BLOO Abroad

Where we all are. One year later

2008-07-22T04:51:00.000-07:00

It’s been almost a year since I was last in the West Bank this past August. It’s been over a year since May of 2007 when I left the first time after nearly five months living in the city of Nablus. I started this blog to convey my experiences there to friends, family, and whoever else might happen to read it. My hope all along was that in some small way readers could come to see the people I knew and the places I saw as I knew them and as I saw them: in a personal light.

Well, this blog is done now, but before I stop for good, I thought I’d pull one last entry out of my sleeve. This is an update on some of my closest friends from Nablus (all names have been changed) most of whom have shown up at some point or another in my earlier blog entries. This then is where we all are, one year later.

Sharif was one of my closest friends in Nablus. There was not a single moment in public when he was not cracking a smile or pulling a practical joke on someone. Sharif was the one who once wrote on a chalkboard in my classroom “Life is a camera, so smile”. He also told me the story about fooling the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints by pretending he spoke only French—with anyone else I’d be sure they were just joking with me, with Sharif you considered that he just might be crazy enough to do it. In private he was much the same, but with intermittent moments of cold hard seriousness. Still, he was never bitter. I think I admired that the most about him.
Sharif was born with a limp—one of his legs was shorter than the other—and had undergone seven surgeries on it since he was a child. Each surgery failed to correct the limp, and he underwent an eighth and final surgery when I was still in Nablus. By the time I came back to visit last August, he had been on crutches for three or four months. Still, same smile and laugh.

We’ve e-mailed a few times since then. He asked for my help looking for ways to come to America for college. We looked at visa application forms, and college transfer applications, and scholarship applications, and decided that barring a miracle he would have to borrow money at home somehow, we even hypothesized that he could borrow the money for a few days from extended family, print a bank statement showing that he had enough money to support himself for a year in America as per the student visa requirements, then return the money immediately thereafter. It was not a hopeless situation, but neither of us had real answers. After a month or two without contact from him, I e-mailed and asked him if he still was thinking about college in America.

He wrote back saying he wasn’t sure. “Sometimes, I just want to stop thinking. Do you understand what I mean?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, only that I couldn’t stand the thought of him ever giving up.

Adam and Hassan don’t show up in any of my blog entries, but I spent uncounted evenings with the two of them joyriding around the city before the army incursions began after midnight, sitting at hookah bars, coffee shops, and our favorite downtown pizza joint (they always insisted they pay). They showed a complete disregard for my host organization’s curfew rules, and lived in the moment, recklessly, with a wild verve for life and companionship. They lied to their fathers, both of whom I knew rather well, about where they were and when they would be back so that they could squeeze out just another quarter hour of joyriding or lounging around town.

Adam was one of the founders and managers of the Children’s Center that hosted Nablus’ champion youth ping pong team and where I taught a roomful of little boys aged five to twelve every Monday and Wednesday for three months. All of the managers were young, and they were some of the kindest people I met in Nablus. Many of the people whose stories follow were managers at that same center. He had spent a year in an Israeli jail for breaking the permit/checkpoint system that restricts freedom of movement from region to region within the West Bank. The real reason he was arrested was because he had spent time working as a junior level political operative for what both the United States and Israel classify as a terrorist organization. Because of his history, and allegations of his continued involvement with said organization (which he denies, though rumors in Nablus flew thick and fast around the subject until no one could be sure of anything) he was recently arrested again and has been in another Israeli jail now for over half a year. His father, a local school teacher, joined him in jail a few months after his arrest. They leave behind a younger brother and sister/son and daughter, neither older than ten.

I lost touch with Hassan soon after Adam’s arrest. I asked after him through mutual friends. They only told me that he was incurably lonely.

Iman, whose personal account of being arrested during the 2007 February invasion of Nablus can be read here, was another manager at the Children’s Center. He won a scholarship to study for a summer in Jordan, then finished his degree in computer science and is now looking for a job in Nablus.

Kareem was an eighteen year old bear. Six-foot, massive, and with a face that wore two expressions: a surly frown, or a childlike grin. Still, for all that, he was timid and afraid sometimes. He was the one who first told me about Iman's arrest and asked me to come save him if he himself were ever arrested.

I spoke with Kareem on the phone once while I was in Cairo for those two summer months between leaving Nablus and coming back to visit for August. Because of the Children’s Center’s association with Adam and his assumed political leanings, all of the managers had come under threat from an opposing faction’s henchmen. Kareem told me on the phone how they had come to his house and shot at him and one of our friends, how they had hidden from the gunfire, how someone’s elderly mother died of a heart attack from fright, and how they were dragged off, interrogated and beaten.

I never spoke with Kareem again. In August Adam and Hassan told me to stay away from him without giving me clear reasons. Rumor from a friend of a friend in local intelligence had it that some of Adam’ circle of friends had been turned spy so as to keep a closer watch on him. I am fairly certain this is what happened to Kareem and a few other friends from the Children’s Center whom I never saw again. Mostly it makes me sad what happened. The only thing that makes me angry is imagining what sort of intimidation, what sort of threats and bullying they must have had to use on Kareem to make him spy on his own friends.

One of my favorite memories I have with Kareem was when we were walking back to the center together after watching the children at a soccer match. Kareem turned to me and asked, “Brian, would you ever kill someone?” I looked at him a moment before answering. “I don’t want to kill anyone ever,” I told him, “unless someone I love will die if I don’t.” And he smiled at me, his childlike smile. “You’re just like me then.”

The Children’s Center where we all worked was burned down by those same henchmen around the same time. I am told the children cried, though I only got to see a few of them again after that—the political situation was too unstable when I visited in August and my host organization worried about what would happen if I were seen associating with the losing side. The managers wanted to rebuild and restart, but were forced to wait until things calmed down in the city for fear it would just be burned down again. They are still waiting.

Muhammad was the former paramedic whose brother died two years before I met him. But he was always a clown—literally! He and his friends started a small circus group in hope of bringing a little fun and laughter to Palestinian children’s lives. I am unashamed to say that he is one of the most admirable people I know, and the world would be a better place if we could all be only half as good a person as he.

Muhammad tried to give three of us volunteers clowning lessons. It was much harder than I thought. Clowning is serious business. He began by holding up a plastic red clown nose, elastic string and all.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked us. “This” he pronounced, “is the smallest business suit in the world.” If he hadn’t been so serious we might have laughed at him.

We then proceeded to practice our clown faces: “there are at least ten degrees between the happiest you can get, and the saddest you can get. Show it on your faces”. Muhammad was a surprisingly stern clown teacher, and it was surprisingly uncomfortable to breath through that clown nose the whole time.

This past winter Muhammad got engaged to a friend of mine who volunteered at the same time with us. They’re getting married this summer or as soon as possible, and we hope they will be very happy together.

Faizan carried himself with more dignity at the age of twenty-two than most people attain in their lifetimes. He was the friend who told me that if the soldiers hit him at the checkpoints he would hit them back even if it cost him his life. He was also the older brother of Mu’min, the drippy nosed four year old whom I wrote about in one entry. The first memory I have of Faizan was when, before I even started teaching at the Children’s Center, the children heard that I knew some martial arts.

“Faizan knows karate!” one of the children shouted, “Fight with Faizan!”

I looked embarrassedly at Faizan, and Faizan, with his typical composure, simply stood there and said “Ok, try to hit me if you want.”

So I half-heartedly threw a punch and he blocked it and countered. I backed up and threw some kicks, just to prove to him and the kids that I could do it, then he got in under my range and it turned into a breathless little bit of feints and soft punches at which I definitely lost. By the end, naturally we were great friends forever.

I distinctly remember one night Faizan insisted he accompany me back to the international apartment—the inner city wasn’t safe at night for foreigners. Before we parted ways, he looked out over the city lights dipping into the narrow valley, and he told me he’d sworn to himself he would not run from Palestine.

“This is where I will build my life, this is where I will make my work, start my family, here in my country.”

So it surprised me when I received an e-mail from him just two months ago from Saudi Arabia. It said: "My friend Brian, how are you? How is your life? Things here are very beautiful. There are no checkpoints, no shooting, everything is stable compared to our situation in Palestine. Sometimes I feel that you and the others have forgotten us and don’t care about us. But for us, we will never forget you, not until the last day of our lives, because for us when we choose a friend and they prove themselves to us we will never forget them. So I am waiting for your response to this e-mail, because you are still my friend and a brother until the last day of our lives. Your brother, Faizan”

It took me two weeks to write Faizan back. When I did, I told him I could never forget him or Palestine and my friends there.

Sometimes it’s hard to stay in touch with my friends from Nablus, because our lives are so different. I catch myself thinking of them when I have a day to sit around the house and do whatever I want. When I visit a particularly nice shopping center to have dinner at a restaurant with old college friends. When I try to imagine having my ideal job, or getting married and starting a family. It’s guilt born of empathy and friendship. There are days and nights when things resurface so vividly, and guilt drives my mind up the walls looking for some way through to help them. What if I could get Sharif into the country and set him up to live with me while he goes to school? How can I get Adam and his father out of jail? Whatever happened to Kareem; is he safe? And I see again the faces of all the children I taught at that center, leaping up and down and shouting “Teacher! Teacher! Pick me, pick me!” before they even knew the question I was about to ask them.

Most of the time I think in terms of the greater good: there has to be a better way to most effectively contribute to the world. But other times I wonder, if I’m not helping the friends who are right in front of my face, just what the hell am I doing? And sometimes I surrender despairing and contemplate how much easier it would be if I just dropped the idealism and guilt.

I’ve taken to praying, because I just don’t know, and because I suspect I can’t handle things like this on my own. I haven’t come up with answers, but it helps clear things out and lends perspective. All I know is that people need people, and so I’ve turned to you in a way, because these are my friends, and so are you, and I need you to see them as people, even if only for awhile in little snatches of human connectivity, as if that way I might be doing a tiny something for them, as if that way they might know that they are never forgotten.

Angry Letters to Congress

2008-07-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Congressman/Congresswoman,

I know that you must receive countless letters by mail and e-mail from your constituents, and I do not know how I could claim that this one, above all others, might be most worthy of your attention, but I am nonetheless compelled to write to you because no one is better able to help than you.

A friend’s father, one Dr. Sami al-Arian, a professor and Muslim American citizen, has been held in prison past his release date and is now being tried for contempt of court for refusing to testify at a grand jury. To be clear, Dr. al-Arian landed in jail only after being found not guilty on the sixteen charges related to terrorism, financing terrorism, or terrorist connections. He was then told that federal prosecutors would re-try him indefinitely and faced with long and costly trials, he accepted a plea bargain whereby he pled guilty to one minor charge and was given five years jail time, after which he was to be deported. I’d like to put aside the polemics of that initial trial and plea bargain to get to my main point: the prosecutors made a legally-binding verbal promise to Dr. al-Arian while arranging the plea-bargain that he would not have to stand trial again. Nobody disputes the fact, and I have been told the prosecutors themselves will bear witness to the fact.

