…distinguish between the one

This is a land of collisions. For centuries it has housed the great crossroads of three entire continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, and still displays the tread from the wheels of ancient trade. Even ideas, entire religions, began and expanded from these sacred hills. Not without reason has Jerusalem been referred to as the center of the world.

A picture from Google of his final day

But there are many kinds of collisions in the Holy Land besides accidents of Pangea. There are the clashes between nationalities, where lives are at risk, and often taken. Last week Hebron suffered again the loss of a young man. In the excitement of not only his birthday, but also the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year in this millennium, Mohammed, a newly seventeen-year-old was shot several times by a young Israeli soldier. The news reports conflict: was he shot 3 or 6 times? Was he holding a toy gun? Or was it his birthday cake? Was he hard of hearing or ignoring the soldier? As of yet, we are only sure of one thing: that the day of his birth has become the day of his death; this collision’s become so costly.

Tree's alit!

But some collisions aren’t always so, like the community of religions here, where Muslim and Christian live side-by-side, and worship similarly. In Bethlehem the toll of bells and call to prayer both color the air with hymn. I attended a large tree-lighting event in Manger Square, and in the middle of the mayor’s speech a loud call to prayer echoed from the tall mosque behind us. There we waited for the religious man to finish his duty before we continued our quite Christian tradition. In all of Palestine, the twenty-fifth is a holiday, as are the Muslim holy days, and well-wishing a ‘Merry Christmas’ is almost always returned with smiles. I spoke with my students about this brotherhood and was reminded of the sweetness in it from a shared story. One of my students works in Bethlehem and all his Christian colleagues fast at work with their Muslim friends during Ramadan. For many parts of the world, these two peoples cannot seem to live next to one another, but it is not so as they collide here.

There is a collision of eras, where the contention between modern and ancient can be both humorous and frustrating. I’ve been to many celebrations of engagements, marriages or graduations, and they all look quite similar. There is a silliness of grown men and their sippy cups and juice boxes. With traditional headscarves they arrive from this age’s past; slurping juice, they come from their own. But it is normal here, as we sit and chat and shake hands in celebration of love. A man absentmindedly clinks his car keys and stares off into some remote memory of his own love-life. Others toke on their cigarettes. Still others use their cell phones to call over their friends from the other side of the hall. Past and present collide here like tides in transition.

 

Then an important man quiets the crowd and begins the prayerspeak, where Allah and Islam are celebrated first, the marriage second, the families third and Allah again while they open their palms face up and pray. In tight jeans, leather jackets and waxed hair or long robes and beards, they all simultaneously lift up their hands, then bring their palms down over their face to seal the prayer. I sit quietly and make note of the people who wonder who I am and why I’m not joining.

For these traditions are deeply rooted in both culture and religion, and are not frequently ignored. And it has been that way for so long, but with smart phones in hand, a connection with the West has been tied, and where once the negative influence of the modernizing West was successfully quelled, now it is united with one of those knots tied by the ignorant that never undo. Hence the contention. I see the frustration in the eyes of young men who wish so badly to have a girl at their side, but know it is actually impossible outside of an expensive, almost unattainable and altogether too permanent marriage. In fact, their despair is quite the focus of their days, for its forbiddenness makes it consuming. And so we find ourselves here, celebrating yet another young man’s ‘ultimate’ success. And the man with his keys thinks of the woman he loved but couldn’t marry while my friends think of the girl they know they’ll never even kiss, and look at me with a certain envy for not being governed by the same social rules. But we snap out of it to join in a more immediately satisfying tradition: to chow on some incarnate pastry, both fully dough and fully sugar…

Likewise, as Christmas draws near I think of one more collision, one I see within my very self: the coalescence of what I was and am, and what I’m becoming and have become.

I was at church the Sunday after the UN’s validation of the Palestinian State and I was wearing my kuffiya for both warmth and in pride. There a man greeted me, kissed me and looked at the scarf.

Love the Kuffiya

“Ah, now you are Palestinian” he said. I smiled and thought for a moment about how I must be if I just accepted a kiss from a grown man. And then I looked back at him and replied,

“And now you as well, my friend”

But it isn’t just the scarf that makes me Palestinian, just as one vote doesn’t change who these people really are. No, the fact that I am becoming Palestinian was most notable a few days after Thanksgiving when I was eating some leftovers at home. Here people seem to eat pita bread with everything: breakfast, lunch, dinner, vegetables, meat, other carbs, hummus, everything. And I like to think that I haven’t adopted this habit, if only for the health reasons, but then I look down and realize I’m using it to eat stuffing. Stuffing. I was stuffing pita bread with pita bread. And eating it. What have I become?

