we get to keep the ugly things

i start a new life. against my will, i trade the concrete playgrounds of michigan for dusty fields of fackoose and dull olive groves. sitting in the last row of a blue and wood trim station wagon, i push a white beaded headband off my forehead (for it slides forward always) and watch the sign from my father’s store fade away on the way to the airport. i will not see it again for four years. on the direct flight my sister paints my nails. late in the flight, i change out of a pink tee shirt and matching shorts, both trimmed with flowery pastel lace, and into a pair of black shorts, with a black and white checked top. my head band, unfortunately, remains the same. in that last hour, my body knows better than my brain, and i vomit right into the top’s scratchy ruffles. at ten, i am not an easy traveler.

in amman, my aunt makes stuffed grape leaves to greet us. we stay only a few days before attempting to cross the jisr into palestine. we plan to make the trip in two groups, my mother, brother, and two eldest sisters on the arab side, my third sister and i on the american. we make this decision out of necessity. L and I are too old to travel with our mother without howwiyat, while my two oldest sisters have them, and my little brother is too young to travel without his mother. my mother and her entourage make it through on that first trip. L and I are sent home, too young to travel alone. my aunt makes us fried spam. we try a second time, with a different aunt, but they claim her relation is not direct enough. my aunt in amman makes us bazaila (peas in tomato sauce with lamb). it can’t be helped. my mother comes back for us, and we cross the jisr on the arab side, despite earlier commands to do otherwise. it is the first real indication of my life to come.

at the jisr i watch israeli guards take things directly from our luggage and into their personal possession. my sisters’ makeup, my walkman, my stuffed animals. i watch them confiscate bottles of shampoo and lotion, i watch them paw through our clothes. one guard, seeing my horror, feels some shard of pity, lets me keep my trolls. we get to keep the ugly things. they are the only toys i have from my childhood. my hatred is so deep i physically recoil from myself. i cannot imagine how my mother feels, forced to endure the jisr twice, forced to watch them desecrate all our measly possessions and attempts at comfort. once, when during times of duress, arabs could still fly into tel aviv, my father lost an entire suitcase of gifts for us. we think it was stolen, but all i can see is that stupid smug guard’s face, trying on my sister’s confiscated (because it’s dangerous?) lipstick, and wearing the sweater my baba (daddy) picked out just for me.

in palestine i am strange. i am heavy. i wear coke bottle bottom glasses. my hair is in my face, my accent clumsy, my vocabulary limited to niceties. i play in the dirt with my cousins, get in trouble for being so dirty. i say something inappropriate to my grandmother, she chases me down the pebbly driveway between our house and my uncle’s. her feet are bare, she is throwing her shoes at my head. i dodge both. i am forced to do terrible things by a person in my extended family. things i still don’t talk about. things i have never written or said aloud. i start school in jerusalem. it’s american and run by missionaries. i cross the checkpoint everyday. first a car, then a bus, then a car, then a bus. the people stand too close on the bus. they smell. we are bad at personal space. i turn eleven. my grandpa dies. i eat pita bread sandwiches stuffed with salty french fries. i fall on the school steps, cut my forehead on my glasses. the blood is streaming into my eyes and this is what the world looks like everyday. they give me three stitches, no anesthesia. one day L and I are coming home from school. there is a curfew. we are rushing, hiding in arches. we are scared of tear gas, guns, tanks, rubber bullets. we are always scared, so we are never scared. fear is just life. this is what the world looks like everyday.

i stop wearing glasses. i stop wearing headbands. i change schools, to baba’s delight. i enroll in a arabic school in beit sahour. i walk to it every morning. ms. salwa teaches me arabic. she makes me cocoa on her green stove. i become popular. i become smart. i am the seventh highest scoring student in the class. i become cruel. i get kicked out of class. for wearing nail polish, for talking back, for making a picture of my math teacher’s fat head. i get my period, i bleed through my jeans and onto the seat of my desk. i am wearing a uniform over my jeans and t-shirt. it covers the stains. i write an essay about the universe, my arabic teacher reads it aloud to the class. my friends say i cheated, my teacher defends. i have a class devoted to painting pottery. the teacher grazes my new breasts when no one else is looking. i have the second biggest boobs in the class. i am one of the most popular girls in school. my boyfriend is nineteen. he is a dropout. he makes me a necklace. he is good except for when he is not, which is not often.

