The Israeli army has been inside Nablus for the past two days. Allegedly they're searching for wanted people and bomb factories. I am fine. Helping the Red Cross during the day with the other internationals. Internet is limited and I don't have much time. Expect something meaningful when this is all over. Please read/search the news for more info on what's going on in Nablus. --Brian

Aphoristic Apathy

Normally I post every saturday but I was too lazy to write up a real post this week, so I have substituted substance with a handful of aphorisms. The first is a rerun.
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There are people the world over whom, if you knew them, you would love, and having loved them you would pay dearly to see their lives bettered.

That we may never meet them does not change anything.
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History is a plaything for the agendas of the present. Do not accept its assertions without skepticism.
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American aid to Palestine (when there was such a thing) is like handing someone a band-aid after you pay your friend to kick them in the testicles.
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When a child spits in your face, do not hate the child, hate whatever confluence of events conspired to raise a child who would spit in your face.
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Any political office of consequence should come with an instructions manual.
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Whoever writes the instructions manuals for political offices of consequence will control the world.
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Aphorisms are like a three-legged dog: they're lame. :-P
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(Add your own aphorism here) <~this is the interactive part

Terminology and Simple Truths

When a Palestinian shoots at an Israeli he is called a terrorist or a militant (unless you’re in Palestine where they’re freedom fighters).

When an Israeli shoots at a Palestinian he is called a soldier (with the exception of occasional violence from Israeli settlers).

When Palestinian militants take an Israeli soldier from his on-duty assignment it is a kidnapping.

When Israeli soldiers take a Palestinian militant from his home it is an arrest.

The Palestinian resistance is a chaotic hodgepodge of fighters of disparate political, ideological, and organizational affiliation.

The Israeli army is the military force of a sovereign, internationally recognized government.

In academia they would say, ‘in any country the government holds a monopoly on legitimized violence. As such even abusive military actions tend to evoke the vocabulary of legitimate security measures, and on the other hand semi-equivalent military actions from non-state actors evoke the vocabulary of terrorism.’

It’s just a matter of terminology. But how many truths, in the way we perceive things, in the way we believe things to be, are hidden in a twist of terminology…

Madama

Just now I did a spinning back kick in the apartment kitchen and a dirt clod came flying off the sole of my shoe, landing on the counter beside the sink. The tiny earthen companion had followed me all the way from the Nablusi countryside where I had unwillingly picked him up near a village named Madama.

Actually, I have been shedding bits of countryside here and there for the past ten hours. Earlier today, in an aborted attempt to clean my shoes I started scraping them off in front of a little store owned by the family of one of my students, who had invited me to visit him in Madama. He grinned and said in a mock-serious tone of voice, “Brian, this is the entrance to the shop… it should be cleaned, not dirtied.” I stopped immediately, of course. We went to one of his friends’ house where I surreptitiously rubbed a few crumbs of dirt off against a gray stone wall shortly after taking tea and coffee on the rooftop before a magnificent view of Madama and its surroundings. But naturally I dumped the vast majority of my footwear hitchhikers at the earliest possible convenient place: the beginning of the paved road back to Madama and the end of the dirt road that lead me into and out hillside fields thick with olive trees, ancient stone walls, and mottled sunlight sieved through spotted cloud cover. May my mind reside in the calm of the Palestinian countryside evermore.

As I recall it, the walk from the village was occupied primarily by a comfortable intermittent silence. My four companions occasionally broke out into eager exposés highlighting some local oddity or minor wonder: here the wild brother of the lettuce plant, stranger to farm and field, cool to the taste; there a low upright stone called 'The Throne' on the cusp of a sudden precipice; here a hole, one meter squared, one foot deep, chiseled into solid rock to hold rainwater for fieldworkers to drink; there the blossoms and fruits of an almond tree; here a docile turtle hunkered under an awning of wild grass; 'do you have turtles in California?'.