This last is a horrific perversion of what should be the best justice system in the world. I am proud to say I am American, but I cannot and will not abide by abominations perpetrated by my government’s judiciary against her own people. Dr. al-Arian has served the jail time proscribed for him—actually it expired some months ago. Please, do what you can, speak out, speak with people, anything to aid this poor man and his family. It is enough to break most people’s hearts that Dr. al-Arian’s children will follow him and his wife into exile far from the only home they’ve ever known, but for them to continue to be separated, without due cause, in fear and uncertainty over their father’s fate is more than unkind, it is cruel and it is unjust.

Dr. al-Arian’s plight is unacceptable, and leaves me to conclude one of two things. Either this is the kind of treatment that all American citizens can come to expect at the hands of their federal judiciary, so overzealous to chase down terrorists that it willfully makes a mockery of our fundamental rights. Or this is an example of unequal treatment in a country founded on and priding itself on the principle of equality. Whichever the case may be, it should be a matter of concern for all, and I pray that your intercession may hold some sway in the timely resolution of this awful situation.

Respectfully,

Brian J. Loo

Links to more information:

www.freesaminow.com

http://socialistworker.org/2008/07/02/feds-contempt-for-justice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_al-Arian

2008-02-18T01:47:00.001-08:00

This summer, soon after I first moved into my apartment, I put up a sheet of aluminum foil over the little bedroom window that faces east over the Nile and the cityscape of Cairo, and which also happens to overlook my bed. The early rising sun would peek through at an unseemly hour, and even when I tossed and turned on the mattress trying to escape its indomitable march into my sleep time, the ferocity of its rays warmed the room to an uncomfortable temperature that was impossible to sleep through.

Over months, crinkles, wrinkles, then hairline cracks began to appear in my window cover. In the mornings golden flecks began to glimmer along the aluminum faultlines. Soon tiny holes punctuated the steely gray, sun freckles flowed through onto my pillow, the headrest, lights of something divinely alive behind the tattered thin but tenacious metal curtain.

And when a starry burst of morning strays over my yet half-sleeping eyes, in dim musings I consider that behind the world I choose to see, is another more glorious light-filled world to which I am somehow tied inextricably but am unwilling or unable to behold other than through the cracks in those fragile barriers that anchor me to the finite spaces of the familiar.

2008-01-10T00:46:00.000-08:00

Uneasy Alliances

I step out of my taxi in front of Cairo International. We have arrived in record time, aided by the earliness of the hour and the big Eid holiday, which together conspired against the perpetual Cairene traffic to make for empty streets and uncannily clear blue skies. Fortunate for me. I needed the help, having been betrayed by a negligent alarm clock (surely it had turned itself off of its own accord) and woken up 45 minutes later than originally planned. 15 minutes to stow some last minute items into a carry-on and personal item, eat something that passes for breakfast, and be out the door.

Ok, 20 minutes.

And wash the dishes I had eaten my breakfast on, and brush my teeth?

25 minutes.

And then the damn elevator always takes forever.

So when I flagged down a cab from among the smattering of vehicles on the road at seven fifteen on a big holiday morning, and he did not immediately challenge me to state what might constitute appropriate fare but rather sped along airport-bound post haste, needless to say I counted myself in the good graces of whatever diety (from among the agnostic’s pantheon of deities) doles out the fates of travelers.

My good cheer was of such tenacity that I happily turned the other way when my taxi driver stopped along the way to fill up on gas (in Cairo, a common enough thing to do in the middle of taxi-ing passengers from point A to point B).

So finally as I step out of my taxi into a brisk wind under clear skies, I happily overpay the taxi driver by ten pounds, wish him happy holidays, and then stride purposefully into the terminal. I take one step in, and have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve been dropped off at the wrong terminal.

I must have exuded uncertainty, because at that moment someone comes up and asked me, “Excuse me, where are you going? Let me see your ticket.”

He is dressed in a dark heavy vest and sharp khaki trousers, so that without close inspection they give the impression of official attire.

“Um, to New York?” I hand him my printed itinerary.

“Wrong Terminal.”

A vague sinking feeling in my stomach sets in. The two terminals are an unseemly distance apart, perhaps thirty minutes worth of walking, and I have no idea if there's official airport transportation between the two. “Ok, no problem. I can take a taxi to the other terminal,” I say to him in Arabic.

“Hmm… take a taxi you say” he mutters as if to himself, “Come with me please.”

I hesitate a split second.

“Come on, come on!” he says.

I follow him back outside, across the street to the parking lot. We pass up several waiting taxi drivers, and the sinking feeling in my stomach is now somewhere in the vicinity of my feet. My itinerary still in hand, he gets into the driver’s seat of an empty cab, I obligingly follow waiting to be willingly scammed.

We drive about two minutes, just long enough to be really inconveniently far from any terminal, when he stops the car.

“Listen, how much will you pay? Because normally it is one hundred pounds.”

“One hundred pounds? Noooo. That is a lot! Twenty pounds.”

“Ok, fifty pounds.”

“Ohh, to great sorrow, I only have twenty pounds.”

I am lying and he probably knows it.

“Twenty pounds?! Twenty pounds how?”

“Twenty is a lot, my friend. I would normally pay no more than five pounds for the distance you are driving me, or even four!”

“Oh, but this is not normal. Let me tell you. Fifteen pounds for the ticket to park at Terminal 1, and then another fifteen for the other terminal, that is thirty pounds!”

“And also you want me to pay twenty just to drive from here to there? It’s all in the same airport! Am I right or what?”

“Yes, yes, it’s the same airport, but what else will you do?”

“Enough! I will just walk there.”

“No, there’s not enough time!”

“I don’t care. I will walk, it’s not far.”

“No, no, walking’s no good, it’s not allowed.”

But whether to forestall the threat of my hand on the passenger side door handle, or to improve his bargaining position, my unlikely companion starts the car again, and resumes the drive between terminals.

“Who ARE you anyways?” I ask, hoping to improve my own position.

“Me? I am an airport worker.”

I scoff. “You work at the airport? But what is this? You drive a private taxi just like any other taxicab driver. No, you are just a normal taxicab driver who was waiting at the airport to cheat people.”

“No, seriously, I am a worker at the airport. Here, you want to see evidence?”

“Yeah, let me see this evidence.”

“Here, here, take this, look, you read Arabic?”

“Of course I read Arabic.”

“There, my ID card, what does it say? See, where does it say I work?”

I take it in hand and scan it a moment.

“It says you work for the Egyptian Department of Security.”

“See? See? I told you.”

“But what does the Department of Security have to do with the airport? Nothing, there is not relationship at all between the airport and the Department of Security. It should say ‘airport’ or ‘transportation’ or something.”

“No, no, that’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“What?”

“That I used to be a police officer.”

“What does that mean? That, also there is no relationship with anything!”

A brief silence reigns. Each of us withdraw to consider how we made out during that skirmish. I think I may have pulled slightly ahead, but not enough to considerably decrease my fare without putting up a big fight.

Boy I’m tired. This is not the way to begin 33 hours worth of flights, layovers, and one night fitfully sleeping in an LAX terminal.

I make a decision contrary to the principles of a foreigner living in Egypt and trying to pose as something more than just another tourist.

“Tell you what,” I interrupt the silence. “If the terminal is the right one, and I will go ask someone at the terminal if it is…”

“You want to ask someone at the terminal if it is the right place? No problem.”

“I will ask someone that I choose, and if they say it’s the right place, I will pay you fifty.”

He takes that in for a moment before responding:

“No, if it is the right terminal, you will pay one hundred.”

I start to see red and want to scream “if you are purportedly already taking me to the correct terminal why should I pay you MORE for not doubly cheating me and taking me to the incorrect one for God knows what disgusting money-making ruse.”

Of course, all that comes up against the language barrier, and my ability to speak Arabic is significantly worsened when I’m angry. Fortunate for me because in the second it takes me to collect myself, I realize he’s joking with me.

I laugh and slap him on the back. He chuckles with me. Neither of us makes mention of the fact that I am only supposed to have twenty on me. We all feel good about ourselves.

“But really. Fifty pounds only, right?”

Rather than enter the parking lot, he pulls up in the lane in front of the terminal to drop me off. A nearby police officer shouts at him, “Hey, you can’t park there!”

My wily companion steps over to soothe the airport guard. As I take advantage of the momentary confusion to move towards the terminal and verify that it is indeed the right one, I notice that a second police officer has intervened on my friend’s behalf—apparently the two of them are somewhat aquainted with one another, likely through a series of similar encounters whereby no doubt a bribe is handed over for the officer’s forbearance.

I make it inside, a few steps ahead of my apprehensive taxicab driver who doesn’t want his fish to escape once he’s gone through all the trouble to reel him in. One glance at the departures board is all it takes.

“Alright, you were right, this is the place.”

“Great.”

“So, here you go.” I pull a bill out of my wallet.

“Oh, you want to pay a hundred?”

“No, I pay you fifty. Do you have change for a hundred?”

“Noo, there is no change.”

“Well, that’s ok, we’ll find change somewhere here.”

Meanwhile the police officer has started yelling at him again.

“Please hurry up.”

Out of a vengeful sense of having been unduly cheated, or maybe a petty sense of cruelty, I staidly march across the terminal floor.

“Excuse me sir, do you have change? For a hundred? No? Ok thank you. Excuse me, Madam, do you have change? Oh, no? Ok, thank you anyways, thank you very... very... much........... alot.”

“Hurry, Hurry, faster!”

“Well, I need change first.”

“Ok, ok, I will make change. Here, give it to me.”

I hand it over to him.

“Wait! You still have my ticket. Give it to me first.”

He hands me back my itinerary and then rapidly rushes about the terminal, shouting:

“Change? Change? Change for a hundred?”

He zooms about, a wild zig-zag on the hunt for two fifties, ten tens, four twenties and two tens, anything to sum up to a hundred in a country chronically suffering from a shortage of exact change.

I of course zoom around right behind him, a little shadow intent on getting my rightfully owed change.

Somehow in the course of this mayhem he picks up, and bargains with a second passenger who is looking for a ride from the airport back into Cairo. Then we, all three of us, end up back outside and he is asking the shouting police officer if he would just give him a hundred pounds worth of change so he could be on his way and wouldn’t violate parking codes if only he could just get correct change, because the foreigner won’t let him go until…

And whether it’s a miracle, or merely because of a mutual interest in having the offending taxicab be on its way, the police officer starts counting out small change in tens, fives, and, at the last, in ones.

