existential crisis, take two.

As an instructor I am many things: feminist in politics, casual in presentation, strict in policy, detailed in assignments, sometimes funny, sometimes flip, sometimes focused in discussion. I like to think that I’m a good teacher. I can summarize difficult arguments in brief and clear language. I try to make space for students who wouldn’t normally speak to be heard. Though it is cliche and sentimental, I genuinely believe something powerful can happen in the classroom. I believe that people change how they think, or begin to change how they think about the world. And I generally perceive that change for the better.

This week, I was something in my classroom that I have never explicitly been before. This week, I spoke to my students not as an informed and (inasmuch as possible, objective) instructor, but as a Palestinian who had lived under occupation; as someone who approached the topic from a specific political perspective, with ideas grounded in theory as much as feeling, and with definite opinions regarding action and change. I have never done this. I have never been a Palestinian first. While I am unclear on how to describe that position in concrete language, I suppose the closest I can say is that to my students I stood in for Palestine. For many, I was likely the only Palestinian they had seen in person, or with whom they could converse. For many, I was the only indication that something like Palestine existed, that it was populated by real people, and that it was under occupation.

I feel incredibly conflicted about holding this position. I was clear when I began my sections that I would be happy to pursue our regularly scheduled activity. I was clear that if this was undesirable or unproductive, we could move on. And while it was productive and interesting for many of my students, I could tell that one student in particular was not comfortable, was not OK. While I wouldn’t characterize her posture as hostile, I would say that it was defensive. Now, 24 hours later, I still can’t shake the feelings of vulnerability and anxiety I felt in the classroom. What a curious effect of oppression, that in acknowledging your own personhood, you might feel guilty. Guilty to take a “biased” position, guilty to claim space, guilty to make those who would support your oppression feel at all uncomfortable. I know that this guilt is obviously complicated by the fact that I am her instructor, and we exist in a relationship that is unequal. And while I prefaced and reiterated multiple times that I was speaking that day primarily as a person with a clear position, rather than facilitating discussion and underlining concepts with no position other than conveyor of course materials, I feel so…icky. Did I do something wrong? Was this the correct course of action? Should I have stuck to the lesson plan? Isn’t it OK sometimes to be honest, to be me, to be Palestinian? I know that neutrality is a farce. I know that even when I play instructor, my personhood and politics don’t disappear, but neither are they as explicit as they were yesterday. I am afraid that I have alienated her. I am afraid that I was too transparent. I am afraid that the room will be altered irrevocably after this. I am afraid of my anger at feeling afraid in the first place. I am afraid I am not cut out for this job. I am afraid that now that I have been a Palestinian first, I will not be able to lie to myself– I was one always, throughout all things. I am afraid to be Palestinian. I am afraid to be.

Fall Break (Down)

All three smoke alarms were going off at once. I didn’t know I *had* three smoke alarms. I’d cranked up the oven to bake biscuits, which need high heat to rise properly, and the heat must have been too much. Every time I fanned one off, another would start up until I was sure my head might burst. The cats were hiding, but couldn’t escape the sound no matter where they went. In the cacophony, the only choice was to take them all down. Then, blessed silence, but for the ringing in my ears, which eventually faded.

I had meant to stop being so maudlin on this forum. All this melancholy, melodramatic obsessive shit–I tire of it. I tire of myself, when I can’t shake it off and move on. I just want to be happy. I really do, but there’s the smoke alarms, the crazy parents, the unrelenting feeling of displacement, the loneliness. All these things combine to be more than me–shoving and pushing until I’m back where I started, talking endlessly about my feelings. I brood. I huff. I cry. I rant. I drown myself out, even as I try to stop speaking.

My mother called me. She wants to know about my brother’s sex life. These are things I deliberately don’t talk to my brother about. In fact, I avoid talking to my brother about many things, because I am constantly being mined for information. My mother calls me, 3 out of 4 times, to see if I know something she doesn’t. It’s awful, playing double agent between your brother and parents. They think he’s lost, and want to forcibly show him out of the forest. I sympathize, but I hate making him feel watched. I hate treating him like a child who can’t make his own mind, who needs to prodded into what’s “best” for him. They hate his girlfriend, and they want him to leave her. He works 70-90 hours a week, sends her money so she doesn’t have to work. I’m not crazy about the situation either, but I won’t make him choose between me and her. They will. They do. It breaks me. And even as I promise I will never make my love for him conditional, I know I’m guilty by association to both parties. My mother sees it as taking sides. If I take his, I’ll be out, too. If I take hers, I lose him. In some ways I already have, our closeness precariously wavering as we both avoid saying or doing something that can be traced, exploited. My baby brother. My beautiful brother. I think I failed him.

Whenever someone hurts me, I find a way to make their failure mine. It’s part narcissism, part control freak. If I had set the proper parameters, if I had done something better, smarter, differently–I wouldn’t feel hurt. If I control the source, I control the feeling. I can walk it off. I’ve been trying to make my way around my hurt feelings for two weeks. It hasn’t worked yet. The tenderness around my heart? It’s still there. Squeezing in my chest as I do the most mundane or elaborate tasks. What should have been something brief, beautiful and easy cut me deeper than I want to acknowledge. I don’t want to believe I let myself be so stupid, so open again. So I replay the moment over in my head, I replay the fallout every time I’m home, and I want to run screaming. Out of the house, out of the bar, out of the city. It follows me across county lines, and I bring the despair home, where I am already more isolated than I care to be.

