As I climbed the millionth stair, I saw a girl there, on the floor up above. Our eyes met. We smiled. I doubt it was love.

I asked her a question. She didn’t know. Was I not from here? and I thought, does it show?

America, I said to unwonted applause. She gasped, clapped, laughed without pause.

My father studied his master’s there, in Iowa — yes, in Iowa somewhere!

With a 2-gallon purse on her shoulder, a snazzy phone in her hand, she flew down the stairs and bid me follow her down. Her Robin Hood boots treaded with an important gait. She had no class now; I wasn’t making her late.

We went from room to room on a scavenger hunt, but we made no progress, punt after punt.

Then, as my class drew near, she looked at her phone and said, Oh dear. I cannot spend any more time with you now. I cannot stay here. My boyfriend and I have a date, I fear.

Hijabis with boyfriends — well that’s something new. 

You know, she replied to my silence, Muslims can have boyfriends, too.

I wondered, then, if there was a space within the word. For boy friends and boyfriends are different, I’ve heard.

What brought us together was fate. I love him and he loves me — she left no room for debate.

And how did you meet? I wanted to know. Was it on the beach or under the snow?

We were at a picnic — my family and his. He saw me and I saw him — that’s how love is. Oh, it was perfect from the start. He was my knight in shining armor; yes, he stole my heart. (I figured there must be a mishap. Humans, not trees, were now dripping sap.) And our families have been friends a long-time. We are so made for one another, we practically rhyme. I mean, my parents dote on him, and he tried to propose – but until we graduate my father’s opposed. See, I have a boyfriend, but I’m not like those girls on the street, those girls who fall for some guy they meet.

Now it was all clear. She was a rebel indeed, on the wrong side of family, society and creed.

“She’s paralyzed, the waist down, can’t move. Go, bring your mother,” he instructed one of the children.

S, bint el hara (their neighbor), explained again that unfortunately we were not from an NGO. We were not here to build rooms or to give them better roofing. We were here only to document their conditions in hopes of conveying them to a broader audience. We would make no promises, for we could not keep them.

They didn’t believe us, I don’t think, for they kept asking if we’d taken their names down and if the help would know their address when it arrived.

The man’s present wife served us over-sweetened tea, but its sweet scent was lost amidst the overpowering smells of animal droppings. The steam rose doubly quickly, for we stood in the center of the house, an unpaved square that boasted two canopies — a leaky zinc one and another intangible one made of a material that turns red-orange but doesn’t rust.

Pheasants and chickens, also eager to avoid the rain, shared the small canopy with us. With hands cupped around our tea glasses, we watched as the sky showed off its various card tricks: thrusting weak spades into the muddy ground, slicing the air with rain sharp as diamonds, then slowing until it seemed the heart of the sky would stop pounding altogether.

One of the children, undeterred by the slings and arrows of outrageous weather, stood directly under the rain. There were three open-mouthed bins set out to collect rainwater for rainless rainy days. The bins were full to the brim. With water dripping down his face, he tried to wash his feet and sandals — an impossible feat, given that both would instantly be muddied as fast as they were cleaned. He ended up perching on one of the bins, his little sandal bobbing up and down beside him.

“Here she is — my wife,” the boy’s father commanded our attention once again. “Paralyzed feet, but no treatment.”

To my astonishment, the woman peered at us from behind the wooden gate, standing on her two allegedly paralyzed feet. We, all of us, looked at her mystified and expectant. Her husband waved her in. He wanted us to take a good look, to help her out.

As she came forward, it became clear that there was indeed a problem — not (what I understood to be) paralysis but something crippling nonetheless. She walked as if her feet had been incorrectly screwed on, as if her legs carried otherwise dead feet. We were paralyzed with dread as we saw her make what was, even to us, a perilous journey across the mushy shit-covered ground.

The rain had given the Arabic expression – zad itteen billah, made the soil wetter — a new (brown) shade of meaning.

Before we could locate a tray or a ready hand to rid us of our tea glasses, the woman had fallen. Hands and knees went into the slime, and she struggled to rise.

Why did her husband ask her to come across? Did he not know better? Why didn’t we move more quickly? I wanted to kick myself for just being there, for seeing that.

