah Fatiha in their duas. She told me that her brother was buried there and every time they pass by the graveyard they pay their respects. The only thing I knew about this brother was what she told me every time she mentioned him "my brother. the Israeli people killed him". 

I knew that he was in prison for 5 years, for being too 'outspoken' in college. "He was really shy and quiet. But he spoke up against a lot of things". and they would take him to jail, for indefinite amounts of time, and then let him go and come back after him again and again. I asked Ghassan's mom "wait why do they take people to prison?" it was a rhetorical question. with my time here so far and talking to people, i know that there are no good reasons why people are taken to prison. if the Israeli soldiers feel like putting you into prison, they'll put you in prison.  

He was only 20 years old, with a really artistic spirit. Through his 5 years in jail, he made art in prison. The living rooms which carried the portraits on the walls, also had his artwork placed on all the shelves. like incredible art. he took cardboard he found around prison and made replicas of the Dome of the Rock, and built sculptors and frames, out of things here and there. 

Artwork : made entirely of cardboard and thread

I couldn't believe this man had made all this in prison. He also taught himself Hebrew during his time and the last time he was in prison and then taken to court he demanded that he would defend himself. There was no evidence, or any reason for him to be locked up, and the judge let him go. After they let him go, he changed his identity. He moved to Nablus, changed his name, changed his looks, and started a new life and had disconnected himself from his family. They had no idea where he was for three years. He just did not want to go back to prison. So one day, jeeps showed up outside the family's house where he was staying, and they called him by his real name, announcing that they knew where he was and that they wanted him. The building was evacuated. He hid on the roof of the bathroom. When they raided the building, they found him, and at the staircase, they put a gun to is mouth and blew out his brain.

The mom found out watching the news, her son's face on the screen, who was now dead who she hadn't heard from in 3 years. She went crazy.

I kept on thinking about the locket that hangs around her neck, with her son's picture, framed in gold, that I noticed everytime she came over to sit next to me or talk to me.

Ghassan's mom at that time was in Gaza, and she couldn't get out. She heard about her brother, from her husband who heard from another family friend. She was only able to visit the grave, after their house was blown up in Gaza in 2008, they were able to get out, and start a new life in Ramallah and move to the West Bank under special sanctions.

When the dead body was given to the family in Nablus, the family took the body and wanted to bring it to the village Kufur Thalth to bury it there. At they checkpoint, the soldiers stopped the mourning family and told them that they could go, but the dead body could not go. Because the dead body is obviously a threat.

After hassles and chaos, the other brothers carried the corpse into the village.

Several months later, the soldiers showed up at their house again. This time wanting to take the other brothers into prison. "One is already under the ground. We have to show you people what you are playing with" This is how they would come to the house and interrogate the brothers, the ones that are alive.

I'm listening to this story, and my entire perception of my weekend changes. I am in utter shock hearing what I"m hearing and I'm replaying over and over again every single family member that I had met, and trying to imagine what they had to go through. A village turns into a battleground. And an innocent weekend turns into something else, I can't even explain.

I failed to realize how heavily their story impacted me until I realized that I was sort of shutting down, because there are some things and some feelings you just can't explain. And it's a slow process. Sometimes you go through feelings and you feel like you are in a mind warp where things just don't make sense. Or you feel anger when you realize how blind and deaf the world chooses to be.

I was telling my best friend that, I KNOW this happens, I KNOW what a Shaheed means, I know this happens in Palestine, I KNOW this place is under occupation. But then after experiences like this, I realize I don't know anything at all. It's different when it's real and not just a story. The reality becomes so shocking sometimes that you perceive it as a stranger and you feel foreign to it.

Sheep Milk and Duck Brain

I had never drank sheep milk before.  But there it was, a hot steaming cup of sheep milk, which came straight out of the sheep that morning.  Who could say no to that?(perhaps a lot of people) I took the cup eagerly from Ghassan's mom's hands only because I was curious about sheep's milk, and the strange bitter aftertaste wasn't that big of a big deal after two scoops of sugar.  The fact that the hot steaming milk soothed my cramps, also left me quite happy.

