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.

I’ve been watching too much Freaks and Geeks.

In the third grade, I had what was probably my first public breakdown. Janelle T, whose last name I completely remember, but who I will not name in entirety here for fear of Google search retribution, told me that I was a bad friend. I can’t remember why she said it, except that she was rich while I was poor, she was beautiful while I was not, she was thin while I was fat, she was popular, and I was, well, poor, ugly, and chubby. So when the new kids, Doni and David (twins!) joined our class, and Doni was my friend, I was ecstatic and Janelle was displeased. Doni eventually moved on, as all new kids who are nice but infinitely more interesting than you do, but Janelle wouldn’t let it go. She whispered to me at the desk I shared with Patrick R, whose name I also remember, who was also an asshole, even in the third grade: “You’re a terrible friend. Don’t you feel bad about that?” I was. I did. I believed.

I remember laying my head on my desk. I remember refusing to participate in activities. But here is what I remember most: Mrs Whitehead, leaning down to me, whispering again in my ear: “Don’t do this. You’re one of my most solid students. You’re not like this. Can you be a rock?” Maybe the exact words are off, but I know she had faith me. I know she told me I could be better, that I could be stronger. So I was. I did. I believed. Mrs. Whitehead gave me detention anyway, one of two times I ever received such punishment in my American schooling. (I got in trouble in Palestine ALL THE TIME, but that’s for another day). I understood why she did it, knew I earned it, though it was an odd feeling. Amidst the other kids who routinely populated the after-school special, I was misplaced. We all knew it. I didn’t belong with Seamus, who pinched my butt, or Robbie, who stole markers (this is totes real, and eerily in line with that Dane Cook skit). I was just passing through.

In the fourth grade I had my second detention. This time for refusing to go to Mass, and spending the hour in the girl’s restroom. Mrs. Paris, who I hated for claiming to never received my yearbook money, and thus denying me a fourth grade yearbook, was not understanding like Mrs. Whitehead had been. She took my denial as disrespect, and I hated her all the more. I cried when she denied me my yearbook. It was $12 I had painstakingly saved, the kind of money my parents thought was unnecessary spending, and thus were reluctant to give me, but I wheedled anyway. I took detention round two like a champ though. I decided to never let people like that see me cry again. I kept my word. My emotional distance in American schools continued before and after the Palestine years, until approximately the second year of my undergraduate degree, when I finally began to make friends again, began to feel.

It’s easy to make my middle school years the stuff of TV sitcom–I attended Catholic school until the fifth grade, when I moved to Palestine for four years. At HR, we couldn’t afford the tuition, and received complete aid from the Church. I even had breakfast and lunch vouchers. Everyone knew we were the charity cases, and they laughed at this, as they laughed at my father, who sometimes picked us up after school in a station wagon, driving it through the enormous pond that would form in the parking lot after precipitation. They called it the Yacht. They laughed too, at our funny contributions to school lunches, at the fact that my mother didn’t come to class for our birthdays, at our convenience store where they shoplifted, at my older sister, who didn’t date, and was therefore clearly a lesbian (oops. Wrong sister, HR). With a few minor exceptions, my memories of school are unpleasant, and bred in me a remoteness and an ease with disappointment that I carry until this day.

I think what I miss most about my girlhood is my gullibility. My willingness to take people at exactly face value, with no suspicion regarding their motives, or their truth. I believed so much, so readily–willing to take both praise and criticism in equal measure. These days, I’m told I’m bad at taking compliments, which is certainly true. And though it rarely happens (insert massive ego here), I’m equally bad at taking criticism. What I am good at, what I excel in most, is finding ways to say “I’m not a part of this. I won’t do this. I am putting my head down.” Of course, now it’s masked as distance and judgment, the farce of adulthood. Sitting on the sidelines of this or that affair, in the wings of social events and community stages, the whispers in my ears are mine alone: “Don’t you wish you were better than this? Stronger? Don’t you feel bad about this place?” I do. I wish. I believe.

song of herself

I rescued the bananas. They were so sad, sitting on the top of the garbage in my friends’ kitchen, tossed before their time, to accommodate their purchaser’s week long absence. I didn’t want to take them–I didn’t. Already beginning to turn brown, what could I do for them? Wait for the winter of their life, before resentfully forcing them into some banana muffin scenario. For now they sit coyly on my table, in a bowl I threw for the very purpose of housing fruit. The bananas tricked me, made me accountable and my guilt over their presence is disproportionately huge. I didn’t even buy them. Why should I care?