I see my taxicab driver slip the officer a ten into his breast pocket. Then he comes over to me, pausing only to settle his new passenger into the cab, and rapidly flip-counts through the change from the officer.

“Five, ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-five, fourty, fifty. Ok?”

I must have looked skeptical.

“Five, ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-five, fourty, fifty. Fine?”

Whatever. At the least I expect him to short me five, for half of the bribe used to pay off the guard.

“Ok, you cheater,” I say, trying to sound good-natured rather than resentful.

He gives me a half grin, like he’s not sure if I’ve been genuinely offended or if it’s all within the expected limits of the unspoken agreement between Egyptians and foreigners who are in the know.

I give him another slap on the back and tell him thanks.

It’s an odd set of uneasy alliances. What can the Egyptian do? If he says, look I need the money and it doesn’t make much of a difference to you, can the foreigner then be relied upon, out of good faith or generosity, to simply accept paying more than is normal, and/or would he in doing so be made to feel no better than a beggar? As for the foreigner, if he says, I don’t know the prices or the system, and I know the money means more to you than to me so I just want to pay something reasonable, will he then trust the Egyptian not to overcharge him outrageously, and/or will he become no more than a fool to be taken advantage of? Thus, instead we play out our little prearranged theater: the one as if he were merely the average affronted customer demanding only his due in fair prices; the other as if he were only charging the natural costs of services rendered; each party’s respective dignity, or at least the appearance of it, maintained in the fragile web of self-apparent lies and transparent dissemblances.

A check-in counter and several security and customs checkpoints later, in the sterile tourist-friendly safety of the inner terminal, I slouch into a bench, and await my flight. Though the battle is long over, I am bitten by an idle curiosity to know the final score.

I dip my hand into my coat pocket and draw out a wad of discolored bills of varying denominations.

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty-five, forty…

I stick the money back into my pocket, hold back a laugh, and grin into space.

He shorted me ten.

The scamp.

2007-11-10T13:22:00.002-08:00

NEW POEMS

I assume no one really checks this anymore, and I have e-mailed some of these out to various people just because the urge to share is too strong to resist. Still... I figured... just in case.

Three new poems written this October/early November while in Cairo.

2007-11-10T13:22:00.001-08:00

All the forward thinking is mired in the past these days.

I sleep with the balcony door open. The chill clenches my feet, their dirty bottoms, the extra thick layers of skin. Tendrils of wind brush the corners of my elbow, work their way up to tease my face. Cold is so primordial.
Hunter-gatherers laid out on the forest floor, bedding in pine needles and mulch, or animal skins, or tents—I don’t know. Or maybe it was the times I went camping, and at night there was nothing between me and the dead of space save for paper thin layers of sky: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere.
I am recalled to the lolling tongue of the laughing wolf in his winter coat. The dull heatless throb of a granite cliff’s heart. The snap of ice crystals and frozen autumn morning dew, tread underfoot. Wild things that scorn us in their insentience.
And I am curled up on my white linen mattress cover, while an open balcony door whispers to me of forgotten heritage.

Wonderment, we say, because awe is filled with a question; no certainties will come of it, and therein is despair.

2007-11-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

At times there comes a deluge
as a quarrel, an epiphany, a small failure, a piercing dream,
a sweeping off of things, really.
And a fierce loneliness
that quiet days peaks out from the loose sod
in little catches of startling truth
overtakes me those rare days of tempest trials.
And I am face to face with my bare self
quivering on the threshold.

2007-11-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

Oh I envy the naivety of my bedroom curtains
that flap in the immaculate cold of the morning
sighing in and out, languid flashes of light and color
from within the folds of humble coarse fabric.
What cause for such carefree abandon
such unaffected freedom
when it hangs by its feet, crucified to the wall
by a vulgar line of thin metal tracking
that proclaims the upper and lower limits
of its trite oscillations
breathing in and out
two meters’ distance
of an immaculate winter’s morning.

2007-08-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

EL-EIN CAMP

The Rooster
when he is torn
from his midnight sleep
crows
like bereavement
an unnatural dawn
in a scream
without light;

and above the lemon trees
in our terrace orchard
the kohl-blue sky
and immense fuschia clouds
go racing
fast
hastening
so fast
until uncaring eternity.

--2:40 am Monday Aug. 6, 2007, Nablus

2007-06-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I conceptualize of the world I populate it with imaginary people. I give them personalities, dreams, troubles big and small, beliefs, lives unfathomable until they defy the very imagination that created them. I am convinced that the real world is just as such, and as I behold it I am filled with strange feelings of longing, sadness and love.

2007-05-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hospitality

It is my second to last day in Nablus, and my social calendar has never been so full. At the moment I am in a shoe shop drinking tea with the owner, his thirteen year old son, and three other workers. Although I had seen them intermittently on my visits to the furniture shop across from them, owned by a good friend’s cousins whom I in turn had befriended, I really only got to know the shoe shop’s occupants a week ago. Nonetheless, when they heard I was leaving they insisted I come back and have tea with them once more before I left for good.

Prior to arriving here I have been at my friend Ashraf’s house (tea and coffee) for a few hours, at one of the centers where I once taught (soda) for half an hour, and now at my final engagement, checking my watch, it seems that I have planned everything appropriately to balance social obligations and teaching duties—I have been in the shoe shop for about forty minutes, a goodly amount of time, and with ten minutes to spare until my classes begin. I politely begin to excuse myself.

“No, no. Stay some more,” says Brahim, the heavy-set worker who first dragged me into the shop a week ago.

“Ah, no, I am in a hurry, I have class” I say pointing to my watch.

Someone else insists I stay. The shopkeeper kindly cuts them off and says curtly, “Can’t you see he has class?”

So relectanctly they let me go, we say goodbye, I tell them I will be back in three months’ time. Samer, an older worker who spent several years in the states, gives me a hug; his mind is slightly addled though no one can figure out how it happened or when, the result is merely that he has the simplicity of a child and sometimes speaks nonsense. It does not prevent him from telling me to come back soon.

I step out into the stairway alley where the shop is located. Over the past four months I have taught classes in the neighborhood, frequented a sweets shop at the bottom of the stairs, and been stopped countless times for tea and coffee by proprietors or workers who recognized my face and invited me in out of a sense of curiosity, hospitality, or both most likely.

I turn to head up the stairs when a voice stops me; I know immediately I am in trouble.

“Hey Brian! What are you doing?” It is Tamer. His father owns the little shop across the stairs where his brothers and he help sanding, varnishing, and finishing furniture of all sorts. It was they who first took me under their wing in the neighborhood because I am a good friend of their first cousin.

“You drink tea with these guys,” Tamer gestures dismissively towards the shoe shop, “And don’t even come inside to see if we are here?”

“I am sorry, really, but I did not have the time. I have class.”

“When is your class?”

I glance at my watch. “In five minutes,” I lie.

“Five minutes? Alot of time! Come, you must drink tea with me.”

Tamer is sixteen years old, skinny, about my own height, but his friendly grip on my arm is strong and I am propelled into the shop, filled with the now familiar smells of wood and varnish.

“Sit, sit,” he says pointing to a chair. No matter where, or how many times I visit a place, I am always asked to sit.

Tamer busily sets about boiling the water, fetching the tea bags and sugar from the back room. “So today is your last full day, yes?”

“Second to last,” I say, “Listen, I told you I will come to visit here tomorrow. Really, I will be late.”

“Oh, no no, the tea is almost ready. See? It is fast. How much sugar do you like in it?”

Tamer fills two tea glasses, the amber brown tea steams, the cups are hot against our palms. Tamer sips at his. I hurriedly alternate between blowing on mine and taking painfully large sips. My tongue is going to be burnt. Three minutes until class.

“What’s wrong? Take your time and enjoy the tea.”

“My class, I will be late, no time, GAH so hot, it burns!”

Tamer goes to the back and comes out with a plastic pitcher and moves to pour into my cip. “Ah, is that cold water? Yes, cold water?” I need to be able to finish my tea in a hurry and go.

“Ah… yes, cold water,” says Tamer with a look in his eye. In my delirium I can only see hope: I tilt my glass towards the pitcher. Hot tea comes out, filling the cup to the brim; I protest all the while—“No, no, no, stop, stop.”

Once tea is in the cup, and the cup placed in front of you, it is the height of rudeness not to drink it all. Strangely I know my students will be less upset that I am late than Tamer would be if I did not drink the tea; tardiness is quite common in Nablus. Personally, I just hate being late, possibly because I am so often lacking in punctuality, so I take my tea in a gulp and try not to yelp too loudly. My esophagus and upper stomach are uncomfortably hot.

Tamer realizes my frantic desire to leave has overcome his forced hospitality. Still, unknown to me, he has one last ploy up his sleeve.

Tamer shakes my hand.

“Why don’t you teach me a karate move?”

“What?!”

“Just one move, right now.” Tamer’s handshake has turned into a death grip and all the while he smiles at me. I half want to laugh at myself for being in such a situation: being asked to perform martial arts moves while desperately making excuses to leave.

“Right now? No, maybe tomorrow.”

“No, right now. Why not?”

“But… no, tomorrow, I will, really, tomorrow.”

I wrench my hand free.

“I have class! I am very late, seriously. Bye!”

Tamer makes a face at me. “Ok, but come back tomorrow like you said!”

“Ok, I will!”

I hit the stairway running. Two long blocks to my class. I am ten minutes late.

In Nablus, no one runs anywhere. In fact locals frequently ask us foreigners why we walk as if we always have somewhere important to be; I wasn’t even aware that I walked fast.

I am ten minutes late, screw propriety. I race down the two blocks, people staring at me: the two youths at the carwash, the caretakers at the Christian graveyard, the neighborhood kids playing soccer on the street.

“Hello!” I shout to them all, “I am late!”

As I approach the Project Hope office I see our director standing outside talking on his mobile. I jet past him, but he motions me to stop. I am fifteen meters from my classroom where ten college age students are waiting for me.

“Ah, Brian. You’re leaving after tomorrow, yes?”

“Yeah, I am. Probably early in the morning after tomorrow.”

“We’ll have to have a dinner for you then. Maybe we’ll all go out. How does that sound?”

“Great. It sounds great.”

He takes a second look at me.

“Did you run all the way here?”

“Yeah… I’m late for a class.”

He looks at his watch. “You’re thirteen minutes late?”

“Yeah…I had to get tea with some local shopkeepers… and then Ashraf’s cousin stopped me and I had to have tea with him… ”

“Basically you’re too popular. Well? What are you waiting for then? Go. Go to class.”