my mother slaps me. once for calling her a cow, another time for lying. i have a different boyfriend, but i don’t love him. i go back to the first one because he is good to me. he kisses my cheek. at camp i hear him telling others his girlfriend sure can eat. i stop eating. i am still heavy, but i am beautiful. i am beautiful and cruel. i tell on the principal’s son to the principal himself. he called me a whore, the son. he gets in trouble. my parents won’t let me go to camp this year. i slam the door so hard the little decorative window in it breaks. my dad chuckles, because he is still my baba and i am a teenager. he is not mad, but i am. i am so mad i can’t breathe. my mother comes to my room and tells me not to pay attention to boys. “a degree is power in a woman’s hand.” i believe her. my cousin slips his hand into my shirt while we are watching TV, aladdin. he slips his hands into my pajamas at night. he doesn’t make me do anything, so it’s better than before, better than the other one. but i don’t look at him. i read a poem at the school’s end of year party. my uncle dies. i dance in the carnival.

we have a going away party. i should have danced with him, my sister’s boyfriend’s friend. i wish i had. he was kind. we pack up everything. i pack up the trolls. i leave my name on things. a shelf, a wall. we leave pictures in the house. we leave furniture. we send 12 boxes back to the US. we keep our keys. i want to come back. i don’t want to leave. in the cab i watch my home fade away. baba’s dahlias, the arch, the steps, the ice cream shop, the falafel stand, the steih, the fields, the trees, the land. when i can see nothing else, i stop. i stop being cruel. i stop being beautiful. i stop being.

i start a new life. against my will, i start a new life.

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.

retreat to move forward.

I’ve heard many people bemoaning 2010, and eagerly grasping at the new wisps of 2011. I get it. 2010 was a hard year; they are all hard years. The past year was wildly rewarding and deeply depressing for me, often at the exact same moments. The memories are hazy and blurry, but I can recall the feelings well: the apathy of January, a body blizzarded and grey by the bleakness of Michigan winters; the exhilaration of February, a brief moment of sun and sex outside US borders; the freedom of May after the end of classes, the anxiety of doing nothing at all; the heartbreak of June in my homeland, the unsettledness of July after my return; the rush of August to prepare for the term; the desire of September for company, for loneliness to abate; the ache of October as July and September carried still; November brought newness; December replayed all these months, in a whirlwind of emotion–leaving me exhausted and anticipating the new year. What could 2011 bring that 2010 failed to mention?

When we visited Palestine in the Summer of 1999, I was reunited with my old boyfriend. The night before our return to Amman, Rami and I sat in the cool night air, under the grapevines in the walkway to my house. We sat there for hours, talking and reminiscing. This was a time when people would walk by my house that I would know, and they would stop in to chat for a bit for continuing on their way. So there we were, two silly young things imaging our love impossible–born witness by casual passerby’s. My mother, who eschews the sentimental, eventually demanded I come inside and start packing. I went up to chat with her briefly while Rami waited. I said I just needed a little more time, I just wanted a little more. Brisk and succinct, she suggested that 10 minutes or 10 hours would change nothing. I was going, and he was staying. Fin. So I bid farewell to Rami, grazed his cheeks with my lips, a standard parting gift. His cheeks were soft, his lips rough against me. Older now, we knew this had a finality that our first goodbye lacked.

There are some things I cannot relinquish. The notion of our love. The notion of my love for G. The memories of G and our relationship. Friends I would have not wished to lose, but had to for my own survival. People I loved too much to be continued to be hurt by. I love them still, quietly holding on to our memories, lingering with the ghosts of our friendship. They stand in stead for newness, for those people and places I’ve abandoned with ease for never have becoming entangled.