It’s been four weeks since my return to the States. Everything is my apartment is bananas: the books I bought for school but haven’t read; the rugs in the bathroom I keep forgetting to wash; the MacBook that taunts me with its light-up keyboard, begging to be put to better use than Facebook status updates.  I have sat down to write hundreds of times since coming back. I blink at the screen. I look at my nails. I eat a snack. I eat twenty. But there is no story to be told, and I learned my writing lessons well. What is the narrative arc? Who are the characters? It can’t just be a free-fall of feelings, an avalanche of emotion.

And then I chide myself, because I have *done* things since coming back. Surely I have. I drove 3 hours to celebrate a friend’s birthday at a gay resort. I baked muffins, crumb cakes, pies. I watched Eclipse, Jersey Shore. I clocked hours on my RA position. I caught up with some of the amazing, important women in my life. I mailed packages. I went to a party where five minutes into meeting her, a woman informed me of her support and affection for the IDF. But these things are unrelated, no consistent strand but the overbearing “I” of it all. So I decide to be less like myself, challenge myself to ignore my overly rational tendencies and do the opposite of the thing I think I should do. I go out when I want to stay home, I go to my favorite bar when I should work. I flirt with people who are vulnerable, I have sex with an old friend and enjoy it. I research publishing companies that work with creative non-fiction, and imagine ways to take a year off from graduate school.

And when I convince myself that perhaps I can be less like me, more like someone interesting, someone with a story, someone adventurous and lovable and unpredictable rather than reliable and boring,  I rescue the bananas. It seems like such a small thing, doesn’t it? Practical and unemotional, but it’s so like me, I hate it. I hate their stupid curved bodies in my beautiful round bowl, which previously housed Sour Patch kids and the cord for my external hard drive. Now that they are here, I can’t possibly turn away from them, let them rot without some kind of resolution. I owe them my time, attention, as I owe all things: the books, the rugs,  the blog, the friend, the graduate school.

And because in all of this, what I want most is for someone to rescue me, take me home, make me safe and loved and beautiful and wanted, I envy them even as I loathe them. And because I hate that I have wants and needs I can’t fulfill on my own, I will take care of the bananas and books. I will deny the wasteful desire to throw them out, the selfish desire to put off my life and my inevitable boring self for a little longer. I come back to me, indulgent but uninspired, efficient but exacting. Sure, I hate the bananas. But ultimately it’s me I can barely look at.

Sun, Salt, and the Sea

I have been practicing my floating. As a non-swimmer, the feeling of my body weightless and at the whim of the water is unsettling. I am much more comfortable in control, my feet firmly planted on the basin. I began experimenting in the kiddie pool of our resort in Punta Cana, when we visited in February. A mere two feet deep, I could easily find solid ground again when it became too scary. Drowning is my earliest memory; my mother taking swimming lessons at the Y with her daughter, her hands under my belly. I am before years but I recall the emptiness when she withdrew her support, my small shape sinking into the blue of the pool. I went under twice since then, once at my Aunt’s pool when I played too close to the edge, and fell in. No one heard the splash but my cousin, who came to my aid as I bobbed uselessly. Again a couple years later coming down a slide at a beach in Michigan. I had studied the other riders carefully, watched as they came off the slide, fell into the water, and buoyed up seconds later. When I went down, I didn’t come up, and they sent a lifeguard when it became clear I wouldn’t find the way back on my own.

In the Dead Sea, floating is easy. Lot’s Wife, that unnamed rebel, carries me, her body turned to such salt that it kills all the water’s inhabitants, cakes the rocks with her essence. The Dead Sea is riotous when we visit. The waves crashing against the rocks, which despite years of sanding, remain sharp under my feet. I lay in the water, moving my limbs in ways I can’t against gravity, and feel the same discomfort, nestled as it always is on my lower back. The water splashes into my eyes and I make my way clumsily back to the shore, eyes closed, blinded. A lifeguard comes to my aid with fresh water, pouring it over my face, demanding I open the eyes, wash out the burn. It’s like a baptism and I see anew; he pulls me up out of the water with one arm, hauls me back safely to the dock. I go in again later, careful to keep my head up. The Sea is luxurious, slippery over my skin. I feel wounds healing, my scars tickle. I paint myself twice with the mud from the water’s depths, letting it cake dry on my skin before heading back to the water to rinse.

