Wanderlust

And so it's been nine months that I've been in the Middle East. I've gotten to the point where I feel uncomfortable about being so comfortable here. As I adjust and Bethlehem begins to feel more and more like home, I've started to feel rootless. When I left, it wasn't my intention to sever the strong network of relationships I had back home. But, time is short and phone connections are bad. In one painful experience, a friend sent me an e-mail baring the intimate details of her life, only to have an virus send the message to all of her contacts, including family members and teachers. This incident has effectively frozen either of our attempts to communicate since. And although I've made new friends here, none of them can compare to the 10- to 15-year relationships I left back home. All of this has led me to wonder, fairly often, what in the hell am I doing here?

This feeling was encapsulated by an trip to Jericho my friend B. and I took yesterday with her five-year-old daughter. We were attempting to go to a food festival that was part of Jericho's 10,000th birthday celebrations. Jericho being 10,000 years old seems like it would be a big deal, so we were surprised to be completely unable to find the festival.

It's pretty typical in the Middle East to roll down the window and ask whoever is walking by for directions. We did this about six times. Nobody had ever heard of any festival, and the people we asked gave us completely opposing directions. We finally ended up following a policeman on a motorcycle who drove us all around town before finally understanding where we wanted to go and taking us there. The whole time we were driving around, B.'s daughter kept piping up from her car seat, sounding like the voice of reason.

"Why are we following this strange man on a motorcycle?"
"Red and white lines mean we shouldn't park here. Why are we parking here?"
"Why don't either of you know where you're going?"

B. and I lost whatever mythical adult-knows-best status we had ever had months ago, the last time we got incredibly lost in the West Bank. But, we kept turning around and cheerfully explaining that things would work out. And, in the end, it was true. The festival was a disappointment, but we had good conversations, a long lunch by a fountain, and came back with our bags full of homemade jam, cheese, and honey. And somehow, that image of the three of us persistently leaning out the window to ask for directions, and cheerfully trying to make the best of things sums up what it's taken to make a life in the Middle East. It's adventurous, but almost never glamorous or comfortable or smooth. And when my voice of reason pipes up, I turn around and tell it everything is going to work out.