The sky cried hard, out of turn. Meanwhile, the woman, who had every right to weep — she looked at her muddied hand as if it did not belong to her, with dry, almost indifferent eyes.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the narrator describes the exhausting search for a friend’s corpse in a river of mud and shit. Vietnam was just that, O’Brien implies, a river of mud and shit: slippery, malodorous, deep, unbreathable and hard to get out of.

Gaza Camp is not unlike.

As we prepared to leave this Saturday, an elderly man told us that, when we were 120-years old, we would remember him as a distant memory merely. I told him that I hoped the camp would be a memory, and I meant it.

I hope that in the camp’s place will be a flourishing city, a city able to stand tall, on strong stable feet. A city that doesn’t fall to its knees. A city like all others that, when promised rain, delights instead of wondering if perhaps this time it shall drown in its own waste.

“What was your expression when he proposed? When you first heard he was gonna ask?”

She blushed, laughed and shook her head. And we thought, oh, how bashful. But we weren’t about to let bashfulness get in the way of a good story.

“I can’t!” she protested.

“You must!” we insisted.

She shrugged her shoulders with resignation.

“I can’t tell you because — I proposed to him.”

Cake forks settled on paper plates and all eyes converged on the bride.

Not every wedding story is as memorable as that. At most engagements, the stuff of novels is summarized in no more than five words: Our families knew each other. We grew up together. Our friends hooked us up.

Still, I’d never heard the rime from an ancient mariner.  (Actually, I don’t think I’d ever met an ancient mariner.) Two nights ago, however, A’s uncle, a sailor who traveled the seven seas, volunteered the story of his betrothal. His promised to be an interesting one for, in it, three siblings married three siblings.

Though the story involved a seven-year long engagement period and slight miscommunication between suitor and prospective father-in-law, and though it was told with the jocular good-humor of a seaman, the story itself was unremarkable. They proposed. They accepted. The rest was history.

“It was naseeb (destiny), and my naseeb was hiloo (sweet),” he said as he admired his wife with young eyes.

His daughter — a wife and mother herself — moved among us with a tray of Turkish coffee. Someone asked for more sugar.

“Did she say she wants more sugar?” ‘Ammu asked his wife. And though she had her hand cupped over her mouth, her eyes smiled through their thin-frame glasses as if she knew what was coming.

“Well,” he turned to the sweet-tooth, “have my wife dip her finger in it and you won’t be needing any sugar.”

All this got me to thinking that, yes, the initial stitches may have been unremarkable, but the elaborate work done since is beyond remarkable. These were two knitting needles that produced some of the finest work I’ve seen in Jordan. And though the years may have aged everything else around them, they seem to be strong, straight and shiny as ever.

The work this pair weaved between them over the course of these years — these children and grandchildren, this home — these I hope will always warm them because, for what it’s worth, on a cold night in February, they certainly warmed me.

“Uh, what — what are those?”

“Oh, those,” one of our young hostesses explained, “They’re just pigeons that the kids colored.”

“Colored?”

“Yeah, with markers or paint.”

This was one of many colorful elements of a camp on the outskirts of Jerash. There was also a mutilated yellow chick on the hood of an old blue car, makeshift white flags hanging over several houses heralding a child’s betrothal, and stunningly beautiful black Gazan women who (thanks to a combination of Photoshop, white foundation, and racist attitudes) appear as ghostly white figures in their wedding photographs.

But let’s save that rant for another day.

This was my second visit to a camp known as Jerash Camp by officials and Gaza Camp by everyone else. At this contentiously named camp, over 90% of the residents are what UNRWA calls ex-Gazans, families who were displaced twice, first internally to Gaza in 1948 and then externally to Jordan in 1967.

Some say that, of all of Jordan’s Palestinian refugees, this lucky bunch is denied citizenship because Egypt is the (irresponsible) adoptive parent of Gazans. Jordan already begrudgingly adopted all the West Bankers — isn’t that enough? Others say that it’s because Jordan has come to accept Israel’s ’48 borders but not the lands occupied in ’67. Therefore, these refugees must remain stateless in order to encourage their return. Still others say that all this is rubbish and that, really, Gazans are being denied Jordanian citizenship because they’d flood the job market and, with their hearty fertility rates, tip the already-precarious political balance.