The resort attached to this hunk of beach is beautiful. We tried a different place first, but their beach was closed, so we move on to the Movenpick, a Swedish import. In Amman, the shore is bought up by mostly foreign corporations that turn their chunk of land into a rich haven: upscale, expensive dining; top notch liquor; brown bodies in uniforms, fulfilling needy guests’ every whim. I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy the space, but I hate that my experience is filtered through this. Despite their best efforts, though, the sea remains as is. I am glad I haven’t gone back to the shore in Palestine, for I know that the size of the Sea is shrinking rapidly there, drained for use. The resort is a series of infinity pools leading up to the waterfront, and we watch the sun set. From afar, the Sea is as any other, but we know better. We have felt her secrets on our skin, tasted her brine, slathered in her silt.

From the Dead Sea we visit Hammamat Ma’in, or the Baths of Ma’in. They are not baths, really, but a series of hot springs cascading over the mountains. The waterfalls are fiery, and like the Sea, said to have high mineral contents, with healing properties. I had wanted to come here for those reasons, because my body still aches from my surgery. The first day at the resort, we try to visit the biggest, most beautiful of the Falls. It remains the property of Jordan, and is thus public access. When we arrive, there are no women in the water. They sit on the sidelines, many of them in full hijab, while the men run around in shorts and speedos, enjoying the hot, cascading water. My mother is upset; if we go in, we will be gakwed at, made uncomfortable. We could, and I say to hell with what they think, but even I know how unpleasant the experience will become.

We go next to the “family” fall, where a brood of women, also in full hijab sit on the sidelines still. There are only women here, and this cascade is pitiful in comparison to the last one. My mother is disgusted, still, and won’t even try the water. She returns to the hotel while Rachel and I stay, strip to our suits. The women are gaping at us. They are speaking Arabic, shocked at our attire, our desire to enter the water. I smile sweetly, say “Marhaba”, so they know I understand. We try to go into the water, but it’s scaldingly hot, and we can’t bear it. Still our presence has enervated the women, and a couple join our feeble attempts. I can tell they are amused by our presence, a spectacle. When Rachel and I decide to leave, they suggest we come back. Since I am not above being petty when they are so clearly mocking us, I tell them to enjoy the water, the heat.

We return to the hotel, and try to coax my Mother out of the room. She is going on about the disparity, how backwards she finds the behavior at the falls. Not much of a feminist, my mother’s stance surprises me: what bothers her most is how cruel this is to the women, how unfair. I am impartial on their behalf since I am more than accustomed to being stared at and judged by complete strangers at this point in my trip, but it’s a new feeling for her. We take to the resort’s Spa, which also has segregated waterfalls, also disparaging sizes. We flout the rules and hang out at the men’s, but I can tell she’s still unhappy. This fall is nowhere near the size, beauty or comfort of the main one. We end the day in the pool, where I try floating again. My ears submerged, my face just above, eyes closed, willing my body up, up.

The next day, my parents wake early, visit the main fall before it opens to the public, and my mother returns blissful, radiant. She says we have to go back again, at night when it closes to the public, or in the morning the next day. I promise her we will, though I am over the whole thing. With my departure date so close, I am childishly longing for home. I just want to go back to my life, my things, my time. Still, there is whole two more days to be spent in Jordan, and one more at the resort. We spend the day at the pool, where I continue to float cautiously, no more than a few inches from the wall. Rachel and I compete to see how long we can hold our breath without pinching our noses, and I try opening my eyes under water. It’s blurry, familiar, oddly soothing. Like most adolescents, my niece is bored easily, so the day of lounging has her frustrated, but I am content with our laziness. Later, we watch the football game in the lounge, become depressed about Brazil. We try the main fall again, but because it’s Friday, the public hours are later, and we return, thwarted again, to our rooms. I promise my mother I will wake early, go in the morning. I can tell she wants this for me, doesn’t want me to leave disappointed, because she hopes these small gifts will pull me back, like waves, more often.

Meanwhile, I drift in the water, unfettered by my usual neuroses. Weightless and light, just this once.

