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.