Like the Moon Needs Poetry

The below events occurred in 2009, but Syria is much in my thoughts of late.

I met my friend Lukman in the middle of a traffic roundabout, where we hailed a cab and began the interactive journey to Shawki al-Baghdadi’s apartment. Interactive, because few places have known addresses in Damascus; you go to the neighborhood, then the cabbie coasts along the curb, calling out your destination and gleaning information from passers-by.

Lukman had convinced me to accompany him to a gathering of Syrian literati. The evening’s events had been organized by the septuagenarian poet and literary critic Shawki al-Baghdadi in honor of the late Shakib al-Jabri, Syria’s first novelist. I couldn’t imagine why they would want a Minnesotan who had never read a word by al-Jabri present for this event, but Lukman insisted. “These are Syria’s most eminent intellectuals,” he avowed. “If you want to understand the state of Arabic literature, you must understand these men.”

Lukman, a writer himself whose work I had translated, in fact had a dim view of the state of Arabic literature. He had declaimed his criticisms the night before, brandishing a glass of arak.

“The Arabs don’t produce anything new. They just describe their so-called “situation”. And they’re talented at that, real craftsmen. But they deny their Islamic heritage, which is the language of their people, and they don’t create a new philosophy, a new reality, which is what novels are supposed to do. The Russians, they reinvented the whole world, using the language of their people, and their situation was no easier than ours.”

He paused to light a cigarette, then continued. “The Arabs, once they turn fifty, they just look backward instead of ahead. The past is their raw material and they assume their best work is done. So they just rework it and rework it until they die.”

But Lukman was all sweetness and reverence when we arrived at Shawki’s apartment, located in a modern development on the outskirts of Damascus. Shawki greeted us at the door in a housecoat, his rheumy blue-eyed gaze fixing us in turn as he spewed locutions of welcome. He spirited us directly into his office: ceiling-high shelves of crumbling books and periodicals, collected over a lifetime. Lukman noted that there was no computer. “No, I never use a computer,” Shawki scoffed. “Waste of time. It blocks me! I must connect to the paper.” He handed me a copy of the newly published volume of Shakib al-Jabri’s four novels, whose release we were celebrating, and to which Shawki had written the introduction. I carried it out to the sitting room and began to read, so as to have a notion of the writer to whose home we were headed later that evening.

As the gentlemen arrived, all asked Lukman if I spoke Arabic. When he assured them I did, and even added that I was a translator, most tried out their English phrases on me anyway. But one leaned over with flamboyant discretion, mustache twitching, eyes twinkling behind tortoiseshell glasses, and proclaimed in Arabic:

“Miss, you must know that Lukman is the best of people. I taught him! I have known him 25 years -- 25! -- and haven’t met anyone better. No better poet, no better actor, no better man.”

I nodded and voiced my agreement, shooting Lukman a reproving look. He waved off the teacher with his cat-like smile of smoke-browned teeth. Lukman has a reputation for charming the ladies (although he is married, sort of, to a Latvian woman), whose number our companions assumed with glee I had joined. I hadn't, but Lukman didn’t bother to explain that I was not a conquest; at other times he has insisted that I am like his sister, once even his mother. Despite his griminess, Lukman does cut a dashing figure: shoulder-length black locks that curl (when clean) and a lanky, hulking frame. His sprawling limbs look ready to spring to action at any moment. He plays the bad guys on Syrian soap operas.

At last the company had assembled: a dozen of Syria’s brightest Leftists over 60; Lukman, whose poetic career had earned him entrée despite being a “youth” of 43; and me, 27-year-old woman from Minnesota. A minibus had been hired to take us to al-Zanadi, the mountain village near the Lebanese border where the al-Jabris resided. The gentlemen clambered on, harassing one another and showing remarkable adroitness with the rickety fold-down seats. Everyone insisted that I sit up front with Shawki. Then we whipped west out of town, following signs toward Lebanon, the setting sun shearing through the windshield.

Shawki narrated the passing sites for me: identical villages, yawning army barracks, newly planted trees (part of a Syria-wide reforestation initiative). He spoke in elaborate formal Arabic until he discovered with joy that I spoke French. His filmy eyes wobbled as he dug back into memories of his grade school days under the French Mandate. Each word he spoke emerged as if through sedimented layers of knowledge and ideology, crumbled together like the periodicals in his office. Dust seemed to fall from the words as they hit the air, clouding his vision then dissipating, leaving him lost in mid-sentence, bewildered by the architecture of a language he once spoke well. His face maintained an expression of ecstatic nostalgia as he labored.

The sun set behind the Lebanese mountains just before we arrived. Shawki chastised the group. “If you had come on time, we could have enjoyed the sunset!” We rumbled through the village. Unlike Damascus, no Roman letters anywhere. Veils. Stares. As the bus-o’-literati chugged up the hill, Shawki pointed ahead to our destination -- a stone house nestled in an outcrop over the valley, swaddled in fig trees. We pulled into the driveway and the jolly company issued forth, hastening to explore al-Jabri’s historic home in the fading light.

From the ambient chatter, I gathered that al-Jabri was from Halep, and had acquired this place later in life -- a stone house built inside the ruins of another which had been carved straight out of the rock centuries ago. Fruit trees and vines enshrined the limestone walls, and gave way to pines where the nestled house notched into the red clay hill. We trickled along the open, vaulted windows, tracing the chipped stone with the guilty reverence of one sneaking a touch of an ancient statue in a museum. A dapple of houses began to light up against the bands of green forest and ochre mountains, which were shifting spectrally into browns.

Lukman and I walked farther than the others, and he regaled me with tales of his stint in Russia in the winter of ’92. He had accompanied a group of Syrian refugees seeking amnesty in former Soviet-bloc countries, and after befriending an Iraqi-Kurdish mafiaman (Lukman is Kurdish himself), employed himself smuggling souls through to Sweden at $200 a head. He regretted that he had not yet written a novel about this, but swore he could sit down and do it any time.

Lukman has led a life that justifies novelization. He lives as if he were attempting to singlehandedly create the new philosophy he claims the Arabs lack: befriending and promoting all artists, rich or poor, famous and unknown; writing effusive paeans to Alessandro Messi in his column one day, and tearful eulogies to a dead bird found on his windowsill the next; roving the streets of Damascus day and night, managing to be at once everywhere and nowhere. His resulting notoriety has made him a kind of cultural mayor of Damascus -- universally adored, trusted and consulted. He runs a poetry night once a week in the basement of the Firdaws Hotel, called “Bayt al-Qasid” (meaning both “House of the Poem” and “Verse of the Poem”), which the Secret Police allow under their close supervision. Lukman contents himself with subverting their authority as much as possible without getting arrested. He brings in poets from all over the world to read and recite, all interspersed with his own stand-up routines (hilarious) and Kurdish folk songs (heartbreaking).

Given to inserting lines of poetry in conversation, Lukman observed as we trudged through the red clay and pine needles that “the sound of the wind in the trees was the voice of the sea”. Normally I would dismiss such blatant cheesiness, but everything registers as a kind of poetry when trying to communicate in a foreign language. Deliberately speaking in verse evens the playing field in a way, so I followed Lukman’s lead. The line had reminded me of one from the Magnetic Fields song “Come Back From San Francisco”, so I sang:

You need me, like the wind needs the trees

To blow in, like the moon needs poetry

You need me

I translated the verse for him. Delighted, he made me sing it again, as we made our way back along the darkening path. He murmured the words to himself, pleased at this find -- a new American poet, Stephin Merritt. Lukman always has an ear cocked for novelties he could incorporate into his banter at Bayt al-Qasid. It tickled me to think of Stephin Merritt as a poet rather than a rock musician, but upon second thought, Lukman is probably the closest thing he has to a Syrian counterpart. Being a poet is like being a rock star in the Arab World, if only because there are no actual rock stars.

Our companions had settled in a circle on the patio and begun drinking whiskey, arak and Lebanese beer, nibbling from plates of pumpkin seeds, smoking, and carrying on. Everyone hooted as Lukman and I crossed the ring, confirming their impression of my role. I ended up next to our host, the esteemed Shakib al-Jabri’s son Safwan. Al-Jabri’s heir wore his white hair floppy with a part down the middle, a pale blue suit sans tie and, inexplicably, cleats with orange-and-brown striped socks. He persisted in describing obvious aspects of our surroundings in broken yet confident English, as if my not being a native speaker of Arabic also impaired my senses. I endeavored to disabuse him of this impression, to no avail.