But it doesn’t rest there. Even walking arm-in-arm seems natural, like I’ve been doing it my whole life. Once I absentmindedly stuck my arm in the elbow-crick of my American friend before we both made weird eye-contact and separated. On the rare occasion that I see a foreigner walk by, I stare, wide-eyed, as if I’m at the zoo, with the question why? on my lips, before I’m caught by a Khalili for being so, well, Khalili.

 

I remember the first word I ever learned here: habibi. It means something like ‘my lover,’ but is used for so much more. It has a certain flexibility among the Palestinians, but a subtle one found in how you say it. You can look at your wife and say Habibi. It’s like any other term of endearment: you say it with earnestness. Easy. Then you can see your good friend and greet him. Habibi! You hit the ‘H’ a bit harder in this one, and drag the rest of the word out a bit. It becomes endearing and affectionate. Not too hard. Well, then you can run into a stranger and ask him to take your picture, or something. Bidi ishi. I need something. Habibi. This one comes after a few words have been exchanged and he is ready to take your picture. Or something. His payment: being addressed as such. It isn’t rocket-science, but it requires a bit more finesse. But then you can use it to say thank you. Down the street and to the left? Habibi. This time it flies out quickly, like we might say ‘thanks.’ If you want, you can even use it with hints of sarcasm to mean the opposite. Habibi. I don’t like you. Please leave. I, of course, have no need to ever use it this way. But perhaps the most exclusively native way of using it is in accepting a complement while simultaneously saying you’re welcome.

I was speaking to someone the other day and he called me his Maine Man for the help I was providing him, and, of course, the place from which I come. Then he complemented my work. My immediate and completely natural response: Habibi.

We paused for a moment and looked at each other. Then, on the brink of continuing our conversation, we were interrupted by our own simultaneous laughter. It was really funny and we didn’t need to say anything for we both understood. “You know,” he said to the others in the office, “his habibi is, like, perfect.” My response of course: habibi.

But this collision of identity, this coalescence of two-in-one, draws me back to the message in the music I so nostalgically listen to these days. It is what we are celebrating now, both in the West and here, where it all began. It is Him, a man of two identities. Despite what you believe or the traditions you practice, Christmas is about a being who was God and still is, and is becoming and has become a man. But our focus lies not just in his birth, for we celebrate a man who was born to die, and so my thoughts drift back to our late friend Mohammed, and I feel a certain sorrow in such a collision of fate as theirs. 

...dream deeply

I have been looking into my future lately, and trying to make some sense of direction. I am not lost, just deep in a forest, and I need to decide which road to take to get out. In doing so I have let my mind wander back Stateside to wonder what would be there when I return. Much of this was fueled by the very real understanding that I may have had to go home if the recent violence had escalated. In my thoughts’ pasture, I saw Maine, my feet swirled cold water and stirred the mud and led me to eyes I haven’t looked into for so long, where I sang Christmas carols amidst deeply familiar voices. I dreamt of art, of making movies or directing plays and the joy that it brings me to see people marvel. But that is only one road that I strove with; the other brought images of deep conversation with those around me, not in English, but Arabic. I had visions of knowing what was really on the minds of those I love here, what they doubt, desire or dream of. In this reverie I was proud and loved and able to love. How long will I really be here?

In reality, the grape leaves have turned those lovely lime greens and goldens and brick reds that light the valleys with a simmering napalm, and though it can be oddly warm, December has arrived. Bethlehem has taken no time to honor base lampposts with string-lights like cookie-cutters of trees, bells and holly. I remember being here almost a year prior, abandoning my tour group and buying pita bread on the street, talking with a local and purchasing his fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice. I remember falling a bit in love. I had no idea then that I would walk down that same street and salute that same man many more times in that same year. And then my mind slips momentarily into the discouragement of another year that passed so quickly. Where does life go? And how long will I really be here?

But even the knowledge that I could leave is one reserved for those few of us who weren’t born to the sons of Ishmael. However, that might change someday, for a historical vote was cast, and with almost global support, Palestine achieved member-state status in the UN. We were at al burj coffee shop saying goodbye to a French friend of ours and watching the television when it finally happened.