The night before, I had arrived to Kufur Thulth, a small village outside of Qalqilia.

 Ghassan is a kid that really does have a special place in my heart.  I had heard a snippet of his story from my former roommate, who briefly had told me about this kid, Ghassan, whose house was blown to shreds in Gaza, who had gone to the States for 40 days, coincidentally taking the same flight to JFK as my roommate was.  Having the same layover in NYC, my roommate took the opportunity to show Ghassan and his two younger siblings the magic and hype and madness of new york city in December, and the kids jumped at it, being crazier than the city itself, experiencing something they had never known before.  The mom frightened out of her wits let her kids do whatever they wanted to, because she was grateful that her kids were alive to be running around.

For the past two or three weeks Ghassan would come up to me at least three times at the beginning of class and perhaps five at the end of class to ask "Teacher can you please come to our village on Saturday?".  Each day it would be the same twinkling face with captivating kiddish gleam and the end of each class period was a pinch of dissapointment for him when I would mutter "I don't know Ghassan.."  It would give him more motivation  to be even more persistent the next day.

I had given up on the hope of olive picking because plans continuously fell through.  And as much as I did want to visit Ghassan's village (and knew that there were olive picking opportunities there) I didn't actually think it was going to happen for some reason.
But one Saturday afternoon after school towards 5pm I was stuffed in their car for the hour long journey, passing through the beautifully hilly terrain of Palestine, passing through the not so beautiful checkpoint a new one that i had never used before and towards the fall of darkness we had squeezed inside a cramped garage after cautiously driving through a wobbly narrow village road.

Baby Danny, Dana, Yazan and Ghassan, myself and Ghassan's mom spilled inside the house and I met their jovial, playful grandfater, who was a thin, short statured man with more energy than the kids, running around (literally in circles) playing with his other 2 year old grandson.  But his body boasted years of labor.  You could tell he works in the fields, a lot.  What I loved more about him, more than his youthful energy, more than his laughter, were all of his facial lines, and his face was absolutely filled with lines! And his smile would have an accordian player effect on his face.   Ghassan's grandmoter was much quieter, and she didn't speak much, she just greeted me with a very warm smile, and called me to dinner which was a giant feast of Makhluba with sides of pickles and olives (like all dishes here) and though I didn't understand the family conversations, it was quite special to be eating a meal with Ghassan, who seemed to be in disbelief that I was there, his mom, his sister, his brother, his grandfater, grandmother, two uncles, one aunt and two more cousins.

Ghassan and Yazan took me outside to see all the birds they have, all the cactus plants they have, all the flowers they have outside, their lemon tree, fig tree, almond tree, banana tree and god knows what else.  "There are more in the Mashtal teacher!".  I didn't know what a Mashtal was but figured it was a place with a lot of plants.  "We also have sheeps and goats! I will take you there tomorrow! you can milk one if you want!"  he quite literally wanted to show me everything and his curiousity and energy was incredible.

What was also incredible was how hard, how absolutely hard, I was trying to ignore all the shaheed pictures of his eldest uncle, whose face was plastered in almost room with three or four portratis of him in each room, beside an ayah of the Quaran, with a green piece of cloth hanging out of the side of the frame.   One picture was of him with a gun in each hand (have you seen Paradise Now? remember the thing they do in front of a white tapestry with the guns in their hands as a testimony to what they are about to do? that's what the picture reminded me of) and I was ignoring it, all of the pictures, this house that was a living commemoration and a museum of a brutal death,  with all my efforts because I just did not want to know the story behind the portraits.

