a new page

oh, hello blog. i haven't seen you in a while.

i am a californian now. the next time i vote, it will be in a blue state (not a swing state). i barely ever drive, but my new license lists my permanent residence in the tenderloin of san francisco, my photo is a picture of me with long hair, not short, and a nose ring. everything is new and strangely permanent.

i buy my fruits and vegetables at a farmers' market that sets up shop a block away from my building twice a week. on sunday mornings i go early - past a grassy area where a gang of the neighborhood's homeless gather for their nightly slumber party, past a smelly old truck full of live chickens squawking foolishly from inside over-packed cages. i watch the old chinese man break their necks one by one and distribute them to a long line of customers who chat unintelligibly (to me, at least), comparing prices as they juggle their bags full of beans and potatoes and flowers. the market breathes - the air somehow seems fresher when i walk between the stands, squeezing tomatoes and sniffing melons and wishing in vain that i will find avocados (they never seem to have them at this market. i thought avocados were a california thing?). my favorite vendor is an overweight chinese woman who wears a blue bandanna and her long hair in two braids that are always messy and falling out by the time i find her. she offers me what she claims to be the biggest, freshest head of lettuce - though mysteriously, she just gave the biggest, freshest one to the man in line in front of me - and when i protest that i live alone and have no use for an oversized head of romaine, she suggests that i have a party and share it. i laugh and buy the lettuce; that's easier than telling her that i don't have enough friends for a party yet.

my apartment is on the twelfth floor of a building exclusively for law students. some days it feels like a dorm. the boys who live on my hall go out to clubs on weekends and invite me, come home late making lots of noise and playing drinking games, roar at the television together on saturday afternoons. when i arrived one month ago my space was empty - the sad brown carpet made the off-white walls look even sadder, the venetian blinds hung unevenly over shaky old window frames, and the tiny kitchen stood alone in the corner, the two stove burners and minifridge seeming to laugh at my misfortune. who knew such a small space could be so monotonous? a single towel rack, installed by a previous tenant, broke the impossible dullness of the space, if only because it represented a past life, something real and concrete that once hung its wet towels in the bathroom but has now disappeared, leaving only the towel rack as a memorial. i slept my first few nights on a camping pad on the floor in the corner where my bed now sits. staring up at the rough, stucco ceiling, i listened to the shouts and sirens blaring twelve stories below and wondered with what memories i'd fill the room, if i could find a way to call it my home, what i'd leave behind.

when i arrived in my bedroom in palestine, i cried. cried at the touch of the cold tiled floor, cried at the terrible orange doors and bedspread, cried at the strange smell of the air freshener in the bathroom, the sounds of shouting children in an unfamiliar language coming from outside. i cried at the total unfamiliarity of the entire thing, at my feeling that, for the first time in my life, i might not have been prepared to handle what i'd set myself up for. i didn't cry this time. i opened my windows, stuck my head outside, and smiled, for all the same reasons that i'd cried ten months earlier. it doesn't scare me anymore - i'm getting good at re-rooting.

from my window i look south across market street onto the mission and potrero hill - two neighborhoods in san francisco. past potrero hill there is a single piece of land that strangely remains totally undeveloped - in the late summer months it is brown, with only a few trees spotting it, and it sticks out from the multi-colored homes below. i found out a week after staring at this beautiful hill that it's actually a dog park, but i try not to think about that. i prefer to imagine that it somehow erupted from underground after everything else had been built - it doesn't seem to fit, and yet i couldn't imagine the view from my window without it. the hill reminds me a little bit of palestine. i think about looking out onto the bethlehem countryside from my veranda onto the layers of stone wall and dry grass rolling like waves toward the horizon, the white stone houses seeming to balance on the steep inclines of the mountains, the huge plateau of herodion (which i never did get to visit) in the far distance. the voices of children screaming, diesel cars puttering by, goats baaing, have all been replaced by the pulsing beat of a modern city, but my hill is still there, like it showed up to keep me company in this strange place.

there are pieces of me everywhere, and everywhere i've been has given me a little it more of myself that i'm now holding in front of me, colors and shapes pulsing in my hands. some days i look at the pieces and see if i can make sense of them, put them together into something intelligible. mostly, though, i like the way they look now, all muddled and disorganized, like someone's taken a handful of paintballs and thrown them against a white sheet so that the colors have started to melt and swirl together.

