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.

a land without a people

Where were they, the Palestinians?

In front of the school, there were no children. In the roads, there were no gel-haired youth. I had read that most women in the Middle East stay indoors for a plethora of reasons, so the absence of women on the street didn’t feel uncanny.

Still, I was wondering, where were they, these people who have famously high birthrates? Have they been so effectively scattered that none have remained?

We had seen red-roofed settlements on our way here. We’d seen Israeli Arabic-Hebrew roadsigns. We’d yielded to let cars of bearded yarmulke-wearing settlers drive past. We’d paused at the wave of an awfully young Israeli soldier at a checkpoint.

Israelis were here. Illegally here, but here all the same.  So where in the world were the Palestinians?

Beit Haneena was our first Arab-majority stop, and it sure made me stop.

The village felt uninhabited, forlorn, eerie. The metal doors on most of the storefronts were jammed shut. It was quiet –uncomfortably so, and so dark at night that there were no shadows.

This village, like countless others, I was told, had become so suffocated that the majority of its population lived elsewhere — in the US and Europe. As many as 90% of Beit Haneena’s residents annually commute from the global village to their little own.

Sure, I was disappointed in Beit Haneena but, in a way,  I was looking for a giant in elf’s shoes.

Beit Haneena is and has long been an agrarian village. Sure, in her blossoming days, she had a bigger wardrobe and more admirers, but notwithstanding her stunted growth, I suspect she fares well next to other crippled villages.

Plus, we had arrived ‘al-asriyah, in the late afternoon, at a time when dinner aromas regularly seduce families indoors. That evening, a score of N’s family and friends were assembled around a tray of ma’loubeh and, the next morning, I was comforted to see schoolchildren snickering and gossiping and running around in starched-and-pressed teal uniforms in the yard.

Still, nothing quieted my worry quite like visiting Ramallah the next day. Yes, I told myself, the Ramallah of Mourid and Mustafa Barghouti. The Ramallah of Al Jazeera. The Ramallah.

In what I perceived to be the city center was a rotunda. High on pedestals, half a dozen lions oversaw the streets radiating out. But, I reflected, if lions are still the noble, dignified creatures they were once reputed to be, they weren’t standing at the rotunda.

The lions were alive, of flesh and blood. When they had stepped off those pedestals, they’d left stone figures in their wake. Among these people wrapped in demure coats, with well-groomed manes were lions with spirits untamed.  Though they’d been caged, forbidden from roaming the pride lands of their fathers, made to jump through flaming hoops and whipped right and left, they remained dignified.

That unwillingness to settle, that sense of our own intrinsic value, that awareness of our humanity — that is what enables us to endure oppressive regimes and, ultimately, to overthrow them.

more frayed than afraid

It took us five hours to cross a bridge — and a land bridge at that.

At the main security checkpoint, we found a tall fellow with the gun and features of CTR’s Pinstripe Poteroo (Playstation 2, anyone?), only he was in plainclothes instead of a flashy pink suit. Unlike most security personnel I’ve seen in my short lackluster life, this man moved about. One minute he was twenty meters away and the next, he was behind us. What’s more, his gaze was penetrating and utterly unapologetic, and he always had both hands on his weapon.

Once inside, we encountered a different, more eclectic breed of Israeli security personnel — young, bored, self-important, self-effacing, chatty, reserved.

We three (unarmed) musketeers apparently qualified as a suspicious group. N, after all, was Jersualem-born and American-raised, a girl who had only days before entered besieged Gaza among a band of Code Pink protesters. Blond American A had been to Gaza twice on humanitarian missions and (they didn’t know this) she had single-handedly fundraised for N’s trip. Then me. I was this strange Muslim American appendage.

We saw our passports move from hand to hand as we waited on the sidelines along with four bearded men who spoke a language I suspected was from the Caucasus or thereabouts.

A young Israeli security officer asked me a few questions. Through his thin-frame glasses, he looked at my passport and then, as I answered, his eyes flitted from me to the rest of the waiting area.

Across from where I sat were two dressing rooms, with curtains and a square-shouldered guard outside. A slender Palestinian woman in jilbab disappeared behind one of the curtains, followed by an Israeli soldier with clear plastic gloves. A cavity search, my mind screamed. I promised myself that, under no conditions would I subject myself to one of those.

The bespectacled soldier’s questions brought me back to what was — by contrast — a rather comfortable encounter with security forces. His questions were direct: Was this my first visit? Why did I want to go to Jerusalem? Do I know people there? How long and where did I plan to stay? Could he see my plane ticket?

Then, to my eternal delight, after our interview ended, he asked me to call — he opened the other passport, presumably N’s — and read out my name. Would I please call myself for an interview? No, I couldn’t do that, but I would call my friend.

A while later, a sudden stir swept the place. “Everyone here,” the girls with pagers urgently directed the crowd. Then, “No, no, everyone here. Move!”

