Change of Focus

I'm spending three months collecting interviews for a book about daily life in Palestine. While I'm doing that, this blog will be on hiatus. Please check out my other project at www.palestinevoices.com.

Kickstart my heart

I'm writing a book! I'm not doing it alone though. I'm working with an amazing team of people, including a friend I met in journalism school over 10 years ago. The book will not like this blog at all because very little of it will be dedicated to writing about myself. Instead we're collecting interviews from Palestinians about their daily lives. We had a publisher, but it was going to take too long to get started going that route, so the publisher encouraged us to get started on our own through a website called Kickstarter. This is our campaign here. Check it out to see what we're up to and follow our progress!

Lords of the Land

Note: I'm on vacation in the U.S. for the month of December, so I'm not actually in the Middle East for the next few posts. But, I'm taking advantage of the fast Internet speeds to post some articles I've been meaning to do for a while. Oh, glorious high-speed Internet! It just took me 30 seconds to upload a picture that would usually take me upwards of an hour.

Lords of the Land is very literally heavy reading. The book is encyclopedia length and I blame carrying around the hard-back version for all the painful knots in my shoulders. Although it's a commitment, if you want to understand the issue of the settlements in Israel and the West Bank, this is the definitive book to read. It's meticulously researched and beautifully written, with lines like "Almost out of sight and out of mind, it [the settlement project] is going on with the full cooperation of the state of Israel and its institutions, as though it were an involuntary, unconsidered movement of a body that had lost its mind." The authors, Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, a historian and a journalist, sometimes veer toward the over dramatic. But, their subject matter is so shocking that, most of the time, it seemed in context to me. Overall, they chronicle the story of how almost 300,000 settlers came to live in the West Bank and Gaza and the many people that made this massive project possible, and as the Economist wrote, "Lords of the Land lets no-one off the hook."

Pause in the Sinai

I was invited to go with friends to the Sinai this week. We stayed with Bedouin in the desert, drank tea, rode camels, and drank more tea. It was not a tourist experience. The friends who invited me are German anthropologists who've been living on and off with this tribe for years. It was not exactly a comfortable experience. My Arabic is terrible, and I don't speak German. So I spent a lot of time sitting quietly, and drank a lot of tea. A lot. Plus, half our group got violently ill. Which was made more difficult by the fact that there were no toilets or toilet paper. But, despite all this, when we returned home, we realized we had collected all these vivid and funny stories and sat around the table shaking with laughter over them. Like the camel that managed to run after a female camel from another caravan despite the fact that his legs were tied together. Or one of the young boys in the Bedouin tribe who was given a mattress for Eid (the rest of the tribe sleeps on the ground) and showed it off joyfully to anyone who came to visit. And it was revolutionary to live a deep and simple life even just for a few days.

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.

Back to class

I've been told that it takes six months of living in a foreign country for the language to start to stick. That has held true for me. When I first arrived, it took a Herculean effort for me to learn each word. The moment I stopped studying, all that hard-won vocabulary would slip out of my Teflon brain. But now, seven months into my time here, I'm getting some traction. I decided it's time to go back to Arabic class. My friends recommended a great teacher. She's encouraging, which is important because learning Arabic tends to make me feel completely incompetent. And the way she explains the language is almost like poetry. About halfway through the class, I had a funny tickle in the back of my throat, and I realized if I were a cat, I would be purring.

This is some of what she told me:
• "When you say yaret, or I wish, it comes from the deep heart. I wish I could go to Jerusalem. (She lives about three meters from the checkpoint to Jerusalem, but can't get a permit to go there.)"
• "When you want to love the people, you want to speak the language."
• "If you tell someone niyyalak, or I envy you, you want to say it with a smile on your face. If you say it angrily with knots in your stomach, people are superstitious, and they will say you sent them the evil eye. I don't believe in this, but it's a word to be careful with."

And most importantly, she told me, "Talk! Talk loudly. Look in the mirror and talk to yourself. Don't think you will break the language."

Summer in Palestine

People here in Palestine would think it's funny I'm even bothering to post this because this salad is as common as french fries in the U.S. But it's what I have been living on in the hot weather. It's been in the high 90's, and often past 100 every day for months. This is abnormally hot for Bethlehem. It's hard to think, move, and eat. As my friend recently posted on Facebook, "I'm sorry if I'm not returning phone calls, but it's hot and I'm dysfunctional. Don't blame me, blame your God." This salad seems to be the only thing that helps. It's commonly called Arabic Salad.