We will replant these trees.

8:3o pm, May 19, 2007
Artas Village, Bethlehem, Palestine

We arrive in the deep, silent valley shortly after sundown. The path is unpaved and dark - we can only see ahead by the harsh power generator light beating down on our camp from the mountain above. The generator was built yesterday morning in the first step of an Israeli project to seize and clear the land in this valley, to destroy the farmland on which the Abu Sway family cultivates apricot and almond trees, to clear way for a sewage system to serve the nearby Israeli settlement of Efrat. We are about fifty, a gathering of Palestinians, Israelis and foreign activists huddled around campfires getting to know one another. We will wait until 4 am, when the military is scheduled to enter and clear the piece of land.

10:15 pm

A group of foreigners has just taken off for the night, though we're told more will come early in the morning. Erin and I take a walk away from the group, and look up the mountain to watch the security guards wander around their base above. We can see and hear the crackling of their own bonfire, and the faint sound of a radio playing music. The soldiers are younger than I am.

1:15 am

About seven soldiers arrive at our camp and circle around us for a few minutes, taking photographs and speaking quietly to each other. They come down into the camp and speak to our leader, Awad, and ask if they can take a few photographs of the Palestinians participating in the campout. Among us are three older women, at least seventy-five years old, and two old men, the owner of the land and his brother. Awad refuses the soldiers' request, and a small confrontation breaks out. I am scared; I pull my hat down lower over my eyes and stare at the fire, waiting for something, though I'm not quite sure what. There is talk of a dangerous gunman roaming the area, possibly a deranged settler, and we are warned to leave the area to protect our own lives. It is a lie, a scare tactic.

2:20 am

The armed gunmen never came, so we begin a game of hearts with a few of the younger Arab guys. I'm terrible at cards, and it only takes a few rounds for me to acquire three or four advisors pointing hastily at cards telling me to put down, pick up, pass, I have no idea. I eventually give up, pass my cards to my head advisor, and try to take a nap. It is cold, colder than I expected in May, and I am hungry and tired. I lie sleepless with my eyes closed, listening to the night birds sing behind the laughter and chatter of my comrades.

5:05

I haven't been able to fall asleep, probably due to some combination of the rocks below me, the conversations around me, and the three cups of Arabic coffee I've had to drink. I sit up and chat for a while with two other foreign women, one from Britain and one from Canada, and we wonder why the army never showed up. I'm sure that they have postponed their action, figuring that if they postpone it long enough there won't be any activists left to oppose it.

The sun is beginning to rise and gradually our group is stirring, wondering why the soldiers never arrived. I'm looking at a group huddled around a newly lit fire. In the center, the wife of the landowner wits, gesturing wildly and smiling, exposing a set of perfectly white teeth. She warms her wrinkled, strong hands against the flames, and her white scarf surrounds her face, strands of grey and black hair sweeping down her eyes, eyes whose years have been drawn in delicate lines that deepen when she laughs.

5:15

The arrival of thirty soldiers is forewarned by the mighty rumble of a bulldozer descending from the top of the mountain. The soldiers stand in a line facing us, and one, I imagine the head officer, warns us that we have ten minutes to leave the land. A discussion begins, dominated by the same woman, who keeps repeating, "This is our land! May God forgive you! Put me in jail, what else have I got?" Behind her, Israeli activists are tying themselves to the twenty-six apricot trees in the grove. Five minutes pass, then eight, and we are reminded over and over again that we are in a closed military zone illegally, that the land is not Palestinian, and that we have no right to be there. There is yelling, and some pushing, and I back away and begin to take pictures.