I have friends, amazing, kind and supportive friends. I have sisters, smart and strong and loyal. I have so much, it feels greedy to want more. But I do–guilty even as I type it–erasing lines that sound too sad, too needy. I want so much my heart feels cavernous–my voice echoing so loud it’s a fire alarm, a siren’s song. I’ll swim until I drown. She’ll sing until I go down.

strange conditions

i’ve been apartment shopping. i have neither the time nor money to make a move at the particular moment, but the craigslist’s offerings are so enthusiastic: indoor pool! free parking! laundry on site! i move every year and this is the first time i’ll have lived in the same space for more than one. it’s nice not to pack up my things, recruit my brother to lift the heavy stuff, pay for a moving truck. still, i feel itchy and dissatisfied. i begin to resent the second bedroom, agonize over the screen doors, antagonize the cats. they’re bored here, too. on nights like this, and so many others, i long for my flint home. the comfort and capacity i feel there, the sense of self that’s so grounded, it can also feel like being buried (on a bad day). i wonder if i’ve made the right decision, moving here. if i should go back, or if this longing is just another way to distance myself from the things i don’t want a part of here, or perhaps don’t want a part of me.

the semester is starting, too, and with it all kinds of fresh promise. new classes, new professors, new friends, new work. i’ve been in school so long i can’t help but feel a heady rush about fall. i buy new clothes, admire pumpkins. i’m filled with ambition about my work: all the things i’ll learn, what i could accomplish. to my dismay, i find myself arrogant about my abilities, my intellect–wanting to prove it to other people, perhaps by taking more classes or saying just the right thing. this posturing is absurd, and frankly, i blame it on people who consistently comment on my competence, or my astuteness. i don’t want to disappoint. and i want to be liked. it really is like middle school all over again.

this weekend, i visited with a friend and we canned tomatoes at his parents’ house. amidst the roiling boil and slippery skins of tomatoes, his parents, who treat me like their own daughter, were asking about why my father left Palestine, why we returned to the US after moving back. what can i say? my father cares, too much, about our well-being. he tries, too hard, to give us everything. and he would sacrifice all to do it. so we moved. and then we moved again, because in his mind, this would keep us safe. eventually, this would make us happy. my father is proud of me these days, following his unfulfilled footsteps of higher learning. he can legitimately excuse my absence from his home because i attend school far enough away. when i moved back from ohio, my mother told me it would be better to stay there than come back if i wouldn’t live with them. they froze me out of the family for the better part of two years when i did come back, live alone.

sitting at my kitchen table now, in my lonely apartment, i don’t regret the choices to leave. it hurts to know how conditional love is, how it can be withdrawn for infractions minor and major in scope. it hurts to know how deeply i’ve internalized the desire to please, to help, to do something to counter the blame of my real and imagined failures. to compensate, always, for my shortcomings. maybe i could go someplace new, where no one knows me well enough to see those ugly things, where i can start over, try again to do it right, to make decisions and present a person that doesn’t cringe at herself so often. but i’m caught between my given and chosen families, my school and personal life–they all collapse into eachother so that i feel stuck, always supposed to be here and there at the same time, always neglecting something, giving not enough to everything. i feel myself peeling away, layer after layer of me sent to stand proxy. i stay, but the person i face is shrinking, hollowing, endlessly diminishing by halves. in practice, invisible; in theory, infinite.

no. i don’t regret leaving. but staying gets harder and harder.

Boom Goes the Dynamite

When my cousin Rula comes to visit Palestine from Amman, she convinces me to attempt to cross the mahsoom, or checkpoint again, without a visa or tasareeh in order to visit Jerusalem. That first time, we attempted entry from the Beit Lehem point. This time, Rula and I go up to Beit Lehem, and take a bus that will take us to a mahsoom in Beit Jala, a neighboring city. This checkpoint is called Mahsoom al Nafuck (insert joke here). Nafuck apparently means bridge, and so there is. The bus costs 6 shekels, and pulls aside at the far left lane of the mahsoom. As the bus pulls off, my stomach is pulled in a hundred directions–into itself in anxiety, into my throat like bile, into my knees like shock. We disembark, and stand behind a guardrail in queue while a soldier searches the bus. Meanwhile, a second soldier gestures us forward and asks for our identification and paperwork. There is only one person ahead of me, an adolescent boy with a blue howwiyyah (ours are green). The soldier keeps the boy’s howwiyyah but indicates he should return to the bus.

When I hand the soldier my passport, she speaks to me in English, asks me where I’m from. I tell her Michigan, and she repeats the word, curiously, like a novelty. She looks at my picture, back at me. Without checking for a visa she hands me the passport, and tells me to have a nice day. I re-board the bus, in disbelief. Behind me, the soldier looks over Rula’s paperwork and passport. She has Jordanian citizenship, and was granted a visa in order to attend the consecration of another Shomali cousin, William, into Catholic bishop-hood (bishopness? bishopity?). The soldier sends Rula back to the bus, but keeps her passport. Rula sits next to me while the rest of the passengers are screened, each presenting a blue howwiyyah, each returning to the bus without it. A third soldier takes the stack of IDs and Rula’s passport to look them over. When he sees the Jordanian emblem, he calls Rula off the bus, and informs her that she cannot enter, even though she has a visa. He claims that this mahsoom is only for people with blue howwiyyat, ie, Arab Israelis. The guard who let me onto the bus gestures me off, and we are both sent away.