I turn to run the last fifteen meters, through the heavy black gate, down the old stone steps, across the terrace and then back up another set up steps to the office, but first our director shouts after me, “And don’t forget the dinner! Save room for us in your social calendar!”

If this is how my second to last day goes, I dread to imagine the last.

To quote something another volunteer once dryly remarked to me: “Nablus is supposedly a hotbed of terrorism, but the most lethal thing around here is definitely the hospitality.”

2007-05-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

Haven't had time to write up the pieces that come to mind so expect two entries in the next week: leaving Nablus, and another on the perspectives and position of Israeli Arabs in Israeli society and in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

2007-05-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Career Path

In America when I mention that I have studied Arabic, most people inevitably say, 'There's a lot of demand for that nowadays. You can work for the government."

In Palestine when I mention that I'm from America, some people ask, in one way or another, 'Are you an American spy?"

I told one friend that I had no interest working for the intelligence agencies of a government whose policies I disagreed with so strongly. He responded, "Ah, well in that case why don't you work for the Palestinian side. You can spy on America for us." I laughed because even if the Palestinian Authority wanted it, what could they possibly do with daily updates on the inside goings-ons of the American government.
"Of course," my friend added, "the financial recompensation isn't so good. Right now you wouldn't have been paid in nearly a year. Better keep your day job."

Now that I've spent the past three or four days in Tel Aviv, and three or four days in Haifa--actual Israeli territory--I've been pretty tight lipped about having doing volunteer work in Nablus. Maybe it's partially that the paranoia of Nablus has finally seeped under my skin, because certainly not everyone in Israel would scowl at someone who's done volunteer work to help Palestinians, but I think most people would make inferences about my political alignment and... certainly it wouldn't predispose most Israelis to like me. Anyways, as an example of how paranoid people are about security here, I'm going to the airport in an hour, everyone is required to show up three hours early to the airport because airport security interrogates everyone, especially single travellers on tourist visas (very suspicious). I may actually tell them the truth about what I've been doing here, and I'll let you know how that goes.

Last night I don't think I slept very well. I must have been dreaming something in Arabic, because I distinctly remember sitting bolt upright and saying, in Arabic, "We have to find a translation for this". To which one of my five dormitory mates in the hostel replied, "Shut up and go back to sleep."

Guess that blew my cover---worst Palestinian spy ever.

2007-04-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

Today I have no designs on your sympathy; I’ll write no sad symphonies on your heartstrings; I have surrendered—and I’ll tell you why.

There is little comfort in the fact that the symptoms of society's maladies are obscured, that the ways in which we exacerbate, participate, or consent are tacit and routine. The multiplicity of problems is so great that even perceiving the tip of the iceberg, without knowing what manifold horrors may lurk just out of sight, ought to suffice for a dramatic change in trajectory. The tragedy of human nature is that too often we are not moved to action until dire circumstance makes action all but impossible.

Although you may not know it from the news, Palestine falls into the former category—it is neither Iraq nor Darfur—ordinary run-of-the-mill Palestinians, can act to alleviate almost any of the afflictions that presently beset them (most, though not all of which can be largely attributed to the Israeli Occupation). You can get an education in Nablus, though schools are overcrowded; you can go to University in Palestine, though few can easily afford the high tuition; we have the internet, roads (though most outside the city are owned by Israel), plumbing, in most places sewage systems, many even have cable television; here you can ply a trade, own a store, have a family, though money is scarce, none are easy, and your greatest fear is that it can all be destroyed against your will without a moment’s notice. In short, there is room to breathe for most here in Nablus, though the air must first pass through military checkpoints to get here, and there is enough freedom for the voices of social agitators, political pundits, or activists calling out the rallying point before the storm. And if in doing so they surely risk being targeted by the Israeli army for assassination or arrest, still too many have prematurely succumbed to either despair or self-absorption, choosing not to act, or choosing not to see that they like most other people in the world yet retain an active role in shaping it.

Life precarious and so it is precious; it is sweet and so we wring every last possible drop out of it. Thus when a time comes to act, we rather willingly bind ourselves in a blindfold of our own making and let the years pass in delirious denial, in self-pity, in self-contentment.

Though the way has been paved with obstructions and barriers, no one has more to gain from a fair resolution to the situation in Palestine than the Palestinians. Every community, society, nation, every sub-set of humanity—that magnificent term which we invented to set ourselves apart from animalkind—faces problems of a similar nature on varying magnitudes: deteriorating natural resources from collapsed ecosystems, global warming, unchecked corruption in government, extremes of poverty, mediocre or failed educational systems, woefully inadequate healthcare systems, neglect of those most in need be they the old, the hungry, the ignorant, the poor, the sick, the outsiders and the loners. Palestine is unique simply because here problems manifest themselves more prominently, occur more regularly, more violently, and contrast more sharply with our attempts to remain blissfully oblivious to our duty to partake in the solution.

So, dear reader, today from Palestine I have no designs on your sympathy; I'll write no sad symphonies on your heartstrings; without effort or thought, we have surrendered—how then can we ask of our neighbors in a time of need, rally on my behalf?

2007-04-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Evening Passage from Egypt

Moses wandered here
in desert purgatory
between Pharoah and Promised Land.

They prayed to God
and heavenly bread issued from stones and sand.

How long was it? 40 years?

Now at dusk the Sinai is peach:
chocolate colored shrubs sprinkle its dark sorbet surface,
and the sky is Cool Whip colored cream.

40 years? 4 hours and I'm starving.

2007-04-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

Earth

I cup you in my hands
try to clasp you between fingers
but strands of your hair
trail after you
as you fall slowly
back onto your bed
and I would follow you
to beg an embrace
from your loving heavy arms
were it not death.

--from the Sinai

2007-03-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Gone on Vacation

For the next week and some odd days I will be on vacation in Egypt (via Jerusalem and Eilat). The practical reason for this sojourn is to renew my visa--it's possible to just ask for a renewal in Tel Aviv, but then they ask all sorts of questions, like what have you been doing the past three months, why are you here, where are you staying, etc etc. I'm not so great at lying to begin, and most volunteers in my organization take the opportunity to do some site seeing anyways, because it's silly to be here all this time and not be a tourist once in awhile.

I dislike overly autobiographical entries ("dear diary, today I washed my clothes. They were dirty. I ate so much food for dinner I thought I would die. Can you believe that Ena said I sound like a sheep?!") so I'll try to make this short. I basically wanted to let people know there won't be an entry this week, though there was an excessively long one last week, and if its lengthiness overwhelmed you, you can take this opportunity to try and finish it now.

You can also use this time to check out the new photos I have added to the shutterfly account. http://blooabroad.shutterfly.com

Peace people. See most of you in May.

2007-03-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

Stones

Sometime two weeks ago, between Wednesday and Friday, the streets were swept clean. Where all the rubble, stones, and sand went, or who cleared them and how, I can’t imagine. Just two weeks and a half ago when the Israeli army had camped itself in and around Nablus the streets were littered with everything from middling nuggets to football sized rocks—the broken wartime toys of children thrown against the implacable side of an armored jeep. And where there were stones a fine coat of sand lay atop the asphalt as well—the leavings of impact, the dusty the crumblings of everyday aspirations. But then, like the Israeli soldiers, jeeps, and humvees, the stones disappeared much as they had appeared—suddenly, and out of nowhere. Really they had been there all along, hiding and waiting under the semblance of normality. But none of that was self-apparent at first.

I suspect that in reality the army withdrew en masse one Thursday afternoon, but in most of our minds it lingered on: disbelief obscured reality. Closed shops, hesitant residents, and rumors that secret squadrons had been left to hold key places were manifestations of this residual invasion, though it too receded in its turn. Ordinary life tumbled back into place. I went to my classes, stopped in at friends’ shops, spent the evening at a good friend’s house, and went to the sweets shop where the owner and some regulars have become accustomed to my visits. Whenever someone asked what I did during the incursion days, I told them I spent one day in the old city helping the Red Crescent Society deliver milk and bread. It was as if I had earned a badge of honor that said, "I did something useful", and I wore it with pride. It was only then that delayed news of my friends' detentions began to reach me.

Two of their stories reached me by email. Neither of them are on the Israeli army's list of 'wanted people'. One of them who was detained with his brother for several hours and then made to walk from the military outpost back into the city along with a score of other detainees described it as one of the worst experiences in his life. The other's account, Iman, a manager at one of the children's centers I work for, was posted in a previous week's entry.

The third, Samir, was only held for an hour or so. He showed up at our apartment two days after the withdrawal, bleary eyed and exhausted.

"I'm sick," he says. Samir is a paramedic and during the military operation he was already working too many hours a day in the old city without enough rest or food. One night he went back to the old city after nightfall to try to deliver supplies to an older man he had not been able to reach during the day. The army caught up with him, made him strip his rain soaked clothes, and held him in the cold for an hour. The following day the army chose to occupy his house, a common practice in Israeli incursions wherein the family is usually confined to a single room. If the soldiers are decent, they do not destroy anything in the house. Luckily for Samir the soldiers let him sleep most of the day away in an invalid's coma.

"I tried to go to the hospital today, but they are on strike.” Samir slumps in a chair and shrugs.

"Why? Because they have not been paid in weeks. There's not enough money. So they just gave me a shot.

"Yes, they keep enough people for emergencies only.

"No, I don't really know what the shot was. It's just a shot."

There had been a shortage of money even before the military operation forced half the city to close down for most of the week. My friend Hakkam works at a windows and glass cutting shop six blocks from downtown. Half the time when I drop by he and his coworkers are idling around the shop. At first I thought they simply enjoyed the slow life, but really there’s just not enough work. Everyone here asks how the work is in America, how the pay is, what their chances of getting a visa and a job are. I try to explain that seven dollars an hour sounds great, but you can hardly make a living out of it in the states. I'm not sure that they care.

"The work here is bad, Brian." We are sitting in the shop on the Sunday after the army's withdrawal. Hakkam and two others have been waiting for a single work order to come through. It's been at least an hour coming.

"This is shit, you know. Nablus is broken. Broken. No future."

Despite that life goes on inexorably. I went to my class in the children's center where Iman works near the old city. He is not there when I arrive, so I ask Kareem, one of the younger managers for news of Iman.

"Iman. He was arrested. Arrested, you know?" Kareem pantomimes being handcuffed.

"Yes, I know. But how is he? Is he ok?"

"Yes, ok. But not happy. Arrested. How do you say arrested in English?"

I tell Kareem, spell it out in red on the whiteboard.

A-R-R-E-S-T-E-D

"Brian, if I am ever arrested. I will call you and tell you where I am, so you can come get me. Ok?"