The soldiers line up in a row and begin to walk across the field, pushing the demonstrators back as they go. Those who resist are removed forcefully; some are picked up and carried by three or four soldiers, their bodies limp to demonstrate their non-violent resistance. The soldiers grab the Palestinians forcefully and drag them away from their trees; one man is thrown roughly against the wall and is surrounded by three soldiers when he attempts to stand up. When all of the demonstrators are pushed back to the stone wall surrounding the grove, they are lifted up above the wall and pushed over, five feet to the ground on the other side. Some manage to slip back into the grove, but they are removed again in the same way. Some of the Israeli activists are shouting at the soldiers, though I can't understand what they are saying. The soldiers' faces remain cold and detached - they do not respond nor do they flinch.

Meanwhile the oldest woman is walking around, grabbing soldiers by their shoulders and frantically chastising them for their heartlessness. Two other women from her family are seated at the top of the grove, cross-legged, crying as they watch the bulldozer enter the field and begin to uproot each tree, one-by-one. We have all been removed from the field by now, and though some attempt to hop back over the wall, they are quickly pushed back by soldiers. Only the women's cries are heard over the grinding gears of the bulldozer.

6:45 am

The soldiers have cleared the field of the twenty-six fruit trees that stood only ninety minutes ago. The stone wall surrounding the grove, which has stood for over one hundred years, took only three minutes to topple. Four Israeli citizens have been arrested - their hands are bound by plastic bands and they sit waiting to be taken away on a hill nearby. The last two women have been removed from the field, by the hands of a soldier who looks like, and probably is, my age. I caught him more than once grinding his teeth and doing what looking to me like holding back tears - he was the only one whose face betrayed any kind of emotion. I catch his eye for a moment and can't think of anything to say, so I just hold his eyes for a few seconds, hoping that maybe a bit of the pain that I'm feeling, which is only a fraction of the pain the owner of the land is feeling, will somehow penetrate his years of training and brainwashing.

Two new soldiers bound down the hill from the generator carrying bags of cookies and juice for the soldiers. Congratulations on a job well done, now rest a while.

8:00 am

We've decided that it's time to leave, since the soldiers have all but left the premises and the whole place seems to be crying against a blue sky. I look up the mountain and stare for a moment at the red-roofed buildings of the Efrat settlement. In only a few weeks, their sewage will be pumped through this field, destroying the entire valley's ariability. My eyes cast down to one of the younger Palestinians, the son of the land owner. Last night we kidded with each other about the urgency of bringing an arguila (water-pipe) to the camp. This morning, our eyes meet and I am overcome by the despair seeping from his eyes, his unwavering yet defeated stare, his youthful face aged years since our joking only a few hours ago.

Note: I will put pictures of the morning on facebook in the next two days, or I will post a link to them here.

Fighting the Wall

Last Friday I participated in my first protest against the segregation wall, and I'm angry that I didn't go earlier. After only a few hours, I left the demonstration feeling energized, productive, like my presence here represents something concrete, like I have a purpose. Perhaps exactly at the right moment, I was reminded of why I'm here, what I care about, and what's really going on.

There are weekly protests against the Wall in a few locations throughout the West Bank. For a long time, the largest and most publicized demonstrations were taking place in Qalqiliya - a town in the northwestern West Bank situated just East of the Green Line (which marks the internationally recognized border between Israel and the West Bank). You can see on the map below that the Wall, which has been in construction since 2002, cuts deeply into the West Bank, often enclosing entire cities, leaving them accessible only through checkpoints.

Proponents of the Wall claim that it is being built in the name of security, to protect Israel from terrorist attacks. Opponents argue that the Wall is a "Land Grab", a means of securing land for Israeli settlement expansion in the very near future. In fact, the instance of terrorist attacks has decreased in the past four years, but its also clear (from my own veranda) that the Wall and its planned path swerves through land, separating settlements deep inside West Bank territory from nearby Palestinian towns.