A Tale of a Fateful Trip (Part Three)

The second morning of our trip, Rula ignores her alarm. One of my major pet peeves is being startled awake, so hearing “Imma Be” over and over again while she sleeps leaves me…put out. Our late start (which, by my standards, is still a startling 8am) also annoys Yousef, who is clearly over our charms, and is ready to be rid of us. The continental breakfast is a bizarre mix of croissants, cold cereal, and labana. I drink two cups of lukewarm coffee before giving up on proper caffeination, and we begin our journey to Yaffa.

Like Akka, Yaffa is one of the oldest cities in Palestine, also known for its port. Yousef drops us off at the “top” of the old city, which looks out over the ocean and the new city. Yaffa is, in a word, charming. The old city’s architecture is stunning, and it’s been maintained kindly. Next to it, skyscrapers play with the skyline and it’s the easiest metaphor for Palestine: old and new, tradition made modern. Unlike other cities we’ve visited, Yaffa’s population is composed of mostly Jewish Israelis. So here, the transition into Yaffa from Arab spaces is abrupt. In other places the Arab and Israeli bleed into one another, resisting the separation we all seem so intent on.

The city has planted gardens in every available space so that every angle, every view is a postcard, picture perfect. Rula is naturally delighted by this, and I spend some time reprising my role as professional photographer. I think if you can’t make beauty here, there’s no chance for you at all. Magically, Rula disappears each time I’d like to include myself in the scenery, so I make due with landscapes and details  unmarred by my comparative homeliness. In the old city, there is a sturdy rope bridge alongside one of the gardens. The ropes are linked with bronzed cylinders, each featuring a different sun sign. Legend holds that if you stand on the bridge, look out to the sea and make a wish, your wish will come true. Not one to miss such opportunities, I make mine grand. I feel like every holy site I’ve visited has come to this, acting from hope, hope a substitution for faith, or maybe a version of it.

Rula and I decide to walk alongside the ocean, on the pebbled promenade to the Yaffa port. The sea is sparkling and seductive, each crashing wave inviting the next. I am taken with her completely, resent Yousef waiting for us, resent that we’re here only for the day, and can’t go swimming. The sea is right there. Cars park in between glass and concrete shrines to capitalism and passengers take a five minute walk to sandy beaches. I imagine cubicle bound workers coming to eat lunch on the beach. I imagine teaching nearby, students asking to hold class amidst sun bathers. Could I resist?

Our walk is long, the sun doubly reflected off the water, so we barely reach the port before Yousef is ringing Rula’s cell, trying to hurry us along to the next leg of our journey: Jerusalem. Despite my repeated attempts to enter the city, or perhaps because of them, I am completely unprepared for the Old City, the massive wall that surrounds it, the seven gates. My breath catches in my throat and my eyes well. I chide myself over how many absurd tears I’ve cried on this trip but I can’t make myself see sense. The city is so changed, so foreign, but my body recognizes it, greets it like a lost lover. Here is where Lemma and I caught taxis to Jerusalem School, here is where Jacob helped me put in my new earring, here is where we bought falafel and ka’ak on the way home from school. I’m flooded with memories and they are crushing my air channels. Even entering the city I already feel its loss.

Yousef drops us off at one of the highest points in the city, looking down on the Old City, and we walk down, stopping at the Garden of Gethsemane to marvel over the 8 olive trees that have existed since before we changed our watches to AD. Here, a man gives us scarves to drape over our shoulders as we enter holy sites. The deference, like all things, turns a profit and he demands we pay him for the service. We haggle over the price, which seems petty now, and our argument escalates to insults, at which point I refuse to pay. Rula won’t engage, shrugging her shoulders passively so I am left only with aggression, and we walk away, down the slope, his words rolling behind us.

By the time we reach a gate into the city, the Lion’s Gate, we are exhausted and over-heated. We buy water at tourist prices and make our way inside. The sook is just as I remember. Lively, colorful, fragrant. I banter with shop keepers who treat me, for the first time in my visit, as an Arab and not a foreigner. I buy earrings and a necklace, a bag of Turkish Delight. Rula and I feast on falafel sandwiches in the center of the grocery market hustle and bustle. We visit the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus woke up. In my excitement about the sook, I honestly forget to visit the other holy sites until we are long gone. But I’m content with the trip. I fear that if I see too much, do too much, I won’t be able to hold on to my memories of a happier time here. The reality of now is already intruding with the receding then, and I can’t bear to lose anymore–the image of Jacob and I making our way through the cities arches, him holding my hand secretly as we perused jewelry. The image of a woman blessing my mother’s children, and my mother stopping mid-stride to give her money. The taste of licorice sticks on my tongue, the rich smell of the spice bins.