The thing is, Mahsoom al Nafuck is not only for Arab Israelis; people pass through on visas daily. The bus driver, with whom we had consulted regarding my visa-less passport, was sure Rula would pass through without fuss, and if anyone was sent back, it’d be me. Instead, for reasons unbeknown to me Rula was turned around, and I, the only passenger who was sent back to the bus with her identification, was asked to leave after being cleared. I can only assume that they saw us sitting with one another, and assumed guilt by association.

The Nafuck, unlike Mahsoom Beit Lehem, allows individual cars to pass, so there aren’t any taxis waiting around for passengers. It also does not function as a bus stop. So Rula and I walk back to the road the bus came in on, approximately half a mile from the checkpoint. We wait there for a taxi. Several white ones pass before we realize that white taxis will not stop; they are Israeli companies, with the yellow Israeli tags. My mood, which is already dangerously morbid, drops a bit more, and I match my internal fuming with external. Lighting the cigarette my hands shake, and I barely manage it. I’m so angry, so frazzled, I don’t even realize I’ve dropped the pack until a yellow taxi stops, and we ride a few minutes. By then it’s too late to retrieve them.

The other passengers in the cab are both men, and they are douches. They laugh with condescension when we get in, and I’m at a loss as to the hilarity: is it because we are Mahsoom rejects? Is it because I was smoking in public? Is it because we are two women, on the side of the road, at a loss? I can’t find it funny, though maybe, sometime later, I will. The cab takes us to my other priestly cousin’s church, where we get a ride from my Uncle George. Rula elects to go to Mahsoom Beit Lehem, but I am furious, and can’t bear to be turned around again. I curse in multiple languages, with multiple registers. My mobility is at the whim of another person on both a macro and microscopic level.  I hate relying on other people for transporation. I hate feeling caged in. I hate feeling like a second class citizen. Because I’m Arab in Israel. Because I’m a girl in Palestine.

When I get home, I retell the story, over and over again, to my family and random other people who want to know what happened. I wish I could stop. I wish they wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t make me repeat it.Each time I do, my gestures become bigger, my voice louder, my emotions…I can’t. Everything spills over, and I sob on my bed in my room, the room I had as a girl, in which I had doubtless cried a million times. I can’t catch my breath, my mascara bleeds into my eyes, so I cry harder, and my body shakes shakes shakes. Even here,  so little control. I ask myself how people live like this, how they survive this dehumanization daily. I am angry that I know what it feels like, angry that I know why people put up with it. Angry at myself for forgetting, angry at myself for forcefully remembering. I think, if I lived here, I might die. And then I am angry that I am too weak to stay and fight, and angry that I dare judge or question the people who do.

I gather myself to go out onto the veranda and have another cigarette. The rhythmic inhale, exhale calms me down for a moment, but midway in I am crying again. Quietly now, my quivering confined to my face, my shoulders shuddering randomly. I think, what now? What next?

hot flashes

Beit Sahour is having some kind of heat wave. Today the actual temperature is 102 degrees, and it feels hotter outside. Here, the houses are built to keep cool in the summer, and warm in the winter, so we go without AC. It’s actually fine, if you don’t move from under the high speed ceilings fans. Yesterday and the day before I made the mistake of leaving this haven, to visit the Church of the Nativity in Beit Lehem and Ramallah respectively.

***

I’ve been inside the cool walls of the Church before, crouching low to enter; high ceilings add grace to the wide, square belly of the cathedral. Ahead the altar is ornate, trimmed with gold while opulent light fixtures with red glass hang low, leading up the center aisle. Off to the right is a small room with sculptures and framed painting of saints. There are two stands filled with sand, where one can place and light a candle in prayer. Though long from my religiosity, these kinds of rituals soothe me, so I light two: first for our dead, a second for our living. Instead of a left wall, a semi-circular, steep stairwell leads to a second small altar, constructed around a star, the spot where Jesus was supposedly born (I don’t suspect the birth per se, but merely its location). Still, the room is thick with age and incense–the feeling of many old churches. I kneel in front of it, belief notwithstanding, since it feels wrong not respect what has driven and divided centuries of people. The marble is cool and hard beneath my knees, and I incline my head lower and say a short prayer from muscle memory. I cross myself, too, from habit, before standing to leave from another semi circle of now ascending stairs on the opposing side. These stairs lead to another room of artistically rendered saints, and back to the main cavern. Lubnah’s kids are supposed to be there, but they have disappeared.

Outside the light is dazzling. I hear a wedding party approach: the bride is moving slowly as a crowd of her family sings folk songs as they usher her into the church. I can barely see her amidst the crowd, and my first thoughts are whimsical. I too know these songs, love them. I want to join in, but not only am I stranger to the family, I appear as a stranger to the land, and wouldn’t want to intrude. My second thoughts are practical: she must be melting in this heat. The kids are sitting, waiting on a stone bench next to the entrance. We maneuver out of the square, past the party, and head into Beit Lehem’s old city (which was not called old when I lived here) to search for postcards and cold drinks.

***

We take tareeq wad il nar to get to Ramallah. The yellow van we ride in is newer than Saalih’s, and the driver seems to be as well, so the curves of the valley become even more exaggerated. Sitting between my sister and a stranger, my body leans side to side with each turn. The hour long trip around Jerusalem costs 18 shekels; luckily, this van has AC, so we arrive in decent condition. Ramallah positively bustles with energy. Shopkeepers stand in their doorways, inviting patrons in with “itfadaloo, ahla wa sahla.” When they peg us as foreigners, they lower their pitch with a slick “welcome, welcome.” Little boys with bubble gum walk close to your side, trying to get your attention, make a sale. They bless your father, your mother. One asked that God keep my husband safe. I give him a shekel for irony’s sake.