After some cheering and applauding we paid and left and once outside, followed the music that was electrifying the air. We found its source at a great stage that had been set up in front of the balladia, or municipality. A large screen was projecting, with bright LEDs, the news. A pick-up was parked as a platform for the news crew, and in between, there were hundreds of men (and a few ladies even) with flags and scarves and kuffyias and the dancing was grand, for music beat their hearts together and arms felt tired not to wave in such victory. Palestine…138 to 9, with 41 abstainers. That’s a landslide if there ever was one.

So myself and seven other foreigners arrived on the scene and stole too much of the attention. I looked up to iPhones turning and recording our happiness and suddenly flags were put into our hands and we waved them proudly. Ditte and Sofie couldn’t dance, because that would be inappropriate, but I got sucked into the slue and was once again swirling my hips and lifting my hands and holding up the flags. I couldn’t help myself in elation. Around me were people glowing with something I haven’t encountered before, and small men became bigger when their colors were wrapped around them. Shoulders fell into place, wider, eyes burned with some flame from the stars, and smiles were generated from the very organic seed of humanness. Deep within these men something was taking root…

A dream is a lofty and powerful thing that can keep one walking in the darkness of a forest, but in the hands of Hope, it becomes something unstoppable, like a light in the very midst of the trees. And things once unreached quiver a bit closer.

The international celebration

That morning I had an Arabic lesson with my friend Nasser and we had grumbled about our financial situations together. He is jobless and after we griped, I decided we needed tea. I returned from the kitchen bringing two steaming cups, and found that I had to pull Nasser out of a deep daze of hopelessness. He knows there aren’t any jobs here for him, for he has been on such a prowl to find one. But he also knows that he probably can’t go anywhere else, whether because of denied permission or lack of funds. I could see the haze in his eyes, no longer bright and youthful, but hoary. And I felt as if I had nothing to offer him, except a little warmth afforded by a small glass of tea. Little did I know what the next phone call would bring.

The glasses were drunk, the class ended, and we walked together to the street. I called Ditte to check in and she answered with an euphoric Marhabbah! I soon found out that the vote was going to be cast and Palestine would probably succeed. I felt it well up in me, like a deep, dormant spring. I looked around me and found the air sprung with joy and vibrancy. And something deeper than that. I broke the news to my friend and every part of his face suddenly jumped as far away from every other part as possible. He was elated. “Wow! Maybe we’ll change our passports” he cheered. Inwardly, I thought it was silly that his passport was his first concern, but perhaps I didn’t understand something at that moment. Looking back I see that perhaps his I.D. is a constant reminder of his situation, and a change in it would mean that all else he hopes for for Palestine has come to pass.

Imitating a foreigner he cried, “I want to go to Palestine State, I want to go to Palestine airpor—” He cut himself short in silent wonder about where that place might be. “Maybe I will travel to America easily. Maybe I will travel to Europe, to Denmark easily.” After a pause he said with such earnestness as I have never heard these words spoke before.

“I will achieve my dreams.”

...be thankful

You all saw it on the news: Gaza and Israel at it again. And many of you sent quick notes to me, checking in on how I was. I appreciated that. It was a strange night, when it all began. I was in Jaffa, a city just south of Tel Aviv, when we first heard the rumors of war. My friends David, who left for America a couple of days later, and Ditte and Sofie, the Danes, were all dressed up and going to see the new Bond movie, Skyfall. At dinner we chuckled uneasily about the all-too appropriate title to that movie.

Tel aviv, from Jaffa

The next night was interrupted by tremors of war as rockets missed their mark, or sputtered out early, and landed in the Mediterranean nearby. We thought we might go dancing, but the mood sort of died amidst the already-growing suffering.

The week passed like a fitful night of sleep. Even the weather groaned and tossed and turned…nothing was at ease. Every day we counted the fresh graves with solemn souls. At night I heard the firing of gas or sound or light grenades as people threw stones at Israeli soldiers, and they responded. The unrest has stretched into the West Bank and many people joined Gaza by strike, by stone, or by prayer. 

Imagine the honking

The greatest of all the shocks in Hebron was not from a stray missile, though. No, we were hit hardest and closest when one of our own was shot and killed in the street, amongst his brothers. The pictures and phone-recorded clips found their way to YouTube and Facebook instantaneously; I saw grief I have never known, blood I’ve never seen shed, and it sunk heavy as stone in my heart. This was no news reel—this was a friend of a friend who lived down the street. I could have seen him, perhaps purchased something from him. His hands were Khalili, as are mine, and as I type this, I know he never will. The grief was overwhelming, and it carried him through the street the next day, held aloft, proudly, in a bed of wood and covered by the colors of Palestine, black, white, green, and red. Here is our martyr.