During construction of the Wall around Qalqiliya, internationals and Palestinians gathered regularly to protest. The Wall went up anyway, and today, the city is essentially dead, economically and socially. The biggest Wall demonstrations are now in the Ramallah area, which has also been almost completely surrounded, and, in the past few months, around Bethlehem, where construction of a 360*, 28-foot wall is almost complete.

Last weekend I went to the Bethlehem demonstration with a friend and her colleague, Marwan, one of the coordinators of the weekly demonstrations. Marwan spoke to me the whole morning about Gandhi and his teachings of non-violence. He is fascinated by the possibility of a tiny man clothed in rags gathering more strength than the British Empire, and emphasized to me the importance of continuing non-violent resistance in Palestine despite the desperate situation. I don't think non-violence is a term that we as Americans automatically, or even after consideration, associate with the Palestinian resistance. It has, however, been a central part of activism here since 1948. Unfortunately, we don't see that on our side of the ocean.

We arrived in the village of Umm Salamona on Friday afternoon and walked about a kilometer through baby olive tree fields to the beginning of the march. From afar we could see the group of 150 or so Palestinians finishing their Friday prayers - kneeling quietly in neat rows, bodies rising and falling like the sea. Only a few hundred meters away we could see three military trucks surrounding the construction site, where workers and a front-end-loader were clearing a path for the Wall.

When we arrived at the site we saw that the group was about 200 - accompanying the Palestinians were nearly 50 foreigners and Israelis. The Friday prayer ended and one of the coordinators spoke to us briefly about the history of the Wall, what its impact would be in the area, and what we would be doing in the next hour. Over and over, in English and in Arabic, he emphasized that there would be no violence on the part of protestors that day. "Our faith in our land is stronger than their weapons," he said more than once. Non-violence was central to his message, and all of the participants, young and old, Palestinian and foreign, nodded in agreement as he warned us not to lose control, not to pick up stones, not to throw away the message of the demonstration.

We started walking, shouting "No, no, to the wall!" "One , one country!" and "Where is the justice?" A band of soldiers - as always, my age, probably younger - ran along on either side of us, scanning the crowd for disturbances. I caught one young guy filming us with his digital camera...but nothing happened. We walked along our path, crying for justice, holding hands and flying flags. At one point the soldiers stopped us, forming a wall of shields across the path. I was frightened - as voices raised and protesters pushed against the soldiers angrily, twenty five armed soldiers watched us from on top of the hill, waiting for a stone to fly or for one of their comrades to fall. I've heard stories and watched news coverage of protests in Ramallah - its not uncommon for Friday afternoons to end with tear gas and rubber bullets. This Friday, this site, though, saw none. The same coordinator who had spoken before stepped to the front, calmed those still marching (I had climbed up the other side of the hill and was watching carefully by that point), and then turned to the soldiers and spoke for a moment. Somehow, we were able to finish our march without another interruption.


The afternoon ended with an evaluation session led by the demonstration's coordinators. By that time our group had trickled to about 50 or 60 people, but we sat for an hour, sipping juice and eating cookies (as is standard at any Palestinian gathering) discussing the successes and failures of the day, points for improvement in the future, and our different roles as Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners. They asked us, as foreigners, to document our experience, to send home photographs and stories to share the truth about the situation and the resistance. I returned to the village on Friday feeling energized, educated and overwhelmed by the gravity of this responsibility. It would be impossible to successfully repaint the distorted pictures that we are presented in the United States, or to flip over the coin that has laid forever on the same side.

I guess this is a start.