When Shawki al-Baghdadi tried to take the floor to give a speech in the increasingly dark and drunken circle, the unlikelihood that his companions would stay quiet made me squirm. He had chosen to deliver his lecture after a fifteen-minute session of jokes about people from Homs (a city whose citizens are the agreed-upon butt of Syrian jokes), and levity prevailed. Everyone managed to keep quiet for the duration of each joke before breaking into raucous laughter for twice as long in between. After multiple false starts, Shawki resorted to admonishing his juniors once again.

“Listen! I am the oldest of you all, and my relationship with the esteemed Shakib al-Jabri goes back some 50 years. So if you please, let me say my piece, and save your observations for the end.”

He scowled with the ferocity of a toothless grandpa polar bear. The crowd of toothier bear-men grumbled but ceded a very delicate silence, into which Grandpa Baghdadi lumbered. His self-hyped speech amounted to platitudes diced up with a constant tick of “know-what-I-mean?”. Gradually, the men on his left and right, who had edged themselves in on the attention reluctantly bestowed on Shawki’s spot in the circle, forced the speech into a three-way dialogue. They soon veered off the intended track (i.e. expounding upon al-Jabri’s achievements) and hurtled down another, all-too-familiar line of discussion. It began innocently: al-Jabri had possessed a document by Benjamin Franklin, whom the men clearly saw as their equal. But after much building of suspense, they revealed that in this document, Franklin warned that the Jews would take over America. They all clearly viewed this as a fulfilled prophecy. I steeled myself for questions, but a squabble over whose right it had been to say the punchline of the story had engulfed the three narrators and the conversation rattled off, uncurious about what the one American present thought.

Later, at an outdoor dinner table under the fig trees laden with mezze (small salads), cups of rayyan (yogurty milk), and two slaughtered lambs submerged in rice and nuts, our boorish host Safwan took his turn to give a speech. He held his rayyan aloft, and spoke briefly about his deceased father, then about the Left, then Bush Sr., then Jr., then the need for the Arabs to resist Imperialism. He ended abruptly, since his audience had begun discreetly pecking at the spread. They toasted with their rayyan before attacking the meal in earnest. In the midst of the passed plates and hand-torn pieces of lamb, the fellow next to me launched into the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace lecture, while Safwan tried to have a public word with me from the other end of the table about American foreign policy.

Conversations eventually narrowed to two or three, then to one, then to poetry recitation. Having a store of memorized poetry constitutes a standard expectation for any Arab calling himself an intellectual, and really anyone at all. (Unschooled Bedouins often have the best repertoire.) One member of the party recited a poem by the Medieval writer Abu Nuwwas from the famed Khamariyyat (“odes to wine”). The men’s jocularity melted away, as they murmured “Allah!” after particularly beautiful lines, or insisted that certain passages be repeated. Like taking a cab ride, poetry is an interactive experience in Damascus. Listeners are expected to chime in, request encores, and correct mistakes in declension.

Lukman stole the show with a prose poem of his own, recited in the booming singsong of a sportscaster, which narrated an ill-fated school trip in the northern Syrian countryside. The table exploded in laughter at the story’s bawdy climax (the principal seduces the teacher, leaving the kids to do as they please). Lukman captivated all but Safwan, whose face creased in the effort of bringing the spotlight back to himself.

Instead it fell on me. “Miss Anna, you MUST recite something!” one and then all of my companions urged. “In English or in Arabic, yalla, come on!” I was annoyed with myself for not having memorized any poetry, since these situations do come up. “Shakespeare!” they suggested. I racked my brains for the speech I had memorized in high school. But Lukman had another solution. “Why don’t you recite that beautiful poem by, what’s his name -- Sa-teefeen Meereet?” The literati exchanged glances, unsure whether they should know who Stephin Merritt was. Safwan alone nodded in a vigorous display of recognition. (Yeah, right.) At first I protested. Rock lyrics, for these elderly poets? But as they coaxed and pounded the table, I realized that 69 Love Songs is a kind of modern Khamariyyat. These poets should hear Stephin Merritt! He is someone America can be proud of.

So beneath stars and fig leaves, over platters of fruit from the garden, surrounded by quizzical servants frozen in their tracks, the rapt faces of Syria’s aging intellectuals fixed on a Minnesotan singing an indie rock ballad memorized one lonely winter in college:

Come back from San Francisco

It can’t be all that pretty

And all of New York City

Misses you . . .

You need me

Like the wind needs the trees

To blow in, like the moon needs poetry

You need me

They cocked their heads in concentration, the mention of American cities sending gratified waves of comprehension across their faces. They applauded vigorously, and again after Lukman translated. They all repeated the name of this new American poet, this Stephin Merritt, pleased to be in the know and innocent of the absurdly unlikely chance of their ever coming across him again.

As we drove back east after midnight, the hills barely etched into the blackness, I considered the absurdly unlikely chance of that whole evening. Although simultaneous, my experience of that gathering must have been almost wholly different from that of my companions. Had our worlds really collided? Had I correctly imagined the Arab poets of old welling up in the voices of these wizened repositories? Could they see through the words of my song to the icy highways of Minnesota, feel the angst of a silent pair of teenagers flipping through their CD wallets with frozen fingers and burning dreams? Had we really torn off and passed pieces of ourselves like that lamb across the table, nourishing one another with our own shares of wisdowm? Had we shared something so essential that the particulars were irrelevant? Or were the impressions of each other we would leave with a travesty, a mockery?

Not knowing the answers to these questions but getting to pose them again and again is why I travel, I think. I shifted on the car seat as Shawki dozed off next to me, and resisted the urge to rest his head on my shoulder. Because we don't really need answers. Like the moon, we need poetry.

A Date in Jericho

Living in New York City means dating everyone you know. If you deign to monopolize another individual’s time in the midst of the city’s boundless stimulus and allure, you had better have an ostensible event around which to program your socializing -- a show, a new restaurant, an art opening, a party. Without such a pretext, you might meet someone for a “coffee” before 5pm, or a “drink” (for pre-approved companions, maybe even “drinks”) after, but don’t count on more than an hour of their time; if they signed up for a “coffee” with you, they likely have a “drink” scheduled after that, if a “drink” then likely a separate dinner. The unspoken hour rule applies to new friends as well as lovers. Which is fine. It can be nerve-wracking; you have a short time to convince your interlocutor that you merit a repeat performance. On the other hand, you experience people’s best attempts to entertain you, and if the conversation doesn’t take off, you only have to suffer through a short stint of boredom.

Even my close friends I hesitate to invite to my home with no entertainment agenda, or at least the promise of an elaborate, home-cooked meal. Who actually likes me enough to schlep all the way out to Bed-Stuy just to sit on my couch? I’d rather not find out.

Those of you who have lived in the Middle East may see where I’m going with this. The Arab World is in some ways New York City’s social opposite. “Just sitting on couches” is what it’s all about. A grand generalization indeed, but the following account of a day in Jericho does exemplify many, many others.

I procrastinate for days before calling up a Palestinian teacher I met in Jericho last March. We spoke only briefly then, during my teacher group’s hour-long visit to the school where he teaches mathematics. Still, we exchanged emails, and he knew I was in Palestine, so it would be rude not to call. I wait until my final afternoon in the West Bank. Why? Maybe because even knowing that this person does not expect to be invited to an indie rock show or a drink at a hip bar, I feel shy calling someone I barely know and suggesting that we just “hang out”. If I’m honest with myself though, my anxiety stems more from the knowledge that there is no guarantee that this agenda-less meeting will last only an hour, and dread the social internment of uncertain duration which I am about to endure with this stranger. But I call, am invited over immediately, and catch the next ser-vees to Jericho. The get-together has already begun: my companion-to-be calls three times during the 50-minute journey east from Ramallah. Yes, I am still on the ser-vees, I assure him, as we hurtle past the barbed-wire-encircled Israeli settlements through the increasingly desertified hills down to the lowest point on Earth.

Unlike sloping Ramallah, Jericho is flat, the sandy streets lined with palm trees and kitschy souvenir shops. It feels like a depressed, off-season beach town rather than the world’s oldest city. My host is waiting for me in his car where I get off the ser-vees. His name is Luai.

Luai and his oldest daughter

“You have been to Jericho? No? I will show you. But first you must come to our home. ” Was he from Jericho originally? No, from Jerusalem, but his father had come here in 1967. “Even after that, I used to go to Jerusalem, to buy clothing, special foods, to go to the doctor. Then after the Intifada all that changed. I can’t go back unless I have a permit, and they don’t give shopping permits, ha ha. This is my family’s street now. This is my brother’s house, he is a director at Arab Bank . . . and this is my sister’s, she is a school administrator . . . and my other sister, there on the second floor . . . and below hers is our house!” This row of connected but good-sized stone houses with small gardens suggests that Luai’s family is well-to-do by Palestinian standards. We pull into his driveway and he ushers me through the door.