Two days later I sat atop a high place in Hebron and overlooked the hills in the shadow of war and approaching night. Lights shivered in the distance: that was Gaza. A flare in the darkness was no celebratory firework, but a presage of grief. I found myself in a coffee shop later, joined by foreigners and Palestinians alike. We wondered with shaded hearts what tomorrow would bring. That a ceasefire was being discussed behind doors where lives are saved and wasted, we knew; that the ceasefire may not work, we feared. As we looked out to the street and watched the parade of honking fury pass below, we acknowledged that our time in Hebron might be cut short. We looked at our Palestinian friends who sat among us, whose hospitality we had so generously been recipients of, whose love for one another bled even for us, who had known them for so little. Could we leave? Must we?  

We will if we must.

The anxious gathering

And with that we saw to our homes for another tormented night.

I woke up on Thursday to a strangely golden room. There was an afternoon’s light bursting into my room and I fumbled for my watch to answer a question I knew to be impossible: was it still morning? It was. I ventured into my kitchen and looked out the window. Away in front of me a tall mosque thrust itself into a sky so golden and overcast I felt uneasy. There was something apocalyptic about it and without internet or television to inform me, I feared the worst. But I had to prepare a pancake breakfast for the Danes and my two roommates, as promised.

I noticed something, here. In all this turmoil I saw many people who fought, many who cried, and many who stood, stone statues of old kings besieged, but untoppled by breaking crests. And in every moment I only thought about food. The day before I had kept my friend company, making pancakes to fill her worrying mind and body. I prepared coffee and small snacks for my roommates, and in doing so, I suppose I felt human in something that can confuse even that foundation. 

My roommates creaked out of bed slowly, with joints unoiled, and Ditte and Sofie arrived while I built an impressive stack. The girls have internet at their place and so were bearers of great news. Besides the fact that Ditte had all week been in Jaffa, alone, and had just arrived yesterday in Hebron, the ceasefire was successful. We celebrated over starch and brown sugar, and it was a Dane that first said ‘Happy Thanksgiving!’ And so it was.

The sun came out in full glory that day, and most of the morning and afternoon was spent joyfully doing errands. I had planned to prepare a traditional meal for some of my friends here, but the whole conflict had closed roads and checkpoints and raised tensions in many places, including Jerusalem, where I needed to go to purchase some important ingredients. Now, with rocketless skies, I made the trip into the holy capitol. I was looking for one rumored store in a place called Beit Hanina that apparently sold pumpkin puree and who knows what else. But I had no idea where it was, except that a stop on the train in Jerusalem was called Beit Hanina.

A half an hour of walking after I got off the city train I finally found Jafar Supermarket. I was in an Arab town between Jerusalem and Ramallah at this point. Two hours prior I had left Hebron, and when I didn’t find pumpkin puree there, a flicker of frustration caught flame. But I found sweet potatoes and butternut squash instead, so I grabbed some with my other groceries. However nice this small market was, I grumbled for I could have bought these things most anywhere in Jerusalem at least. So I started my trudge back, but I had scored little that I came for, and I was still turkey-less. I had thirty minutes of walking and I knew I had passed a couple butcher shops on my way. I walked into the first one.

Salaam alaykum. Ainduk deek rumi? 
              (Peace be upon you. Do you have turkey?)

La. Djej, bas. (No. Only chicken)

Ah. Shukrahn. Yatik Allafiya. Salaam. 
              (Ah. Thanks. God bless you. Peace.)

Shop number two was the same, but third times the charm, as they say, and soon I was on my way with the smallest turkey they had: a 20 pound doozie. I actually called a friend of mine to get a second opinion. Was I really about to purchase a toddler of a turkey and attempt to cook it? And they sell by the kilo: this was no cheap steak. She cleared my head with strong affirmatives, and so I paid and left, heavy laden with a long road ahead.