On the brink of 2011, I swayed and bopped in the gay bar of my hometown, with old friends and new. Some of my ghosts followed me there–mutual acquaintances reminding me of folks I had held at bay for a while, intoxicated with the newness of others who I would have also abandoned, were it not for friends who stood me still long enough that I would stand there by choosing. The visit didn’t ruin my evening. It didn’t make me unreasonably sad. Over time the losses I’ve incurred and initiated are receded to a slight throb in my heart when provoked, exaggerated if I allow myself to dwell. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. New Year’s was no time for this sadness. Or was it? Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? I don’t want to forget though I have moved on. I don’t want to forget though they have moved on. I linger here, too, knowing the memories enrich me even as they sometimes hinder my forward movement. I won’t say good riddance to the past year. I hold it’s hand in the new year, looking on it fondly, my hand warmed by its presence. It’s an old song, but a classic.

Happy Thankschicken

At my childhood house, a two bedroom apartment above my father’s store in Burton, my sister’s mother in law pulls three stuffed chickens from the oven. Her family does not favor the taste of turkey, and so she has prepared another poultry instead. They are golden brown and beautiful, but they are not turkey, this is not my family house any longer, and she is not *my* mother. My parents now live in a house, a mere 30 years after moving to the United States, and they are currently in Boston, visiting a different sister. Nevertheless, the meal is delicious, and my sister and I laze on the couch after, looking through ads for Black Friday, drinking tea. Whatever else I feel, I know this: I am with my sister; I am home.

Returning from Palestine, I spent the remainder of my summer in a daze. I cried as I unpacked my suitcases. I fell asleep sitting upright in Panera. My throat grew hoarse with telling. My throat grew hoarse from not telling. I remembered, or realized, or both, that I no longer have a home in Palestine. But what was worse, I didn’t even belong there anymore. Because you can belong someplace without calling it home. I belong many places, but home is a more slippery thing. I don’t know that I have one these days–a physically or geographically marked space–but what I have, and what I am ultimately thankful for, are amazing thoughtful people with whom I *feel* at home.

I feel at home, sitting on my sister’s porch stairs, my niece facing me on my lap, her head nestled on my shoulder as we take in the lazy July sun.

I feel at home, standing on the porch of my friend’s home as I realize she is home after all. I knocked and no one answered, but the timing was serendipitous; as I turned to leave, she arrived on her bike.

I feel at home, walking into a cabin where my friends are celebrating a birthday. They cheer, and people stand to hug me, and darling S hands me a drink.

I feel at home sitting on my couch with A, smoking cigarettes and divulging our summer in 30 minute bursts.

I feel at home across from B at our favorite Mexican restaurant, laughing as we search for our favorite waiter.

I feel at home in my favorite bar, drinking rum and coke doubles from K while JR stops to sit for a minute between customers.

I feel at home, finally, when I gather these folks together in one room, and we sit and eat and drink. For a night my heart is full and my tears are from joy.

So this November I will try to remember how fortunate I am. And I will try to remember to be thankful for all the love I receive in this world. And for all the different ways and the beautiful people that tell me: here now. You are home.

the re-return

I am skilled at leaving. I left Michigan when I was 10, Palestine when I was 14. I left Michigan again when I was 24, Ohio at 26. Over the years, I’ve dropped many schools, ended friendships, forgotten names and erased the banal minutiae that make up the everyday of places behind me. It’s easy now, the process of moving on, packing up, starting over. So few things and people have survived these overhauls, their staying power a sign that perhaps I am not as strong as I wish I were. Or if holding on is harder, stronger than I know.

My last day in Ma’in is also my last day in Jordan. We awake early, per my mother’s request, and go to the main fall before it’s open to the public. The water is steaming, pungent with the smell of minerals. Against my back the fall is the strongest, hardest shower I’ve ever taken, times 100, but more erratically distributed. Sometimes a shot of cool water makes it through, shocking and a pleasant change. It’s exhausting, the lap of the water against your body, the effort exerted to stay vertical against the pressure. We stay for an hour, slowly make our way back to the resort for breakfast, where a lush-lipped beady-eyed cook stalks me around the dining hall and all the way out to the pool. I ignore him, but even my mother notices. On this trip she is realizing something she never imagined: some people actually find me attractive, charming.