The customary square of stiff, gilded furniture awaits us, but the mood in this traditional Arab living room feels less staid than usual. The obligatory polyester curtains are drawn, but allow in a bit of afternoon sun, which warms the obligatory fluorescents. This unexpected presence of natural light indoors (usually a no-no in traditional Arab homes) combines with the brisk circulation of air under a strong ceiling fan to create a beachy atmosphere. That, and the children’s toys strewn here and there. One by one, Luai’s five offspring (ages nine months through nine years) are presented to me, each shyer than the next. His wife, a black-haired woman with tough golden skin and sparkling, heavily made-up eyes bustles out, kisses my cheeks and insists on my moving to the most advantageous location under the fan. “Are you hungry?” I wasn’t. I had thought that arriving at 3pm would be late enough that I wouldn’t need to worry about fending off lunch. “Of course, we waited for you to eat!” Leena (her name) exclaimed. “Now sit here, it’s cooler. The food will be ready in a minute.”

In the meantime, I must make small-talk with Luai while Leena slaves in the kitchen. We discuss, of course, the situation in Palestine. True, you don’t really have to worry about finding an hour of stuff to talk about here. Everyone you meet has ten times that in stories of life under occupation. One of Luai’s daughters proves bolder than the others. She is striking, in a gauzy pink dress, sparkling heart-shaped earrings, and wavy black hair. As Luai points out pictures of deceased relatives enshrined around the room in glittery frames, she darts closer to me, staring as I murmur bland condolences. Leena pops in and out, setting a table behind the square of sofas, interrupting her husband to ask me questions and repeating how much she hopes I like the food. One would think she had been planning this meal for weeks, although my phone call an hour and a half ago was the first she had heard of her hostessing obligation, and of me.

When we sit, Luai’s mother, who lives there, emerges from the bedroom, her balding brown hair kinked from sleep. She begins asking the same battery of questions, but now I have to compete with Leena and Luai to answer them. She speaks quietly and is hard of hearing, so our conversation proceeds in fits and starts. Meanwhile, Leena frets that I don’t like the food and I redouble my efforts to show enthusiasm while still eating slowly (lest I be re-served). It is good -- freekeh (a grain) with spiced ground meat, tomato-cucumber salad, and yogurt. The mother-in-law condemns the dish as salty, but cleans her plate. (Leena does not re-serve her.)

The family flutters around me. As usual in these situations, I feel like an overgrown child, unable or at least untrusted to dictate my own actions. I remain in my seat, awaiting further instructions. This earns me the glass of Coca-Cola I have refused at least four times. “It’s so strange, you foreigners, all you ever want to drink is water!” titters Leena as she fills my glass to the brim with lukewarm Coke. I smile politely and take a sip. She beams approvingly.

The kids peel off and split into gendered play, the girls patty-caking, the boys hunting each other with plastic guns. The matriarch excuses herself to catch the next installment of a Turkish soap opera. Leena serves coffee, and she, Luai and I remain at the table, chatting. That is, both Luai and Leena simultaneously engage me on unrelated topics. Leena discusses with equal enthusiasm the joys of motherhood and the frustration of being left behind while Luai goes on work trips. Luai jokes about how he doesn’t wear a wedding ring outside the house so no one will know he is married. Ha, ha. I try to dole out responses evenly and offer relevant stories about myself. But because of the constant interruptions I never really get going and, again as usual, am trying to talk so fast that I keep making mistakes. But my hosts carry on blithely, as if this is the most fun they’ve had in years. So I kind of have fun too.

Once lunch has officially wound down, Leena retires to the kitchen and Luai takes me outside to see his garden. In the cracked earth, a variety of plants cling to life. He quizzes me on the plant names and is as pleased when I don’t know them as when I do, as this affords the new farmer a chance to ID them. The sun has sunk lower in the sky. Unsure how many hours have passed, I begin planning a graceful exit. Surely I have intruded on these people long enough.

“Now, you must meet my sister!” Er, does she know we’re coming? Might she have had something else planned for the afternoon? Luai knocks on the door, his silent children alternately gathering around his knees and scattering through the yard. A bleary-eyed woman appears behind the screen door in her bathrobe. “Usually we take naps in the afternoon,” Luai explains her appearance cheerily. No time to excuse myself and apologize for interrupting her repose; I am pushed from behind and herded through the door, this time into someone’s bedroom. We sit in chairs around the bed and I begin my feeble attempts to avoid more coffee. Another sister appears, also bathrobed, but skinnier and more glamorous, her face fully made up like Leena. Their teenage children are summoned, including one daughter who used to live in America. The adults command her to discuss her time there with me. I try to communicate to her with my eyes that I understand how annoying this is. But she is happy to oblige. I ask whether she misses the US. “Here is better!” she says glibly. Well, I thought, sipping my second coffee in the serenity of the fluorescent-lit bedroom, maybe it is. Still, I am hardly providing these poor people enough entertainment to merit rising from their naps.

Luai stands abruptly and announces that we are moving on now to meet his brother. Wails of protest meet this proposition. Luai is unperturbed, determined to introduce me to his whole family this very afternoon. Out we go, to knock on the next door down. The brother’s elementary-aged daughter lets us in and sets us up in his purposefully garish living room. He is a bank director, Luai reminds me, and clearly the prodigal son of the family. Apparently his relative riches have not affected his piety; framed, gold-on-black-felt Quranic verses adorn every wall, and his wife does not appear in a bathrobe. More Coke appears though, even before the brother, who must still be emerging from his nap. He makes his entrance at last, greets me cordially, and calls for coffee. I don’t argue this time. Good thing they’re small. He and Luai chat, and every once in awhile my newest acquaintance throws me a polite question. What were my hobbies? He chuckles at my mention of yoga and announces that he couldn’t imagine just sitting still like that. I resist the urge to observe that sitting still seems to be all folks do around here. Perhaps it’s just the thought of doing it without coffee that he finds so unappealing. We do not pursue the conversation.

At last I insist that it’s time I was leaving and suffer the protestations of my now multiple hosts. “Sleep here, with us,” coos the glamorous sister. “But when will you visit again?” frets Leena. What to say? That my real life, full of people I actually know, is waiting? That I will likely never be back? Leaving an Arab family always feels like a kind of betrayal, like they’ve let you in to the most intimate recesses of their lives and after accepting their hospitality you are callously stepping out again. But I never asked for their generosity, I counter my own pangs of remorse, and they made it impossible for me to refuse! I was just going along with it, trying to make them feel comfortable. Yes, I counter again, but now that you’ve shared this intimacy with them you are bound to them, whether you like it or not. But what if they don’t even want me to stay? What if they just did all of this because they thought they had to, and as soon as I leave they say or at least think, Whew, enough of that boring weirdo? Maybe I’m really doing them a favor by being callous enough to reject their offers and leave.

I’ll never know. What I do know is that if I come back to Jericho someday, Luai and his family will open their doors just as wide, whether due to a sense of duty or to actual enjoyment of my company. I’m the only one out of everyone concerned who cares which it actually is. Because this is something we don’t do in New York, welcome people in out of a sheer sense of duty. And while the physical experience of this unconditional acceptance can be awkward, there is something so civilized about it. Truly treating everyone who comes your way with equal respect, never letting on that their presence might be a burden, never ducking out with the excuse of another rendez-vous. That I find such openness stifling is food for thought indeed.

Before dropping me off at the ser-vees station, Luai and a friend who had dropped in at his brother’s squeeze in a whirlwind tour of Jericho. We stand for a few minutes looking out over the ruins of an eighth-century palace, then stroll through an abandoned souvenir plaza, where a lone employee slips me one more free, sugary drink and insists on rubbing Dead Sea mud into my hands. “Such a shame you couldn’t stay longer, Jericho has so much history!” regrets Luai. “Some day,” I murmur. I wonder who his next “date” will be, and whether she will stick around to see the rest.

Courage Tutorial

The ser-vees dropped us off on the main drag of Bil’in village in the West Bank. A boy materialized at our side, selling woven Palestinian flag bracelets. The Friday Demonstration Economy was up and running here. And as he correctly assumed, I would be ashamed to come here to protest in solidarity with his village against the Israeli Separation Wall and not buy one. Nor could I bring myself to bargain with this boy, whose lands had been illegally annexed by Israel. “Pay what you like,” he suggested. Good call.