The Danes had joked earlier that I should buy the turkey in Jerusalem and travel home with this frozen hunk of meat under my arm. I wasn’t laughing as their premonition became all-too true. I initially had a frisson of excitement, but soon my breath swam away in front of me as my arms ached for breaks they could not have. My legs stung and my left shoe began to dig away at my Achilles. I made it back to the train and knew the walking was over. But it was not. In less than a short hour I was standing by the road outside of Bethlehem wondering where all the shared taxis were in this fallen darkness. At this point I did not laugh, but sneered inside at the fact that my groceries had depleted all my cash save barely enough to get home. I couldn’t afford a taxi from here. I looked away down a dimly lit road where I knew I could be led to the main street in Bethlehem. The problem was, it was a few miles down that road. But twenty minutes of thawing turkey made up my mind and I started off. The familiar aches, stings and groans of my body quickly resurfaced and I found myself whimpering in pity.

She finally made it home. Subsequently, she lost her head.

But on I walked motivated by some apparition of a brown turkey before wide eyes that I had conjured, and I was determined to see it through. I revisited every prideful act I ever committed those miles of the night, and was strangely strengthened by them. I would see this bird to the stove, and my spent arms couldn’t wail loud enough to stop me.

I had been 5 hours from Hebron by the time I reached the main street, and I could only pitifully deplore this white man who stumbled out of the darkness with full bags into the usual going-ons of the neighborhood. It was some divine gift that brought me a car less than ten minutes later. The driver recognized me, and took me to Hebron and the whole way I sat in the back, on brand new leather seats, fearfully cradling the dripping turkey in my lap. I reminded myself that it was thanksgiving, and so I counted things I was happy for. A ride. A turkey. Absorbent jeans. When I finally got out of the car, I looked as if I had wet myself, but I saw no gleam on the seat. Alhamdulillah. Thank God.

Palestinians with Pies

The day ended weeks after it began. I had done some surgery on the bird, disrobed her, spiced her, and tacked her skin back on before putting her in the fridge. Then I walked home and fell into sleep. And the night ended only minutes after it began. Soon I was back at the Danes’ place, improvising some pita bread stuffing, and getting the bird a-cooking by ten-thirty. I had never done any of this before, but I felt confident…for some reason. I spent the entire day cooking and preparing. The stuffed turkey was in the oven, the potatoes were ready to be mashed, the pecan pie and butternut squash pie were ready to go in once the bird was out, vegetables were cut for roastin, the cans of cranberry sauce eager to be opened and served, salads on the verge of being thrown together, flour out and ready to become gravy in her marriage to turkey juice, and then it all happened; the puzzle began to take sudden form. 

Though it was all a bit impetuous I was proud of the table that was laden. Two Danes, two Aussies, two Palestinians and I all sat down and feasted. Only two of us had ever known this meal before. Even the Arabs kind of liked it, and they are not known for their tolerance of different foods.

And with a bit of wine in me, and the merriment of company filling all the spaces within me not already occupied by tender meat and perfect pies, I slept well on the couch, and I was quite thankful. We had all agreed at the table: this was one to remember, with Gaza quiet, the air still, and hearts and stomachs full. Happy Thanksgiving, we said. And indeed, it was.

Oh, he beems with pride

...google Wadi Rum

I remember it as a dream, even though it was only this past week…Wadi Rum. I could have been on the moon, in a painting, but not in reality.

Where are we?

Three days ago I left for my first trip to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Yes it’s a kingdom and there is a king and his picture is everywhere and people generally like him. I have been wanting to go, but necessity breeds action and my tourist visa was running out. So I went into Jerusalem and after scheduling an appointment for a work visa interview, I caught a bus far up north by means of the Jordan River Valley to a place called Beit She’an. There I grabbed a taxi to the border and after a series of questions, security checks, taxes and fees, I entered Jordan. At one point in the process my traveling partner and I had received our exit stamps, which means we had left Israel, but were waiting for a bus to take us over the river to get entry stamps into Jordan. We wondered where we really were and who would put us in jail if we committed a crime…

But wonder is all we did, and soon found ourselves under royal, setting sky. 

The setting sun from Jordan looking west

Something was different about this place. It was more open and expansive as if the land itself spoke of her freedom. This is a nation without Occupation. It is a land full of people just like the Palestinians but without checkpoints and tension. This is a place to come and go as you please without walls and gunman and x-ray machines to delay you. I could feel it in the air; it was refreshing.

My homebase was at a friend-of-a-friend's apartment. His name is Samer and he lives near the University of Jordan in Amman, a capitol city where there are millions of people and many foreigners. At one point during my trip I spoke in English and Arabic to a young Kazakh. That’s a first.