An hour later, after my class, Iman walks in, pale and sallow. I ask him how he is. Fine, fine, he says. Did I get the e-mail about his arrest? Yes, of course. Again I ask if he is ok. Yes, yes, fine. A nervous look, his face is bathed in a thin sheet of cold sweat.

“I heard you were in the old city distributing food on Sunday,” he tells me.

“Yeah, I was.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I was at al-Jalala school. We needed food for the neighborhood.”

The magnitude of even this minor oversight rushes to my head.

“I’m sorry…”

Later for lack of more appropriate things to say, I apologized again.

“It’s ok. Not a problem. Just next time, ok?”

“Yes, of course. Next time.”

“Ok. Now if you don’t mind, I have to study. I have exams in two days.”

Other than back-room grumblings, and some invective curses, the thousands of lives and jobs that had come to a halt resumed as if nothing had happened. Even the children at the local secondary school greeted me with no more than the ordinary interest or innocuous harassments. The only real problems I ever encounter on the streets are from the children in the form of taunts, mockery, or, at the worst, schoolyard style bullying. I was thus moderately surprised that they too seemed to take a week’s worth of cancelled classes, soldier infested streets, and limited freedom of movement in stride.

A few days later my friend Hakkam decided to upgrade his sputtering automobile with a second-hand CD player. I went with him to buy it from a friend of a friend of his in al-Ein refugee camp. It was a beautiful day, and as we drove through the narrow gray streets a bright blue sky pierced through the jagged edges of rooftops. Hakkam met his contact and, after some polite haggling, the man went back up to his house to fetch the CD player while we waited in the car.

“I’ve never been here before,” I say to him. Contrary to nomenclature, a refugee camp is a permanent place of residence. In fact it would be indistinguishable from the rest of the city if not for the compactness of its streets, the density of tiny buildings often built one on top of the other after space runs out, and the heavy presence of poverty. The camp was only a ten-minute walk from my apartment. I had never known.

Hakkam looks out the windows of his car.

“The army used to come here always. There are many martyrs from al-Ein. Two of them from just a few months ago. Dawoud and Yousef. Maybe you remember them?”

I do not. They had been killed two months before I ever arrived in Nablus.

“Afterwards the army would come into the camp and say on the device that makes your voice loud, ‘Where is Dawoud? Where is Yousef? Where are they now?’”

And the residents of the camp, acquaintances, friends, and family of the two killed fighters would have been able to do naught but sit inside their homes while the army patrolled the streets calling out the names of their dead.

As it turns out, one of Hakkam’s co-workers was a cousin of the al-Ein martyr, Dawoud. He smiled proudly and, standing beside his fallen cousin’s martyr poster, asked if I thought they looked alike at all. I cautiously admitted there was a family resemblance.

In Palestine there is a habit of glorifying what has passed to escape or lament the conditions of the present. People talk of the days before the Second Intifada, before the checkpoints stifled Nablus’ economy, before regular army incursions, and their eyes mist over with the golden light of remembrances; as to how true collective memory is to actual history, I can only guess it’s a mixed basket. The truth is perhaps less important than the ways in which memory chooses to remember.

Martyrs are immediately and unquestionably heroes. It doesn’t matter how they died, what they were doing, who they were, all that matters is that the Occupation killed them. Just like the much-mourned pre-Intifada epoch, they are painted in the most positive light as a way of coping with the emptiness left in place of what once was.

But not everyone copes so well.

There is a boy named ‘Alaa who lives close to one of my best friends, who goes to school near my organization’s office, and who seems to hate me with a vengeance. I met him, without realizing it would be a protracted relationship, three or four weeks ago. I remember something in the air that day unsettled the children. Even in the early afternoon children in the streets were restless. On my way to a class, I saw three of them throwing floor tiles at each other. Two eventually ganged up on the other and forced him to run past me. The children quieted as I approached, but one of them ran up from behind and throw a tile at my feet; it exploded into a hundred ceramic shards, skittering on the asphalt. I did the same thing I always try to do in so many similar situations where I am the outsider being tested or toyed with: maintain the appearance of calm.

“What’s with this boy?” I ask the other children. They watch me silently. One or two talk to me out of curiosity and follow me down the street. As I leave the neighborhood someone pushes me from behind. I turned around to see who it was: the same boy who threw the tile, now laughing and running away fast. I yell at him to come back. It only bothers me that he pushes me and then runs away. If he just wanted to fight I would understand. Instead I am being baited, being provoked to anger, and I know it.

That same night I visited my good friend, Ashraf. Somehow all the children of the neighborhood knew that a foreigner was around and a crowd of fifteen or so trailed after me as I went up the stairs to the main road. Some of the older youths, sixteen or eighteen years old, working construction in the nearby buildings, tried to shoo the children away from me as I walked past. Their efforts earned me a reprieve of thirty seconds or so.

Later I would wonder what I did particularly wrong this one time of all the times I heave dealt with edgy children on the streets. Maybe it was when one of them, a gangling boy with pale skin and light brown hair, grabbed me insistently.

“You! You are a donkey!” he cries in Arabic.

I reply “No, you are a donkey!”. His face turns dark and I immediately try to say it had only been a joke, but it is too late.

Maybe that was the mistake that snowballed into a mob of angry children. Or maybe it was later when that pale-faced boy first shoved me from behind and ran away laughing, eerily imitating the other boy who had pushed me that afternoon.

“Hey, come back here!

“Come!” I say in Arabic. I take a few slow steps towards his manically grinning face.

The crowd of children, over a dozen of them ranging from six to twelve, echo my Arabic. “Come! Come! Come!” They laugh hysterically. Someone else pushes me from behind. I turn around and walk towards him. Then another and another. They’re not interested in hurting me physically, perhaps they’re not cruel enough to want to, they just want someone to push around.

When the cab comes I gratefully step in, though some of the children continue running up from behind and pushing me. Two of them, including the first boy with pale skin and brown hair, spit in my face before I close the door. The taxicab driver yells at them, gets out and chases after them.

“Whose are these animals?!” he shouts to the nearby shopkeeper, a young man who silently stood by during my entire ordeal. I’m not sure which bothered me more, the children’s behavior or the reticence of adults when I am in trouble in a city from which I have come to expect so much hospitality.

I spent a good hour back home thinking about the event. The most unsettling thing was that I genuinely felt angry towards the children, and I honestly worried that if I let that sort of anger sit, the next child to smart mouth me would get a kick in the face. … I have a temper sometimes. After that I would be at the mercy of the neighborhood, both children and adults, and in street terms, after hitting a child, as a foreigner and a guest, I would deserve whatever justice the neighborhood metes out.

I saw that same lanky brown haired boy twice in the following two weeks. Once he spit at me in front of his school as I went by, then threw a few stones towards me as I walked away; they knocked about at my feet. Another time he followed me half a block, screaming the entire way. I did my best to ignore him, hoping not to incite the anger of his fellow schoolchildren who were, for the most part, more curious than angry about my presence.

I wonder if there’s anything I could have done to avoid this single child’s enmity, if there’s anything I did in particular to deserve it, or if fate had written it for me the instant I stepped into that neighborhood three or four weeks ago. The street where I had been awaiting my taxicab was famous during the First Intifada. The Israeli army was always there, and a large number of Nablus’ martyrs in the first Intifada were from that neighborhood. Children invariably saw soldiers breaking into their homes, arresting their brothers or fathers, and terrorizing their friends. And if there were indeed a large number of martyrs, then some of the children must be absent a brother, uncle, or father.

As an American, I feel responsible for the part that my government plays in funding the Israeli state and army while they commit such abuses. It is hard to hate a child who hates you only because of the things done unto him, especially when those things are perpetrated by your own government. Really, in my eyes, I have much in the way of debt to pay to the Palestinian people, as well as to so many other people of the world who are in as dire or much worse circumstances because of injustice, apathy, or ignorance in the way nations treat with others. From there everything unfolds in a deadly bloom of consequences.

The next time I went to visit my friend, the children saw me the minute I stepped out of the cab. I had gone over to talk to a young shopkeeper who invited me in. As I stood there explaining who I was, where I am from, what I do in Nablus, a familiar voice screamed up at me from the street level.

“Enough, ‘alaa! Get out of here,” the shopkeeper shoos away the brown haired boy who has plagued me for weeks and whose name, I have just learned, is ‘alaa. He is not deterred; instead he waits for me across the street by the stairs to my friend’s house.

After saying goodbye to the shopkeeper, I cross the street. ‘alaa says nothing, grins widely at me. I greet him reservedly, “Salaamu ‘alaikum”.

As I descend the stairs I feel the light touch of stones at my back. Thrown fro above by a child’s hands, they fall harmlessly against my coat, then precede me clattering down the stairs. I briefly wonder how it is that the children always have stones in plenty. The answer that comes to me is both simple and complex: the stones have been given to them, placed in their dirty little hands by an impenetrable storm of events and circumstances, economic, political, cultural, religious, historical and otherwise.

A few days later I am back at the children’s center, teaching a room of twenty attentive, obedient, though somewhat noisy kids. Kareem occasionally interrupts me to tell the children that talking without raising their hand is unacceptable. Afterwards I play chess and ping-pong with some of the children and Kareem. Iman comes in. I go over to greet him, clap in on the shoulder, ask how he is today.

“Fine, fine, thank you,” he says, smiling weakly.

He walks over to his desk, and I follow behind him awkwardly making conversation, sitting down beside him hoping to make amends for not having called him during the Israeli invasion to see if he needed my help.

“Hey, Iman!” Kareem shouts across the room.

“Hey, Iman, when I am arrested, Brian will come to save me. Isn’t that right, Brian? I will call you and tell you the place. Isn’t that right?”

Kareem and Iman both turn to me.

In my mind, before I answer them, I swallow a big ball of saliva that’s trapped in the back of my throat.

“Yes. Of course. I will try. Just call me and I will try.”

Kareem grins and gestures to Iman as if to say, ‘See? I told you so.’

Iman looks back at his work. He second later he turns to me. “Brian?”

“Yes?”

“Is it ok if I call you also?”

I say, “Of course.”

There is much to be answered for in Palestine, but so little that can actually be done. I think Iman and Kareem both know there is almost nothing I could do for them if the Israeli army decides to detain or arrest them. Maybe it was just that a part of them welcomed the little white lies that we bring upon ourselves in order to continue believing what we do: that somewhere, somehow, something can be done.

2007-03-06T23:56:00.000-08:00

Soldiers

“Identifications,” he simply says. French and American passports come out along with one Palestinian identity card. He speaks a mix of Arabic and English to us.

“You are Palestinian? You are with the Red Crescent?” His gun rests easily across his chest, the shoulder strap around his neck, his right hand on the handle.

Fino answers him in English. “Yes.”