We stop at the Stars and Bucks for something to drink, for which I am eternally grateful. The sign, the logo, the colors are so deceptive. I love the complete disrespect for copyright here. I especially love it because Starbucks, in addition to brewing bad coffee and charging for Wi-Fi, contributes to Zionist campaigns in Israel. Here, on the other side of the wall, Stars and Bucks does a kind of Starbucks drag, and my Butlerian heart celebrates. After our cold coffee break, we meet up with Lubnah’s cousin, Abeer, and she takes us to a couple of specialty shops before the heat conquers–we plan to visit with a couple more of Lubnah’s cousins later, but kill time first by heading to an outdoor restaurant.

Sangria’s is a lush garden with a fully stocked bar; I can only assume it shares a kind of heritage with Eden. We sit in the shade, at a table under a massive raspberry tree, and each time someone picks a berry, a handful of riper ones fall. We eat fruit from the trees, Abeer and I order the only Palestinian beer available(on the menu and elsewhere) Taybeh, on draft. It’s crisp and cooling and delicious. The kids order food that the adults mooch. Marie, per her custom, befriends ever male working person in the joint, and they play an extended game of hide and seek, where the staff hides Marie’s new toy, and Marie cons them into revealing its location rather than searching in the traditional manner. In the garden the temperature slowly cools, and I am sad to leave it. I am sure it’s gorgeous at night, full of football fans watching the Cup, cheering and smoking argiylah.

We visit with Aamer and Yara for a bit in their 4th floor apartment. It’s a surreal living space, decorated in minimalist modern walnut furniture, splashed with textiles in bright, folky designs. They’re a sweet couple, albeit read as the black sheep, because Aamer is Christian and Yara Muslim. He’s a cartoonist, she works at a non-profit, and they don’t have children (so rare).  Their lives let me imagine, for a brief minute, that I too could live here. Chic apartment in the city, a lifestyle just outside the norm but not so far as to be foreign. Yara asks me if I would consider moving back, and the illusion breaks. I don’t think I could. I don’t know how to be myself here. But I also tell her anything is possible; my intentions are more often upended than not.

Aamer agrees to watch Marie and Jacob for a few hours while Abeer, Yara, Lubnah, Rachel and I visit Yasser Arafat’s grave. His mausoleum is stone and glass, guarded by a number of armed soldiers. Behind it you can see the compound where he was under house arrest in 2002. Arafat had wanted, as I understand, to be buried in Jerusalem, but was not allowed to do so by Israel. Instead, he was buried in Ramallah, with a spotlight pointed toward the city. That, too, Israel ended. Now, a sign outside the memorial reads “Jerusalem: 14.63 km.” Like Arafat, we are all so close, and yet inexplicably far.  I traveled 9640.94km from Detroit to Beit Lehem, and can’t make it another 15.

After Arafat, we visit Mahmoud Darwish’s grave. There is significantly less fanfare. In place of Arafat’s three bright Palestinian flags at full mast, is one tattered and faded one. The grave looks old, though it’s only been in place for 2 years, as though it hasn’t been cared for very well. My sentimentality is in overdrive, and maybe because death has been so close this trip, I mourn for Darwish in a way I can’t for Arafat. here, I think, is the truth. Someone and something beautiful now mostly forgotten, mostly in disrepair. We should all be so lucky, to be so loved, and maybe lucky, too, to be left in peace from armed guards and frustrated expectations.

We go from Darwish back to Aamer, pick up the kids to have ice cream at Abeer’s parents’ house. The ice cream is locally made, the name of the brand, “Baladna” means our country. The ice cream is sweet and tangy but my mood grows subdued and bitter. Baladna is a another kind of parody, a joke at our own expense. To move from one so called Palestinian territory to another there are Israeli checkpoints, even though we cannot, are not, allowed to pass through Israeli ones. The guards don’t stop our car, but I know they do stop. I know they do harass, beat, abuse, incarcerate other travelers. Palestine is a constant state of house arrest, and now, an adult, I can’t even escape into hallucinations and nose bleeds as I did as a child when we faced literal house arrests.

Ahead of us, wad il nar at night is embers, mostly black and sooty with flecks of light. I can’t see the path around me, so the movement of the car is more like a roller coaster now than it was in the day. Who knows what turns or twists lie ahead? Who knows our future?

***

Today, I am camped out on my bed, mainlining fluids and slathering my travel worn feet with lotion. My parents are doing the funeral circuit, since a second family member passed the day after mourning rituals finished for the first. They are bored with death, which is both cruel and understandable. The latest, Madeleine Salsa, died with her eyes open which signifies, in superstition, that another death is coming. Who knows what Madeleine saw? Who knows our future?

israel unsettled

From the Bethlehem area, there are approximately three checkpoints into Israel. My sister calls everything past the checkpoints “il daakhil”, the inside–inside the wall. Lubnah won’t call it Israel, and give the occupation a legitimate name. Portions of the wall have been under construction since 1994, but really got underway in 2002. It is enormous, intimidating. I suppose that’s the intent, but some aren’t so scared. Some treat the wall as a canvas for the feelings of a caged people: messages of hope, peace, banality even, are everywhere.

the wall in beit lehem

i want my ball back.

I can’t tell you how I feel about Israel. I can’t claim I would see all the people who have come here since 1948 be uprooted. My people were uprooted, and we’re still a little miffed. It would be silly to pretend I am not angry about the illegal settlements. It would be naive to pretend that the brutality Palestinians experience at the hands of the Israeli government doesn’t continue to shock and infuriate me.