The next morning, we got up.  I had gone to sleep after playing with Yazan and Dana (Ghassan had gone out to sleep under the stars in the farm next to the sheep, and he had invited me to go with him, but his mom thought it was rather inappropriate for the teacher to sleep next to the sheep.  if it wasn't so cold I probably would have). Dana is this overly stubborn and spoiled 5 year old little girl who cries nearly every 10 minutes, sad or angry about something she didnt get.  and for some reason she has a fascination with my eyeliner.  so she climbs on me, comfortably sits on my lap facing my face, and starts playing with my eyes and my face.  Yazan is always fighting for attention because his older brother, Ghassan, has all the stories, and he wants a chance to be funny as well.  Both Dana and Yazan fell asleep on our floored bedding (prepared by their grandmother) on either side of me, with their legs strewn about on my back as I was sleeping on my stomach. I was too tired, maybe they were just playing on me and fell asleep tierd.

The next morning is when I had the sheep's milk.  The night before I had duck meat and Ghassan had asked if I like duck brain.  I didn't want to make a face so I simply said "no..never tried it before" and he took the cooked head of the duck and broke off the bones and ate the inside of the brains and chewed on the bones.  Finger lickin scrumptiousliciously good.
 He had been talking about the Mashtal, which I discovered was a piece of land with all kinds of plants that the grandfather tends to, and a place that Ghassan knows all about because he helps his grandfather and works side by side, or just runs around playing with his brother in the plant farm.  Ghassan was telling me how some of the plants are bred and how long they have been around and every fact he knew about them. He showed me tall cactus plants, he showed me where they kept the chickens and the rooster, and the parrots, and all sorts of other things.
We hung around there for a while and then went to their main farm, stretches of olive trees and a shed under which several flocks of sheep were just chillin.   When I was a kid, I remember going to the zoo with my third class and trying to feed a goat.  And then getting attacked by a flock of goats.  So a flock of animals, which resemble goats (the only criteria for resemblance : four legged creature with white hair/wool/outer coating, eyes and sometimes a horn) ompleteley freaks me out.
So going inside i kept on thinking 'o buddy..look at that..haha...ha..ha " It reeked and stepping inside you knew that you were stepping on top of fresh or old natural sheep shit fertlizer. And there was Ghassan storming through the crowd of sheep as if it all belonged to him, as if this giant flock of sheep should fear this little 8 year old boy. He would grab them by the ear and tug them around and put them in the right place in the shed.  there were rules about where each one should stay, and in our excitement we had messed up the groups.  one wrong move, and about 20 sheep stormed the small gate separating them from another part of the shed and mad rushed the entire shed.  I was frozen.  I dont like sheep running around me I realized (goat phobia kicking in).
We got out, and Ghassan and his grandfather saved the day.  His grandfather was at the Mashtal and he immediately left and rushed over to the farm in his white little car and muttered and groaned and yelled at Ghassan and in 20 minutes fixed up the shed and told us that the reason why the sheep are separated is because different types are given different foods.  So them mixing was a big deal because eating the wrong food would really make some of the sheep really sick.

The day ended with my walk with Ghassan's mom.  She showed me the olive trees.  Stretches of olive trees.  We walked for a long time till we got to the edge of the hill, and from there, in clear view was  a settlement.  Ghassan's mom and I had been talking for a long time, about their family, about the farm, about the kids, about the weird type ant that lives under the dirt that comes up and swallows this fruit seed in about a quick hungry second if you put it on the already dug out hole that the ant creates for itself (to catch the seed I guess),  and about cactus fruit that I had never tasted before.  She casually looked at the settlement (which for me is always horrific, looking at settlements absolutely drives me nuts) and told me that the family had wanted to build a shed on their farm so that her dad could rest after working in the land, but building anything on THEIR land would become a bomb target.  She casually muttered "the Israeli people would blow it up, we can not build anything"

On the ride back home to Ramallah, she told me about her brother.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

what is a settlement?
 they are  forced illegal communities built by the Israeli government in which citizens are paid to live, armed with state funded weapons on top of wiped out palestinian villages and communities.  palestinian hills have had to be destroyed, families have been ousted, homes demolished to build these communities.  residents of these settlments, known as settlers, are more often then not imported immigrants and more often than not staunch zionists.  cases of settler violence are frequent (examples include settlers shooting at palestinian communities that they overlook, burning or uprooting olive trees as a form of instigation or destroying palestinian heritage, restricting transportation and basic utilities) palestinians have separate roads that they must travel on, which goes around settler roads, which makes traveling around extra difficult and more time consuming.  palestinian communities often face a shortage of water, due to settlement communities.
this definition is not as articulate as it could be, but i hope you get the point.  settlements are illegal and they suck.