“It does not say so on your identity card.” A second soldier stands behind him, and a handful more ten meters back on the porch of an occupied house.

“I am just volunteer.” Fino gestures with his hands, shifts his feet, smiles a short-lived nervous grin more to himself than to the soldiers.

“Ok. What are you doing here?”

It’s Monday afternoon, February 26th, the second day of the Israeli military operation codenamed “Hot Winter”, and it’s bloody cold. We’re in the labyrinth which is the old city of Nablus, delivering supplies to families under the twenty-four hour curfew. The four of us have gone a hundred yards or so up the street from the main group of relief workers to deliver several pounds of bread to the neighborhood. We came around a corner guided by two little children and stumbled into the line of site of a nearby house occupied entirely by Israeli soldiers. They seemed only mildly surprised to see us, which did not prevent a few of them from pointing their guns at us. Can’t really blame them I guess. We raised our hands at our sides to show we are unarmed. Only later did I realize why we raise them only to waist level and not above our heads: that gesture is reserved for surrendering fighters.

“The children. They cannot be out. Tell them to go back to their homes.”

Fino obligingly tells the two boys to go back home. They scamper back down the street and disappear into dark openings—stairways, doorways, alleyways, the children always know where to go.

A long discussion about the permissibility of bringing bread to families ensues.

“Alright. You can take the bread up these stairs to the families there. But only two of you. And not you, only internationals.” He points at Fino who has already moved as if to leave.

A shorter discussion ensues about the need for someone who speaks Arabic to enter the houses. In the end we acquiesce and Lisa and Eric go up to the houses while I stay with Fino and the soldiers. A guarded silence falls among us. For the first time I notice the soldier’s stony face has startling green eyes. In fact so does the other soldier behind him.

A crew of Arab press is working its way towards us.

“Tell the press to go back. Tell them.”

Fino shouts at them. They stop where they are in the arched tunnel underneath an ancient building, halfway to us from the main group of relief workers.

“No. Don’t stop. Tell them not to stop. Tell them to go back. If they come here I will not let you take anything to the houses here again.”

Fino cups his hands to shout again, then drops them with a resigned grimace. “You tell them, please, ok?” Although the old city residents are absent from its streets, and only journalists, soldiers, or relief workers wander about, the houses that crowd every street on the street level and second or third stories are occupied with penned up Palestinians. Shouting messages for the Israeli army in Arabic might give some people the wrong idea about a person’s allegiances, which is also one likely reason why the soldier asked Fino to do it in the first place. All the soldiers know enough broken Arabic to tell Arabs to leave; from a practical standpoint it’s the one thing they all have to know.

He let’s Fino walk down to the journalists and persuade them in private, leaving me to babysit the soldiers for the moment.

“You’re using rubber bullets, mainly… yeah?” I ask the two soldiers.

“What?”

“Rubber.” I point to the stock on their guns.

“Oh. Yes.”

We stand watching and waiting for whatever may happen next.

Fino comes back. The press grudgingly retreat.

A firefighter cautiously jogs up to us.

“There is a fire in al-Yasmeena quarter. I need to get the oxygen. It is in the car here. The captain said I could pass.” The firefighter paramedic also speaks in halting English. Palestinians generally believe that the soldiers are less callous when spoken to in English. It sounds inane but I’ve seen it work several times. Though it doesn’t mean persuasion is easy.

“Where is the car?” the green-eyed soldier asks.

The firefighter points past an Israeli jeep and a humvee several yards up.

“No. I cannot let you pass. Forbidden”

“I spoke with the captain. He said I could pass.”

“Which captain did you speak with?”

“I do not know his name.”

“I cannot let you pass. How do I know you are not lying?”

“There is a fire. I need to bring the oxygen.”

In the meantime Lisa and Eric have come back, lighter several bags of bread.

Lisa approaches the soldier. “The woman up there says that the children who were here are her sons. Is it ok if they come back home?”

“No.”

“But this is their home.”

“We told them to go home, and they went somewhere else. Why would they not go to their own homes? They should not be out anyways.” He is calm, even cold. Not barbaric or even impolite, but inhumanly professional. Nothing seems to faze him.

“Speak with the captain. He gave me permission to get the oxygen.”

“We need to check the other houses in the area to see if they need food.”

“No. Look, these are the rules. I cannot let you pass the humvee or the jeep. Anything before that is ok. You cannot get to your car if it is past that point. If you want to bring bread to anywhere else that is ok.”

This time Fino is allowed to take bread into the houses. I accompany him into a building and up a dark winding stone staircase, the steps worn and irregular, the ceiling low. It opens up into a tiny square with three or four families living around it. We give them however much they need. The second building is similar but no one answers Fino’s calls. He reaches the top of the stairs, looks around, and motions me to go back down. It must be empty. I wonder if Palestinian militants occupy any of the hastily or permanently abandoned homes, waiting for night to fall. It seems unlikely that anyone would be so brazen when a jeep or humvee sits around every second or third junction and any number of homes are occupied by unseen soldiers. Ironically the sheer strength of the Israeli army and the absence of any armed resistance make the old city relatively safe for the relief workers.

By the time Fino and I emerge out of the second building, the firefighter paramedic is coming back accompanied by a soldier between the humvee and jeep, a small yellow tank strapped to his back—in the end someone has decided to let him pass.

He now has to get back to al-Yasmeena where the fire is, another section of the old city. Eric, a French national of Indian ethnicity, and I agree to accompany him and one other to their destination. The first obstacle is a jeep that we have been permitted to pass by thrice already this day. It is positioned on the main road just before Martyrs’ Square, where normally larger-than-life plaques and posters are displayed during the day under the watchful eyes of fighters. The displays are removed every night because even when the Israeli army is not carrying out an extensive or protracted military operation, small nightly incursions are a regular occurrence and the damaged martyr plaques all over the city bear testimony to them. I don’t know if they had been left out when the army came; we never made it that far.

The passenger side soldier in the jeep refuses to let us through.

“The captain gave me permission. Call him.”

The soldier responds in a string of Arabic. I desperately try to follow so I know what’s going on. The square just ahead of us is crawling with a squadron of soldiers. Somewhere someone is trying to break down a door. Elsewhere an old man is clutching his side and doing his best to hurry down the street. A concerned looking young man walks next to him, and a couple of soldiers escort them on either side. We had heard that some older Nablusi citizens who needed regular medicine or medical attention were stuck in the curfew. I could only assume that someone had begged them to let this one old man out under guard; he seemed far too old to be a fighter, and the soldiers, though alert, were far too lenient with him for it to be an arrest.

The soldier in the jeep abruptly cuts us off and slams the door. He picks up the onboard telephone and is talking to someone. He opens the door several minutes later. Eric and I speak before he has a chance.

“Look, there’s a fire. They need to get oxygen to the fire in case someone is suffering from smoke inhalation.”

“Only two of us have to go. Or we can go. We’re internationals. We can bring it to them. Ok?”

“No. You cannot. Come back later.” He is becoming impatient.

“Ok. Ok. How long should we wait?”

“Hours.”

“How long is that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe two. Maybe three.”

“Ok. We will do that then.”

The four of us retreat back to the mouth of an arched alleyway that leads back to the main group. We decide not to wait a few hours and instead go back to see if we can help with something else.

2007-03-03T02:12:00.000-08:00

Account of an Arrest

The following comes directly from a friend of mine. Three friends that I know of were arrested/detained in the past week during the Israeli army's military operation in Nablus codenamed Hot Winter. They have all been mistreated, humiliated, or in some cases beaten. At the least, they have all been unjustly and unnecessarily arrested. This friend is a manager at one of the local youth centers, which he and others founded and maintained to give the neighborhood children a safe and decent place to play. I teach English there three times a week. I will let his account speak for himself.

On Wednesday I was in the isreali prison for one day. As you know , Nablus, and the old city mainly, is now under the israeli operation of (The Hot Winter) The operation started on sunday,and coninued in Monday, stopped just for Tuesday and was resumed yesterday Yesterday the turn of our area (Al-qariown area)in the old city they started at 3:00 in the dawn, told all the families to go out of the houses, containing women, babies and old people

after standing for more than 6 hours not allowed to get any food or even chairs.then they told all women and children to go back to home, also every one whose age is over 30 was told to go back to home and they juts kept us, the youth They put some cloth-masks on our eyes, and tied our hands to back with some-very-painfull plastic ties.

After that, you were moved to some stores in the street, which was opened ,destroyed and converted to prisons we were there for half an hour after that we had to move among large number of staris and bad ways to a very-dirty un-used room , full with dirts that is not suitable even for animals to sit inside. When we were moving, I was the last one of the prisoners, I was catched by one soldier who led me as i could not see anything, then another too soldiers came and started to beat me using thier weapons on my back! note that we still with our hands tied back and the masks are still on our eyes We were kept there for 7 hours(untill 10:00 am), not allowed to go to WC , and when we requisted some food, they brought some bread, through it to the ground, and said that this is food, eat it as you want, they needed us to eat like animals, but we refused that, and continued without food.

We were there untill 4:00 pm then we was taken to an israeli military vehicle, which size is suitable just for 4 persons (inside it one of the prisoners who could remove the mask was able to read,in hebrew, that the maximum number of people is 6) but we were 22!!!!!! we sit one over the other, and it was the worst period of the day we were took through different streets untill they decided to take us to Howwara military base. e arrived there at 5:30 pm , after a period of bad deal they decided to keep us inside a room. lso the room had 6 beds, ut we were inside 28 could go ,wash my hands and pray on the street-like ground hen we realy were hungry , we requisted the army that we are realy hungry, nd after 3 hours they bought us some meals that are suitable for 3 pirsoners o every 4 persons shared a small peice of bread, and for the rice-meal, every one could eat a little some (plz just know that we had to eat rice by our hands, No spoons)

at 9:00 pm we deicded to sleep, because we did not expect that after this time we may go back n every bed, 3 pirsons slept, one slept ordinary, the other slept in reverse(his head near the feet of the first) and the third could sleep in the remaining area of the bed e and other 3, had to sleep on the floor ,under us there is nothing, but every one could has a blanket which was as a bed and a cover in the first time don't know what do you call the peice of furniture that is put head when you sleep, instead of it we used our shoes.

you know it is not possible for an 28 person to be silent directly, we continued chating, I was the last who could sleep at 10:00pm t 10:30pm the soldier knocked the door roughly and said, you will go to the "intellegnce" (I am not sure for the word but it's some militaries like CIA) They do it again to put the masks and tie our hands, put in a military vechile and were drivien for a short distance, then went down of the vehcile.