Today, my mother Mariam, my sister Lubnah, my two nieces Rachel and Marie, my nephew Jacob, and I attempted to enter Jerusalem. The morning is lazy: my parents go to church, come home for coffee on the Veranda. By noon, the sun is at its peak, and the air sizzles with it. Lubnah comes to pick us up in her car, and we all pile in, plus my father, so he can take the car home after we have been dropped off. We wind up the hills to Beit Lehem (Bethelehem), and park just short of the checkpoint’s entrance. We past fruit vendors as we begin the path inside.

walking to the security screenings

I feel claustrophobic and criminal as we ascend to the security screenings. We are attempting to enter only on our US passports. When you cross the jisr from jihit al ajanib, they stamp your passport with a visa that allows you inside  Israel. As Arabs, no such visa exists. Arabs instead apply for tasareeh (the Arab version). We are attempting to enter without tasareeh, partially from ease, for the application for these kinds of papers is time consuming, and not always successful. Since there is no religious holiday upon us, our chances of receiving tasareeh are diminished. We are also attempting this in defiance, subterfuge. I cannot, nor will I ever, believe that Palestinians shouldn’t be allowed into Jerusalem freely. It is home to three major religions; a part of my heritage.

As girls, Lemma and I passed the checkpoints everyday to go to school in Jerusalem. The system was less elaborate then, before the wall, but still frightening. Soldiers with guns would smirk at us, two young girls alone, and leer at Lemma before allowing us through. I remember their cruel faces, and try to remember that they are doing a job assigned to them, but it’s hard to remain fair when I recall our flushed faces, Lemma’s hand clenched tensely around mine as we underwent scrutiny.

Today the first soldier passes us through without incident. We flash our passports and she waves us along. A tiny seed of hope flourishes. The second screening involves a metal detector, and we pass here too. By now, we are growing excited. Perhaps, this once, fate is on our side. We arrive at the final gate. An Israeli soldier stands guard, and a second inside a booth demands our passports. She checks them for visas, finding none. She and the other soldier in blue are confused: we have American citizenship, but no visa. In my head, I am chuckling. I can tell she thinks there is some kind of clerical error, and is prepared to send us through without. After all, we are with children, and I look foreign enough for all of us. What threat could three women and three children pose?

Before we can pass, a third soldier arrives. He is wearing green, and speaks to us in Arabic, though we feign ignorance. He is insistent on visas, and seems as confused as the others. Finally, after 3 minutes, a light bulb goes off above his head. He says to his companions something, though I only understand “Palestina. ” He begins to ask for our IDs (howwiyat). Had I been at the head of the line, I would have handed him my MI driver’s license, but I am not, and Lubnah stands silently, her face a mask of confusion. She gives the man the kid’s birth certificates instead. But this soldier is hip to her game, and insists “al howwiyah low samahti”, the IDs if you would. She tires, I think, recognizes the gig is up, hands him her howwiyah. He takes it and smirks, says something to the others even I can tell is derisive, lacking a knowledge of Hebrew.

He pulls Lubnah aside, speaks to her alone. Later she tells us he has essentially threatened her. If she goes quietly, he will not have to alert the police about her attempted deception. During the conversation my sister’s posture is casual, she leans against the turnstile and regards him coolly, unphased by his threats. He tells her that he is just like us, and to not make trouble, or else he will request a police escort.  If she applies for tasareeh, he is sure she will get them. But he is not like us. He stands there with the privilege of his uniform, backed by armed forces. If he has pulled her aside to save face in front of the other guards, that kindness is nullified by his threat of her safety.

We turn to leave, and Marie, 7,  can’t understand why we haven’t gotten through. Neither can I. In that moment, I hate him. His stupid mustache, his green uniform. We are demoralized and humiliated. I can’t tell if beneath her glasses my sister is crying, and I am glad we kept sunglasses on. They are tiny masks, a little defense against the wall, metaphorical and literal, we have come up against. We didn’t actually expect to get in, but the confirmation that we are not allowed access to our own history hits hard. My father has waited outside, so we make the long journey, back through the barred walkway to the car. We try to lighten the mood by cracking jokes, as we are wont to do, but underneath our smiles the sadness sets in. Lubnah announces that we will apply for tasareeh on Thursday, the day designated for residents of Beit Sahour. The set of her mouth speaks determination, and I am proud of her resilience. We will return to Jerusalem yet.

gilded girlhood memories

My mother’s house (a designation my father finds troubling) has two living rooms. Many Arab homes have this more formal space, used to entertain guests, or generally indicate a family’s wealth. When we were little, my mother took this second space very seriously, perhaps because our means were meager at the time.  The Salon (as it was called) occupied the largest room of the house. My grandfather, my father’s father, built this house, and the Salon is one of its most elegant elements: the outer wall is rounded, and features four windows. There is a separate entrance to it from the Veranda (porch/balcony). It’s capacious interior held all of our birthday dances, as well as the pre-ceremony wedding celebration for my sister Lubnah. I see myself in that room as I was at 14, 14 or so years ago. I am wearing a short pastel floral dress with a fitted bodice, a skirt that flares out. The sweetheart neckline is laced white, my tan shoulders a stark contrast. My body is the body of what I imagine is an “average” 14-year-old girl: tiny waist, small shapely breasts, trim arms and calves. As anyone here could tell you, I was a vision, an angel, a toy doll.

