taking jerusalem

We were making a U-turn. A family was out on the street, adults on metal chairs, children playing with sticks, all gathered around a fire in a rusty metal barrel.

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.

the popeye treatment

We were in front of a wall-sized mural of Yasser Arafat. The canvas was Israel’s security fence.

Where was N? We said we’d meet at this border crossing half-an-hour ago.

“Do you want to cross to the other side?” I asked A. “N and her uncle might see us better from there if they drive by.”

We crossed the street. Now Yasser Arafat was looming over us, and a series of aluminum trash bins formed a pungent barricade in front of the more stately concrete one.

Three apple-cheeked round-faced straight-haired boys formed yet another barrier, this time in front of me. Each had a stack of CDs in hand. A was an ajnabiyah (foreigner), whereas I — I would understand their entreaties.

“Min shan Allah. Min shan Allah. For God’s sake.” They pushed the CDs at me.

Somehow, I ended up with three random CDs: one for Amr Diab, another for Um Kulthoom and the last — catch this — a Fattah Party mix (not to be mistaken for a Fattah party mix). What’s more, I ended up with a loyal following of pre-teen CD sellers.

Some of the boys who’d sold competed as vigorously over my attention as boys who hadn’t. I looked from face to face. Several of these kids were spitting images of each other. There were clearly brothers in the bunch.

“Instead of hustling each other like this, why don’t you guys work together? Now, some of you sold me CDs, right?” They nodded impatiently. “If you took turns, you wouldn’t wear out your buyers and you’d each go home with something.”

My reasoning didn’t buy new clothes or wash off dusty feet. Dissatisfied, a couple of the the boys picked up disintegrating spinach from the garbage heap and flung it into the air. It came fluttering down on A and me like green confetti. A was seriously unimpressed.

We crossed back to the other side. A sat on the foot of a supermarket. I stood in front of her, on the lookout for N and blocking the sun.

We heard a siren. An Israeli police car was wailing near the border. Two teenagers walked past.

“We did it! We broke the glass!” They clapped hands and, on fast feet, were gone.

Two of the apple-cheeked boys who had remorse written all over their faces crossed the street to us.

“You should probably go.” One said without making eye contact. “Someone threw rocks at their cars, and they might shoot. They sometimes shoot. You never know.”

From our place across the street, A and I listened as one vehicle wailed its distress and a hundred others stood mutely in their queues. Yasser Arafat, too, watched. He, too, was ominously silent.

let jerusalem be jerusalem again

Blonde, hazel-eyed A got through fine on her American passport. The slouching IDF soldier in the window yelled at her but let her through all the same.

N was next. N was an American citizen, a Berkeley student, born in Jerusalem. Because of that last fact, she had earned a special oval stamp in her passport that identified her, in Hebrew, as Palestinian and, in English, as unwelcome.

Sure, N could visit Jerusalem, but only after she applied for a permit from the Israeli government — a permit granted under the direst circumstances — childbirth and terminal illness.

We pretended we didn’t know. We hoped that the screaming lady in the window would be blind with self-inflicted fury. Unfortunately, she saw fine.

“Irja’ lalbayt!” She yelled at N in the masculine. “Go home!”

N and I hugged a quick goodbye, then I tried my luck.

The sensor sounded its disapproval.

“Irja‘!” The lady in the window yelled. ”Go back!”

She impatiently waved me forward. Again, it beeped.

“Irja’!” she yelled again. (If she were a decade older, she’d have been Old Yeller.) A young man, also in uniform and with legs raised on a swivel chair, laughed as if he were watching The Daily Show. (In a way, he was.)

“What should I do?” I asked in all-earnest English.

She yelled in a language I didn’t understand — Hebrew? — and waved me away, in the direction of the lined up Palestinians. The young man laughed. I felt my face burn.

A Palestinian woman stuck in the turnstile behind me was my only comfort.

“Are you wearing bracelets? Jewelry?”

I took them off. Two bangles from my Palestinian grandmother. A watch my brother chose for me before I left for Jordan. A ring my mother had given me for my high school graduation and eighteenth birthday. Where did I think I was going, anyway, wearing these things? I dug under my scarf for what were once my grandmother’s earrings. Anything but the beep.

“Leave those. You should be fine,” the woman behind bars spoke, as if from experience.