We soon found a motley assortment of people assembling in front of a large house. A host of boys selling the same Palestine bracelets surged for us. I hastily put mine on and advanced through the yard to a group of kuffiyeh-ed dudes standing in the doorway.

“Is this your first time?” a long-haired fellow in a “Smash Israeli Apartheid” t-shirt was asking the others. A few nodded. I could see by the set of their faces that they were American.

“Alright, let me give you an idea of what’s going on.” His English was accented, but this was clearly a speech he knew well, judging by the slight refocusing of his eyes and jut of his hip.

“I am a representative of the anti-apartheid movement in Israel-Palestine. I help facilitate the protests, but I am not in charge, I do not dictate what happens. That is for the community organizers from the villages to decide. I support them.”

“And where are you from?” a woman with a notebook asked.

He hesitated. “I . . . nowhere. Israel-Palestine, Israel, Palestine? Right now I am here.” He was Israeli. But as his rueful air implied, years of protesting with Palestinians against a wall being built by your compatriots on a strip of land a stone’s throw from where you grew up would complicate your sense of identity.

“Anyway, there will be a briefing inside soon,” the uprooted Israeli was saying. The American boys futzed with their kuffiyehs.

Inside, twenty or thirty more foreign protesters milled around the poster-plastered room, scarves knotted at the ready, sunburns advanced. The few Palestinian men in their midst joked with the few who spoke Arabic, and welcomed those who didn’t in English. The piano, fridge, and mattress indicated that this “headquarters” doubled as someone’s home. Within minutes, a squat, beaming woman with hair bleached golden and a slight Latin accent bustled over to direct us to the “Friends of Bil’in” guestbook. Flipping through its dog-eared pages revealed hundreds of volunteers who had come through this room since demonstrations against the Wall began six years ago. The US, Norway, Spain, UK, France, Brazil . . .

Even as martyrs of the Bil’in cause gazed down on us from their commemorative posters, a jovial if somewhat jittery mood prevailed, as if we had all just arrived at summer camp and were awaiting a counselor to start us on the first organized game. It was supposed to be a festive day in Bil’in: earlier that week, the Israeli Defense Forces had at last begun dismantling the Separation Wall to move it closer to the 1967 Green Line, after six years of protests and an Israeli High Court ruling ordering this change to the Wall’s course. Thus, rather than using the Wall to annex two thirds of the villagers’ land for a new Jewish settlement, they would take a mere one third. Far from a full victory, but a cause for optimism nonetheless.

Suddenly a phalanx of suits pushed through the door, flanked by bobbing cameramen. Their charge was none other than Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. No one rose, even when his attendants announced him. Even the Palestinians seemed either a) too surprised to know what to do or b) too unsurprised to care. The white-haired, bespectacled politician surveyed the room with a grandfatherly smile. “Ready for action?” he said in English. Cameras flashed. Then his entourage herded him out again. Galvanized, we all got up and followed him. We strained to catch his platitudes for the news. The celebratory mood made me guilty to be joining the protests only now. Who was I to waltz in, after the villagers and their committed allies had been protesting for six years, after beloved community members had given their lives? Showing up for the cause at the same time Fayyad deemed it appropriate was by any estimation unfashionably late.

Just then we were called inside for our briefing with Smash Apartheid T-Shirt and another Israeli boy. The second, with long, wavy golden hair and a backpack which appeared welded to his body, launched into a description in lilting English of the weapons that the Israelis could use on us: skunk-water, tear gas, rubber and live bullets.

“So when you inhale the tear gas, if it’s your first time, you’ll think you’re going to die. But you won’t die! Just keep telling yourself, this will be over in two minutes. Don’t rub your eyes, just wait, sit down and rest for a little while. You’ll be fine.”

I tried to imagine sitting down to “rest” in the midst of a tear gas attack.

“Also, watch carefully when they shoot the tear gas, so you see where the canisters will fall, because that is the dangerous thing about tear gas: the canisters. The gas won’t hurt you, but the canisters will. So watch, don’t run, because then you won’t see and they could hit you.”

I tried to imagine not running.

“Then there are rubber bullets, and live bullets. These they shoot at the boys who throw stones. So don’t stand behind those boys, make sure you stand somewhere else.”

But what about the boys?

“Any questions?”

Silence. No one wanted to be less cavalier than our nonchalant guide, and besides, wasn’t today supposed to be more of a celebration than a clash? Surely the IDF would not waste ammo on a bunch of hippies singing songs and giving each other high fives.

“Great everyone, now just remember, today should be a nice and happy demonstration. The Israelis have to move the wall. The High Court ordered it. But we are showing them that we want to take it down NOW, ourselves! So let’s go.”

We took up flags, boys sold scarves to protect the delicate necks of Westerners, men climbed into the bed of a truck blasting debke music, a battery of drummers began to play and people circled up around a few dancers, an unseen orator got on the loudspeaker and delivered a speech in formal Arabic about the peaceful struggle for a Palestinian state, as everyone swung their new flags in time. Operation underway.

When we began to march, I could appreciate the sheer variety of participants. Shoulder to shoulder walked: old Palestinian men in white jalabiyyas and white knit skullcaps atop silver curls; young Western women attempting modesty in cargo pants and creatively arranged kuffiyehs of all colors draped around their necks or hair; knots of Palestinian teenage boys, black hair gelled into variations on the faux-hawk, fake gold and silver bling dangling over tight t-shirts; goth-looking Western youth, massive holes through their ears and noses, hair dyed and mowed into irreproduceable patterns, wearing shirts with anarchist slogans; little Palestinian boys darting in and out, their faces painted with the Palestinian flag and alight with excitement; tan, wiry Israelis, curly hair bandana-ed, sandaled feet dirty and tough; waddling old Palestinian ladies in traditional headscarves and black embroidered gowns, holding flags doggedly as they dragged their skirts through the dust; sunburned American dudes, proudly speaking freshly learned standard Arabic; pairs, groups and singleton Palestinian men of all ages, faces grim, undistracted and unimpressed by the hosts of foreigners, holding their flags with singular concentration; plucky, older Western women with strap-on hats over sun- and time-frizzed hair, smiling and striking up conversations, swaying to the Arabic music blaring from the truck ahead; a diminutive Palestinian father dropping one shoulder to hold his toddler’s hand, cocking the other to hold up the flag.

The road led through town, then past the fields of olive trees remaining in the villagers’ possession. Dancing children waved from rooftops; photographers scrambled around trying to capture the crowd. At last the Wall came into view up the hill. An Israeli tank waited, but I couldn’t make out any soldiers. Could it be that they were going to allow us to march right up and knock the fence down? Perhaps they had decided to let us do the work for them.

I chatted with a Palestinian man about the song blasting from the party truck, “Wayn al-milayiin” (“Where are the millions?”), about the massacres in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, when suddenly he said quietly, “Gas, be careful.” I looked ahead and sure enough, tear gas had just been fired into the front lines of protestors. I hadn’t even heard it over the music. OK: don’t run, watch the canisters. I looked up to see three more snake into the sky, and began backing up in a trance. Watch, don’t run. I traced their smoky, parabolic trajectories as best I could, but they changed course and pace unexpectedly. As I retreated, the sour smell of the gas mixed with skunk water pierced my eyes and nose. “Ambulance, ambulance!” someone shouted from above. The ambulance barged through the retreating protestors and straight into the gas clouds at the Wall. A bulldozer, driven by a group of protestors, had rammed right into the barbed gate. More explosions followed. Screams. Bodies dispersing through the trees, some stumbling out of the cloud to collapse red-faced and panting, others handing them wedges of raw onion to sniff.

I hesitated. The protestors had now scattered down the road away from the gas, leaving only a handful up at the Wall. I looked back and forth. What the hell were any of us doing here, standing around watching the few who dared to take the real risks? Why gather hundreds to cower in their kuffiyehs, taking pictures of themselves? We may as well be watching the whole thing on YouTube. I began back up the hill, albeit slowly.

A Palestinian guy caught up with me. “What are you waiting for, come on!” he said, with what could have been either a smirking or encouraging smile. He had the gangly skinniness of an adolescent but the face of an older man, his teeth stained brown, creases around his eyes.

“Are you from here?” I asked.