But most of the time walking through the countryside, along the northern slope of a rich valley, was spent in silence, and my eyes wandered freely between sky and earth. On the opposite slope and the valley floor, the dark brown trunks of olive trees stood out starkly against the light pastels of underbrush and topsoil. Patches of shadow flitted across the earth, stragglers from last night's storm, and a breeze blew down from the northwest—fresh, clean, rejuvenating. "Is it beautiful? Is it beautiful, Brian?" they asked me repeatedly. "Yes, yes. It is." It reminded me of parts of California, those semi-deciduous regions in the foothills of great mountain ranges, just between the pine forests and lower climes.

"Do you see that?"—quarries in the distance, the color of sandalwood, dug into the mountainsides—"There is good stone from these places. Once the people of that town were rich because of the stones, but now Israel has built a new road between the quarries and the town. It is forbidden to cross."

"Do you see that?"—a long narrow vale snaking into the opposite valley side, inlaid with small dark green fields—"There is a hole there. Deep deep deep. Tourists used to come look at it. It does not end. Impossible? Yes. But this is only something they say. It is not real.”

In the spectrum of existence there are times, and for me they are many, when one feels so overwhelmed by the sheer and inexplicable beauty of life; this was one such instance. Maybe it was like the feeling you get from being in love, or feeling at home someplace, or watching an infant in his mother’s arms, or from noticing for the first time that the season has changed. Truthfully I didn’t know how to describe my feelings, except to say again, “Yes, yes. It is beautiful.”

We stood quietly on a stone outcropping for some time.

“This is Palestine. This is our land. This is for Palestine. Do you agree?”

I do. And I told them so. Still every time I concur with some bold statement of Palestinian nationalism I simultaneously feel as if I have betrayed better judgment by not also advising constraint, compromise, and cold rationality in the pursuit of an independent Palestinian state. But in a place like that, it was easy to see how better judgment is thrown to the wind and in its place are sown the seeds of loyalty to and love of country.

By the time we trekked out, a thick layer of soil clung to my feet, augmenting my height by a full inch. I suspect a great deal of it remains with me even now.

New Post(s) to come before the weekend is over hopefully. In the meanwhile I have added some new photos to my shutterfly collection. http://blooabroad.shutterfly.com

There is a masked man with a sledgehammer trying to break down an apartment door in the building next to ours. Let his story be a lesson for masked men everywhere: if you set out to break down someone’s door with a sledgehammer, you damn well better be in shape or have the common sense to bring help.

From our balcony you can see through the stairway window of the apartment building opposite ours and from there into the interior hallway. Had you made use of this vantage point one night last week, you would have seen the aforementioned masked man trying to break down one of the apartment doors with aforementioned sledgehammer.

Really, it was the noise that attracted attention: a loud throbbing bang ringing throughout the neighborhood. He was at it for a good ten or fifteen minutes, so long that he took breaks, quite frequently in fact, huffing and puffing, resting the sledgehammer upright on the floor and leaning against its handle for support.

So I took stock of the situation, calmly collected my thoughts, and their general gist was as follows:
“What the hell??”

Then I called one of our Palestinian friends who works with us and asked him what to do.
“Stay off the balcony and don’t be seen.”
“Is there a number we can call or something like that?”
“Well, unfortunately in this situation there’s nothing we can do. But tell me if anything happens in your building.”

I love Nablus, but sometimes I hate how things are here. The police are ineffectual and partisan, there is no law, no court system, no sign of a robust local government in people’s daily lives (with the blessed exception of waste disposal).

We guessed that at the worst the masked man was here for one of the relatively harmless kidnappings that have become rampant in Nablus between Hamas and Fatah supporters. One of the kidnappings, which two of my flatmates witnessed at a Nablusi refugee camp, consisted simply of one armed masked man jogging through the street, firing into the air with one hand, and lightly tugging an obliging man behind him. Practically everyone who gets kidnapped in Nablus is returned safely after some time (think of it as a very very spontaneous vacation). In all likelihood our masked man’s intentions were no more serious than kidnapping, or perhaps even more minor than that, otherwise he would not have come alone, or he would have simply shot the lock out (guns in Nablus are like liberals in Berkeley, conservatives in Orange County; commonplace like candy at a candy shop, only the candy is inedible and discharges bullets).