Ingredients:
• Cucumbers
• Tomatoes
• Fresh Mint
• Fresh Parsley
• Lemons
• Hot pepper to taste (such as jalapeno)
• olive oil
• salt
• avocado (optional)
• tahini (optional)

I'm not giving you amounts because it really doesn't matter. If you can find cucumbers with thin, sweet skins, those are the best. These are also ubiquitous in Bethlehem, and my roommates and buy several kilos at a time and eat them in a few days. Chop all the vegetables into small cubes. Peel and chop the lemons as well. On days when this salad is all I eat, I add avocado or mozzarella so that it has a few calories. Mix everything together and Add some olive oil, mint, parsley, and salt to taste. If you want a thicker dressing, mix a few teaspoons of tahini with the olive oil and a little water until it's a thin paste. That's all! If you really want a true Palestinian experience, you can throw lemon juice, mint, sugar and ice in the blender for a limonana, or mint lemonade.

I didn't know

This weekend, I took a business trip to Jordan. We had to make it to a meeting in Amman at noon, so I woke up at 4:30 am and headed to the checkpoint. I've been through the checkpoint many, many times, and thought I knew the drill. I know it's busier in the mornings when everyone heads to work. There are few jobs in the West Bank, and an unemployment rate of 40-70%, so the people who are able to get permits often go into Israel to work. But even though I was expecting to wait, I was completely unprepared for the complete chaos of the checkpoint at 5 in the morning. This video from Machsom Watch captures what it's like:



A few months ago, confronted with this scene, I would have turned around and gone home. But this time, I decided to push forward. Women have an advantage at the checkpoint and are given a special line to go through. Despite this, a crowd of men, desperate to get to work on time, had filled the women's line too. I followed the lead of an older woman ahead of me and pushed to the front of the line. Then we ducked and dodged and smiled and yelled our way through turnstiles, metal detectors, passport checks, and line after line after line. Afterward, I thanked the woman who had helped me. She beamed at me and told me stories about her two children living in New Jersey.

When I had first seen the line at the checkpoint, I had been sure that I would be at least two hours late to meet my co-workers. But I showed up only 10 minutes after our meeting time, full of adrenaline, and ready to go to Jordan. It's only now that the experience is sinking in, and I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from it. I feel simultaneously sad and frustrated by what I witnessed. I also feel slightly embarrassed that I felt entitled enough to push past everyone who waits in line every day. I started this blog determined not to write from a political or ideological viewpoint, although I certainly have them. But, at the same time, it seems important to show what daily life is like in Bethlehem, and the consequences politics and ideologies have had on almost every aspect of life here.

On resourcefulness

This is where we've been watching the World Cup from.



I think the waiters are a little shocked about all the new business they've been getting. They're so busy, it takes about an hour to get a cup of coffee.

Reading List

One of my favorite places to go in Jerusalem is the Educational Bookstore on Salah Eddin Street. It's tiny, but packed with books in English. It attracts the expat community with a bias toward Palestine. They also make very good cappuccinos. I've dropped a good portion of my paycheck there a few times and my shelves are quickly filling up with treasures I've discovered there. My latest purchase is Palestine by Joe Sacco. It's a graphic novel written during Sacco's trip to Palestine in the early 90's. It's important to note that what he describes is not my experience of Palestine, but it's a good primer on things are such a mess today.

The book is addictive, in fact, B. is sitting across the table from me now, completely engrossed. The characters are done in broad brushstrokes, and are a little too simplistic for me to say that they resemble the friends I've made here. But, despite that, I've found the book to be a masterpiece of documentary journalism. Many of his observations are ones I've had as well, but found much too contradictory or confusing to ever say out loud. This book would be a good place to start if you know little to nothing about Palestine. (Like I did before I got here.)

Another night in Jerusalem

So I haven't written much about what the conflict/occupation is like. The trouble with it is it sneaks up on me. Last night, when I left my Arabic lesson the dry, dusty heat had faded into a soft evening. The Jasmine smelled stronger than I had ever smelled before, and there was bright pink bougainvillea that stood out against the white limestone wall and the fading blue of the sky. And I was picturing what this city would be like if there were no settlements or soldiers, if people had time and money and energy to invest in it. Kids were playing in the street. When I first moved in, they used to stare at me suspiciously, but now they were used to me and ignored me as just another adult interrupting their games.