All of us were shuffled into a large adjacent room. What was going on, we asked? “There’s a situation and it’s being taken care of,” they answered. They sounded like the college RA I’d been last year. Say something but don’t say anything, really. Exude confidence and maintain confidentiality during times of crisis. (We never did find out what caused the scare.)

In that second room, we watched as crowd after crowd of Arabs with Palestinian hawiyas (ID’s) went through. Though all three of us had American passports, an Israeli soldier with a scruffy face, rudimentary English and the body of a skater-boy told us shyly that, here, this American passport means nothing. As a Jerusalem-born Palestinian, N must have a hawiya. Without it she could enter but not leave the West Bank.

As we waited for our Israeli soldier in shining armor to get N “special permission” to enter, A and I were interviewed again, this time by a lady. This interview was fun, actually. It took place on a staircase, was interrupted by four Israeli personnel laughing and chatting in Hebrew, and involved questions like: Do you care about the internal politics of Israel? Did you protest the Gaza war of last year? Do you plan to get involved in protests around the anniversary of the war?

Though I sassed her a little bit, my honesty most often left her smiling. Yes, I’d protested, as did many Israelis. Yes, I read Haaretz and the New York Times. No, I more-or-less protest in my country, where my shouting (supposedly) counts.

Finally, after the border crossing had officially closed and the janitors were halfway through mopping the floor, our band of three was granted the right of passage.

By then, my nerves were frayed. We had talked to others’ children, made contingency plans and visited the bathroom an unreasonable number of times. N had listened to a quarter of the songs on her iPod and A had downed a dozen cups of coffee. As we exchanged dinars for shekels, collected our bags and taken our first steps in Palestine we were too tired to notice.

N was arguably the most exuberant: ”I can’t believe it! It’s all because of that soldier. He was so nice. I can’t believe I’m here! They let me through!”

“Do you hear yourself?” I snapped. “He was nice, but he kept acting like he was doing us a favor. Going back and forth, as if you were the first Palestinian-born they’ve met. And for five hours?! No. No, they weren’t nice. You’re Palestinian-born. You have a right to be here. My mother is Palestinian. I have a right to be here. They should be apologizing to us.”

“You’re funny,” N replied, for she’d been stung at the Egyptian-Israeli border. “Your expectations of Israel are too high.”

I’m not going to lie. I had always envisioned a glorious, haloed entrance to the Holy Land — not unlike man’s first steps on the moon. But here I was, tired of the bureaucracy, of the iniquitous rules, of the waiting and waiting and waiting.

And then I realized that, to truly enter a place as weary and battered as Palestine, to experience it, something in us must be worn and battered too.

This had been our orientation to occupation. Within these five hours, we had already shed our ability to protest invasive strip searches. We had foregone the notion that all humans ought to be treated equally, regardless of their place of birth, religious garb, skin color, language or beard length. We had genially submitted to the authority of an illegal occupation. We had been broken in.

We were now ready to enter the Occupied Territories.

miss spontaneity

It had been a bizarre day. Two of my friends from the US were suddenly in Amman and, unwilling to choose between them, I chose them both.

Now we were assembled around a dinner table in the balad (downtown), with bowls of mansaf between us. Introductions had gone around and rounds of questions followed.

“I’m going to the West Bank tomorrow.” My Palestinian American friend N said. “Wanna come?”

Of course I wanted to come and of course I wouldn’t. Tomorrow? Please. Who do you think I am? Miss Spontaneity?

“Why not? You can come with us. A and I are going. Jerusalem. Bethlehem. Hebron. Come! You should totally come!”

“But I don’t even have a visa–”

“Do you have an American passport?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. You don’t need a visa. Just bring your passport. See! You can come.”

“My God. Maybe.”

I imagined Jerusalem — the historical, fictional city emblazoned in my memory. I imagined Palestine — a place I sometimes thought I could smell and see and remember. Could I visit this ethereal idea? This mirage of a place? Could I really walk among its villages? Touch its leaves and rocks? Could I really see its people — for the first time — in a land they call their own?

The blood rushed to my face and I took N in a hug. She had made it all seem so real, so possible, so easy. Yes, iA I could go. I would go. I will go.

I reined myself back in. I had galloped too far. There were still parents to talk to, bags to pack, an early alarm to set, and an aunt to bid goodbye before her own trip to the US.

I didn’t want my hopes to fly too high on faulty wings.

“I’ll call my parents and see. I’ll call you tonight,” I assured N.

That night, I called my dad. It was early morning there. Mama was still asleep. I told Baba about N’s invitation, that we’d be staying at her grandfather’s. He said he remembered that elderly amiable man; the grandfather had visited the US.

Ours was a five-minute conversation. He told me yes.

I left Mama a message. She called me back. I filled her in. She seconded Baba. Then, she warned me about Israeli soldiers and about entering a house without a gift in my hands.

I called N, packed a bag, set out my traveling clothes, made a midnight run to the bank, slept in spite of myself and woke up the next morning well before my alarm.