The reasons are many but the result is one.

The absence of national ID numbers means that Gazans hold 2-year Jordanian-issued passports. If those prohibitively expensive documents aren’t renewed, residents say, they become undocumented immigrants, even if Jordan is their country of birth. The UNRWA neatly summarizes the conditions of ex-Gazans here:

Ex-Gaza refugees cannot vote, work for the government (except on a casual basis), and benefit from government services. Access to domestic employment by (larger) private companies may also be denied, as national Intelligence may not grant the required approval. Also certain government licenses, like public drivers’ license, are not granted to ex-Gaza refugees. The ex-Gaza refugees often lack the skills, licences and resources to start their own small business. Further, they do not afford higher education,

as they have to pay disproportionate tuition fees.

Now that your acute social sensibilities are sufficiently offended, allow me to point out the parts of the camp that are offensive to the senses.

Paris is known for its Eiffel Tower, Italy for its Leaning one, Jerash for its Roman ruins and Gaza Camp for its gutters.

Nowhere else in Jordan will you find a fifty-year old neighborhood that has open sewers, a pipe poking out of every zinc-roofed home and little rivers of sewage running alongside children in every alleyway. The place has a stench and is reputably revolting in the summer.

My friend and I benefited from the hospitality of a dozen families there. We therefore sat in a dozen guest rooms and, as our taxi driver assured us, had the best refreshments the families could offer.

Did anyone on the street beg? our driver asked, concerned. No, they hadn’t. He nodded knowingly. It seemed his confidence in the pride of his own community was restored.

“We aren’t starving,” a resident with a hijab twisted into a flower told me. “What we need is education. Money to get our young people through college. They can help themselves after that. Even if they can’t be employed in Jordan, they’ll be employed elsewhere. They’ll help their families out of this situation.”

S, a 23-year old in a jilbab, however, told me that she didn’t want out. “I like the camp and its ways. I love the community here.”

“You’re a reporter?” S’s father asked me as he adjusted his red keffiyeh. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll tell you what we need most. Take note. Yes, write this down: better healthcare and a closed sewer system. That’s all. Healthcare and sewers.”

Even though I don’t know who to report to, I took note.

It’s not a lot to ask. Heart surgeries shouldn’t be luxuries and everyone has a right to wake in the morning to the smell of flowers or coffee — really, anything but sewers.

–

A bunch of girls gave us a guided tour of their camp. One of them, A, had drawn a thick line of kohl under her slanted brown eyes. She wore a regal black abaya with a rose print at its hem. Her black heeled shoes were square-tipped and slip-on. She walked through the camp as if it were a garden and showed us into her home as if it were a palace. Her composure, gait, poise — everything bespoke a person who refuses to bow to even the cruelest context.

Just as I was thinking these thoughts, the worst happened.

It was just as she was excusing herself to go. She stepped back and her foot fell into the gutter. When she regained her balance and withdrew foot, we saw that it was shoeless and green.

I had a water bottle. Did she want to rinse it off? No, she maintained her poise. Several men in a nearby store — a little hole in the wall — men whom she knew or did not know, were already moving swiftly to get her figuratively back on her feet.

My help was graciously refused. And I didn’t insist either.

It was as if, by stepping into the sludge, A’s heel had broken a hole in the glass floor of the camp. So long as the glass remained intact, so long as the hole was quickly repaired, the residents could block out their degrading circumstances.

The girls we met treaded upon the dirt of the camp with the elegance of Balqees (Queen of Sheba) at Prophet Suleiman’s palace.

So real was the illusion, so necessary, that we, too, after several hours’ walking, no longer saw the ground as it was. We, too, walked in denial of our surroundings.

If not that, then I don’t know what we were thinking, why we were so surprised.

Inevitably, a delicate ankle would slip, the glass would break, and the crystal rivers underneath would reveal their true colors. The foot would emerge green, and the putrid smell would rise, repugnant and undeniable.

If you’d have beheld us then, you’d have seen a dozen or more girls with dry throats and sober expressions.