Coming to the end of the street, I saw my bus waiting. It was the last bus of the night and if I missed it, I would have to take a taxi to the checkpoint and then another taxi after I got to the other side of the checkpoint. Relieved, I ran to catch it, not realizing until I got to the doors that the bus wasn't going anywhere. The end of the street is the soldiers come to "fish". They take everyone's i.d.'s on the bus, looking for anyone without a permit. I often see the results of these fishing expeditions: a line of young men sitting on the sidewalk, waiting to be taken to jail. Soldiers milling around glaring at everyone who walks by. The soldiers don't ask me for my i.d. as I get on the bus. Racial profiling has become an art form here. Once, I'm seated, the bus sits in place for a long time. The driver keeps getting out to talk to the soldiers, and inside people get tenser and more and more angry, asking what is happening. After 30 minutes, a new army vehicle pulls up inexplicably. After more milling around from the soldiers, they finally hand out all of the i.d.'s. The passengers on the bus form an assembly line trying to get them back to their owners as quickly as possible. By the time we get to the taxi stand, all the taxis to Hebron have left, except one. Passengers sprint to try and get a place in the taxi. I'm glad that I'm staying on the bus. The remaining passengers are quiet, subdued. Just another night.

Welcome to Bethlehem

So, my friend T. pointed out that if my purpose in starting this blog was, as I told many people, to provide evidence that I wasn't dead, then I wasn't doing a very good job. She makes a good point. So, even though I don't have much to say tonight, I'm posting anyway. I moved to Bethlehem a few days ago. Hopefully, after I'm done assembling my Ikea furniture, I will have much more time to write. I no longer have to commute through the checkpoints, which often involved multiple taxis and lots of waiting in line. I'll leave you with these murals done by the mysterious, but famous British graffiti artist Banksy, which are all over Bethlehem, especially on the Separation Wall between Jerusalem.

Nothing to wear

The second most common question I was asked when I decided to move to Jerusalem (after is it dangerous) was, will you cover your hair? The answer was, and still is, no.

First of all, it's not required, despite the stereotype (repeated in the new Sex and the City 2 movie). There are a few countries like Iran, where it's required by law to cover. But, Palestine is not one of them. Second, I'm not Muslim or Jewish. (Women of both religions often cover their hair here, but in different ways.) Finally, I would feel silly covering my hair, because there's an art to it that I've never learned.

So, I'm pretty clear on head covering, but what to wear below my head seems to get more difficult by the day.

"When you go to another country, you are, in actuality, asking millions of people to let you into their home. I, for one, don’t much cotton to people who come into my home and disregard the basic rules I honor." This quote from the travel column Inga la Gringa is my motto when figuring out how to dress in other countries. I generally try to fit with the customs because then the people around me are much more likely to engage and not dismiss me as just another tourist.

So, when I arrived in Jerusalem, I adjusted to wearing long-sleeve shirts that covered up to my collar bone, and loose long pants. The outfit above from Hejab Rehab is a good example of typical dress here--trendy, but modest. This was what the guidebook told me to do, as well as our office guidelines. After a while, it started to seem normal. When I saw a woman wearing a t-shirt, it seemed risque even to me. And then summer hit and I moved to Bethlehem. All of a sudden, the women pulled out their t-shirts, and yesterday, I saw a woman wearing a strappy knee-length sundress. In the West Bank. It seemed so revealing, and yet so temptingly comfortable and cool. So, now I have no idea what to wear. I have a closet full of long-sleeve shirts, and it's 90 degrees outside. I still feel uncomfortable wearing t-shirts because men on the street tend to give me a lot more attention. But it feels strange for the American to be the most conservatively dressed one in the room.

Lost Fears

Today I am in such a shape
That I can't differentiate
The load from the donkey.
I am in such shape today,
That I don't know which is the thorn
And which is the rose.

My Love put me in this shape today.
I don't know who is the Lover
Or who is the Beloved.

Yesterday, drunkenness led me
To the door of the Love.
But today I can't find
The door or the house.

Last year I had two wings.
Fear and hope.
Today, I don't know of wings,
Don't know how to fly,
Don't know of my lost fears.

-Rumi
From Essential Sufism

The million-dollar question

So here's the last post attempting to answer the insightful and challenging questions you all have left me in the comments section. This final set is from my dear friend Kate.

What does the air smell like?