We make our way out of the Old City through the Damascus gate (Bab Al A’mood), the gate we used to enter through. Bab Al A’mood has remained just so-boys playing soccer in the courtyard, young and old folks sitting on the steps, smoking, speaking, being. Rula and I sit for a while, and I take in as much as I can. Its sameness is a salve for the change in the city, for Jerusalem has been excavated of most of its Arabs, and it seems like we are only here, in the Old City, a tiny bubble that may pop at any moment. We make our way back to the buses for Beit Lehem since Yousef has abandoned us for good. The bus sits 30 minutes before leaving, and I think this is enough time to pull myself together and not cry (again). I’m wrong. As soon as the bus pulls out, I cry under my sunglasses, surreptitiously sniffling so the man next to me won’t notice. I leave my lover for the third time, and for the second time, I have no idea when I can return.

The bus drops us off at Mahsoom Beit Lehem, where we go through Israeli security to return to the Palestinian territories. The solider looks at my passport, looks for a visa, but asks nothing. She hands it to me and we make our way back through the gates and turnstiles in the sun on the other side of the wall, where fruit vendors ply cucumbers at 10 shekels a tray, and a yellow taxi cab waits to take us home.

The Three Hour Tour (Part Two)

I think time moves more slowly on this side of the globe, each hour stretching into three. The day begs to be seized, over and over and you wait for the sunset like some kind of mercy. Rula, Yousef and I arrive at the hotel Wednesday night at 9:30pm, and we have managed each location on our itinerary.

***

We begin with the holy sites in Nazareth, visiting the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic church versions of the annunciation (ie, where Mary finds out she’s knocked up). The Orthodox church is small and modest, its interior colorful and ornate. It opens to the center of Nazareth, the city courtyard. I sing to Rula an old Arabic song about lovers meeting in the courtyard, she is not amused. The Catholic version is a behemoth building, a new structure built over the old church. If you descend into its bowels, you can see the old stonework, the altar. This church is a tourist hub, with opulent mosaics of the Virgin Mary lining the walls. There are mosaics from all over the world, and most of them are stunning, rendering her in the image of the people from each nation. The mosaic from the US is easily the ugliest, forged in industrial looking metals, posed aggressively as though she were priming for war.

We go next to Cana, where Jesus allegedly performed my all time favorite miracle, turning water into wine. This church is smaller, but still beautiful. We walk in the eaves, where people have left money and notes tucked into the walls, thrown on the old, fenced off foundations. There is a striking stained glass window of a woman staring straight ahead. Her face is harsh, regal, and I can’t place her. The writing on the side is in Latin. I like her suggestive stare, the coolness she emanates. Though she too is aggressive, she lacks the garishness of the American Madonna. I try the wine at the tourist shop before we leave. It is too sweet, and I’m amused by my own snobbery.

We move next to the Tabgha, where Big J multiplied fish and bread to feed thousands. By now I am over the whole religious tour thing. I can’t get worked up about these places like the other tourists can. They are bent over the old stone, doubled over in the pews, praying with a fervor I can’t conjure or emulate. It must be amazing for believers to be in these places, but all I feel is mild curiosity. The magic for me is in the antiquity, the stories these sites could tell, the lives they’ve witnessed. After Tabgha, we make a longer drive to Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Tiberius is mostly a night-time town: a long boardwalk and port for passenger boats. Today, the little shops are closed, the walk mostly empty. But when we were young, we would get tasareeh into Jerusalem for religious holidays. After visiting the religious site in the morning, we would go swimming in the afternoon, and end the evening in Tiberius by riding one of the boats. The boats would meander around in the sea, and on deck a DJ spun music. We’d dance and laugh in the twinkling lights strung about the boats mast, reflected in the clear, crisp water. There is a picture of me dancing on one of these trips, on the Lido, my arms up framing my face, which is over-sunned and glowing. I look happy. I was.