I spent the first morning grabbing a cab to Jabal al-Qala’a, or the Citadel. Atop this mountain (jabal in Arabic), there stand ancient ruins of many civilizations built atop one another, as is common in this part of the world (‘it was a temple, then a church, then a temple, then a mosque, then a church, then a mosque, now a crumbling tourist attraction’... it's a familiar mantra). 

From here we could walk around and get an exceptional 360° view of modern-day Amman, while prancing around this old fort-city. There were gorgeous ruins of a temple to Hercules, a palace, a mosque, a church, a bathhouse, a guard tower, old whispers of walls and rooms upon rooms upon underground cisterns. And when I looked up and out I saw towers and theatres and mosques and churches and hotels and houses upon houses upon the seven mountains of modern Amman. And I saw the world’s highest flag.

Amman, with a huge Roman theatre sometimes still in use.

But the focus of this trip wasn’t the citadel, or even Amman: it was Wadi Rum. I was traveling with Sofie, my Danish friend who is living in Palestine while she completes a paper for her Master’s program, and we were both eager to get out of the city. Palestine is crowded, sometimes claustrophobic. It is noisy and a bit cagey. Amman is some of those things too, and we both wanted space and quiet. So we rented a car, Sofie, Samer and I, and drove into the night, due south until we reached our destination.

The Desert Wolf at camp. He rocked my hat
so well, I gave it to him.

We were greeted by Ahmed, our Bedouin guide, the Desert Wolf, as he called himself. He was a pirate of a man who took us out into the middle of the desert, turning off his headlights at one point to look at the dark mountains for direction. I thought he was pretty cool, and I thought myself so for being there with him.

And then we stopped at our campsite.

I had a spiritual moment when I stepped out of the car. Looking up and around, letting my eyes get used to the dark, I saw massive shapes jet into the sky like the great teeth of a huge jaw. They surrounded me and would have swallowed me if not for the endlessness of the eternal night above me. Suddenly I was small and insignificant enough to gaze on the Milkiest Way I have ever seen. Honestly, I am having trouble choosing words to describe what I saw because it goes beyond what breath and tongue and lips can forge. This place awakened the vocabulary of angeltongue, of which I know not. But sometimes our bodies are smarter, or perhaps more enlightened, than our worldly-wise minds, and it knew what to do. So instead of saying anything, I ran, jumped, cartwheeled, spun, stretched and fell into a heavendance where my tongue could form no intelligence, my toes swam in the cooling desert and my entirety longed to make one grand jump from where I was to any of the infinity of stars that formed my canopy.

But my lungs exhausted long before my spirit, and I sat by the cooking fire to learn more of Ahmed and prevent my very cells from splitting from one another in ecstasy. We chatted, laughed, wrapped ourselves up and occasionally I looked up at my brobdingnagian ceiling.

Sofie and I didn’t sleep save for an hour or so. Instead, we strolled and explored, confined only by our moat of mountains, speaking of life, or silent in awe. The half-moon glossed everything, and we were quite able to find our way. We felt like we were on the moon, really, but when we looked up, we knew we couldn’t be: high and bright the arching moon chased the stars in an Olympian game of tag, and we found ourselves bewildered to look at something that couldn’t be real, could it? This place is a land one comes to in his dreams and has tea with God, finding clarity in something wholly heavenly and wholly earthly at the same time. It was incarnate, and I understood suddenly the reaction within me, of twins—no, more than twins…halves, perhaps—uniting in divinity unfettered by humanity.

Sofie in the sun.

But we knew it wasn’t over…morning was coming, and we were eager to see the sunrise and to see what our shelter looked like in greater light. A small nap sufficed to pass the time between the stars twinkling out and the sun peeking in. Tired and clunky, we rounded the corner of the nearest mountains in order to see the sun come. I have always found the sunrise to be one of the most beautiful things we can see with our eyes, but here, what he illuminated was so much more glorious. The golden light cast shadows as icebergs of stone rose out of a sandy sea around us. Ann-Sofie sat in awe; I ran into the horizon that never got any closer. Movement seemed the only proper response I could muster for such as Wadi Rum.