Parent Teacher Conference

Yesterday was parent teacher day.  I must say I was dreading it all week, but it wasn't so bad.  I met 19 families.

I'm reeeeeeally enjoying my day off today.  TGIF

november 3rd 2010 - thank you israel

“I need to see Jakeline” i demanded firmly as i looked at my cell phone watch at 8:59am .  My appointment with Jakeline was at 9am.  I had left the house at 6:25 am from Ramallah to get to Jerusalem to meet with her.  After I lost my passport the second week of September, I’ve had no visa or documentation that makes my stay here legitimate in any way, forget about the West Bank, in Israel or in this area in general.  Using my second passport, I was at least able to prove that I’m American, which is the only ID that I have on me that proves my American-ness.  Losing an American passport outside of the States, is a huuuuuuge deal, because it sells for thousands of dollars in the black market.  After waiting for 2 weeks for it to turn up, I went to Jerusalem to the Consulate to order a new passport, and was told that my old passport would be cancelled, and no one would be able to use it.  At the Consulate, the man who was helping me, quietly told me that to get another passport and another visa I can’t have any documentation that says I was in the West Bank.  That morning he told me to go walk 25 minutes uphill to Jaffa Gate, he told me where the police station was, and he told me to get a police report done there, and tell them that I lost my passport that day, that morning.
It’s almost jarring how I can lie now on demand to authority when it’s necessary.  I casually went up to the police station, and during my walk, i thoguht for a second “hmm what should my story be for the police” and that throught twas followed by “meh dont think about it”.  sitting across from the Isreali police, i just made shit up, saying that that morning I was in the old city with some of my friends, I was at the french bookshop (which I passed on my walk to the police station) and i had gotten a book which was the last time I had my wallet, and then when we were sitting down for coffee I realized I didnt have my entire wallet so I dont know where it is, I must have dropped it somewhere in the old city (which is a big place) and i need to report a lost passport because that’s super important.
Doing so got me my police report , and official piece of paper with lots of Hebrew everywhere, which is always a good thing in this part of the world when you have to deal with the IDF.

My new passport came after another 3 weeks.  And then I had to set up a meeting with the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem to see if I could get a visa..the visa that I had been waiting the whole summer for in Jordan, the reason why I was stranded in Jordan for a couple of months in the first place, and the visa that i had gotten miraculously at the end of the summer..and the one that I managed to lose.  

So that appoitnment was today.  at 9am. with Jakeline.

The man looked at me for a split second like I was crazy.  “Who’se Jakeline?” he asked.  now it was my turn to look at him blankly. “crap” i thought, i dont even know Jakeline’s last name.  I’ve just been in email correspondence with her for the past year. “i’m from Ramallah and I work for the Latin Patriarchate and I need to see Jakeline.  she works here?” and he goes “ohhh the church is down the street, and then you will take a right and then you will go up the street and the church is at the end of the road”.  Where the hell was I standing?? Turns out I had walked into a hotel with a church name that also happened to have the word “latin’ in it and had walked straight into the lobby of the hotel to ask the receptionist...about Jakeline.  I kind of told the wrong person that I work in the West Bank.  oops.

The reason why I didnt know where the church was, is because I had never been there before.  Though I work for them and though I use their address as my residential address, this was the first time in about a year that I was actually seeing my ‘home’.  