The round room (what I have really always thought of as the ballroom) is no longer the Salon. Stripped of its grandeur, the ballroom feels naked and lonely to me. Inside the dancing ghosts of that girl and her family and friends trip over a broken coffee table, a storage cabinet, three twin size foam mattresses no longer in use. Now the Salon is a boxy room with one window off the side of the informal living room. It’s become a utilitarian space for guest overflow, a rare occurrence these days, where everyone is too busy getting by to visit, and we are all grown up, too big for birthday dances. I can’t say I miss the Salon’s opulence, but I miss what it seemed to symbolize. The celebration of my sister’s marriage (she remains the most stunning bride I’ve ever seen), the ignorant happiness of my girlhood.

To employ what by now is probably an obvious metaphor, I can’t help but feel about my body like I do the ballroom. Here I am, creeping up on 28, and my body can’t begin to approximate the girlish version of myself. I don’t miss that girl’s insecurities, for even then I was told I was too fat, and I believed. I don’t miss how she took her peer’s cruelty as her due. I don’t miss how she played down her intelligence as to not overstep boundaries with her friends. Still though, amidst all that tension, I was beautiful in a way I will never again be. Wasn’t I? Dredging it up, I can’t exactly recall. I don’t remember feeling pretty, but I remember being called fat. I ran with the popular kids, had a boyfriend five years older than me. Surely that means something?

When I greet folks who haven’t seen me in the last ten years, when my weight really increased, and I became officially, undeniably fat, they are shocked to see the body I have now. Some of them comment on it.  Lubnah’s mother in law, for example, told me to lay of the Kanafa (a kind of pastry) my first night here, so I wouldn’t get fat. When I told her it was a little late for that, she replied that I could still lose some weight during my trip. Hadn’t I been a beauty queen before, she said? She was so hopeful, I found myself bereft of a reply. Some say nothing, though I can see the surprise in their faces. Maybe they too are nostalgic for a better, thinner me. A more beautiful me. A more Arab me?

My fatness combined with my nose ring, I’m guessing, nail the final coffin in my foreignness. Or perhaps more broadly, my apparent lack of concern about my fatness combined with the way I present my body (piercings and cleavage included) indicate that I am no longer “bint al balad”, a daughter of the country. But then, I never was: our family was always the American family. It bolstered my adolescent popularity, marked me as an exotic entity. Even strangers can read it. I walk down the street with my niece, and can hear people speaking about us, speculating in Arabic about our origins, my dress, my nose ring. I speak to shop owners in fluent Arabic, pronouncing all its unique sounds, and they are befuddled. They ask if I am from the Arabs in Israel, and I reply I am from the Arabs in America.

Truthfully, being here takes me back to my girlishness, all that hope and fear but bottled in a much larger body. Standing in front of familiar strangers, I gather my will against their memory of my body, my identity, try to remember and be myself as I am, faltering enough to grant them psychic access. Being in the ballroom makes me long for the intimacies I shared with my friends and classmates of yesteryear, intimacies that distance and neglect on all our behalves have left dry and wilted. Standing in the shadow of my sister’s marriage, and the heteronormativity that’s as everyday as the occupation, makes me long for the girl who knew she wanted a husband, and children, a nice Arab life in this lovely Arab town. I find myself wondering about Rami J, what he’s doing, if he’s married. I shake the ghosts, as best I can, reconfiguring my body into its strength, its modest beauty. I think of the many rewarding, life altering friendships I have, and know that I am lucky to be shaped and blessed by the traces of those former connections. I tell myself that if I do run into Rami, I will at least kiss him this time. Both the girl and her contemporary deserve as much.

Traversing the Borderlands

I won’t keep you in suspense: I had the cigarette using the related concepts of academic obligation and deception. That second night in Amman, I explain to my uncle that I have some reading to do (Cruising Utopia) and would like to do it outside. Night has fallen, so we rig up a light above the old metal swing which is sort of in the front of the house, but down a few steps, effectively outside the visual range of the living room windows. I light up and crack open Munoz. He’s never sounded better.

smoker's paradise. seat cushions not included.

The next day, I leave Ammo’s house at 11am to make the journey to Beit Sahour (land of my well spent adolescence). The trip ought to take approximately five hours, though I make it in a timely seven point five. That’s over half the flight to Jordan from DTW for considerably less distance. First, my uncle drops me off at the taxi station, where authorized vehicles authoritatively drop you off at the “jisr” or bridge. It’s called a bridge because it links two lands, but it’s essentially an elaborate system of border controls. I don’t have photos from this (alas) because apparently, the governments don’t take kindly to you snapping photos of shady behavior. Fearing confiscation, I kept my camera to myself.

In order to cross from Jordan to Palestine, I must pass muster for three governments: Jordanian, Israeli, Palestinian, in that order. I entered Jordan on my US passport, and attempt to cross the Jordanian border from “jihit al ajanib” which basically means “the foreigner’s side”. This is not a joke. Non Arabs go to one side of the building, and Arabs toward the other. So, I haul my 4 bags to the first window at the Jordanian border where a fresh faced young man smiles shyly at my English, but pronounces my name correctly. He stamps some papers, slides them through to the next window, where a less-fresh-faced older man also pronounces my name correctly, but makes me feel as though my mere presence has caused him a serious case of indigestion. He not so quietly, not so kindly informs me that as a Palestinian, I cannot cross the Jordanian border on my US passport. This confuses me, since I came in the airport that way. When I ask for an explanation, he comes out of his booth, around the side of the window, lights up his cigarette, and says “Because. That’s the rule.”