Unlike most reminders, this one was not concerned with the drama or metaphysics of death itself. It dealt strictly with post-mortem mechanics. And though death was hardly mentioned, it was implied at every step.

In my community, few women know how to wash bodies. Even fewer actually do it. Khala Hala was one of them.

But Khala Hala wasn’t known to me for her strength at the thirteenth hour. I knew her in life, among the living. It is hard to think of the mosque without her, in fact.

She was there often. Every Saturday practically, sitting Indian-style in the first row on the women’s side.

She had a large, expressive pair of eyes that, when fixed upon you disapprovingly, made you melt into a puddle. Conversely, those beautiful eyes when smiling radiated warmth, thawing the ice between friends.

Khala Hala was the kind of woman who called out the bluff of even the toughest ‘ammus (uncles). They were like Rapunzel before her, caught in the act. A stern look from her could make them stop mid-sentence and withdraw their tumbling words. And, like a Madonna, a simple nod from her was redemption.

Khala had a voice like a yardstick that put naughty Sunday School children back in their seats. A voice that shepherded the wandering gaze from the open mosque doorway to the greener pastures of a chalkboard where Arabic letters grew like stalks of wheat. I taught at Sunday School beside her. My students left with the scent of baby powder still on them. After making it through the next class — Khala Hala’s — my rose-cheeked kindergarteners emerged with a different glow. She turned them into resilient little creatures that did not hide in their tortoise shells when assaulted. Like Red Bull, Khala Hala gave them wings.

Khala Hala wore the kinds of large home-sown scarves that fluttered in the wind and gave her an eye-catching grace, even as she swooped down to catch a running child in her arms.

She was one of the first khalas (aunties) to transform her Motorola phone into a hands-free device, tucked into her hijab. Khala Hala improvised and Bluetooth plagiarized.

I feel like it’s been years since I’ve been to my mosque — the playground of my childhood and the Saturday-night club of my adolescence. Since college, my mosque visits have become more scarce, with months in between. That’s why every time I go, I register all the small alterations that combine to give the mosque an altogether new look: a fresh forest-green carpet in the women’s prayer hall; a bulletin board design that’s new to me but sun-bleached with age; a new line of young impressionable evergreens; a don’t-run-over-the-kids sign.

When I return — if I return iA — I don’t know if I’ll recognize the place.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) praised a person whose heart is mu’allaq (attached; hanging) to the mosque. And, when I enter the main prayer hall where Khala Hala used to hold her Sunday School classes and attend Saturday night lectures, I know something will be awry. One of the longest-standing light fixtures there — that modest yet sparkling chandelier — will be gone.

–

Allah yirhamha. May Allah have mercy on her.

“Since he’s been in your class, he’s grown degenerate. He doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t listen to any of us — me or his sisters. He’s even less studious than before. I ask him about that dossier you gave him — what are you studying, and he can’t tell me a thing. He’s gotten worse this year, with your class. You’re not strict with them. Just now, when I came in, the boys were fooling around — punching each other, out of their seats.” I couldn’t deny it. “And sometimes, when he’s supposed to be in your class, I get calls from him. Four, five calls. What is he learning if he’s on the phone? And I don’t let my son out on the streets, then he comes to your class and hangs with boys who are a bad influence. I just happened to be driving past the other day and there they were — smoking. My son. Smoking.”

This was news to me, and sad sad news at that.

“I can afford to feed him and clothe him, but a pack of cigarettes — two packs a day — I can’ t do it. You see, I’m a smoker myself. I smoke. I can’t have him smoking, too.”

And I thought he was concerned about the boy’s lungs.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be taking my son out of your class.”

“If you really believe that your son is attending my class for the wrong reasons and that it has a decidedly negative effect on him, then I, too, think you should withdraw him.” Then, in what must have been an echo of my parents, “If education doesn’t make us more mannered, then what’s the use?”

Without taking book or pencil, the student trotted after his father.

I came back into the class feeling betrayed.

The subtle texting, the cluelessness about homework, the horseplay– I knew about those. I had been permissive to a fault. Bas hada kom ‘uttadkheen kom. But that’s a pile and smoking’s another pile.

I confronted them.