I walked into the church after the walking on winding roads, found Jakeline, and she told me to come back at 12 and told me to stay close to the area by the church, in case the interior ministry people who are the Israeli officials securing my visa, would want to see me in person to verify that everythign was ‘true’ or to see me since I had lost my passport and all of that.  As I handed her my passport, I felt strange thinking “well this is it”.   A month before that my boss had said to me “you need to keep in touch and follow up with Jakeline.  I dont want you to get deported” and that was ringing in my ears.  Would I get deported? Would I be leaving my teaching and my students? I”m not sure, I have no idea.  In a strange way even though I’ve definitely learned more than anythign to let go of any feelings of certainty, one still has a tendency to worry being always in the middle of a mental tug of war, being pulled in one direction that makes you the happiest to the other direction where all of that can be taken away instantaneously.  
I had 2 and a half hours to kill before getting that passport back.
I came back at noon.  She hadn’t called me to tell me that I was to be called in, in person to be questioned or anything, so in my mind, I thought, wait either that’s really good or really bad? it’s a complete rejection or a complete approval? here goes
At 12i went in, and I went up the narrow set of stairs to her office and she was sitting at her desk, a bunch of papers and 2 X 2 passport photos of Catholic nuns of all colors and their applications spraweled all over her desk, probably applying for the same visa i had applied for.
She handed me my passport, and taking up two entire pages was a typed up printed piece of document that said that I am legal in Israel until October 3rd, 2011 with multiple entry, a big “M” stamped on the second page.

She told me that BECAUSE i lost my passport, they had to apply for the visa agian today and then renew it today, so in a weird way BECAUSE i lost my passport, I have an additional 3 months in Palestine, until October 3rd 2011 instead of July 2011.

Mutliple entry.  I can leave and come back without any questions, from country to country, if i want to go to jordan, i can go and come back without worrying that i will be sent back.  A year.  I can move around from city to city within the West Bank.  I dont have to worry about leaving the Israeli borders every 3 months, and stressing if I am coming back or not.  I can be here LEGALLY.  I am LEGAL.  
I still havent processed this, and to many of my friends this may sound like not a big deal.  but I can not begin to tell you HOW BIG OF A DEAL THIS IS.  what i had in my hands was like holding diamonds.  this kind of documentation, this kind of permission, JUST DOESNT HAPPEN.  I didnt know what to do, i was in shock.  So i went out, and because it was noon, church bells were ringing loud and clear and ringing through the entire city and with the visa in my hand i couldnt help but think “JESUS CHRIST!!! ..eff you Israel you messd up so bad! THANK YOU!”.

I dont knwo what to think.  I’m not sure who to express this to, but to be here for a year legally in Palestine is almost unheard of (I’m sure it happens, but very very very veryyyy few in numbers)
this has put a completely new twist on my frame of mind.  Firstly I still can’t let go of my 10 months of lifestyle : constantly and always bieng on pins and needles thinking about the uncertainty of living here, 3 months at a time.  10 months just to do the calculation for you is roughly 300 days lol, which is a long time.  and to suddenly think that wait...i can actually move around from city to city.  i can leave the country and come back.  is ..too much to process it feels like.
This certainly doesnt mean that i HAVE to stay until October, but it gives me option.  To pass up on a 3 month legal stay here doesnt only seem silly but almost stupid.  
Wakling out, without even thinking I looked up to think “God you really DO want me to stay in the Holy Land!” what are the chances? that my passport being lost would result in THIS? Everything happens for a reason.

With a year at hand, I feel like there are countless things I can get my hands into.  First and foremost: research.  I’ve been talking to a lot of people about my teachign expereince here, and me wondering about research regarding conflict zone psychology.  these kids that i deal with, do things and act in ways that will shock you.  and there is absolutely no data or documentation of these behaviors, or causes, or implications of these things.

This was just to update you.  If you know of any department or any professor that needs or requires or wants field work in Palestine, I am here, and would love to connect with academics.  
Until I process more and find more things, this is it for me.  I”m sure i’ll be getting in touch with you to bounc around some ideas.