So, I am escorted by a luggage handler old enough to be my grandfather over to the Arab side. At this window, another man informs me that since I have a US passport, I shouldn’t be on the Arab side and tells me I need to go to jihit al ajanib. At this point, sweat is dripping down my face and I’m pissed. These tools are looking at me like I’m an idiot, I feel like an idiot, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be able to get in to Palestine at all. I explain what’s happened, and someone who didn’t have a stick so far up his ass it was coming out of his mouth, told me that he can let me into Palestine as an Arab because I have a Palestinian ID card, but I will not be allowed to leave unless I get a Palestinian passport. He claims he is only treating me as Israel would, and while that’s the case, the other more nefarious purpose for this is to strip as many Palestinian refugees of their Jordanian citizenship as possible. You can’t hold two Arab passports, anymore. I don’t really want the Jordanian, mind you, but I figure this is a bad show of inter Arab support, and it will matter to my father, who has faithfully paid membership dues to a Farmer’s Union in Jordan for years, and relies on the retirement funds he receives from them each month. If he’s stripped of his Jordanian citizenship for a mostly fictive Palestinian one, he will no longer be eligible for those monies.

Carrying on: Stick-free fills out my paperwork, slides me to a second window where another soldier is also confused by my US passport and howwiyyah (Palestinian ID card), I direct him to consult with Stick-Free. He stamps some things, writes some things, slides me back to window one, where a third (fourth?) man looks at my documents, and tells me to have safe travels. Stick-free reminds me of my obligation to get a Palestinian passport, directs me to the buses for phase two, and smiles. Amidst this room of assholes, his smile is less creepy, and I am temporarily thankful. Yes. They are jerks. Yes. My hair is a mess. But he could have been like Indigestion from jihit al ajanib. I can’t tell if I’ve experienced genuine kindness here, or if I am so uncomfortable around the others that any scrap of decency is enough.

I board the bus that will take us to the Israeli checkpoint. I am sitting next to a woman who lives in Jerusalem, recognizes my surname. She tells me I have failed to secure a bus ticket and vouchers for my bags, which I hadn’t known were necessary. I hobble off the bus, meet the driver who sends me back on the bus, tells me the tickets aren’t necessary, and will just take cash. Back on the bus I stub my toe against the step, tripping onto the stairs. My face reddens like it’s high school and I gather what little grace I have to get back into my seat next to the woman with the drawn-on-eyebrows. Behind me the bus driver snickers and says “saabooki fil 3ain” which literally means “they touched you in the eye” and figuratively means that people were talking about you and jinxed you. I can’t tell if he’s doing sarcasm here, or admiring how great my butt must have looked in my leggings when I fell.

The bus to Israel’s checkpoint waits outside its gates for over an hour. There is one bus of Arabs ahead of us, and two buses of non-Arabs. I’ll let you guess who went first. When we finally get inside the gates, and off the bus, we send our bags to be scanned, are given vouchers in their place. We stand in line for security, which admittedly, makes the TSA look like overachievers. The Arab man who looks over my passport and hawwiyyah tells me to go in peace, and I stupidly think I’m done. I go inside to find another set of lines. One for people living in Palestine, a second for people visiting. I go to the visitors line. The woman working the counter says nothing to me as she takes my things. After a few moments of aggravated typing and sighing, she hands me back my documents, and moves me to a final window. I hand over my documents, again, and she barely glances at them, or me. I move on to find my bags, ignore the line for customs, exchange dollars for shekels, buy another bus ticket, smoke a cigarette, and proceed to phase three of the inspection.

We board a bus that will take us to “al istiraha” which translates into “the resting place” but is nothing of the sort. The istiraha is merely another port of authorized vehicles, that for a fee, will transport us to the various cities of Palestine. Before we istareeh/rest we stop at the Palestinian border. We’re allowed to remain on the bus while a man takes our hawwiyyat (plural of hawwiyyah) inside for checking. He’s gone for about 20 minutes before returning to distribute them like I would return papers after class: calling out our names before handing us the grade. All but two pass. Two men disembark and the bus moves on. At the Istiraha (and in the Arab world I know at large) queues are not generally taken seriously. Consequently, I am one of the last people of the bus, and a baggage handler has placed my luggage on a cart. I tell him where I’m going, and he escorts me to a driver who will take me to “bab il daar”, the front door of the house.  My driver is named Saalih, and I love him immediately. He tells me to take the front seat while we wait for a few more passengers, offers me a cigarette, and tells me about how he’s driven this route for over 15 years. He asks me about America, and we exchange jokes. His eyes are animated when he speaks, and when I tell him he can hop a ride to the US in my suitcase, I almost mean it. He’s so wire-y he could probably fit.

The other passengers seated behind us join in the conversation from time to time, long enough for me to recognize one as a boy my girlfriends and I had crushes in the previously mentioned well-spent youth. In our friend group there were at least 3 Ramis. Rami J I “dated” on and off. My best friend at the time, Dalia, used Rami S to make her boyfriend jealous. And Rami A everyone agreed had the most beautiful naturally lined eyes we’d ever seen, but was dumb as rock. This remains true. I giggled like that girl when I realized who he was, though I don’t think he ever did place me. Still, he came in handy later when as we traveled the long way to the West Bank through Wad il Naar (Valley of Fire) since we weren’t allowed through Jerusalem, the engine in a car ahead of us caught on fire and held up traffic. Rami slid out of our van to redirect traffic around the smoking vehicle. And I’m not ashamed to admit: I have made several jokes about flaming cars in Wad il Naar since then. What I lack in originality I make up for with charm.