“You guys,” I didn’t know who I was talking to, so I addressed all the boys. “I know the pressure you’re under. I go to the University, and every guy who thinks he’s anybody smokes. [Except for the religious crowd, I should add.] Smoking is so prevalent, so casual, so sophisticated — wallahi (by God) the idea crossed my mind.” They laughed. “You might think that smoking is part of becoming a man, growing up, but you shrink in my estimation when you choose to smoke, because it’s self-destructive.”

“It’s killing yourself slowly,” one of the boys offered.

“Exactly. Imagine putting your face on a car’s tailpipe and breathing in. That’s more-or-less what you’re doing. It causes cancer, blackens your lungs. Why would you do that to yourself?”

“But, Miss, you’re telling us all this and over there [in the US], they drink.”

“And there’s drinking here, too. What others do doesn’t concern us.”

“And there [in the US], they do heroin.” The boys pushed back their chairs and shrugged their shoulders as if I was being hypocritical.

My reply here was a throwback to Anthony Quinn’s Omar al-Mukhtar: “They are not our role models. If they do wrong, must we also? I’m not telling you this because I want to point out your faults as a society or as individuals. I’m only concerned for your welfare.”

By this time, one boy was almost flattened on his desk and a couple others had slid in their seats.

I know that advising prudence and healthfulness is teacherly and motherly and that, at 14 and 15, teachers and mothers are not the hippest role models on the block.

Even so, I am a teacher, not a saint. In the name of leniency, I’ve been tolerating a lot of tomfoolery and that, in turn, has made it harder for the serious to stay focused.

There are a few kids, besides, who’ve been treating the class as a game. I’ll buy their analogy. This is a new playing season. We’re short on time for practice and we’re up against formidable teams. So, this semester there’ll be tryouts and, sadly, not everyone will make the cut.

The rest of N’s female kin tuned in to our radio station. All eyes on N.

This was a hard question to answer without offending. If you said “No” there’d be a “Why  not? What’s wrong with us and our sons?” And if you said “Yes” there’d be a flurry of excitement, a few gasps at your unseemly audacity and quite possibly some (unwelcome) knockers at your door.

N was honest, brutally so.

“From here? No.” She shook her head. A dozen eyebrows asked the formidable question, so N explained, “The men here have these expectations — about their women. They expect them to cook and clean and take care of the kids.”

“And…?”

“And they act like it’s not their business. At all. The Prophet (pbuh) used to help around the house.”

“Her husband helps with the children,” they all turned to one of the women who, ironically, had a child on her shoulder and another at her foot.

“But they don’t help ‘illaw biminnu ‘aleich (except that they boast about their help), so much so that you regret accepting help in the first place.”

The women turned back to N, conceding the point.

“And men here are controlling–” N continued. She wasn’t letting anyone off the hook tonight.

“Of course,” one of the aunts remarked to her neighbor, “she’s used to coming and going without anyone standing ‘adda’ra (at her every step). It’s hard to go from this to that.” She raised her hand and tilted her head understandingly.

“So who would you marry?” They asked but looked afraid of the answer.

“An American.” Highly suspicious.

“An American Muslim –” I interjected.

“Do they exist?” Their faces seemed to say.

“Like her. Like us,” I tried to soften the blow.

“And shabab in Ameirca do those things? They really clean and help with the kids?”

“Well,” I interrupted, afraid that they’d think ours the land of Merry Men. “They don’t all do that, but there is more of an expectation that men should participate in chores, especially because women are most often working.”

“It’s because the women work!” Nods of satisfaction went around.

“I work,” one of them confessed, “and my husband doesn’t lift a finger, so I work inside and out.”

Another seconded her sentiment. Again, the swing states voted in our favor.

“It’s true. Our men don’t do that, but what are we to do? If you wait for a guy who’ll do those things, you’ll never marry.”

“Aunt, it doesn’t have to be this way,” N seized a teachable moment, “You can change this. You’re the only people who can. You’re the mothers. If you raise your sons to help out and to be less possessive vis-a-vis women, they’ll be that way. Sure, it won’t be your generation, but the next one — your daughters — they’ll benefit. That’s how society changes.”

“It’s hard. Hard.” The skeptics muttered. From others’ faces, I could tell that the  ideas were percolating.

