a few things that upset me

My friend had to go to Jordan today.  Though I have crossed the bridge from the west bank to Jordan many many times, exiting “Israel”, paying a ridiculous exit fee on the way out each time, looking at, soldiers who I consider kids, men and women probably no more than 19 years of age, working in border security carrying guns bigger than they are, I’ve never exited through the Palestinian side.  My foreigner privilege allows me to exit the bridge, by taking  a bus to the foreigner side.  It’s a process that takes a few hours but it's not that big of a deal. Palestinians are separated completely, in completely separate buses and they must go through the ‘palestinian’ side to exit the West Bank and enter Jordan.

So my friend had to go to Jordan today (not a foreigner, a Palestinian).  The soldier looked at his ID.  He didn’t like it.  It was too old.  So he tore it up, and told him, that he has to go back, get another one reissued and then come back.  6 hours later. 

On the day of the Nakba, the clashes at Qalandia were inevitable.  However we saw some new things that we didn’t before, in addition to surrounding Arab countries also responding to the significance of this day.  New kinds of bullets.  My friend looked at the five or so bullets on the ground at Qalandia checkpoint  and got mad at the kid next to her, telling him to stop collecting rubber bullets and to stop playing with them (kids do that).  He looked at her puzzled replying that he didn’t.  The kid told her, no it’s not me, the soldiers are using new kinds of bullets.  ‘ O really?’  she still didn’t believe him.  Another gentleman passed by her to tell her, that it’s true, the kid’s not lying.  They have a new kind of bullet, they throw it, not directly at someone, but they just throw it, and when it hits a hard surface, 5 or 6 bullets shoot out as soon as it hits something, in different directions. 

Thank you state of the arts technology and US tax dollars.

On the day of the Nakba, something else caught people by surprise.  Undercover Israeli policemen in civil suit, one disguised as a Palestinian woman, to ‘catch’ protestors. 

In 2008, a reporting cited an undercover unit like this executing four Palestinian fighters.  At the time of the killing these men were in their cars waiting for their dinners, unarmed.

 “It was the moral equivalent of a team of Palestinians, disguised as Israelis, driving an Israeli car into Tel Aviv and gunning down four off-duty Israeli soldiers”

- (http://electronicintifada.net/blog/maureen/photo-gun-toting-israeli-soldier-disguised-palestinian-woman)

What makes me upset is this.  In which other country would it be ok if you showed up and 'security'  just ripped your passport, instead of respectfully turning you around because something was wrong with your paperwork?  I guess these are the "simple" nuances of living under occupation, when you are the one occupied facing those who are the occupiers, the 'simple' things that you have to put up with. 

What also makes me upset is the twisted reporting of events.  Palestinians being regarded as unruly barbaric people ‘mourning’ the independence of Israel.  The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, those who are still in refugee camps across the Arab world ignored.  What also makes me upset is how the terrorisers are considered the victims and the victims the terrorists.  I’m not sure how an official military unit arresting children, intimidating civil population whether by force or by a lack of liberty, impeding on all their rights and violently traumatizing them daily through humiliation or weapons, are not considered terrorists.  But an angry teenager throwing a stone from the ground by definition, somehow, is a terrorist. 

Ramallah, May 15th, 2011

I was strictly warned yesterday by several people to stay close to the premises of my home.  living so close to the town center, around 12 in the afternoon, i heard massive thumping and drum playing and the heavy sounds of marches from my apartment.  im hearing this after hearing ambulance sirens going in and out of the city, people at qalandiya checkpoint being tear gassed and all, ambulances going back and forth from the checkpoint to the city and back. soldiers in civil suit were also attacking those protesting at the checkpoint.  all of this is described of course as 'light clashes'. as of 11 in the morning there were 3 head injuries of men who had tear gas canisters thrown at their heads.  one woman had gone into shock from the tear gas and had to be helped by medics.

Not being able to resist the urge of stepping into what i'm hearing from my window, seeing pictures online of what is happening literally outside my window, i took my camera and left out the door.  What I saw was an ecstatic energy of kids young and old, adults young and old, waves of flags and banners, music, food, and a stage filled with singers and dabkeh dancers rhythmically stomping their feet to the exuberant beats of traditional Palestinian music , young men piled onto vans, yelling into the bullhorn and making the crowd around the town center cheer, sing along and clap, and young school children scouts march with their drums and musical instruments around the center, with one cheek face painted with the triangular red cutting into the black, white and green stripe.  The Palestinian flag.

An enormous make shift key stood upright near the "Manara", the town center, a circular area marked by 5 lion statues , each lion facing an offshoot street from the center.  The old fashioned key, picturized in all sizes, is a symbol for the right to return, for those who were displaced in the catastrophic events of 1948.

I saw a child sitting peacefully on the shoulders of his father (i'm assuming father) facing the stage in front of him, holding a small key in his hand, a palestinian bannered flag wrapped around his neck, with a t-shirt that said 1948 in the back.  Teenagers littered the tops of buildings, waving massive flags.  When the dabkah music started, they would also dance along.

I am pleasantly surprised and impressed by how events have been organized within Ramallah.  What's happening at the checkpoints between soldiers and civilians is a different story.  Yesterday, 17 year old Milad Said Ayyash, was killed in East Jerusalem by live ammunition, which according to witnesses, came from a settlement private guard.  The funeral procession of the boy, hundreds of Palestinians marching towards Al-Aqsa mosque, was attacked by tear gas.