From Ma’in we make our way back to Amman, where I spend the afternoon with my family and relatives,  packing my suitcases. By some miracle (my mother) everything fits, under the weight limit and then I am just left with waiting. My relatives re-emerge, playing cards on the Veranda. Mina has found three more figs on the very top of the tree, and he saves them for me, so I eat them, thank him. By now I have won him over, and as he helps me lug my bags up the stairs, he implores me, “Stay a while longer.” I say so many goodbyes. Some heartfelt–because it was good to see you, meet you, be with you. Some perfunctory, for my presence or absence means nothing in your world. At the airport, farewells abound, and we are a tiny scene in Love Actually. I pass through inspection, get my tickets, check my bags, and now I am no longer we, I am just me, going.

The hour is late, my body and brain exhausted from simply everything, so I fall asleep before the plane even takes off. I am asleep the whole way to Paris. I appreciate the beauty of the Charles De Gaulle airport before I am sleeping again, from Paris to Amsterdam. I move through customs, get questioned about traveling from Palestine to Jordan by a curious security agent, and then I am aboard a third plane, my last, from Amsterdam to Detroit. By now I have my fill of sleep, so I subtly fight with my seatmate over the armrest, watch two movies which leave me feeling desolate and convinced I will never be in love again. Never feel loved again. I try hard to focus on leaving, but it’s all ambivalent, my real feelings projected away from myself and onto the heroines cheeky faces in forgettable romantic comedies.

When I watch the little digital plane hover and land in Detroit on the small screen in front of me, I finally feel excited. I am so close, so close. The plane lands, and I make the arduous rounds of US customs, where I lie about having food in my luggage, evade search, and walk outside into the heavy Detroit air. A friend picks me up from the airport, and I feel so strange, speaking entirely in English, peppering my language with curse words, which had been excised for most of my trip. There is no hitch here but I sound foreign to my own ears. Who has this pitch? Who has this inflection? The feeling fades quickly, and by the time I am at my apartment, I am marveling at how easy it was to come back, to remember, to fall into patterns of my life, with nothing visible to suggest a change but the suntan that will surely fade by winter.

In the next few days, I will pick up my parts that fractured, reassemble them: here is my sister, here is my niece, here is my friend, my cat, my car, my beer, my mail, my Meijer. Everything is in place, everything is slightly askew. I will wonder what Rachel is doing, and remember I left her. I will wake thinking about my mother’s tea, and there will be coffee. I will go to flush the toilet, but the lever is on the front of the tank, not the top. I will field questions about my trip, speak in the past tense. I will ache in my back, my throat, my heart. I will ache, divert my attention with work, crushes, laundry, the quest for my missing tank tops. I will fret over paying rent next month, I will consider cutting groceries from the budget. I will long for the figs, for the fackoose, for Mina’s smile, for Bishara’s laugh, for Yazin’s chubby little arms, his songs. I will drive and praise higher powers for lanes. I will wake early, sleep early as my  body copes with jet lag.

I will, willing myself to be here, to be happy, to be OK, to be something besides sad and lonely and aching. I will the ache to linger, proof I went, that I cared, that I didn’t already forget. I forget what I wanted, if I ever knew. At the end, there is no answer, no conclusion, no neat tidy understanding or lesson learned. There is just me, moving along, getting on, pushing through to something I can’t foresee.

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.

Gilligan Does “il Dakhil” (Part One)

Maybe I am biased, but none of the many drivers I’ve ridden with here can compare to Saalih. On Wednesday morning Rula and I make my third attempt to enter the Israeli territories;  a driver named Shakir picks us up at 6:30am. This time, we are attempting to cross the mahsoom/checkpoint in Beit Sahour, which, like Mahsoom al Nafuck, allows vehicles through. Shakir is an Arab Israeli from Nazareth, fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew. His van is tidy, and he offers us ka’ak (a delicious sesame bread) as we make our way to the mahsoom.