“Yes, I am from Bil’in.” His name was Noor. He had the thick, textured village Arabic, using a “tch” sound for “k”. We went through the usual questions, was this my first time in Palestine, where was I from, was I here alone, what did I think of Palestine. All of this as we sauntered up toward the Wall. I started at every noise, eyes darting upward, but he kept a steady gait, unperturbed. After all, he had been doing this every Friday for years. His comfort was contagious; even as a new volley of tear gas canisters whistled into the air, their white paths cris-crossing over our heads, we barely changed pace. They sailed past and landed in the middle of the road behind us. Squeals filled the air as the retreated protestors scattered still further back toward the village. “We could live with the Jews, you know,” Noor was murmuring. "It's just the governments that refuse to let us live in peace." I kept my eyes on the sky, watching one gray volley after another bisect the haze, flinching but walking evenly. One flying object I started at turned out to be a bird, streaking through the cloud. What must the birds make of these noxious chemical plumes wafting through their trees?

I found myself stumbling off the road and squatting, my eyes and nose stinging in earnest now. Taking a “rest”, after all. I mistakenly gulped some water, which made the gas I had inhaled burn all the way down my throat. Noor appeared at my side and gave me a cotton swab dipped in a solution to sniff. It smelled like nail polish remover, but strangely sweet in comparison to the tear gas. I inhaled deeply and looked around. A girl in a hijaab was wiping away gas-induced tears which had streaked her mascara down her cheeks. She managed a snuffling laugh and held up the two-finger peace sign as a friend took her picture. Flags soaked in the vile skunk-water lay abandoned by the side of the road. The heroic bulldozer, its side now pocked with bullet holes, sat parked behind us. The party truck still blasted music, but the drummers squatted by the road, wiping their eyes with their bandanas. Then the orator came back on, thanking the foreigners for their support. The day’s struggle had come to an end.

I sat up on a stone wall with Noor and watched the front guard trickle back down the hill. He recited lines from the classical Arabic poem “al-aTlaal” (“The Ruins”). Already a kind of spleen had set in; here I was, free to go back to Ramallah on the next ser-vees, then home to New York forever, able to say, “I participated in a Wall Protest in Bil’in.”

Yet I had done nothing. In fact, what I had done felt worse than “nothing” because it could be described as “something”. Sure, I made the trek and waved a flag and scared myself a little. Palestine does quickly impose its own relative scale of danger; by some calculations, going to the Middle East at all could be chalked up as a grievous risk, let alone the West Bank, let alone Bil’in, let alone a clash with the IDF at the Wall. But the realities we place ourselves in have a funny way of normalizing in an instant; after all, they become the only reality that exists. For these people, marching through tear gas is a Friday tradition, as natural and as necessary as prayer. Perhaps this could become my reality too; at each demonstration I would grow braver, until finally I forgot my comfortable home and husband and family and ambitions and threw my body without hesitation into the service of a noble cause. But next Friday, the villagers of Bil’in will be back at the Wall while I doze on an airplane. It feels wrong to have been able to sample their suffering, their bravery, then fly away.

"Go to back to America," urged Noor as we parted ways, "and tell them we are a peaceful people . . . we just want to live on our land." At least Bil'in has one more witness.

For more on the peaceful struggle in Bil'in, see their website.

For more photographs of this demonstration, Friday June 24, 2011, see my friend Bram's gallery.

One Fish, Two Fish, No Fish

We squint in the sun outside St. George's Church, Madaba, Jordan, as our government-approved guide, Talal, decodes the famous 6th-century mosaic map of the ancient world in a whirlwind speech. He recites the information in a monotone at breakneck speed, like a student rattling off the multiplication tables or Bible verses. His English is so heavily accented that anything but rapt attention would deprive us of his speeding factoids.

"You see this fish here?" he finally stops and turns back to us. He points at the spot on the mosaic where the River Jordan meets the Dead Sea. While the other two fish in the river swim towards the sea, the one closest to the entrance faces the other direction. "Why it is turning around?" He does not wait for an answer. "Because this is the Dead Sea and it is not wanting to die!" We try to chuckle with him. We had already heard this story, after days of traveling the region discussing water issues. "Nothing it survive in the Dead Sea, and they know this even in ancient times. Now see this fish?" This is clearly his favorite part of the tour. Yes, we see it. "This fish, it is looking up. Why is it looking up? The other fish are not looking up!" We are stumped. "Where it is looking, it is Bethany, the place Jesus was baptized there! You know maybe there are many people saying they know the true baptism site, the Israelis, they say they have it, but this map was finally one of the biggest proofs we have found it that Jesus' baptism site it was in Bethany here in Jordan. Why else would the fish look up that way?" He stands back from the map triumphantly with his hands on his hips, letting this wisdom sink in. Wow. Even tours of ancient Christian relics come complete with a dose of Jordanian nationalism.

Barbara, our resident historian, who has been grimacing throughout Talal's little prance across the meaning-laden and much-studied mosaic, finally speaks up.
"So how about the other fish, that one back there? What is it telling us?" she peers up at him through her glasses, barely coming up to his shoulder.
He looks down, harried. "This one, it tell us that the Dead Sea water too salty, this one, it looks at Bethany for tell us Jesus baptism site," he repeats, as if to a child.
"No, the other one." Barbara points to the third fish, also taking on a parental tone.
"This fish?" he confirms uneasily, following her finger to the unassigned creature.
"Yes. The other two have meanings, so this one must too, right?"
This thought has clearly never occurred to Talal. He gazes at the map in consternation, perhaps hoping that the hidden meaning of the silent third fish would suddenly become clear.
"Not all the fish are having something to tell us," he concludes huffily. "Just the two, they have meanings." We snicker and leave poor Talal to ponder his meaningful fish and missed opportunities while we wander the sunny square. You have to feel bad for the guy. Just his luck to get put with a bunch of snotty scholars. I'm sure he has entertained and edified many a tourist with his two-fish story.

We drive south toward Bethany itself later that afternoon. I am apprehensive. We had already visited the spot further north on the Jordan where the Israelis have dammed the river (just south of their snazzy rival baptism site, of course). Below the dam, pure sewage pours into the riverbed, churning south through the Palestinian territories. The smell at that spot is overpowering, but beyond it the river remains hidden from view, cordoned off by the military fences protecting the no-man's land -- and no-man's water -- between Israel and Jordan. In fact, the only other spot where people can access the river in Israel is across from Bethany, where those unfamiliar with the fate of the Jordan still go to get baptized in the holiest of rivers.

We arrive at Bethany just before the site closes. Much to-do has clearly ensued since the auguring of the mosaic fish. The gatekeeper hands out dildo-shaped audio guides in English and Russian to follow thirty-three (not a coincidence) stations down to the water. “An hour-long journey,” announces the first station brightly. We groan and set off down the manicured path to the Jordan River. We try to wander ahead, our audio-guides tinkling. Despite his sudden obsolescence, Talal insists that the group stay with him. “There are still land mines here, everywhere. This is a border area. You could lose an arm or something like this!” Whatever. I am just so sure that the Jordanian Parks and Rec Authority would go to the trouble to set up this little woodland trail without de-mining the place first. Talal has his way though, and manages to slip in a few redundant speeches at various sites along the path, including still further proof of the place's authenticity: a modern mosaic of the pope touring the site with the Jordanian royal family in a golf cart. We snicker some more.

But no one laughs when we get down to the water. Far from the glistening blue stream depicted in the ancient mosaic, the Jordan River is now a pool of brown, swirling goo. It has clearly been dammed downstream to make the water level appear higher, but as a result there is no current. Standing poo. Across the water on the Israeli side, just meters away, a group of Russian Catholics in their Sunday best -- it is Sunday, I realize-- sing in harmony, the priest in front of them reverently dipping his hands into the sewage and letting it run down his arms, occasionally anointing his face. We all hiss with disgust. A black woman with her hair covered in a scarf walks silently past me on our side and down the wooden stairs to the water. She dips her finger in, eyes closed in prayer. I watch the greasy swirls undulate out from her touch. She crosses herself and steps back up onto the platform. I avert my eyes.

The Russians have advanced down the steps on the other side. We can’t tear our eyes away, as if watching a horror movie. One by one, they wade out into the bilge, still singing. An adolescent boy scrunches up his face and submerges himself. My colleague Deanna tries to take pictures. “Stop it!” hisses another colleague. You can see in her eyes that we are disrespecting someone else’s holy moment, that even knowing what we know we must somehow let their experience be sacred. They've come all this way after all . . . Yet how can we appreciate the holiness of the moment when these people are exposing themselves to certain disease? “I just want to shout over to them, even in my broken Russian, that they need to stop!” Deanna wailed. I sit on the bench and finally look away. Oh Jesus, if you could see us now. I cry inside for my mother, for Mimi, for the soiled Russians, for the cheerful audio-guide narrative, for the River Jordan, reduced to a cesspool of human waste. This is how we treat the Promised Land? This is what God meant by go forth and multiply? One thing's for sure: there are no fish in that water now. It's the absence of fish that has something to tell us.