After a long meditative silence, the aunt who posed the marriage question turned to me.

“And you? The same?”

“The same.” I said, as if indicting myself.

She shook her hands with (melodramatic) worry for us and our looming spinsterhood, and they laughed at us and we at ourselves. Then, from all around the room, little duaa’s (supplications) came flying towards us. Duaa’s for marriage and happiness. We were, after all, girls who were looking for ethereal partners, made of light, not clay. We were the kind of girls who made mothers’ hair grey early. We were girls with great expectations.

“Who killed whom?”

“It’s internecine violence. It’s been going on for three years. Palestinians killing Palestinians. It all started when a bunch of kids from one prominent Khalili (Hebron) family beat up a crowd of kids from another prominent family. Just kids playing rough. Then, youths from the beaten family came over and beat up the offending kids. The youth of that family then met them man-to-man, and violence broke out among them. First, fists and feet, then someone pulled a gun. And that’s how it started. The latest in the revenge killings was yesterday.”

“But–” This was all bewildering to us. We were just in al-Khalil. “Where do they get the guns?”

The taxi driver laughed at our naivety. “Where do they get the guns? From Israel, that’s where.”

At the risk of further evincing our stupidity we asked, “But — how?”

“The black market. Where there’s demand, supply follows. You think Palestinians don’t have guns? The men of al-Khalil alone, I assure you, have more guns than the entire American military. So long as they keep using them on each other, even Israel doesn’t mind.”

“You mean recently?”

“Like, last week.”

This was the first (semi-)complete sentence either of us had spoken since we had left al-Khalil (Hebron) for Ramallah. The trip, already (20 watchtowers) long owing to the prohibitive security fence, was made even longer when ‘i’shat al-dinamo (whatever that is) broke and the taxi became inoperable.

Upon hearing of the taxi troubles, the two young male passengers immediately concluded that they weren’t in a particular rush and that, should a cab with open slots pass us by on our road in the middle of nowhere, we girls should get priority. Of course, of the few cabs that passed us by, none stopped, for none had spaces. (To make the trip worthwhile, cabs fill up to capacity before they hit the long and winding road.)

Our young taxi driver with the crew cut apologized to us all as he inched towards the nearest town. There, after several stops, he bought a new ‘ishat dinamo and, at a different mechanic’s, had it installed.

The three men made serious faces at the open hood as N and I waited in the cranked-up car (again, not sure why; the tires seemed fine). Anyway, as N and I sat there twiddling our thumbs, the driver popped into his seat and threw us a chocolate-wafer bar and an embarrassed apology. Before we could thank him (or throw it back?) he was outside.

Though we weren’t hungry and though all we wanted to do was to laugh amusedly at his gruff generosity, we split the apology bar in two and ate it. These Palestinian men were already self-conscious, and the last thing we wanted was to make them think us too good for those famous Ali Baba wafers.

Once the new ‘i’shat dinamo was up and running, our driver made a quick stop at a tiny market. He returned with plastic cups, a liter of tangy orange juice and — guess what? — more chocolate wafers. We drank the apology juice but declined the apology bars. We had had enough apologies to keep us running for hours.

We were back on our mountainous way when the topic of Gaza emerged.

“How is it there?” The taxi driver with the crew cut asked.

“The destruction is awful, but the people are so resilient.”

“How is Hamas’ governance — as opposed to Fatah’s, here?” This from the man respectfully crowded into a corner of the cab, the one with a beige jacket, red-and-white stripe collared shirt and faded jeans. He had been lowering his gaze the whole time, but now his curiosity overpowered him.

“There’s corruption there, too. Hamas and Fatah — they’re the same. Both corrupt.”

A hush fell over our crowd of four. Everyone was processing. I was wondering how, in 48-hours’ time N had managed to discover that Hamas was as corrupt as Fatah.

“What did you see? I mean, how did you find that out? Like, what indicators–”

They all looked at me, astonished. “So you weren’t there, too?”

I shook my head. We all turned to N, expecting.