I went through. Safe.

I pinned my passport photo page up against the window.

“Visa. Visa!” She yelled, and the young man beside her gave her some more positive reinforcement. She must think herself a real entertainer, whipping up laughs like that. She’ll probably try for singing, what with all the vocal training she gets at this border.

I showed her my hexagon-shaped visa stamp. Not Palestinian.

Now, for some unfathomable reason, she was yelling again, in tongues. Now she was waving her arms. Now the young man put his feet down because he was laughing so hard.

“What do you want me to do?” I was shouting, too.

Like a chicken straining to lay her egg, she released several useless screams before her efforts proved finally productive.

“Photo!”

I showed her the photo again, she waved me off like a fly and pressed the buzzer to usher the next insect into her swatting range.

I cried. I cried because I hate hate hate negative attention. I cried because my nightmares involve public humiliation. I cried because I knew that I couldn’t report her to anyone. I cried because I wanted to beat her into silence. I cried because I had come to a place where the human rights of Palestinians are systematically violated and I — I was stupidly, insensibly sensitive. I cried because I had no right to cry.

My self-pity was brief. A and I emerged on the other side of the border, and N’s older cousin — a resident of Jerusalem — met us there.

“They didn’t let N through?”

We shook our heads.

“Follow me.”

We exited the border, left Jerusalem behind us, reunited with N. The three of us hurried behind the man in the black jacket and phone to his ear. Not a minute later, another young man in a huge white t-shirt and baggy jeans  – an LA transplant, it seemed — hurriedly parked his car and climbed into the passenger seat. The cousin took the wheel. Wordlessly, N, A and I rode in the back.

This was the contingency plan. If it didn’t work, there’d be no Jerusalem — at least not for N.

After a half-hour of winding mountainous highways, we were at another checkpoint, this time for cars.

A black IDF soldier tapped the tinted windows. She searched our trunk. Peeking in, she looked at our passports: The two men’s. Mine. A’s. N’s.

She saw only American passports. Human faces. Five casual Arab strangers.

Had she looked closer, though, she’d have noticed that we girls were holding hands. Had she looked closer, she’d have seen that, behind our smiles, we weren’t breathing. Had she looked closer, she’d have discovered that we were smuggling into the city a strictly illegal substance — a Jerusalem-born Palestinian.

little jerusalemites

My professor’s instructions: Pick up your things and head to Such-and-Such Auditorium for a cultural event.

Given that I didn’t know where to find Such-and-Such Auditorium, I played the follow-the-leader game. As it did in kindergarten, the game served me well.

Once there, I found a handful students behind cameras, recording. Older men (and a woman) in suits — presumably professors — sat in the front seats.

A man who reminded me of Mahmoud Darwish held the microphone. His name was Sameeh Al Qasem. He was reading a trifold poem. Each set of verses employed the sentence ana mut’assif (I’m sorry), only in different contexts and to different effects. For example, in the final piece the persona apologizes to God, but not without a touch of bitterness.

During the entirety of his talk, I was trying to place him. Our professor hadn’t given us any introduction and, by the time we reached Such-and-Such Auditorium, we’d missed the formal introduction.

As it turns out, what I said about the striking resemblance between this poet and the late Palestinian national poet — well, it wasn’t all that far-fetched.

Mahmoud Darwish and Sameeh Al Qasem had been friends since the 1950′s.

“People think we were always samn ‘a ‘asal.” (Literally: butter on honey. Figuratively: two things that go well together. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t make it up. And, no, I don’t eat butter with honey. I take it back. I do. ‘Aseeda anyone?)

“But that’s not true.” He continued. “We had our disagreements, but ask anyone in the Middle East — ask anyone if they heard me speak a word against Mahmoud, and ask anyone who knew Mahmoud if he said a word against me — never.”

“Each of us was regularly mistaken for the other,” the poet continued. “Readers would greet us by each others’ names. My poetry was even published once under his name and his under mine.”

Al Qasim gave us a little background on the following poem:

Taqaddamu… Kullu sama’in fawqakum jahannamu. Kullu ardin tahtakum jahannamu. Charge… Every sky over you is a hell. Every ground beneath you is a hell.