After Tiberius, we go to Akka (Acre in English), a port  and harbor off the Mediterranean. I have also been here before, and it’s as beautiful as I remember it. Akka is hella old, and has a long military and political history. Like certain churches, you feel time here, walking along the city’s massive wall, looking out to the water as it crashes into the stone. In its old city, there is a “sook” or market. Sequestered in the arches of old buildings, the sook reminds me of Jerusalem. Here though, amidst the jewelry stores and juice carts are residents. With one turn you can find yourself in the courtyard of the old prison, or at the front door of someone’s house, where children’s clothes are strung up to dry, and a Brazilian flag hangs over the walkway. I love it here, all this practicality, hope, and history merged into one nook. I sing here, too. A Fairuz song comparing the singer’s love to the wonders of the sea, the mountains, and so on.

We spend a lot of time in Akka, primarily because Rula is bound and determined to get a picture of herself on the wall, the sea at her back. I take pictures over and over, and each time she looks at it, makes a suggestion for improvement, and asks me to take another: get a wider shot; only capture me from the waist up; wait until the wind settles; angle the camera down. She wants to preserve her image here, perfectly, next to famous icons, but when I ask her why they are famous, she can’t tell me. I alternate between finding this travel quirk amusing and annoying, erring on the side of annoying. Her unhappiness with the photos is evident on her face, and I want to shake her, and say “maybe it’s not the fucking photographer, maybe it’s your fucking face,” but I don’t. I understand the desire to record, but my patience grows thinner and thinner. Later, Rula will tell me I am rough to travel with, that my personality is “tough.” Imagine that.

From Akka, we go to Haifa. By now, Yousef is rushing us along, wanting to be done with the day, have dinner, and he, too, is grating on my nerves. I remind myself that he’s been a gracious host so far, and that he probably has a life he wants to return to. But then I think that he offered to do this, and will be paid for it, so I want him to stop whining, and stop making me feel guilty for exploring. These two impulses directly reflect my Arab training and my American “get what you paid for-ness.” In Haifa we visit the Baha’i Shrine and Gardens. They feature an elaborate, scaling stairwell; it looks like what I imagine the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were like. We climb as far as we are allowed and turn around to look back at the city, sitting near the sea. These lands are beautiful, the view is a postcard. There is such diversity and elasticity in the Palestinian/Israeli terrain. As always, I mourn the eviction of Arabs from these spaces. In the Holy Land, the metaphor of being cast out of Eden is apt, and as in the original tale, I know it’s unfair, unjustifiable.

We dine on the coast in Haifa, at a small seafood joint run by Russian immigrants. We watch the sun set on the water, eat ice cream. I inch closer and closer to the water, and when we finally do leave, I can smell the sea on my clothes, taste it on my lips. Maybe this is what the apple was like for Eve.

***

Our hotel is back in Nazareth. Rula and I are shocked at the early hour, collapsing onto the bed in laughter driven by exhaustion and absurdity. The hotel is sparse, clean. The shower head is delightfully abusive, and before long we are shiny and fresh from the bath, hoping to God room service exists (it doesn’t) and that there is an open store close by to buy something to drink (there isn’t). We fall asleep thirsty but content with the day, anticipating the next.

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.

Clean Squeek

i love my apartment. the spacious dining room that doubles as study space; the color coded bookshelves; the double closets in the bedroom; the lamps i bought at TJMaxx; the quiet of the complex; the sun in the morning through the patio doors (that don’t actually lead to a patio-alas). i forget how lucky i am to have this serene, private space. i forget how much i love it until i spend significant time away from it. and i am always reminded when i come home. i am reminded when i clean it, and everything sparkles–looking almost as fresh and lovely as the day i moved in (remember, i have cats, so everything deteriorates eventually).

i cleaned it top to bottom today because i was having guests for a potluck. when i say top to bottom, i mean i actually vacuumed, dusted, and wiped down the bathroom. three tasks, that because i live alone, i feel no compulsion to do. and when i say potluck, i mean a hodgepodge dinner of egg rolls, spinach and artichoke dip with homemade bread, spinach salad with tahini sauce, and sour patch kids. for dessert i made an apple crumb pie, served warm with vanilla ice cream and cool whip. it was divine. there was also a nice selection of wines, and the company of fun friends, and DVRed episodes of Community. yes. i am lucky for the apartment, the means that allow me to live as i do, the cool people in my life.

so why the melancholy? the end of the semester left a big gap, but i should enjoy it. it should feel like breathing room instead of existential crisis. i woke up today ready to work. well, my brain did. my body went back to bed until noon. lucky, still. tomorrow i’ll try again. and if i fail, there is still the apartment, the DVR, the people. the research certainly isn’t going anywhere.