Good God. Today was the day I’d visit Palestine.

is real?

“Can we have more coloring activities, like we did last year?” Zade asked me during break. “And can we do more things in Arabic? Not everything has to be in English. It’s too much English. We get tired of English.”

I promised I’d think about it.

Later, I decided that yes, we can have more activities and no, we were not going to do things in Arabic because, face it, this was supposed to be an intensive English class.

For the very next class, I found an activity I could implement without having to buy tons of construction paper or glue. I know it wasn’t what Zade was looking for, but it was a step.

The goal was to write a mock news piece about a disaster that strikes an imaginary place.

I walked my students through the process: ”First, name your fictional location, where the disaster will strike. What is the name of your imaginary city, Samah? Memories City. Nice. And have you decided on a disaster? Rains that inspire forgetfulness? Wonderful! Eyad, what about you? What’s the name of your fictional place?”

“Israel.”

“I said fictional, Eyad. Think of a place that doesn’t exist. Use your imagination.”

He slowly turned the gum in his mouth and looked at me placidly, as if I were without imagination.

in memoriam: sido, my grandfather

Sido had a fourth grade education but memorized more classical Arabic poetry than I will ever know.

He could tell you bittafseel al mumil (literally: in boring detail, figuratively: at length) what he did on Monday June 29 1942 (if that date is even accurate) but he couldn’t tell you his date of birth. (Like many of his contemporaries, he lost his birth certificate during the exodus).

Sido was Palestinian. He survived the British Mandate, experienced Israeli occupation and was one of the last people out of Yafa (now Jaffa). Despite his nonexistent medical training, he helped the last doctor in treating fidayeen (freedom fighters) at the hospital — men who defended Yafa until the city fell. From the martyrs, he collected identification which he used to send the belongings on their person to their surviving relatives.

I want to tell you a story about Sido. Just one because, if I used the darkness as my ink, night would expire and much would be left unwritten. So one story will suffice here.

It was Palestine. Circa 1972. Israel was working to shift demographics in an occupied Gaza strip. (Demographics here is code for the systematic transfer of land from Arab to Jewish hands, the promotion of Jewish immigration and settlement and the  evacuation of the native Arab population).

My refugee grandparents were notified by the Israeli government that their newly purchased home in Gaza would be lost to them if they could not reside in it. Of course, they could not reside in it because — truth be told — they could not reside anywhere in Palestine. As Palestinian refugees, they had no right of return. Visits to the homeland came with limited time warranties. The Man demanded a permit that only he could give, and he would not give it. Israel was acting the prosecutor and the judge.

My grandparents’ only option (apart from forfeiting the property to Israel) was to sell it to Palestinians who could live in it. But, they were told, they could not do even that unless they met a simple condition:

The house must be owned by a divorced woman with a bedridden mother.

Easy enough, right? Well, believe it or not, Sido had already written the house under my grandmother’s name. Why? Because (a) he loved her and (b) he realized that, should he suddenly pass away, he’d like to spare her a nomadic or dependent lifestyle — talk about thoughtfulness and foresight.

Also (ironically) in their favor was the fact that my grandmother’s mother was bedridden. Working against them, however, was her quickly deteriorating health.

All that remained, then, was the divorce. So off my grandfather went to the local sheikh.

When Sido told the man, “I want to divorce my wife,” the kind sheikh began a long spiel about the disadvantages of divorce, the virtues of patience and forgiveness, and the rewards of marital harmony. “Listen, listen,” my grandfather interrupted, “I love my wife. We just need to do this for them. On paper.” Suddenly, divorces were golden. The sheikh was game. The paper was drafted, rumors spread, relatives were alarmed and, with that, the (ridiculous) conditions for home-selling were fortuitously met.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The house could now be sold. But the question was: would it be sold? A potential client, my grandfather and the broker convened to set a price. My grandmother sat in an adjoining alcove, behind a curtain. (Though she did not veil, this was customary.) The men had agreed on a price when my grandmother Tata demanded a higher one. The broker brushed her off. But Sido insisted that they hear her through. The broker was outraged. He feared that the sale would yitfashkal (be spoiled) and with it his share. “This is a matter between men! Leave the women out of this! Are you going to let a woman tell you what to do? If you listen to her, then you are half a man!”

“If I am half a man,” my grandfather shot back, “then you are no man at all. Listen to her or there’s no deal. It’s her house. Not mine.” (Get him, Sido!)

Tata insisted on her price. Luckily, the future homeowner was a gentleman. He graciously met the price kirmal issit (for the lady’s sake), and the broker ate his pride — along with the bigger slice of pie that came with a successful transaction. Only fifteen days later, my grandmother’s bedridden mother passed away.

***

aA Sido and Tata were affectionately married for some 50 years. Now both of them have passed. I pray that their happily-ever-after on this earth be but a prequel for the life they’ll share in a better world than this. Ameen.