Suddenly, she was a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “It’s just that conversation that day with that man–”

“You mean Kareem Muhammad Ali?” He was the socialist Palestinian politician we’d lunched with the other day, among others. He had argued that Hamas was not entirely altruistic in its transfer of goods from Egypt to Gaza through the tunnels, that it stood to profit from the transaction. He did not, however, say anything about how those profits were disbursed, nor did he question the general integrity of Hamas’ operatives.

N withdrew. The language barrier, for once, had stood higher than this land’s physical barriers. She had misunderstood, but she rebounded quickly.

“If you had your choice of Israel, Hamas or Fatah governance, which would you choose?” N asked with characteristic charisma. Over the course of our trip, I learned that the very simplicity of her questions elicited surprisingly complicated responses.

“I’d live in Israel,” the taxi driver said in a heartbeat. “Without a doubt Israel.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s unlivable, here. We can’t get jobs here zay al-nas (literally: like the people). In Israel, the wages are so much better. Here, every city has its own government. In Hebron seat belts are optional. In Ramallah, they’re required. On Israeli roads, you’re fined to death if you litter. On Palestinian roads, no problem, litter all you want. Here, it costs so much just to pay for a taxi license, then for a license plate. It’s impossible. But, to be honest, I’m not here long. My papers are done. I’m just waiting for permission to move to Jordan. I’m done with this.”

“Being under Fatah is awful, worse than Israel even.” The words of the man in the red-and-white collared shirt. “For years, my dad was a fugitive, wanted by Israel — that is before he was killed. Whenever the Israelis come to get someone, they send word right before, so at least the ladies can cover and the family can be ready. I was detained five times: three times by Fatah and twice by Israel.”

This person spoke of prison as casually as if it were an ice cream parlor.

“When Fatah comes,” he continued, his gaze fixed outside, “they don’t respect anything or anyone. And then they beat and torture. Worse than Israel. It’s like a personal thing for them.”

“Why — Why were you imprisoned?” N asked the burning question.

“For talking — about Hamas. I’m Hamas. Anyone who talks about Hamas here is imprisoned. Most of Hamas’ support comes from here, from al-Khalil, but you wouldn’t know it. Anyone who opens his mouth with a word is taken in. It wasn’t Gaza that elected Hamas. The West Bank was the one that gave Hamas its vote, but Israel wouldn’t have it, and Fatah came in on Israel’s auspices. People don’t love Fatah here. In an election, they wouldn’t win, not in a hundred years. I’d live under Hamas today if I could.”

He paused as if turning something in his mind.

“If the bombs were falling on Gaza like last summer, I’d still want to be in Gaza. I’m willing to die to be under Hamas.” He knocked his knuckles against the window. “Thanks, man. I get down here.”

He made the forbidden remark without heroism or theatrics. For prison-worthy words, they were unabashed, stubborn– one might even say — enthusiastic.

A night under the stars? No, our driver explained. The IDF has taken this family’s home. There it was, actually.

We looked up and saw an apartment on the second story of the building in front of which they sat, an apartment smothered in blankets of white-and-blue.

As we passed the dispossessed family, they mistook us for Israelis and jeered at us. Not a moment later, we passed an Israeli boy — this time close enough for him to see through our tinted windows.

He spat at us. Our driver spat back.

It was tit for tat and that was that.

***

At my home in Amman, I had made a makeshift centerpiece for my coffee table. The pine cones hailed from forests at University of Jordan and the acorns smelled of Amman’s northwestern countryside.

I walked the vistas of the Noble Sanctuary in search of a rock or pine cone to take home. I wanted one of them to preside in regal fashion over the rest of my collection. Was there not a fallen prince for me restore to his former glory?

Pine trees dotted the place and pine needles were in excess, but not a pine cone was to be seen. I looked up, and there they were.

N pitied my pathetic attempts to procure a pine cone, so she called out to her cousin. (For the physics-minded, his displacement from our location was 5 meters and counting. His speed was increasing, his acceleration constant.)

He returned to humor my childish wishes, but at the last moment, released the branch into the air.

“It’s better we leave them here,” he said as if he’d almost forgotten. “The boys use them to pelt the soldiers.”

The pine cone was a fish that slipped through my fingers. But there, in its element, it looked lofty, dignified even. And, when the breeze shook the pine-laden branches, I could hear the swish of the river that all these stubborn fish called home.