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.