One Morning

I went to Jerusalem earlier this week to mail a letter, and found the Old City closed for what seems like the 10th day in a row. Saying "closed" makes it sound like the city is a shop, and the owners have gone on vacation or are renovating. In fact, no less than fifteen guards were stationed at every entrance, carefully checking IDs to regulate who could come in and out of the huge fortress - residents, church clergy, elderly religious worshippers - no one else. The security measure is part of an effort to protect the city during recent "clashes" over whether or not the Israeli government can run a construction project against one of the walls of the al-Aqsa complex, the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. The al-Aqsa complex is the third-holiest site in Islam, behind Mecca and Medina, and has technically remained under the control of Muslim clergy since 1967. In fact, the area, where the Dome of the Rock and the mosque are located, has been the site of countless clashes between Israelis and Palestinians over the past thirty years. The second Intifada is often called the al-Aqsa Intifada, because it was sparked by Sharon's visit to the site in September, 2000.

The construction work has been put on hold for now, because of serious backlash from Palestinian protestors two weeks ago when the work began. Protestors and Islamic scholars claim that the construction could potentially damage the integrity of ancient archaeological sites below the mosque; Israeli and other sources argue that this is not true. Whether or not the stated reasons for protesting the work are factual, it seems obvious to me that the work comes at a strategic moment, when the world is focused on the new Palestinian unity government, whether or not it will recognize Israel, and whether or not it will stop the months of infighting in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Fateh, which the UN says has been more damaging to Gaza Civil Society than Israeli incursions ever were. While we are all watching intently, criticizing Haniya and Abbas for not meeting "international conditions" at their Mecca summit, Israel continues to take tiny, almost unnoticeable steps toward gaining total control of Jerusalem. Construction work to rebuild an entrance path to the mosque seems small, but as yet another finger reaching deeper into the everyday lives of Palestinian Jerusalemites, it seems like a move worth protesting.

And then the protests are met with police opposition, which is plastered all over American news sources as "clashes". Stones v. rubber bullets and tear gas. Can we really call that a "clash"?

On the way home, I found the Bethlehem checkpoint more backed-up than I'd ever seen it - 50 people waiting to exit, around 20 waiting to enter, one young woman sitting inside her glass booth, slowly checking IDs, making phone calls and barking at her coworkers, a smoky crowd of teenaged soldiers hurrying in and out of what I assume was their lounge, clearly all on break.

So I waited in line, watching the men and women in front of me become more and more restless as their attempts to push through the crowd or convince the soldier to let them pass failed. A little boy in front of me was crying - he had no eyes, only a class eye and an empty, darkened socket, but his wails filled the neon-lit building as he moved from body to body in the line, each time thinking he had found a familiar set of legs, though his parents were both busy negotiating with the soldier. Finally, she consented to let them through, right about the same time that a male soldier stepped out of the office and spotted my blond hair in the crowd. Almost immediately he had me ushered through the turnstile and began idly chatting with me as he flipped through my passport. Usually at checkpoints I need not even open my passport, let alone talk to the officers. As usual, I froze, unable to respond comfortably, unable to lie, unable to tell the truth, simply uttering cowardly half-truths and hoping that eventually he would had me back my little blue booklet of freedom.

Are you from California, he asked me? The others in the line had resumed their frustrated pushing and yelling.

What are you doing here? We stopped for a moment as the woman struggled to carrying her bag and her child through the final turnstile. He helped her lift her bag through then returned to me.

Do you live in Jerusalem? I tried to pick up the pace of my walk.

Would you like to drink something with me in Jerusalem some time?

When I crossed the hole in the Wall, I felt like I was home. Mostly, though, I felt like I was going to be sick.

Of weeping stones

An old friend passed through Jerusalem this weekend, and we met for a brief twelve hours to share a meal and try to squeeze in all of the stories and jokes that we've missed since our last meeting, more than eighteen months ago. The last time I saw him was in Bryant Park in New York City, where we shared two slices of pizza before he hopped back on a plane to Cairo, where our friendship first formed. The last time I saw him in Cairo, I had returned from Alexandria for only a day before my flight back to the United States, and we met for clinking Stella beers and peanuts at Hurrea, a Cairo bar historically famous for being a center of underground political and literary activity.