Within the city, away from soldiers, what I see is a commemoration and a spirit that says that the Nakba is not a memory that has been abandoned. Nor is it something that will be forgotten.

I Speak in Colors

I Speak in Colors

I’m neither white nor black, I’m brown.  And I often talk about brown people.  In fact, when I’m with brown people I talk about us as collective brown people, and when I’m not with brown people, I feel the need to elaborate on the humorous things about brown people which make us special and the cultural things that make us unique.  As a huge fan of Bollywood, I also love to educate people on brown music and demonstrate brown dancing, slightly, by doing the famous ‘pet the dog screw the lightbulb’ move.  Brown people never mind when I say things about brown people, because they get it.  Strangely enough a group of white people were offended when I once used the term ‘brown’, and I didn’t get that because as a brown person , I hold the right to call myself and my people brown.   Living in white America, the black and the brown and the white discourse always come about.  Somehow I’m comfortable with speaking in colors.  Because it gets the point across.  White people are one thing.  Black people are one thing.  Brown people are one thing.  There are other colors too of course, but for now I’m just sticking to these three.  The point is, the colors convey  somewhat of a collective similarity in each  group. 

I am so used to talking about people in colors that I fail to realize how brainwashed I am with the fake man made construct of race, living in America.  How the construct of race and color defines identity and the living experience of daily life in America.  How absolutely unnatural and absurd it is to define your living experience using the colored boundaries.  I didn’t realize how unnatural and absurd speaking, thinking, and living in color was until coming to Palestine and having to look at my closest Palestinian friend in the eye, to struggle coming up with answers to her simple questions “What’s with the colors? Why do you talk about people in colors? It’s so weird”. 

“What color am I?” she asked.  I am about to answer “brown” when I see the look on her face that tells me, that it's a rhetorical question with no sensible answer.  One of her sisters has blonde hair.  What color is she?

I think about my students.  Pierre, one of my 4^th graders, is a white freckled kid with bright red hair.  Palestinian. When I look at him through my American eyes, and think about my perspectives shaped by the exposures in America, nothing about Pierre says “Arab”.  If I saw him in America, I’d classify him as a white kid.  Yara, one of my 5^th graders, is a student of mine who some teachers say looks like she could be my daughter.  Her skin tone and mine are the same and she’s got similar facial features.  She looks brown.  Again, fully Palestinian.  If I saw her in America, I’d classify her as brown and Indian.

In Jericho, there are dark skinned Arabs who are “black” by my American lenses.  As I think about my friend’s quizzical question, and her smirk and slight distaste with my speech, especially coming from me,  from the land of the free, home of the brave, so called “melting pot” United States of America, where supposedly diversity and culture is focal, I struggle to make sense of my mental frames.  And as I reflect on her question “Why do you speak in colors?” the only answer I can come up with is “How can I not?”.  An Asian American’s experience in America is different from a European American’s experience, which is also worlds apart from Black Americans.  I try to tell her that race is something in America that is definitive.  Every application, every survey, every census will ask you about your race.  As  young, educated, minority students or young professionals in America, we feel more inclined to talk about race, to get it out on the open, to feel empowered by our colors or backgrounds or experiences in America to voice those narratives. 

The first time I ever saw a black person was when I moved to the States at the age of nine.  I went to an inner city Brooklyn school, P.S. 152, and there were maybe 3 other students my color and the whole school thought we were related.  Most kids were black.  And I remember distinctly my mother telling me to not play with the black kids.  As a kid, I didn’t understand, because I would think but I’m not white either.  I’m neither white nor black.  And people always seemed to talk about the white kids and the black kids.  Cafeterias would also always be white or black.   So when I finally identified myself as ‘brown’ and finally attended a high school with a significant number of ‘brown’ kids, and found my first ‘brown’ best friend, it was ownership of my minority experience that I had not gotten before.  In a strange way, it took a long time to identify myself as brown American.  Brown meant , people like me.  and American meant white, people not like me.  It took years to reach the point of being comfortable in the color of my skin, my culture and race, and my national citizenship. 

Suddenly all those  discussions with friends, programming and coordinating and sessions of different 'diversity' programs and ‘progressing’ in dialogue about race, and color, and racism and stereotypes in college as a young activist, seem so silly that I feel embarrassed as an American.  Because none of that should actually matter.

 As I reflect on my friend’s question, I start thinking, why do we focus so much on color and race? How truly strange it is that, that fake construct of our identity means so much.  The experiences that we have in our skins is not fake, but the construct of it is very much an intangible and baseless construct.  In Palestine, everyone is Palestinian.  Some are light complexioned, others dark, and most filling the whole spectrum of skin colors.  There are comical stereotypes about the villager or the “falaheen” accent, or the stubbornness of people from Hebron, or the people from Nablus who love to gossip, or people from the north who are extremely conservative.  But no one here talks about color.  Everyone is Palestinian. 

I wonder if we can ever reach that point in America.  And I understand that quiet smirk in my friends voice and eyes  as I hope for America by looking at the example of people living in Palestine.

Thoughts?

A Tuesday Afternoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother's Day and Political Prisoners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i hate checkpoints

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Undignified Day at the Dead Sea

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


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

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

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

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

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

more coming soon..

Basel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli Newspaper

http://duckbar.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/13/13d6f663ea29a5d53193e1bf7af7161abeb22a74.jpg

A picture of a Palestinian child crying as a result of losing family members in the atrocious 2008 Israeli attacks in Gaza is used as the face of "Desperate Hungry Israeli Children".  

A little twisted?  Where does this money go?