We came to know Shakir through my cousin Rafat, who works as a tour guide for a Palestinian agency. Rafat, in addition to arranging for our transportation, has also arranged for Rula and I, should we get through the checkpoint, to join a tour group for two days as they visit Nazareth and Jerusalem. I should say I never got the opportunity to apply for tasareeh (the visa or permissions for Palestinians to access Israel) since Beit Sahour residents can only apply on Thursdays, and last Thursday was my Uncle’s funeral. Even if we are turned around, I have already decided I will not apply. Perhaps it’s stupidity or stubbornness, but I won’t put myself at Israel’s mercy more than I already have.

When Shakir sees the guard at the mahsoom, he curses briefly under his breath. This guard is new, and doesn’t know Shakir. Still, Shakir smiles widely, converses with him for a moment in Hebrew, before requesting our passports. As we oblige, the guard walks away, and Shakir hops out of the car to follow, passports in tow. He is gone for less than a minute, though it feels longer. Upon his return, Shakir says we have been rejected, and I feel nothing. I expected this. But Shakir guns the car anyway, and it takes me a few more seconds to realize he’s joking. The guard was having breakfast, and didn’t even open the passports to check for visas. Suddenly, I am officially in Israel, my access the result of some random man’s hunger. Shakir and Rula congratulate me, but I don’t feel victorious. I feel sick; how arbitrary and cruel these stipulations and manipulations are.

Shakir drives on, for we are trying to make it to Nazareth (al Nassra) in two hours. He is a genial driver, mostly quiet. He offers bits of information as we drive through the diverse terrain of the (my? our?) country: here is Abu Ghosh, the last Arab-occupied space between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Here is Megiddo, the military and political prison for Palestinians. The way Shakir imparts this information reminisces of a museum tour: here are some curious things, some things from the past. It’s as though the Arab population and the reality of political prisoners in Israel are not part of the present, not part of daily life. At some point, I must tune him out, because he seems to think that the reason the Palestinian territories are poor is merely a matter of laziness. I feel like one of my students: Shakir is a nice guy, except for the little bit o’ racism. Still, I am grateful he can show me these things, grateful that for as much as he expresses distaste for the “Arab work ethic,” he is also happy to help pull one over on Israeli security at the checkpoints.

We stop only once before Nazareth, pulling into a small convenience store and gas station. It must be near a military base, because there are dozens of soldiers milling about. They are so young, so casual with their machine guns strapped across their bodies. They flirt and joke with one another like the teenagers they are and I am sad for them, sad for us. I know Palestinian boys who dropped out of school because the Intifadas made attendance impossible, because they lost families and loved ones, became disaffected by the war, the incontinuity of their lives. They are casualties, the cost of occupation and its resistance. I wonder about these Israeli soldiers, their uniforms heavy on their bodies, aging them in ways I couldn’t imagine. Do they believe in what they represent? Do they resent it? I can’t pretend to know what they think or feel, but to me, they too seem to be casualties, collateral damage of a different sort.

We make Nazareth in the predicted two hours, though it costs us the more scenic drive along the coast of the Mediterranean. Shakir pulls up outside of a strip of stores, and a second driver, Yousef arrives to take us to meet the tour group. We thank Shakir (which, incidentally, means “one who thanks”) and transfer vehicles. Yousef also works with Rafat,  also speaks Arabic and Hebrew. As we drive to catch up with the tour, we inform Yousef of our newly hatched plan to travel with the tour on day one, and then ditch it the second day, to visit Yaffa and Jerusalem on our own. Concerned with our shenanigans, Yousef calls Rafat, and together they agree that Yousef ought to stay with us for the whole two days instead, acting as our personal guide/driver. Though this idea grates at my nerves, Rula is ecstatic to have someone cater to her every desire and a place to leave her things between locations. Her enthusiasm trumps my tourist-sex fantasy, and we plan our itinerary with Yousef. Nazareth to Tiberias to Akka to Haifa on day one. Yaffa and Jerusalem on day two. It’ll be a miracle if we manage it.

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?