We like to joke about the peculiar and random circumstances of our friendship - instead of choosing a new restaurant or cafe in which to catch up, we choose a new continent.

Still, there is something very romantic about building a friendship on meetings in three cities so full of history and energy. This third meeting, though, felt somewhat different to me for its setting - unlike Cairo and New York, where dynamism and mystery fill the air like steam rising from the subways below, Jerusalem's positive energy is matched, if not overcome, by a feeling of tragic desperation, of a tension and urgency propelled by many years of conflict. The city is a source of hope for so many in the world, a symbol of faith for millions who only dream of setting foot on its narrow paths of ancient stone and dirt. And yet those who walk these streets live in constant fear of their lives, constant uncertainty of what might happen tomorrow.

A few weeks ago a group of us went to Jerusalem on a rainy Saturday afternoon to visit the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Jewish tradition. We were mostly internationals, but a Palestinian joined us that day, the last day of the month-long Travel Permission that he had gotten for Christmas. We roamed the Old City as Jewish families slowly emerged from their homes, making their way towards the wall to end the Sabbath with prayers. We watched the worshippers gather, some chatting happily, others standing solemnly, marvelling in the wall's strength, others caught in almost trance-like prayer, their hands laid on the cold, wet stones as though they were extracting some divine energy. As usual, I was caught in awe of their undaunted devotion to their beliefs; I can't imagine believing so fully in something so abstract - I think the weight and responsibility of so much faith might be too overwhelming, too much pressure for me to bear.

Despite the obvious celebratory aura - the end of Shabbat means the beginning of a new work week - the whole display somehow felt desperately sad. My friend asked me why I thought they called it the Wailing Wall. I told her that I wasn't sure - perhaps it is crying for years of Jewish oppression and struggle, perhaps for those years when Jews were not able to access the site, or perhaps, like the city's streets, it is crying for a lost vision of peace that has been almost completely forgotten.

Jerusalem

I wept until my tears were dry
I prayed until the candles flickered
I knelt until the floor creaked
I asked about Mohammed and Christ
Jerusalem, luminous city of prophets,
Shortest path between heaven and earth !
Jerusalem, you of the myriad minarets,
become a beautiful little girl with burned fingers.
City of the virgin, your eyes are sad.
Shady oasis where the Prophet passed,
the stones of your streets grow sad,
the towers of mosques downcast.
City swathed in black, who'll ring the bells
at the Holy Sepulcher on Sunday mornings?
Who will carry toys to children
on Christmas Eve?
City of sorrows, a huge tear
trembling on your eyelid,
Who'll save the Bible?
Who'll save the Qur'an?
Who will save Christ, who will save man?
Jerusalem, beloved city of mine,
tomorrow your lemon trees will bloom,
your green stalks and branches rise up joyful,
and your eyes will laugh. Migrant pigeons
will return to your holy roofs
and children will go back to playing.
Parents and children will meet
on your shining streets,
my city, city of olives and peace.

Nizar Qabbani

the gender question

i had a conversation with a colleague in the village this week that left me feeling not only frustrated and injured, but also confused. it started out as a brief lesson in palestinian culture from one of the mothers, but quickly developed into a heated discussion of religion, gender and sexuality between me and my friend. he is twenty-three years old. last year he graduated from birzeit university, the most prestigious palestinian university and one of the more respected universities in the arab world, with a degree in psychology, and now works as a youth advisor in the village. he comes from a refugee camp in ramallah, but he and his brother both live here in bethlehem. he is engaged to a young woman to whom i give english lessons, and the couple has invited me to their wedding in july.