Wad il Naar is hilly and winding. The paths are narrow and really only allow one car at a time. Of course, cars are traveling in both directions, so maneuvering past one another is an act of faith and physics I assume only seasoned drivers understand. Saalih breezes through, around massive trucks and cargo cars of cows. I come to Jesus six or seven times looking out the window at the distance we could fall, and Saalih quietly tells me we’re almost through. He is a king. A god among men.

Out of the valley, Beit Sahour is only 15 or so minutes more. The van is humming with anticipation, and I am the first to be dropped off. It’s out of Saalih’s way to drop me off first, but he knows I have had a long day, and that I haven’t been back for 11 years. Saalih is true to his word, parking the van directly in front of our house. My nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and parents swarm around me. In the buzz I barely get to wave Saalih goodbye, but I catch his smile one last time and he tells me “koolik sharaf.” Sharaf is a word that can mean honor and/or dignity and/or class. I’m not any of these things, really, but koolik means you are all ____. I incline my head and tell him “Ana il itsharafit” which means I was the one honored–by his kindess and brief friendship. Saalih hops back in to deliver his passengers to other eager families and I remember the tiny arms around my waist, my kids looking up at me as I take in their faces, this sublime surreal moment.

Here.

I am finally home.

Arrival and Affect in Amman

Sitting on the plane as it descends into Amman, I can’t believe I’m so close. In the monitor nested in the back of the seat before me, I am watching a small digital rendition of the plane making it’s voyage, but somewhere the connection is faulty because my plane hovers an inch to the West of Amman, even as we are taxiing on the runway. The visual suggestion of the stalled trip is so convincing it anchors my disbelief. Passengers bolt up before we barely touch the ground. Their impatience comforts me; this is how Arabs do. We’re not going to take the pilot’s admonition or the fasten seat belts sign very seriously. What could possibly happen now that the wheels are on the ground? I peer out the window to find grapevines climbing their way up the sides of plane garages. I smile. I am beginning to believe.

The triggers are little. The chaos of the baggage check as you leave Queen Alia’s airport. The black and yellow checked curbs barely containing drivers who treat the roads as a competition, aggressively cutting across lanes—how many are there? Used to the regimented lines of the States, I couldn’t tell you. I look for more familiarity in the crowd, and my heart jerks a little when I realize for the first time in any memory, I won’t see my Ammo Manawail at the airport, waving vigorously. He is fine, just away at the moment, but the dissonance of my arrival mirrors my feelings. Everything is familiar. Everything is not.

My third uncle, Ammo Afif, picks me up in his red Toyota instead, which he bought the same year I was born. The car is spacious, and has held up exceedingly well over the years. I find myself thinking it’s aging more gracefully than I have. But then, I’ve become overly sentimental sometime between the stone facades of buildings and the rickety fruit stands scattered on the side of the road and am thinking everything here ages better. A fine mist of dust travels with us, and it functions like rose colored lenses. Everything here is beautiful. Everything is grand.

When we arrive at Ammo’s house, it’s the scent that clinches it. As soon as I open the car door, I smell Jasmine. I didn’t know I missed it. I didn’t know I loved it. It carries me into the house, mingles with the scent of stuffed grape leaves. It’s not long before other family members begin to arrive, kissing both my cheeks, thanking god for my safe arrival, asking about the welfare of the people I left behind. The greetings roll off my tongues deceptively easily, as later I will coax out casual language slowly, my mouth and brain stubbornly refusing to recall the right words, place them in the correct order. I’m forced to choose my sentences carefully, and alter meaning according to capability. The stiltedness of my speech makes me feel less like myself, and I spend the evening hugging my own shoulders, crossing my arms against my chest. I’m sure my posture speaks my discomfort, but my relatives here are unfailingly kind, and if they are thinking cruel thoughts, they’ve chosen not to voice them. I see messages in their eyes, glances to each other, but that language is something else I’m not fluent in. Better and fair, I suppose. I share these same intimacies with my sisters and close friends, and can’t wait until I see Lubnah again to begin exchanging them.

The evening winds on. Some of my relatives play cards at the square table while others chat over tea, then coffee, then chocolates. The thing I want the most, a cigarette, eludes me. I can’t bring myself to smoke in front of these folks, because I know it’s not done by women in public, and I know it’ll get back to my Dad. 27 and still put in my place by custom. It’s not like he doesn’t know. It’s just a courtesy, I suppose. When everyone heads home, I return to my room. The bed is hard, and the screen on the window won’t budge. I’ll have my cigarette tomorrow. I hope.

In the Kitchen with My Mother

The second time I make bread, I recognize the yeasty smell as one associated with my mother, who made pita bread at home when we were young. Older now, her hands hurt from the kneading and she no longer does it by hand.  Instead, she combines all the ingredients in her Kitchen Aid (a gift from her daughters a couple mother’s days ago) and let’s its sleek “S” hook do the hard work.

My relationship with my mother is strained for any number of trivial reasons, but it’s always been the kitchen that brings us together. Whether rolling grape leaves or making Easter cookies or meat pies, my sisters and I would gather around the largest counter and work in assembly line fashion under our mother’s direction.

Under her tutelage, we created delicious things. Under the guise of cooking, we created bonds and memories not so easily forsaken. When I think of what it might be like to be without my family, I recognize the moments in the kitchen, the sultry smell of bread baking as the ones I would miss most.

Like so many families, my family sees food as love.  Perhaps it’s this emotion and connectivity that draws me to baking and cooking now. There’s no reward like the meal enjoyed, or the pastry savored.  Perhaps, like my mother who cooked everyday for years, I make bread or cupcakes or lasagna as a way of saying “Yes. I love you. Yes.”