Eventually the dull banging in the next building over ceased. One of us occasionally took peeks out the kitchen window. The last she saw, the masked man and some others were standing in the hallway. The next time they were gone. Who knows if they got what they wanted, perhaps a truce was negotiated, or friends and relatives of the wanted man intervened, or he simply acquiesced to whatever demands they made of him. If it was a kidnapping perhaps we’ll hear about it in the rounds of idle gossip. The specifics of minor kidnappings almost never make the local or international news: people would rather read something interesting.

Still, I worry that if things keep getting worse someday someone will kill a hostage here or more likely in Gaza; then everything will change in an instant. And regardless of the bigger picture, I want to be able to call someone when I see a masked man, clearly out of shape, taking his sweet time knocking down a door with a sledgehammer.

P.S. Some days after I wrote this, Hamas and Fatah came to an agreement in Mecca and the infighting settled down noticeably (in Gaza of course, but also the random kidnappings in Nablus). Hopefully all goes well with the formation of a real National Unity Government.

Warning: Poetry Follows

For those who are avid readers of my blog, but dislike poetry, we advise you flee this web address in utter terror post haste.

For those who are infrequent readers and dislike poetry, we advise you flee slowly, in partial terror, to last week's entry.

For those who enjoy poetry or are willing to dare a modest sampling of my poetry, please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times, and DO NOT feed the live animals.

Foreign Girl

All the boys call after her, ribald tongues a'clackin.
Children trail her eagerly. One daring touch--they flee.
The shopkeeper's brows, gathered gray clouds,
belie his eyes, which slip on the sly,
so clandestine.

A woman in green, hobbled with age,
purses her lips, tsks in dismay.
And a beautiful girl, when they cross paths,
turns hazel brown eyes to the fringe of her hijab
out of caution, propriety, modesty, or fear. Who knows?

--For Alicia, Ena, and Lisa who put up with alot.

The Electric Kettle billows smokey white,
lazy curls wrap the kitchen light.
Water cracks the paint.

Look, look, the kettle boils over the countertop;
The tiles tell of squeaking feet, an off-time beat;
The children dance in glee.

--a real occurrence in the apartment life

My Love,

Tonight the wind clatters across the cityscape,
kicking trash about the hillside street tops,
rattling windows in their loose-fit frames,
testing every door and gate with its persistent nudge.

The rain runs rivulets down down
down the slender valley sides--
no curbside grate or man made channel,
only contours nature left as guides.

My Love, it is a stormy night,
a wild urgent storm,
and just as such are we.

--In Memoriam for all love long passed but long remembered.
--In Celebration of all love long absent but long hoped for.

Waking Dream

Terraced hills and winter orchards
slip beneath my half-shut eyelids.

Oh Palestine, you have stolen
my peace of mind, and bequeathed me
your unsettling beauty in its stead.

Taxi Ride

Soft rounded summits,
like a tender woman's breasts
veiled in blue-gray twilight,
part as we approach
to show the way home.

In Other News...

Last week a suicide bomber killed three people in the Israeli city of Eilat. It was the first suicide bombing in Israel since last April. Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (the militant wing of the Fatah party), and a third previousy unknown group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Three days ago I was about to begin class at one of the local children's center, when a friend at the center told me the Israeli army was currenty camped at my apartment's front doorstep. This news was followed by a phone call from another friend warning me of the same, and one of the staff members of my host organization asking me to return to the main office immediately. The other volunteers and I were driven back home after the army left; later that evening we saw a splotch of bright red on the street as we walked to the local grocery store. They had come to take a wanted member of Islamic Jihad; he was wounded in the process, probably he fought back. I had wanted to teach the children how to sing 'head shoulders knees and toes'.

Two days ago in the early morning two al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades members were killed in the old city area. The following day I saw their martyr posters being put up as I walked to a friend's house.

Last night I was awoken sometime after the muezzin made the morning call to prayer (around 5am). Gunshots, loud and nearby, sounded repeatedly from the window. Everytime they began again I slipped out of whatever warm, safe place consciousness goes between waking and slumber. It bothered me because I couldn't figure out why, after all this time, from the safety of my apartment bedroom, the sound of live arms fire gave me even the slightest fright.