we started discussing the many double-standards that exist in this society for men and women in all aspects of daily life - dress, studies, household responsibilities, manners, posture, socialization, everything. according to some (though not all, and not always universally considered accurate) readings of islam, women are required to wear the mandil (head scarf) and dress modestly, are forbidden from socializing with men except in academic settings, are expected at a very young age to take on household responsibilities that men and boys are not asked to complete. when male guests enter a home, more conservative women will retreat to the kitchen or bedroom so as not to socialize with a stranger; many women wishing to enter the work force will begin to cover their hair to protect themselves from male scrutiny; when i eat dinner in the village houses, more often than not the girls clear the table and do the dishes, and the boys play outside or start their homework.

these rules and separations, or at least the visible ones, don't apply to all women in the society. many women do not cover their hair, wear western clothes, study at university, obtain high-level degrees, work as doctors and lawyers, party at nightclubs. but the less-tangible, underlying inequalities are in many ways more frustrating, because they are harder to question and fight.

i come from a society that is very quick to condemn this kind of power-imbalance, and to be honest, though i like to consider myself an educated and open-minded person, many of these traditions irk me as well. because i am an outsider, the manifestations of this double-standard seem obvious and often barbaric to me, but in certain ways they are no different to the perhaps more subtle imbalances that exist in the united states. today, women enter the workforce at almost the same rate as men, and yet men still control nearly all upper-level management and decision-making positions in the government and large companies. a greater percentage of working women (compared to working men) occupy service positions (waitressing, house-cleaning, secretarial, cashier, etc.) than their male counterparts. even though anti-discrimination laws are in place today, its still a well-known fact that an employer would rather hire a man than a woman, based on the fear that she may choose to have a baby at some point and would then be entitled to maternity leave. it seems that the government is actively looking for a way to take away a woman's right to control her own body.

i'm in no way trying to argue that the situation for women in the united states is as difficult as it is for women in arab countries. it's not even close. i am saying, however, that our society is still quietly patriarchal and bears remnants of a gender imbalance that still exists in full force in much of the world.

so back to my conversation with my friend. eventually we started talking about sexual relations between men and women, and for the first time the realities of these gender standards became real, tangible, and unspeakably disturbing to me. women in this society (as in most societies in the world) are expected to be virgins when they are married. if they are not virgins, they are considered to be unchaste and "damaged goods", and can suffer any number of punishments at the hands of male family-members. this is not a secret - particularly in the arab world, it is a well-known and hotly disputed (by newly forming women's rights groups) fact. i asked my friend what he would do if he found out that his unmarried sister was in a sexual-relationship. he told me he would kill her.

he considers himself to be a women's rights advocate, so he would not only kill his sister, but first he would kill her lover, under the assumption that its just as much the male's fault as it is the woman's. so he would kill twice. but if he found his brother in the same situation, he would not kill him, but would disown him. if the woman's family killed his brother, my friend would say that they had the right.

so, here is my friend, to use a bad cliche, among "the best and the brightest" of his generation in palestine, and he would be willing to kill a family member to protect the family's honor.

a critic of palestinian activism...or perhaps a critic of jimmy carter's book, would argue here, "how can you advocate for independence in a society where this kind of barbaric practice is condoned?" some days i'm not sure. the truth is, the society here is not perfect - no society is. it bears remnants of ages and loyalties and traditions past, and its complexities make it both fascinatingly beautiful and unimaginably frustrating and tragic at the same time. yesterday i had a lot of trouble getting out of bed in the morning, thinking about the conversation and its implications for all of the people i know here. i hadn't really learned anything new during that hour - everything my friend said i had read in a book or heard about in a class or even heard about as "a friend of a friend..." here. and yet to hear it from a friend, a peer, and someone who considers himself progressive was, and remains, very difficult for me to process. how can i throw so much of my personal support and energy into a society that condones what i can only understand as violent sexism? can i ever adjust myself and adapt to these gender relations? do i even want to? the answer to this last question is no, i don't want to, and i won't.