“Some listeners actually thought this ‘taqaddamu‘ was a directive for Palestinians or Arabs. A sort of rallying cry. But that’s anything but the case. There’s a story to this, actually.”

Al Qasim and Darwish were part of a human chain, peacefully protesting an IDF activity. Members of the IDF shot rubber bullets and threw tear gas canisters. Then, just as the links of the human chain began coming undone, little Jerusalemites arrived on the scene.

The schoolchildren came with backpacks packed with rocks. As they pelted the soldiers, they said, “Kadima (Hebrew for charge). Kadima, you sons of…”

The children succeeded in provoking the soldiers, thereby giving the protesters a moment’s respite. (I wonder what became of the children.)

The poem was born of that experience. Taqaddamu (the Arabic equivalent of kadima) pays homage to the children of Jerusalem who, ironically, came to the defense of the adults.

Funny thing is: I remember a lot about the aforementioned poem, only I can’t, for the life of me, remember who wrote it, Al Qasem or Darwish.

Yes, Mr. Sameeh. I’m one of those.

Sadly, there are no little Jerusalemites who can come to my rescue on this one.

ageless in amman

The first act had ended, and night’s curtain fell heavily onto Amman’s jagged cityscape. Artificial lights splashed the limestone hills with neon colors, as if to herald a second, more spectacular act.

We had spent our Friday afternoon like virtually every Friday afternoon: my aunt and I tidied up our homes; my aunt’s husband prayed jum’a at the mosque and picked up edibles from the bakery; then, we all packed into the car and cruised off to the scenic outskirts of the city.

Earlier that afternoon, we had driven along a narrow road hugged by striated clay-colored hills, and my aunt’s husband reminisced about swimming in Jerusalem. (I’m not sure what triggered the memory; there was no water in sight, but, who knows, really. The mind’s eye sees much more than meets the eye.)

“That’s not right.” My aunt frowned at her husband, and I frowned at her. Since when were early childhood memories liable to scrutiny? But my aunt continued, “How old were you?”

“I don’t know, but I remember it distinctly. Swimming with my siblings in Jerusalem.”

“So you must have been — what? — three at least, maybe four, if you can remember.” She clicked her tongue, unconvinced. “How old are you, ya zalameh (oh man)?” At that, I perked up. Did she just ask what I think she asked? Does she really not know her long-time husband’s age?

I needed to hear this. I mean, if you manage to keep your age secret after thirty-some years of marriage, you’ve got to be the best con artist alive.

“‘Ammu (Uncle), you don’t know your age?” I was sitting up like a sprightly hare, holding the back of my aunt’s seat.

He smiled, as if that were an answer.

“No, he doesn’t know his age.” My aunt translated.

“My mom told me that she held me in her arms [when she fled] in ’48.” This was a clue to the mystery of his age.

I suddenly wished I were better at mental math. 1948 was a long time ago — over sixty years. Then, he had been old enough to have stored a valid memory, but young enough to be carried in his mother’s arms.

“They didn’t take the birth certificates with them,” my aunt said of her husband’s family.

This story was not unfamiliar. My grandparents — Allah yirhamhum, may Allah have mercy on them — have lived and died, and the dates on their tombstones are approximate.

Still, I thought, I  cannot imagine what it is to live and not know how long I’ve lived.

What must it be like to measure your years not by a solar or lunar calendar, but by the number of wrinkles on your face, the number of white hairs at your temples?

If you don’t know how many years you’ve burned through, how are you supposed to figure out how many matches you have yet to light? But perhaps it doesn’t actually matter. After all, we may feel entitled to a certain number of matches — perhaps a full 42 count — but none of us actually knows how many our box holds. We simply go from year to year, striking that birthday match, all the while hoping that it won’t be the last.

Somewhere along the unpaved roads from Jerusalem to Amman, my aunt’s husband lost his age. Perhaps it’s taken residence in the city’s oldest quarters, crumbling with its walls and aging with the parapets. Perhaps it’s still a child, splashing around in a pool within earshot of al-Masjid al-Aqsa.

Wherever it’s gone, it’s unlikely that it’ll be back.

But I’m not one to mourn a lost name or date. Yes, I might consider his age among the casualties of that war, but I’ll not forget that the war cost countless others far more. My aunt’s husband is numbered among the lucky, the survivors. This, even if he has no number to his name.