We walk away sobered, nauseated. I step sullenly off the path. They may have de-mined the place, but they didn't make it safe, and certainly not holy.

The Weakest Degree of Faith?

"Come in, come in!" beckoned Abu Bakr, a young father we had met minutes before. I peered through the narrow concrete doorway in the wall of the graffittied walls of Al-Amary Refugee Camp in Ramallah, the West Bank. A magenta swatch of cloth hung horizontally across the opening shrouded our host, revealing only her black skirts and open hands. As usual, I could not imagine descending upon this woman's home (whose relation to our friend of three minutes I had not yet gleaned), especially not with a group of ten teachers, but also as usual, I knew there was no turning back. Her hands were open and gesturing us in with increasing intensity. So one by one, we ducked under the cloth and edged sideways into her living room, a dark, formal and familiarly appointed space: stiff glossy couches, glass-surfaced coffee tables, framed pictures of young men with Palestinian flags.

As we filed in and took our seats, each of us perching tentatively along the edge of the 270 degrees of couch, Abu Bakr explained that the woman's oldest son Fadi had been in an Israeli prison for five years. "The army just appealed his sentence to increase it to twelve years," he added, nodding toward one of the picture frames behind us. The young man in the pictures was Fadi. Hearing her son's name, our hostess nodded, clasping her hands as she sat as tentatively as we were on the chair nearest to the door. Silence fell. "as-salaam 'aleykum," she said with sudden vigor, spreading her hands wide and smiling, revealing the beauty of her unwrinkled face, a smooth circle within her green, tasseled hijab. We responded. "Ahlan wa sahlan," she added. We responded. She clapped her hands. "So you speak Arabic!" Her urges that we choose a beverage met with less ready responses; of course my colleagues seemed scandalized at the idea of taking anything from this refugee mourning her son. At that very moment, he called from prison. It was Mother's Day. The refreshments were at least temporarily postponed.

While she spoke to Fadi out of earshot, our guide, Robert -- an American professor working at al-Quds University and the most at ease out of all of us, despite looking the most out of place with suit and briefcase -- asked Abu Bakr and his companion about the history of the camp. Did they know where in Palestine most members of the camp had come from? "Of course we know the history," his companion scoffed, his brows furrowing in surprise that such a thing would even be in question. "Everyone in the camp knows where we come from. We are from Ramleh and Lydda, and we came in 1948, all of us. We will not forget." Lydda, now Lod, is the ghetto suburb of Tel Aviv where we had flown into two days before. No one mentioned that.

Abu Bakr continued, "We are strangers in Ramallah just like you. This is not our city, not our country. Even though I was born here, and my father was born here, my grandfather came here from al-Ramleh and that is our home. We have nothing here. They don't want us. The Israelis put us in jail. We are refugees, do you know what that means?" No answer. I guess we don't. Abu Bakr sat back in silence, his face deadening beneath the carefully gelled curls arranged on his forehead.

Now off the phone, our hostess passed around the sage tea she had finally convinced us to accept. She gathered that I spoke Arabic, and having thus appointed a translator began to tell her story. She had, in fact, eight children -- four daughters, all married, thanks be to God, and four sons, one in prison, one fresh out of prison (whom we had met in the market that day, selling Israeli-grown produce in Ramallah as do most of the refugees in Al-Amary Camp), the others still in school, one of whom -- still an adolescent -- hovered between his mother and the door, blushing when he was mentioned and sneaking glances around the room. We were all gripped and saddened by the loss of her eldest son, and while curious I was loath to ask her to revisit the story. But she offered it up willingly:

"My husband worked in a cafe for years, saving up money to build my son's house, above our own [In refugee camps, families must build up rather than out, adding stories for children's families insofar as the structure can bear.] He did all the work himself, saved the money, it took years. Then when the Jews came to take him away, they destroyed everything. You can see, go upstairs and see for yourselves! All those years of work, for nothing."

Fadi's offense was not mentioned, but the stature which he had clearly had in the family and the camp suggested that he may well have been active in resisting the occupation.

"And my son, Mohammed, have you met Mohammed? Maybe you haven't met him, he is working. Did they meet Mohammed, Abu Bakr? You will meet him. He was in prison, And now he's out, and he's working but it's hard for him to work now, you see. He's not like he was. Prison changed him, it changed him psychologically. He can't work hard anymore, he doesn't have the drive. All of the boys, the men, they go to prison, and they come out changed. It is so hard for us to survive now. My husband, he has a bad back now, and he can't work anymore either. But we are patient, we continue." Her eyes brightened on this note, clearly a recurring theme in her speeches. I wondered how many foreigners came through here, how many times she had told her story. "Patience," she continued, her voice taking on a sonorous certainty, "is what keeps us alive. It is good for your health! When you learn to be patient, it calms your nerves, it slows your thoughts. You live longer. Yes, patience we have." Eyes filled around the room as I translated, everyone making inner promises that they would be more patient, have more faith, somehow try to be at least as satisfied with the world as this blighted woman saw fit to be.

How many grandchildren did our hostess have, one of my colleagues wanted to know. I translated and her face lit up instantly. "Let's count them together, shall we?" she cried gaily, a playful twinkle in her eye, her grave speech about patience forgotten. "So, my first daughter -- and all of my daughters are of course as beautiful as jasmine, each and every one! -- she has six children. My second daughter, thanks be to God, she has five. So how many does that make?" She waited for an answer. "That's right! Eleven. Did I count correctly? Yes, eleven! Then my third daughter, she has four. So how many now? Fifteen? Yes! Fifteen! But there's one more daughter, don't forget her. She has one. So what's the grand total? Did I hear? Yes! Sixteen! And wait, I haven't even mentioned -- one more on the way! That's seventeen, thanks be to God!" We oohed and ached, quite honestly wowed by her prolific family. Basking in our admiration, she cackled on. "Would any of you have guessed I was grandmother to seventeen? Of course you wouldn't guess," she purred to herself, smiling at her own beauty. We assured her that we certainly would not have guessed any such thing. "My daughters did start when they were fifteen," she admitted. "But how thankful I am to have such a family, how thankful!"

We visited the ruined apartment upstairs after we finished our tea, at the urging of our hostess and Abu Bakr. The door was gone, and the marble floors were strewn with gravel and other rubble. A refrigerator stood unplugged and gutted in the middle of the room like a rotten tree trunk. Copper-colored water sat thickly in a bathtub standing alone under a shelled-out window, evoking a dystopic tropical spa. The open back of the house gave us a clear vista down into the neighbors' small terrace and apartment below. Through the clouded windows, I could see bodies moving to and fro. "You see?" said Abu Bakr. "We have no privacy here. We are all on top of each other. And you know, we are Muslims -- we need our privacy, privacy for our women, for our families. But like this, whatever I do, they know. Whatever they do, I know." I shook my head sympathetically but he pressed on, giving me examples of increasingly "private" things he knew about the neighbors. I tried to participate in the conversation by describing the population density to Manhattan, but as my gaze refocused on the bullet holes I shut up.

I finally introduced myself formally to our hostess. Her name was Suad. I tried to acknowledge reception of her story with as much gravity as I could muster: "We are all teachers, and we will all tell your story, Suad, and one at a time people will find out what is happening in Palestine." We kissed on both cheeks and I promised to return. I probably won't. But I know that even if I returned in five years, she would welcome me in.

After we left, we paraded (by default) through the camp as the sunset call to prayer echoed through the narrow alleyways. Little boys scattered underfoot, some shouting "hello!" after we had gone safely by. Older men, or maybe younger men stooped by life in the camp, leaned against the walls, staring out with empty eyes. No greetings there, although when I murmured one to them some muttered back as a reflex. Abu Bakr pointed one man out to me and identified him, to my dismay, by the number of his sons who had martyred themselves. He ticked them off matter-of-factly as we walked by, giving the man an encouraging pat on the back. The producer of martyrs kept his eyes on the ground and moved by us silently, trembling.