I started to answer this question before when Nate asked me if you can smell the desert. But, since I live in the middle of the city, the smells are much different than out in the rural areas. The city itself smells generally bad. The pollution in Jerusalem is overpowering and it has all the usual city smells--stale food, trash, urine. The smell increases the hotter it gets, and sometimes seems to cling to my skin. But tonight, there's a windstorm whipping sand through the city, scattering clothes off clothes lines and carrying away anything not nailed down. So tonight, the air smells cold and fresh.

How does the water taste?

I don't actually know because we drink filtered water because of the chance of parasites. I did drink water from an underground spring a few weeks ago, which was the tastiest water I've ever had. (I'm not entirely sure how water can be tasty, but it was.) But I was sick for days afterward, so I wouldn't recommend that.

Are their toilets designed the same as ours?

For the most part, except most of the plumbing is ancient and delicate and so it's common not to be able to flush toilet paper, which takes some getting used to. In more rural areas, it's also common to have the squat toilets that don't use running water and are "flushed" with a bucket of water.

Are you happy?

Well, that's the million-dollar question. There have been many moments during the past four months when I've wondered what urge caused me to make my life about 50 times more difficult than it already was. Getting through daily life is already tricky wherever you are, but now I've added language differences, cultural clashes, and checkpoints to my list of challenges. But the truth is, I am happy. There is a part of me that is finds the culture here strangely familiar, as if it's a place I'd known before but forgotten. Many people have told me the same thing about the Middle East, and maybe it's because this is truly the cradle of civilizations where many of our modern customs come from. Maybe, it's because, as my roommate believes, I lived here in a previous life. Who knows? But, for now, it feels right to be here and I have much more I want to learn and explore before I go home.

Oh...How about the stormwater management - is it good?

This answer is only for Kate because probably no one else will understand or care, but the answer is no, it's not at all good. Lots of ill-thought-out pavement and flash floods and such. Pus, the region is facing a severe water shortage, so needs all the help it can get. I did actually mention your company to one of my co-workers and he got pretty excited. So, if you need any clients in Jerusalem, you know who to ask.

Coffee, Jerusalem Style

"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love."
-Turkish Proverb

I have a deep love for Arabic coffee. It's strong and sweet and gritty and stains your teeth. It's a symbol of hospitality in the Middle East. I was told that many years ago, people here saved their coffee for guests. When they ground it in the desert, the sound could be heard from miles around and neighboring communities would hear it and come to welcome the newcomers. In a typical day in Jerusalem, it's easy to drink 5-6 cups of it between seeing friends, shopping, drinking it at home, etc. Luckily the cups are little. It took me a while to learn to make it, and my first attempts were pretty horrific. But with the help of my patient neighbor, I've learned to make it fairly well.

You'll need a pot shaped like this one. Ours is much less ornate. You'll also need coffee ground Turkish or Arabic style, which is extra fine, almost like powder. Here they mix dark and light roasts and add cardamom to the blend. If you don't have a Middle Eastern grocery store nearby, either ask for an extra fine grind or grind it yourself, and it should work fine.

To make the coffee, spoon about 2 1/2 heaping tablespoons into the pot. (It depends on the size of your pot, and you can make it to taste, but you want to put much more coffee in the pot than you think you should.) Next, fill the pot with boiling water. Then, place it on the stove on low heat for a few minutes, stirring constantly. The coffee should foam up. In Jerusalem, you're supposed to spoon this foam into the cup because it's considered a luxury. But our neighbor told us that's bad form in Galilee because it shows that you didn't boil the coffee long enough and are rushing your guest out of the house. After the coffee is hot you add sugar to taste. We usually add about a tablespoon. Then, you pour the coffee into cups and let the grounds settle. Here's B. making his first pot ever. It was terrible. But, after much practice, he can make a pretty decent cup now.

Answers Part II

Here's the second half. These were not an easy set of questions to answer. But I used my incredibly honed reporting skills to find them.

What kind of electricity do you have? US plugs, british, euro, etc...? Do you know if it's expensive or cheap? How do they make it?

They seem to have their own brand of plugs, but the European plugs kind of fit, sort of. Electricity is crazy expensive. (In my humble opinion.) And to get it, we have to go to the electricity store with a special key and then they somehow charge the key up and then we take it home and touch it to our electricity thing and then more electricity comes. That's the highly scientific explanation. As for how it's made, in Israel, there's a lot of solar power. According to the highly accurate Wikipedia, 90% of Israeli homes use solar energy for hot water, the highest per capita in the world. Also coal and hydro-electric power. That's not a very comprehensive answer, but it's a start.