this part of palestinian culture is something that i do not and will never approve of. in the past few years a number of progressive women's groups have formed in palestine, as well as in other arab countries, and are beginning to ask these questions and challenge the power structure. like all cultural change, these adjustments will have to come from inside - democracy is not a blueprint that can be placed on the ruins of a broken dictatorship, and gender-relations cannot be tipped to equality simply by evening a scale, particularly not in a society whose cultural integrity is constantly threatened by extinction at the hands of occupation. as an activist seeking peace in the region, i can advocate for national independence while also supporting minority movements (gay and lesbian voices are only beginning to whisper in the region, but their presence is known if not acknowledged) and hope that peace and stability will eventually provide a stage upon which these fringe groups can fight for social reorganization according to their own dreams.

sweet jerusalem

i met a man today in jerusalem who speaks seven languages. he is an armenian christian, born and raised in jerusalem, so for his whole life he has spoken a combination of arabic, hebrew and armenian. he attended a french school in jerusalem, where he learned french and spanish, both of which he now speaks fluently, and his mother is italian. he attended university in the united states and speaks english so perfectly that on the phone i thought he was american. seven languages, one life.

in the first moments of our conversation, i asked him question after question about the solid facts of his existence - where he grew up, where he lives now, what language he uses most frequently, what kind of ID he has here, what kind of citizenship he holds. eventually he laughed, and told me that, "you americans are always trying to simplify, always trying to place things in neat categories. it's simpler for you to understand that way, but it doesn't always work, does it?" i had never stopped to consider how i analyze the world and my experiences, but when he said this, i immediately knew that he was right. the concept of a person without a dominant national identity is almost impossible for me to understand, and even if subconsciously, i was completely unsatisfied by this man's seemingly fluid identity. living abroad, my perception of myself as an american is permanent and ever-present - it is the first thing people ask me, and the first piece of information i offer upon meeting someone. the concept of identity in this conflicted land is completely different, though, solid and flexible, personal and political, real and fabricated.

there are israelis and there are palestinians. most israelis are jewish, and most palestinians are muslim.

and then there are muslim and christian and druze israelis, and christian palestinians.

and there are russian-jewish israelis and european-jewish israelis and arab-jewish israelis and african-jewish israelis, and all of them have a special place in the social and economic hierarchy.

and there are greek-orthodox christians, and roman catholics, and latin catholics, and armenian christians, and ethiopian christians, and some of them have been here as long or longer than the jews and the muslims, and some of them are only here as visitors, and some of them are not religious at all, but their religion is what distinguishes them from the rest.

there are west bank palestinians, and jerusalem palestinians, and gaza palestinians, and palestinians in exile, and palestinians who identify as refugees, and palestinians who don't.

and everyone draws all or part of their identity from their land, or their lack of land, or the land that they perceive to be theirs. a refugee in a camp in bethlehem may never have seen his family's land in the galilee, but ask him where his home is, and he will tell you the name of his village, and promise you that his family will return home some day. a young israeli who has lived his entire life in an israeli town may try to understand the history of war and occupation in his country, but what is he to do if his identity is also so closely tied to his home, his land? if a person lives away from her original country for a long enough time, can her perception of homeland actually change, or is she permanently tied to the place where she was born?

at the same time, identity here is derived by arbitrary divisions and categorizations superficially designed to ensure security. jerusalem palestinians can't travel in the west bank, and west bank palestinians can't travel to jerusalem, nor can they travel in yellow-plated cars - cars driven by foreigners and israelis. and israelis can't travel in the west bank without a permit, and vice versa.

and there is fateh and there is hamas. and in gaza, there is not enough killing already, so these groups have started to attack one another. their political loyalties result from their oppression, their animosity toward one another is derived from the absolute desperation of their situation.

in the united states, our perception of identity may vary - gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, political party - but in comparison to the layers and layers of identities that people carry here, often wearing them on their sleeves, ours is a simple system of categorization. even in this system, potentially conflicted identities - a gay christian, a black republican - trouble us, confuse us, often make us angry. i'm slowly learning that here, conflict is such a permanent staple of life that it is necessarily wedded to one's identity.