Amidst the muted footsteps and calls to prayer, a more jubilant sound throbbed out of a storefront. We peeked in and saw a throng of adolescent boys playing video games on a semicircle of ancient computers. Barcelona and Real Madrid banners were plastered on opposing walls. These boys had none of their peers' shyness. "Hellooooo!!!!" they crowed, jostling in the doorway trying to get next to us. "Whasser name?" An older boy suddenly emerged from the swarm and regarded me a bit more skeptically. "Marhaba," I offered. He raised his eyebrows. The little boys continued their efforts. "How are yoooo? Wheroo from?" After assuring them that we were Barca fans we pulled away, their cries echoing behind us, and we headed for the exit.

The thoroughfare between us and our bus parked across the street seemed vast after the stifled, haphazard roads of the camp. The faces of our guides were already receding behind us as we said our goodbyes. "Is that a phone or a computer?" one of them asked, as I took down their numbers on my Blackberry. My backpack suddenly seemed heavy with superfluous belongings. As darkness fell I sat in the back corner of our bus, singing mindlessly along with early nineties dance music tinkling from another computer-phone as Suad's story sloshed its way into my memory. Yes, I am an American girl soon headed back to her own life, far from the terrorized yet patient prisoners of al-Amary. I do possess one story more. But what will become of Suad's testimony in my keeping? How can I make myself a true witness?

As the Prophet Muhammad would have it:

"Whoever of you sees something wrong, let him change it with his hand. If unable to, then let him change it with his tongue. If unable, then with his heart. And that is the weakest degree of faith." (q1:2)

We'll have to start with our hearts then, so weak our easy lives have made us.

A Wrinkle in Time

(Apologies to those whose adolescence was not shaped by Madeleine L'Engle, whose sci-fi classic this title references)

Being in the Occupied Palestinian Territories muddles one’s sense of distance and time. Traveling between Ramallah and Jerusalem in 1946 was a ten-kilometer bus ride south, a distance comparable to that between my apartment in Brooklyn and Midtown Manhattan. Today, the two cities are on opposite sides of the “Separation” Wall dividing the West Bank from Israel, although over two hundred thousand Palestinians still live in East Jerusalem.

I can’t envision a straight path from A to B when I set off from the Friends School in Ramallah. Instead, I see time: forty-five to ninety minutes of speed-bumps, vehicle-switching, checkpoints, and passport-showing. “Distance” as the crow flies no longer exists. It is as if you are not actually traveling through space but rather passing from one space-time continuum to another and losing an unpredictable amount of time in between. As if you sometimes got stuck when Apparating and appeared an hour later at your destination. As if you were crossing a tesseract.

At first it does feel like you are on your way somewhere. You turn off of al-Nahda Street from Friends and head through al-Bireh, a city older than Ramallah that has now become part of one extended metropolitan area. The usual series of Arab shops files out, then repeats: mini-market fronted with icebox of frozen treats, bakery with open oven and racks of various shaped loaves, odds n’ ends store adorned with hanging tricycles, backpacks and shoes, dark window of moneychanger office, the miniature screens of a cell phone store. The sidewalks swarm with multicolored veils above and the dark curls of children below. You swerve to avoid the old women in traditional embroidered dresses who toddle into the streets with their purchases balanced on their heads. You are in an Arab city. It could be downtown Amman, Cairo or Damascus.

As you leave the city center behind, the streets widen and empty of pedestrians and the prices in shop windows fall. You make slow progress because of the speed bumps striping the road every few meters. Every driver I have ridden with knows the location of these “sleeping policemen” by heart, even though they are unmarked and seem to be placed at random.

When you get out of town and onto the highway, the speed bumps taper off. The driver, regardless of his character, then floors the gas and tears forward with the gleeful recklessness of a teenager in a convertible on the first day of summer vacation. But the sudden freedom of the highway brings with it the first evidence that you are not traveling through an Arab country: the road signs announce the names of the places along the highway in Hebrew, then English, then Arabic. You are still in the West Bank, what would appear on a road map (no pun intended) to be the land allotted to Palestinians. But none of the places on the signs are Arab: Bet El, Giva’at Zev, Ma’ale Adumim. Following the arrows up to the tops of the surrounding hills, where the Israeli settlements’ identical orange roofs twinkle in the sun.

Why are there no Arab places even mentioned? Because this is an Israeli highway, servicing only Israeli settlers. To get to Arab towns, you have to use the circuitous, speed-bump-infested back-roads. As hill after hill of orange roofs loom, the impression that you are traveling through the West Bank fades. But you aren’t in Israel yet either. You are on Camazotz. You have entered a time-wrinkle.

The entrance to Ma'ale Adumim, one of the largest Israeli settlements.

This surreal spree through no-man’s land ends as abrubtly as it began: concrete road blocks slam on your breaks and channel all traffic into the Qalandiya checkpoint. By now, all sense of distance and time is lost. If you are on a bus, you disembark and enter the netherworld described in my last entry. If you are in a car with yellow Israeli plates and have an Israeli, East Jerusalemite or foreign passport, you join the queue of cars awaiting cross-check. If you are driving a car with white or green Palestinian plates or have a West Bank ID, Jerusalem’s proximity is doubly meaningless for you. Your journey is over, unless you have a pass issued from the Israeli government for health or professional purposes.

But you would never have come that far anyway; to you, Jerusalem is a mere legend, a place known through family stories but about as accessible from your home as Seattle or Mars. Mazen, a teacher of history with a PhD who speaks fluent Russian and makes wine, can’t remember the last time he went to Jerusalem, but he’s sure it was in the nineties. Adil, the director of a Palestinian cultural center who studied archaeology in Berlin and taught at Toronto University, recently turned down a speaking engagement at the American Consulate in Jerusalem when Israeli Security would only issue him a three-hour pass. Rashid, a sixteen-year-old student at the Friends School who speaks fluent English and has traveled to Europe and the States, has never been to Jerusalem. “I think I may just not go, ever,” he shrugs.

But those who can pull up to the gateway, under surveillance of mammoth watchtowers whose square eyes seem to move with you. The guardians who determine whether or not you pass back into real time are heavily armed college-age Israeli soldiers, who peer in your windows and flip purposefully through your passports. They do not search your car or interrogate you; an American passport, accent and smile seem to give you a free license to bring whatever you want through the wall. They merely reserve the right to intimidate.

Once you’re through, you speed alongside the wall towards the city. All the license plates are yellow now, and there are no more speed-bumps. The signs continue in three languages. When you hit the periphery, Arab shops begin to file out again, this time with advertisements in Hebrew as well as Arabic, and the veils and and head-balancing acts reappear. But as you approach the city, indications of Israeli infrastructure begin to multiply, emblazoned with blocky Hebrew letters – city buses, schools, gas stations – as well as Israelis, carrying suitcases, wearing miniskirts, walking quickly.

The suburbs expand into highway bypasses towards different parts of Jerusalem, and the old city emerges on the right. As you turn in on Jaffa Street, modern Jerusalem’s main drag, the veils and street sellers are replaced with yamakas, shin-length skirts and beards. Stars of David twinkle proudly in shop windows. Children’s wispy side-curls blow back from their faces as they run up and down the sidewalks after their parents. On the left, Ben Yehuda Street climbs through chi-chi wine stores and cafes; hippies dance in the sun and teenage girls flaunt their summer dresses, while soldiers in fatigues and Orthodox families weave through them.

“Ramallah? No, never been over there!” says the American Methodist pastor who has been living in Jerusalem, working at the Christ Church Guesthouse for the past two months. “Gonna try to make it though, when I get some time to travel.”

Ramallah really isn't ten kilometers away. It belongs to a different world, accessible only to those who willing to brave a wrinkle in time.

No (hu)man's land

For those of you who have encountered the West Bank checkpoints, this story should be no news to you. For those of you who haven't . . . read on.

The "Separation Wall" being built between the West Bank and Israel.

I thought I had learned the drill at the infamous Qalandiya Checkpoint, having been through once before. When the busses from Ramallah (or anywhere else in the West Bank) to Jerusalem arrive at the checkpoint, they pull over and let everyone off. The dispatched passengers then make their way across a parking lot full of Palestinian drivers with Israeli license plates crying “al-‘uds, al-‘uds!” (“Jerusalem”) and over to a mammoth hangar. Temporarily incarcerated, the travelers fall into a snaking line up to a wall of metal bars. The line bunches up around the one entrance, which is barely as wide as a man’s shoulders and squeezes the crush of people into single file as they pass through a tunnel to a body-length turnstile like the New York subways. The turnstile opens long enough to let a few dozen people through, then locks again.