How do you heat your apartment? DO you heat your apartment, or does it not get cold enough often enough?

We have electric heat that is very necessary in the winter, but we only turn on the heaters at night. These big stone houses are frigid in December.

Have you seen/heard anything about Better Place, the electric car company there?

No, what is it?

Are there many SUV's? What does gas cost? Everything's in metric, right?

Little mini European SUV's. And then the big black SUVs that the American secret service drives with mirrored windows that make them incredibly conspicuous. Gas is hovering around $4 a gallon, which is probably why tiny little VW's seem to be the most popular car. Everything's in metric, so I haven't known what temperature it was for months.

How far from your apartment to your office? How often do you travel for work?

It's about 3 km, but it can an hour or more to get through the checkpoint. I haven't traveled at all for work, which makes me sad. But I just returned from a vacation in Jordan.

All the answers

Heartfelt thanks for all the comments that you all have left. It's nice to know I'm not writing into the void. And for the thousandth time, I swear to post more regularly. I think it's finally time to answer some questions you all have sent me, so here goes. Nate, this one's for you. This is part I. I'll write part II after doing some research, which will mainly consist of asking my neighbors for the answers to your questions.

Can you see the ocean? Can you smell it?

Well, first of all if you call it the ocean, people correct you really quickly, and point out it's the sea and give you a condescending look. (I still call it the ocean all the time. It's not my fault. I'm an American. This whole sea thing is new to me.) And unfortunately, I can't see or smell the sea from Jerusalem. The closest beach is at least an hour away. But it's still closer than Colorado and we try to go as much as possible

Can you smell the desert?

Hmmm, difficult question, but yes I think I can. I think the first thing I notice in the desert is not having to smell the dirty city smells. But then I think you can smell faintly all the herbs, like the zatar (oregano) and maramiya (sage) that grow wild all over. A month ago, the desert was covered in a glory of wild flowers like the ones below, but now it's getting hot and the plants are drying out and dying.



Are you asking your neighbor about fruit in English? Can you go to the market with English? I take it you can go to the office with English, right?

Yep, yep, and yep. I'm incredibly spoiled and almost everyone around me speaks amazing English. Especially my neighbors who are language teachers and the whole family is fluent in four languages. Sometimes, I have trouble in markets or taxis, but can usually get my point across for what I need, if not to have an actual conversation. Now that I'm learning Arabic I can communicate some very basic ideas, but my pronunciation is so bad, the people I speak with are pretty much humoring me. I have found that some things don't translate though, like sense of humor. I realize I have this running commentary going in my head of things I'm saving up to tell another American who will understand my strange ideas of what is funny.

How old is your apartment? When was the building built? Do the stairs creak?

It's not too old, maybe 20 years old. The family that owns it built it themselves with some help from neighbors and students. The stairs don't creak because they're marble, which is very common here. (Not much wood available!)

Are there stray animals (dogs/cats/other)? What about rodents? Surely it's not as bad as NYC's famous rats?

So many stray cats. They're constantly having turf wars outside our window and then limping around covered in war wounds. But our neighbors' five house cats quite efficiently fend them off from our yard. There are rats because I'm still traumatized from stepping on a dead one the other day, but I don't see them much. There are also scorpions that apparently come into houses! But everyone says scorpions don't come up to the third floor where we live. Plus, the cats hunt them. The idea finding a scorpion in my shoe still gives me the creeps though. Also, lots of lizards and so many birds. I've never heard so many birds singing as I do in the mornings here.

Spring in the West Bank

When we were out walking near Taybeh a few weeks ago, we came upon this shepherd with a newborn baby lamb. We had actually heard the lamb being born as we walked down the hill and were amazed to come upon the mother cleaning her baby. The shepherd was nice enough to let us take pictures of what to me seemed an entirely miraculous event. Although, I realize it's probably pretty common for people who grew up on farms or around animals. Still, it's an image of the West Bank rarely seen in the news. I was even more amazed to see the baby lamb take its first steps a few moments later. That afternoon, a man rode by with a dead sheep, probably taking it home for dinner. So, it was a complete circle of life that day.

Morning the light

In Arabic, the answer to Good Morning is Light Morning. Half of the alphabet is divided into sun letters and half into moon letters. Ein is a letter of the alphabet, an eye, and a spring. The word for letter (something that is written) is also the word for destiny. Lovely, eh? Almost makes up for having to learn how roll a g sound.