Here we faced very bad soldiers who asked us to sit down on the rough,ver cold ground for about 30 minutes before one of the human rights workers has requisted the soldiers to remove the masks and untie our hands, we discovered that we are in a large area of ground, surrounded by ( i dont know the expression,but they are the wires with the injuring ends).

at 12:30 they started to enter us one by one to the intellignce colonel ,during the waiting period we requisted some blankets or anything to cover ourselves but they refused.

when it was my turn to meet the colonel, i was inspected,even my shoes and socks were inspected by high-tech machines!

when i entered the office, it was just ordinary questions, they suggest every one to be a spy for them. But the most thing that made me angry, that while we are dying with tempreture less than 8 degrees, the colonel's room was supplied with an LG air conditioner.

After that and as expected as i do nothing agianst them, they sent me back to the same vehicle to send us to some place, don't know were (Also masked) the vehicle moved for 3 minutes ad they ordered us to get down, removed the masks, cut the ties and said, this is Howwara check point( i think you know it well) the time was about 1:30am
We passed the checkpoit , some of the friends said:this is the only time you come to Howwara and pass it quickly

We knocked the door of the first house after the checkpoint to call the Palestinain emergency wo camed with two buses and get us back to home,to arrive at 2:00 am finding my parents waiting and my little brothers Ahmad(12 years) and Abdul-qader(5 years) still crying,and my sister has moved to our neighbours department to sleep the night with our neighbours wife whose her husband and his brother besdie her brother were with us.

just i want to tell you, that when they took us from street, they did not even look at our ID cards to check if we were wanted or not.

I just Pray to God to get us away from this situation

2007-02-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-24T02:32:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-22T06:14:00.000-08:00

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…

2007-02-19T03:53:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-17T02:55:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-11T05:35:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-10T04:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-10T02:56:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-10T02:52:00.002-08:00

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.

2007-02-10T02:52:00.001-08:00

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.

2007-02-10T02:51:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-03T01:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-01-28T00:41:00.000-08:00

To my dear friend Mu’min
(who is turning four years old this week)

Dear Mu'min,

By the time you’re old enough and well-practiced enough in English to read this I do not know if you will remember me. Your oldest brother brought me to visit you several times these past few weeks. You were shy at first, hiding behind the hallway corner, then burying your face in your brother’s shirt after he scooped you up and told you to say hello to me. Then a word or two. Then silence again.

The ice inevitably cracked, because, at the age of three years, eleven months, and some odd days, you were hopelessly curious and incurably talkative. You constantly asked your older brother to name things in English—sofa, curtains, cabinet, rug. You were timid at first, but soon you were testing me too, challenging me to speak the English words for every single thing in sight.

The second time I came to visit you did everything you could to distract me from conversation with your mother and older brothers. I tried to show off my Arabic writing for you, thinking it would surprise you. “No, no, no,” you said. “This is ‘b’”—it was a completely eligible scribble. Of course you hadn’t begun to learn reading and writing in school; nonetheless you still seemed pretty sure that you knew the Arabic alphabet better than I did.

You always loved to tell stories and had previously told me one about a man living in a cave atop a mountain (though the story was abruptly terminated when a funny TV show came on). The third visit I made, just a week ago, you immediately started a long narrative recreation of a battle with soldiers, tanks, guns, Jews, and Palestinians, complete with sound effects and dramatic pantomiming. I could hardly understand any of it, and your older brother laughingly told me while he translated that half of it was incomprehensible. ‘Children’s talk’ he said. You chattered unceasingly, leaping up on the couch to shoot from a higher angle, trolling across the carpet like a grumbling tank; I told your mother you were born to become a writer.

I wonder how many years have passed since then. You must be at least a teenager, or maybe twenty, as old as your oldest brother was when I first met him. I try to imagine what realizations first rattled that tenuous bubble of childlike innocence.

You were born into a difficult time. The Israeli army invaded the city shortly before your birth. Your mother must have nursed you while the twenty-four hour curfews were still in effect, while the streets were being turned to rubble and debris. Then for years thereafter, including up until now, the army checkpoints strangled the city. Consequently unemployment, poverty, and smoldering anger took their toll on people, effecting children the last and the most. Your mother told me, you saw a man shot in the head with your own eyes when you were two.

I had seen children, no more than three or four years older than you were when I wrote this, who worked six hours a day: some with tired eyes, sullen eyes, faces far too old for children’s faces. But you, Mu’min, back then, right now, were still the light of your family’s home: incurable talkativeness, runny nose, mischievous antics and all.

Perhaps matters have improved since then. I hope they did. If not, then what will we say to a whole generation of lost children? That peace was sued for in blood, sweat, and tears, but not enough to overcome indifference, selfishness, or shortsightedness? My friend, if we your elders, have failed you in the intervening time between my writing this letter and your reading it, forgive us. It is a difficult world we live in, without easy answer or repose. Do your best to live in it with self-respect, with principle and dignity. I have tried to do the same in my life thus far, but I do not know what anyone can do to change the madness of our times.

The legacies of today may make for a poor inheritance, and on your birthday of all days it behooves me to present you with something that will last you until the days when you come into your own. So because I can leave you nothing else, take then one simple gift: after all the years, over all the distance, a near-stranger from a far away country remembers and loves you, because long ago you smiled at him and called him friend. Take this simple thing with you, dear child, as you are propelled into the future, that uncertain but ever-beckoning horizon.

--Brian

2007-01-22T03:43:00.000-08:00

Miscellaneous Factoids about My Life in Palestine

For the first time in my life since early childhood I have kept and used a wallet. I was so unfamiliar with the workings of a wallet that people had to show me how to use it properly.

I have worn two pairs of pants, one on top of the other, every day since my first night in Jerusalem, when it was so cold in my room (thin walls, built as an add-on to the roof, no heating anywhere) that I emptied my suitcase, piled the clothes on top of me in bed, and topped that all off with the suitcase itself.

I have lost at ping-pong to little children repeatedly. One of the community centers where I teach is the proud home of Nablus’ champion youth ping-pong team. I think they all wanted to play me because I’m Chinese (looking), but much to my surprise and their dismay, I did not pose much of a challenge. You laugh, but really, I’m not half bad and they’re all really really good.

Central heating is a myth. So are long hot showers. Never take either for granted ever again.

Our supply of gas ran out a week ago; there’s practically no gas in the city of Nablus and, some say, the whole West Bank. This means no hot water for bathing or washing, and using the stove conservatively. The last time I bathed was a week and a half ago; it’s fortunate that I wear so many layers of clothing. I did, however, douse my head in cold water and shampoo after my recent haircut.

For those of you who have been reading my blog (even a little), but have thus far been too shy to tell me, you are required to leave a comment HERE!

2007-01-18T03:29:00.000-08:00

Life here is a cacophony: street vendors hawk their wares—fruits, vegetables, sweets, and bread; service drivers call their destinations—Balata camp, 'Askar camp, Huwwara checkpoint, Beit Iba checkpoint; the shouts of children at play fill the streets in the daytime; and the sharp reports of gunfire echo across the valley in the night. But the loudest in this storm of noise are the myriad voices demanding they be heard.
Here are a few which spoke most loudly to me. I have tried to preserve their uniqueness as best as memory allowed. The last one is my own.

2007-01-18T03:22:00.000-08:00

Family
“One of my half brothers died before two years. Now I am ok. It was hard, but he made a decision, and I respect it now. We were both EMT’s in the Old City during the invasion in 2002. For ten days the things we saw were enough to drive some people crazy. You start thinking things like, ‘Why do I deserve to live when other people die. Why am I better than them.’ I think that is why my brother had to go fight. Me, no. But I understand why.”

2007-01-18T03:21:00.000-08:00

Ruins
“Things are hard here. I am a security officer. How do you say… a captain, yes? I am a captain in the PLO security. But it has been nine months since they paid us. I am also fixing things, electrical things, appliances, as a second job. I was an electrical engineer when I studied in university. But there are no spare parts in the city. It is easier to buy it new from Israel than fix it in Palestine.
“There are the ruins of a Roman theatre in Nablus. How do you call it? An amphitheatre. Yes that’s right. A Roman amphitheatre in the hill by the old city. These people, the Romans, they were better than us. At least they made something. Even the slave who makes the stone chair—it is beautiful, with leaves on the side, shaped into stone. You cannot make something like this without putting yourself into it, even if you are not free, even if you are a slave. We are not slaves, but we do not make anything to leave behind.”

2007-01-18T03:20:00.000-08:00

Children
“The children are angry. They are too young. They do not know anything but this violence. I worry for my children. What do you do when your three-year-old son tells you he wants a gun for his birthday? I do not want my child to be a martyr. They only want to play, but the guns and the violence keep them inside the house all the time.”

2007-01-18T03:19:00.001-08:00

Pride or Dignity?
“Someday I will be at the checkpoints and a soldier will hit me, and there will be nothing else I can do but hit him back. Then the soldiers will beat me, and shoot me, and I will die. And that will be it. At least I will die fighting.”

2007-01-18T03:19:00.000-08:00

Who We May Become
“I do not want to become a killer. I cannot stand blood on my hands. I do not want to blow myself up or something like this. But I know myself. If I get angry, if things go on like this forever, I will not be able to help myself. I cannot stand to have blood on my hands like that.”

2007-01-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

Ajnabi fii Filisteen (A Foreigner in Palestine)

There are days here, days like today, when occasional gunfire erupts across the city landscape even in the daytime. A Palestinian militant was killed last night somewhere in the old city. He will be immortalized on yet another street-side plaque commemorating the Palestinian martyrs, until it too is shot down by Israeli bullets. Most of the martyr posters and plaques are decorated with doctored photographs of the fallen hero: a face lifted off some innocuous family album and pasted onto a body with a more militant or defiant pose.
There are days here, days like today, when you walk down into the valley’s center with vigilant eyes and ears, hoping to discern the exact location of the most recent gunshots. But days like this are rare. The real intrusion into peace of mind comes on the calmer days, days of balmy weather and mild mannered greetings from acquaintances on the street. On days like those, you hear something, a rattling or a loud pop. Then you realize it is the heavy pounding of a jack hammer, or the backfire of a decrepit taxi, or the mischief makings of idle children, but in that single instant, you froze. And when the moment passes, in embarrassed gratitude you thank fortune that your fragile little life went on, sound and whole.

2007-01-16T03:31:00.000-08:00

I have begun taking some pictures of things around Nablus. So far I have three shots I like of a protest at one of the Israeli checkpoints, and seven shots of the former city hall, which was bombed out twice when the army invaded Nablus in 2002.

They're uploaded onto my facebook profile; they should also be available at http://blooabroad.shutterfly.com

2007-01-13T03:43:00.000-08:00

There are people the world over whom, if you knew them, you would love them, and having loved them you would pay dearly to see their lives bettered.

That we may never meet them does not change anything.