Excerpts from "Palestine Walks" by Raja Shahadeh

"I like to think of my relationship to this land so immediate, and not intertwined through the veil of words written about it, often replete with distortions"
damn i feel you raja shahdeh!! i feel this way too!!
"In 1925, a Palestinian historian, Darweesh Mikdadi took his students at a Jerusalem government high school on a walking trip through the rocky landscapes of Palestine, all the way to the more lush plains and fertile villages of Syria and Lebanon with their streams, rivers and caves. 
It has been impossible since 1948 to repeat this journey"
"A merchant from Ramallah finds it easier to travel to China to import cane garden chairs than to reach Gaza, a mere 40 minute drive away, where cane chairs, once a flourishing industry, now sit in dusty stacks"
"My days in Palestine are numbered"
"A man going on SARHA, wanders aimlessly, not restricted by time and place, going where his spirit takes him to nourish his soul and rejuvenate himself. 
But not any excursion would qualify as a SARHA. Going on Sarha implies letting go.  It is a drug free high, Palestinian style"
"This landscape, we are told, was formed by the tremendous pressures exerted by tectonic forces pushing towards the East.  It is as though the land has been scooped in a mighty hand and scrunched"
-------------------
November 3rd, 2010.  I think I"ll always remember the date, the way one always remembers monumental days. why? because today was a monumental day. more to come on that later.

i was in jerusalem today and i had 2 hours waiting for something to be taken care of.  from jaffa gate i took a nice stroll down to Salah-Adin street to go to, in my opinion, one of East Jerusalem's best kept secrets  : The Educational Bookshop.
The. Best. Bookshop. in. probably. the. WORLD.
It's got everything you need to know about Palestine, books that you will probably never find anywhere else,
in my opinion. and the people are so nice and the shop is small (because big things ALWAYS come in small packages) so nice that the people actually let my roommate use THEIR p.o. box so that she can get packages from the States.  that might just be the definition of "really nice".  when you know of ppl who live and work in occupied land with no address and you let these customers use your own personal business p.o.box for their personal mail from back home thousands of miles away = really nice.

After a lovely interaction and small talk with the shopkeeper, I picked up a book called "Palestine Walks" which trails the story of a man who walks the hills of Palestine and talks both about their beauty and their deletion and it intertwines personal sentiments with modern politics.  When I read personally, i MUST have a pen, because i underline things that catch my attention. at this bookshop i couldnt do that , so i took some notes.  and these were some excerpts that i wanted to share with you :)

Sugar Apple

So this fruit has a name in English and supposedly it is also prominent in South Asia.  It's called Sugar Apple or Apple Custard.  Didn't taste all that apple-y to me

Sugar Apple  wiki will tell you all about it

i cut open a lime and found an orange orange inside

i felt silly buying a lemon from the vegetable market because i kept on thinking about my old apartment and how we never had to buy lemons, we’d just pick them from the trees. the garden is filled with a handful of lemon trees, planted by Georgette, so actually paying money to buy a lemon wasn’t an idea we entertained
so, instead,  i bought a lime at the market.  i always need a bit of sour in my food.
i came home. sliced open the  lime.  and it was an orange! whaaaaa!
 i tasted it, and it tasted like an orange too. it felt like i had cut open an apple and found a strawberry inside.  
this was perhaps my ignorance about different types of oranges. the only types of oranges i’ve ever had were alywas...orange.  

but THIS fruit the one I’m about to talk about next, was an experience! I’ve never seen it, never had heard of it, never tasted it before.  It’s green with spikes and you have to wait till the tip of the spikes turn black which is how you know its ripe enough to eat.
Cutting it open, it’s white and juicy inside.  the flesh of it is white, and hidden inside are small black seeds.  you eat the white fruit. 

i made a huge mess cutting this thing open and trying to get the skin off, and the seeds out and turningthe white inside into mush as the two things were being done.

i ate the fruit.  and it’s such a strange thing when you eat something you’ve never before tasted.  its like your brain goes crazy trying to categorize the taste, the smell with something you DO know.  it like freaks out at the foreigness, not in a bad way, but in a way where you just wait until you ‘figure’ it out.

so my brain did the calculation : this fruit, in arabic called Ishta, tastes like a pineapple and a mango with a hint of jackfruit. and it's in season!