When you finally get past the stile, you find yourself in an inner chamber with walls twenty feet high and a new wall of bars, this time with six turnstiles in separate compartments. You join one of the crowds of Palestinians pressing up against the bars and wait again. The turnstile allows three people through at a time, then locks shut. Nonetheless, the fourth person invariably tries to lunge through as the stile clicks locked and rattles their bodies back to stillness. The rhythm of the door’s three-turns-and-a-lock – shlick . . . shlick . . . shlick . . . ka-CHUNK – establishes a ruthless regularity as you inch forward. No single file here – it’s each man, child and little old lady for him or herself, although there does seem to be a consensus that the little old ladies should be given right of way when they are noticed underfoot.

Sometimes inexplicable pauses arise between openings and people begin to mutter. But their stunning powerlessness has become a default state of being. Those waiting with friends and family chat, gossiping or planning their errands on the other side. Children weave between bodies until a parent’s hand reaches through to snatch them back. Teenage girls lean inside the stile, each with a foot on the lowest bar. They swing mindlessly back and forth as they chatter. Then it clicks open and they tumble through giggling, place their purses on a conveyer belt, and step up to a double window with their travel documents (Palestinians do not have passports – depending on whether they live in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem, annexed in 1967, they carry varying levels of residency papers).

After showing documents, you pass through yet another turnstile to freedom, which begins with a second parking lot where the busses wait to recuperate their passengers. You show your ticket, board, and wait for the bus to fill. Then you go the remaining few minutes to Jerusalem. Total distance: about 12 kilometers. Total time: an hour and a half.

**************

I had been warned that the morning crowds of commuters could make for longer lines at Qalandiya, but my traveling companions, a British Quaker couple, and I arrived with plenty of time to get to the tour agency in Jerusalem. It was their first experience with Qalandiya, and they were adamant about toughing it out. This time, there was no waiting at the first turnstile, but the antechamber before the actual checkpoint teemed with at least two hundred people. It occurred to me that the “system” I thought I had witnessed a few days before may not have been a system at all, but merely one random manifestation of how the checkpoint is run on any given day. The grim reality of arbitrary rule chilled the blood even more than a predictable system of control. I warned the couple, Alan and Elspeth, that there was no telling how long the checkpoint would take and that perhaps we should consider getting a car from one of the eager drivers outside, who enter Jerusalem via one of the known holes in the “Separation Wall.” But they demurred, claiming that we had plenty of time, and reminding me that our governments were responsible for funding and allowing this monstrosity in the first place.

A fair point. We waited.

For fifteen minutes, no one moved, but people kept coming in from behind and surging past us. I tried to urge Alan and Elspeth to relinquish their politesse and push forward with everyone else, but eventually the tide of bodies separated us. We pressed into the same turnstile line at least, and waited. No one was going through. People began to mutter, then complain, then shout and press the “call” button into the office on the other side. No response. The gate remained locked.

After another twenty minutes, it began to allow one person through at a time, then lock again for unpredictable intermissions. “One at a time!” indignant shouts rose. Perhaps this was unnatural even for Qalandiya. A few announcements came through in blaring, staticky Hebrew: first they closed the window we were standing at (bodies stampede to the right), then reopened it five minutes later (bodies stampede back to the left). Well-dressed Palestinians bypassed the line and barged in front with minimal comment from the monotony-dulled crowd. One man did grumble as a suited, sun-glassed man swept from the back right into the turnstile. The newcomer screamed back that he had been there the whole time and pushed through. People started crowding into the stile two and three at a time.

At last my turn came. Dazed after an hour and a half in a mob of oppressed, angry humans, I walked through the turnstile in front of me and turned right towards the busses.

But on the right was a wall topped with spikes. To the left was a corridor leading through a turnstile into another parking lot, disconnected from the busses. I had gone through the wrong gate.

I ran back to the turnstile I had gone through. Of course, it was locked. The trickle of travelers coming through inform me that that gate was only for the post office (yes, Palestinians have to go through the Qalandiya checkpoint to mail a letter). I run back and forth in the corridor in a panic, eying the walls and trying to imagine myself vaulting over them. Impossible. I would be shot. Oh shit. I pressed the call button again and again and finally earned a stream of screaming Hebrew, then silence.

A couple of Arabs finally came through the corridor that had become my prison. They told me I would have to go out and back around through the checkpoint again. No! My spirit fluttered fiercely against the bars of my trapped body. Then I saw an Israeli guard outside. I leaned against the stile and called to him in English, and he came over. A tanned, rugged middle-aged man with a white-blond ponytail.

“Hi, listen, I went through the wrong gate,” I panted, trying on a disarming smile over my tensed muscles. “Is there any way you can put me back through?”

He sized me up and chuckled. “Where you from?” he asked.

“American,” I sighed with relief for a change, handing over my passport. “New York.”

He nodded and smiled, flipping through the pages. “Ah, New York . . . Welcome to Israel. Why you come through this gate, girlie?”

“I didn’t know it made a difference. I can’t read Arabic,” I lied, offering a rueful shrug.

He raised his eyebrows, amused. “There was no one there to direct you?”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” he handed me back my passport and said reassuringly, “I’m going to call and see if I can get you through. Don’t worry – just be patient.” He disappeared.

It is impossible to be patient and not to worry when you are stuck in a walled corridor in heat approaching 90 degrees facing an empty parking lot and a huge army complex into which your sole chance of escape has vanished. I pushed against the first gate again, recalling my yoga teacher’s frequent reminder: the definition of madness is to attempt the same thing the same way over and over again and expect a different result. Then a man appeared on the other side and magically let me through, then vanished. My body melting in relief, I charged at the gate to the busses.

Ka-CHUNK. Locked.

I ran back to the turnstile into the checkpoint window and called out. No reply. Were their windows soundproof? Probably. Why let explanations and excuses be even a remote possibility? A man passing through informed me that this gate was now closed for travelers to Jerusalem, and was open only for the post office. Now made reckless with fear and frustration, I stamped back through the post office gate, out into the deceptively open parking lot and into the complex, where I found the kindly Israeli guard at the desk.

“Ah, they send you back to me. Why you not wait? I tell you be patient. Okay, I see what I can do."

A languid phone call in Hebrew ensued, out of which I distinguish only the word “Amrikai.” He hung up and grinned.

“Come with me now, I’ll take you back over there and someone’s gonna let you in. So relax!”

Two Palestinians were coming out of the turnstile as the officer buzzed me back through. The look of shock on their faces confirmed that such an exception would never have been made for them. At the next stile, two Israeli soldiers, a boy and a girl barely more than teenagers, had materialized, in fatigues and heavily armed. I showed them my passport and they smiled at me and shook their heads.

“Why you go through this gate?” the boy asked, his voice teasing, with an almost flirtatious twinkle in his eye.

“I couldn’t read the sign, sorry!” I stuck to my lie. Their smiles widened and they buzzed me in.

“Hey, you be careful, okay?” the girl warned. “It’s dangerous over there.” She cocked her head back at the swarm of waiting Palestinians (along with poor polite Alan and Elspeth) as she buzzed me through the final gate to freedom.

“Yeah I will, thanks.” I gave my captors-turned-saviors a real smile. “You should make some signs in English!” Somewhere in the mixture of relief to be escaping and to be suddenly joking with peers rather than trying to talk sense to a screaming intercom, I liked them.

Young Israeli soldiers in downtown Jerusalem. They are actually watching a bunch of Israeli hippies dancing around shirtless to some tribal drumbeat.

As the 18-bus rolled on towards Jerusalem, the aftershocks of my brush with Palestinian reality crumbled my thoughts and opinions into an indecipherable mush. Images sparred and splattered against one another: the hunched old ladies in traditional Palestinian embroidered dresses smashed into turnstiles, the high spiked walls, the Arab men smoking and pressing up on all sides, the grinning Israeli soldiers with whom I immediately felt a shared cultural bond, the conveyer belts, the guns, the teenage girls swinging against on the gates, the fatherly Israeli guard, the indecipherable Hebrew screeching on the intercom, my own voice in English saying, in so many words, “Hey, I’m American, we’re allies, buddies, friends! You don’t have to treat me like you treat them! My country funds this whole operation, so it’s cool, I’m not upset. Just new here, sorry!”

So it’s less obvious than I would like to dictate my gut responses to these conflicting encounters. But I also realize that as a foreigner I enjoy a tremendous privilege that few West Bankers or Israelis enjoy: being able to see humans on both sides of that checkpoint. Interaction in the netherworld of Qalandiya forces both Israelis and Palestinians to see one another as animals.