2007-01-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

Nablus

Let us start over from here, from Nablus.

Nablus is a city built on the shoulders of two hills. Its outlying districts ascend and fall with the slopes of Mount Gerzim and Mount Ebal, its downtown and old city center nestle in the narrow valley between them. At night the city lights rise into the sky and would melt into the stars were it not for the dark red lights of the Israeli outposts at the summits of each mountain.
Checkpoints control every exit and entrance to the city and its locale, and everyone has a story about them. In the brief week I have been here, I have befriended a host of Palestinians at the community centers where I teach English. Some speak of the daily inconveniences with resignation, many with anger, some try to interject humor. A friend of mine jokingly told me that at a checkpoint he once claimed to be French; none of the soldiers knew what to do with him because none spoke French.
At night the Israeli soldiers come into the city itself. By midnight, the witching hour, no one walks abroad in the streets downtown except the Israelis and Palestinian militants. Almost every night we hear gunfire from the confines of our apartment, a ten minute walk away. In the old city center you can see the telltale signs of these nightly visits: shot out street lights, bullet ridden signs, and every single residential door with a jagged gaping hole where its lock should be.
Despite all this, miraculously almost, the people here are the kindest I have ever met. Internationals are an unusual sight, and though we are subject to the occasional harrassment, most Palestinians who talk to us are kind, invite us in to talk with them, invite us in for tea at their shop, show us around their city, or simply ask us how we find Nablus and its people. Conditions are hard here. I've only just touched the surface of things myself, and so far I have conveyed only a sampling of that in this blog entry. But things go on, and things go on.
In one of my first classes, when I was done instructing, a friend of mine, the same who told the story about the checkpoint, wrote something up on the board.
It said: Life is a camera, so smile.
I am constantly in awe of how enduring the people I met are. Even in the midst of so many troubles, which I can only begin to comprehend, many still find a place where life yet shines its beautific smile upon them.

2007-01-06T08:55:00.001-08:00

1/6/07
The Nitty Gritty Details

I love traveling. My heart, soul, and mind thrive on travel. However fate or the powers that be balanced a restless spirit with a body that demands stability. I am spectacularly gifted with asthma, respiratory allergies, lethal and myriad food allergies, and a propensity for hypothermia (because I’m skinny and don’t have enough body fat). The lungs have been ok, though they’ve come down with a slight cough. The stomach is constantly begging me for more food than my allergy paranoia will allow (so far one full meal; which was also a rip off price-wise). It doesn’t help that my checked luggage, with most of my clothes and toiletries, still has not arrived to me through Ben Gurion’s Lost and Found service, and it’s bloody cold, though I’ve managed to not come anywhere near the hypothermia stage thanks to the two pairs of pants and peacoat, which I wear at all times, including in bed where I have three layers of blankets. Here I’d like to insert a shout out to my Mom who insisted I take the peacoat.
Yesterday night I decided that the solution is simply to splurge and solve all these problems fast and effectively so I can get out to Nablus by tomorrow. Thus I purchased an international cell phone today (I got ripped off), and umbrella yesterday (I got ripped off), and will go to the New City section of Jerusalem where I am sure to have a better chance finding food I can talk myself into eating (which will be expensive, but I’m hoping prices will be standardized and thus everyone, not just me, will be getting ripped off). I tried arguing down the guy selling me the umbrella, but it was so tiresome that by the time I got to buying a cell phone today I just pretended not to speak much English and took whatever price they gave me. They seemed nice enough and I really didn’t feel like arguing. I just assume that because I am Asian (obvious tourist) I get charged 50-200% extra. It’s worth it if the luggage with all my toiletries arrives tonight.
On the plus side, I love the hostel I’m staying at. It’s the one place where they don’t try to rip me off—in fact all the prices at the restaurant below are printed out on a menu—and it only costs 25 sheikels per night to stay in a warm, though not heated, dormitory room.
On the newer plus side, I recently found a wonderful restaurant that won’t rip me off, and upon returning for a second meal I discovered this excellently equipped and very professional internet café. Now I just need my luggage…

2007-01-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

1/6/07
A Letter to Matthew
(though obviously intended for all of you to read)

Today I visited the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Christ was entombed and then rose from the dead. Actually, over the past thirty-six hours I have inadvertently stumbled upon almost all the Stations of the Cross by following Spanish speaking tour groups. The path of the Stations of the Cross, the way Christ took when he bore his cross through Jerusalem to be crucified, Via Dolorosa, or Tareeq al-Aalaam, runs within a hundred feet of my hostel. Small shrines marked prominently in Roman Numerals according to the number of the Station of the Cross dot the entire way.
Of course I doubt anyone knows with absolute certainty that the path and the Stations are marked exactly where each thing happened. And when I eventually got to the Holy Sepulchre, there were no explanatory pamphlets or signs for any of the relics, shrines, altars, and display cases. I understood almost immediately that a small elaborate shrine with a quiet line of entreetants was the place of Christ’s entombment, and the rock in casing must have been a piece of the stone that closed the tomb and then was rolled aside when he arose from the dead. Still, those were just guesses reinforced by what I comprehended from a nearby Spanish-speaking tour guide. So I felt a little silly waiting in the long line of somber pilgrims, unsure what someone of uncertain beliefs like myself was doing here among devout Christians who traveled just to be here. Yet as I approached the entrance of that place, I was overcome with a strange awe and reverence. It felt a little bit like wanting to cry.
I’ve no easy answers, Matthew. No one really does. But as I left the Holy Sepulchre deep in thought, the following paragraph came to my mind. Excuse me if it is cloyingly aphoristic.

The intellect demands exactitude through questioning, but can never achieve certitude. The heart leaps to certitude but cannot provide precision or explanation. Somewhere in between, I think, is the human soul where faith of all kinds resides, be it religious or secular, neither or both.

2007-01-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

1/4/07
40 Years in the Desert?

I’ve been sitting in what amounts to a glorified holding room in Ben Gurion Airport for the last four hours. It’s not all that bad. The chairs are upholstered with simple black pleather, the floor is marble tile, and we’re allowed to wander outside to the bathroom, hallways, and elsewhere, basically anywhere but past customs (because they’re holding our passports).
When I boarded my connecting Air Canada flight in Toronto the gate attendant checked my ID twice, then walked away with my passport and ticket to hurriedly confer with a colleague of his.
“Is there something wrong?” I asked when he returned.
“Ohh, no. Nothing’s wrong,” he answered with an oily smile.
“Enjoy your flight,” he continued, “I’m sure you will.”
I was naturally somewhat perturbed, and half expected to be assaulted by a team of overzealous aviation security officers on the jetway. Though why a disheveled Chinese kid boarding a plane to Tel Aviv warranted suspicion, I didn’t know.
It turns out what put me off about the gate attendance behavior was in fact unadulterated sycophancy. As soon as I boarded the plane, a cheerful stewardess (read: flight attendant) directed me to the last row of Air Canada’s elite executive super-duper first class section, and everyone began treating me like I was rich, important, or at the least related to someone rich and important. “Orange juice or champagne?” “Hot towellette?” “Box of Swiss Chocolates?” “What would you like for dinner? The Tenderloin steak? Very well.” Even when I was allergic to both possible main breakfast courses, the flight attendants kept pushing alternatives on me until I ended up with cold cereal and yogurt. And as luck would have it the first film was Little Miss Sunshine, which I adore, and which finished just in time for me to nap away most of the flight in my fully adjustable throne-sized chair that reclined a relaxing 150 degrees.
It occurred to me through a dreamy mid-flight haze that I could choose to believe in auspicious/inauspicious starts, in which case having the good fortune to be bumped up from coach to first class certainly boded well for my trip, or I could believe in karma, in which case somewhere down the line I was due to pay for this unlooked for luxury.
Many hours later, curled on a black pleather chair with my peacoat wrapped around my arms and a windbreaker laid over my legs above the marble tiled floor, in between answering questions about the nature of my visit to Israel (purely tourism) and the reasons for the Lebanese and Syrian stamps on my passport (visiting with a friend), I guessed that it must have been karma.
When, after finally being released, I was informed by the Lost and Found that my checked luggage had been left behind in Toronto and would only arrive the following day, I knew without a doubt that it had been karma.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Blog Post Script: Brian later arrived safely at his hostel as planned after hazarding public transportation to Jerusalem (which saved him loads of money but would have cost him a spell of being lost if not for a nice awkward scholarly guy named Amit), a taxi cab ride through Jerusalem to the Old City (which cost twice as much as the bus ride, but the taxi driver was fun to talk to), and a few dazed minutes wandering the claustrophobic streets of Old Jerusalem. He then woke up jetlagged at 5 in the morning to finish writing up his blog entry in third person.

2007-01-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,
From the outset I feel obliged to state the underlying moral premise for my trip to Palestine for two reasons: because some of you (but likely not many) may still be mystified as to my reasons for coming here, because said moral premise is one of two guiding principles for this foray into blogging (the other being to keep you all up to date with me). So let me say as best as I can that I believe if every human being knew intimately the lives of every other human being in the world we would dedicate our lives to the compassionate betterment of those less off than ourselves. And when I say ‘betterment’ I simply mean offering everyone a chance at living in peace, prosperity, and basic human rights, be they medical, political, legal, or otherwise.
It’s a nice idea—I know. Unfortunately it’s also impossible by myriad causes. So my journey here, I hope, is tantamount to the next best thing. Neither I nor anyone other human being will ever know the all intimate details of each life of the billions around the world, and in a foreign culture with a foreign language, which I speak haltingly at best, I’ll probably get to know a handful of people in the next four months and perhaps genuinely befriend fewer. Nonetheless it is my sincerest hope that this simple trip will suffice to prove to me for myself that I ought to dedicate my life to the compassionate betterment of those whose lot has been less than mine. In all honesty, this is sort of a chance to see if the ethical framework I’ve built up over years of closeted intellectual fermentation suits me, fits me as a person in the real world doing real things. Certainly I know I’m no saint. I am prey to everyday lassitude and indifference just like most people. But the people I really admire (and a few of you are among them) are the ones who work tirelessly, often in little and modest ways, for higher beliefs. So, the point is I’ve come to better know one little stratum of the people the world over, on whom I have based my fledgling yet fervent beliefs—it’s one thing to read and know of other people, another to meet, see, and speak with them.
Alright, having indulged in as much abstruse philosophizing as you can stomach, here then is a fairly amusing account of my trip to Israel. For your future reference, each blog entry will generally follow a particular tone until its completion. So later on when you all get bored of reading this blog, if one entry or another strikes you from the beginning as not your cup of tea, then feel free to skip it. I am naturally long-winded and I don’t want my verbage to be an unnecessary burden for those of you who are looking to read specific things from me.