Teaching in Palestine : Article for the Latin Patriarchate

The Latin Patriarchate is who I work for.  They have schools in countries across the Middle East, mostly in Jordan.  I actually visited one of their schools in a village in Jordan, and it was about a thousand times better than the Latin Patriarchate school I work for in Ramallah.

Upon request of writing a reflection as an international teacher teaching English in the West Bank as a part of the Latin Patriarchate, this is a short reflection that I wrote that I'm going to share :

Teaching in Palestine: A Personal Reflection

By: Fahmida Azad

English Instructor, Grades 4 & 5, Al-Ahliyyah College

I was taking a giant risk, as I was packing up my bags during the first days of January at the beginning of this year, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA.  I was taking a blind leap to start life in another part of the world, a part of the world where I knew only one person and I knew that I had a job that I was passionately driving towards: teaching.  I wanted to teach  in Palestine.  And so, I came here.

Looking back on the evening before my flight, at what I knew about Palestine, about teaching in Palestine and living in Palestine, and looking into my heart about what I know now,  10 months after that point in time, now having worked in Ramallah for almost year, I realize the gravity of how this experience has impacted my growth as a human being.  Teaching has taught me more than I could have ever imagined.  And my greatest teachers in these life alternating 10 months, have been my students.

I remember my first day of teaching, walking into a classroom of 27 hyperactive students who had no idea who I was, who could not grasp my foreign accent and who struggled to respond to my requests.  I didn’t speak Arabic and they did not communicate in English.  But we were both in the classroom for 40 minutes together and we had to make it work.  When I think back, I still grimace at the level of frustration and struggle that challenged my students and I, to our core.  For both of us, it was as if we were being dunked head first into a tub of ice cold water.  We didn’t understand each other.  The daily struggles included things such as me reciting simple sentences, which I wanted them to write, to gage the level of their listening comprehension and to see how they write. They didn’t understand why in the world I would ask them such a ludicrous thing, to write sentences that didn’t come from the book.  Our styles simply didn’t mix.  I was asking them to tell me all about their weekend in English, correcting them every time they used the wrong tense or said something absolutely incoherent in English.  Their ears, their learning styles, their classroom expectation of a teacher, were all being molded into something they did not know.

I was simultaneously learning from them. I was studying each student to see what makes them feel encouraged and what makes them tick.  I was trying to understand what they knew, and what they didn’t know.  What I discovered, with each passing month, was that albeit me feeling at times that there were no results coming from their end, that they were trying their hardest as well to learn, as I was to teach.  What I discovered at the end of my first four months, was that students were now able to make small talk with me outside of the classroom, and were trying  their hardest to speak to me in English , not because they were curious about the lesson, but because they were curious about me and who I was, and where I came from.  I discovered very quickly, that the endearing affection that I received from my students cam e straight from their hearts, emotions which were absolutely raw and pure.  And that is what grounded a relationship between me and them, together in the classroom.  A feeling of mutual understanding and affection.  This became the fuel in both of our learning experiences. 

Ten months later, since that first day of teaching, I now feel that it’s difficult to imagine the time when I didn’t know so many little things about each of my students.  After having been invited to countless homes, for lunches and dinners, garnished with incredible hospitality and kindness, I realize how my role as a teacher goes way beyond the classroom.  Families and students have taken me beyond just an English instructor, many of them have embraced me into their lives.

Teaching in Palestine has taught me the value of teaching and being a teacher.  It is not a one dimensional role, nor does it start when I enter the classroom and end when I leave the school.   It is a valuable relationship that certainly starts in the classroom, with a common goal of learning together, but it only goes forward from that point.  The relationship doesn’t end, it simply progresses and changes with time.  I’ve learned resilience, patience and curiosity from the eyes of my students.  And I’ve let them carry me into their world full of both pain and wonder, which has taught me more than I could have ever imagined about my own world.