And then it was light and we welcomed the warmth of the sun, ate a modest breakfast and packed up camp. Ahmed drove us back to our car which we had abandoned near the road while we listened to some traditional Bedouin music and watched the gathering of the camels. We happened to be near a massive camel racetrack and today was a big day for racing. Some were being fed or watered, others walking around, awkwardly, like something out of a Dr. Suess tale. They are perhaps the only animals that ambulate by moving the feet of the same side at the same time. And then with their cleft lip, underbite and misshapen humps, they really are the goofiest of animals. And they got attitude, too. They spit and look at you with long lashes, bending their necks away from your approaching hand as if to say, “Nu-uh, not today brutha.” So sassy, they are. 

Driving in Jordan

But we had traveling to do so we couldn’t stay. The car hit the road again, this time with me at the helm. Driving is a pleasure I thoroughly miss, so guiding our rental up and down the hills and through the dessert, dodging Maersk trucks and other semi-trucks was quite the gift.

Later that night I found myself back in Palestine, having crossed the King Hussein or Allenby Bridge and passed through three sets of customs (Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian), being driven from Arriha (Jericho) back to Khalil. I passed into that place between wakefulness and sleep and visited Wadi Rum all over. When I got out of the van and walked to my apartment I wondered if I had really been there, or if it was a dream all along...

Jordanian Desert

The World's Highest Flag

Can you find Sofie?

…close your eyes

Warning: the last half of this blog contains no graphic images save ones captured by my words. A bloody holiday has gone by, and I mean no joke in my title. If you’d rather not read of this, stop when you see Eid al-Adha.

I woke up to the goose grumbling yesterday morning and the rooster’s competitive call, though I had wanted to catch up on some sleep. And I was a bit peeved so I closed my eyes and allowed myself to wander into daydreams of roasted goose and rooster cordon bleu. I decided, though, as I parted the covers and embraced a blast of crisp, cold air, that I should not be so upset. Perhaps the fowl aren’t nuisances, I think, but alarm clocks, and just have annoyance wrapped into their function. It was time to get up anyway.

This perspective change settled my fury enough for me to rise and stumble into my kitchen, hungrier for meat than is usual for that time of day. And as I slipped on my slippers, I realized there is much in my life I’ve changed perspective on. Many things surround me whose functions have been…redefined, for my slippers aren’t slippers at all, really. I didn’t bring real slippers with me, but my cement floors are vacuums of heat, so, my L.L.Bean boat shoes with my L.L.Bean socks have become, together, my L.L.Bean slippers. If I close my eyes, they feel about the same.

I go to put on a sweatshirt, but approach no dresser. Instead discarded cardboard boxes for tea, fruit and some other Israeli product sit on the floor, drawers for clothes. One has my shirts, another pants and snuggies, and still another sweaters and flannels.

After I make my coffee (this is real, though Arab, not filter) I head back to my room to climb back into bed for a morning in Middle Earth. I am greeted by hanging vines from window to window that display laundry instead of leaves and flowers, whose scent is soapy, sometimes musty. It makes my thin-walled rooms strangely cavernous when the cold creeps in undeterred, like the heart of Misty Mountains whence the Ring was found (which makes me Gollum, wide-eyed, riddling, fingering my preciousss. Sounds about right.).

Next to my head an upturned drawer becomes a long bedside shelf. Here my coffee perches, as do my collection of books. I don’t actually want this shelf here, because it messes with the spatial arrangement in my near-empty room, but with one outlet five feet off the floor by the exit, it is a matter of practicality: this shelf also supports charging cell phones and computers and razors.

And though I have surround sound (which is a stretch for the noise of these wild children), I have no television or internet, and entertainment is defined by the words of authors. But I think I’d rather have it this way. Coffeeshops with wifi are my transitory offices for e-mail, Skype and an occasional catch-up on some American TV.

When I find a good stopping point in my book, encouraged by a break in text or a call from nature, I get up and use the facilities. Often the water is short, and sputters when I summon her. It’s a good thing I have an Arabic toilet to use when flushing is denied me. Oh, my porcelain pit that opens to sewage, the child of holes and thrones, that proves useful, though pungent. This isn’t so much a change in function as a change within that motivates me to use it.

All of these things can make one feel “not-at-home,” and for me, the feeling of home is important. So I have been purchasing things that make life slightly homier: cooking utensils and even a pan, a knife for cutting and a bowl for rice. I have a couch-ish thing to sit on and a Palestinian flag serves as a light-shade.  And since it was the eve of Eid al-Adha, one of two important Muslim holidays, I had someone over for dinner and we ate on my small cardboard table with plastic-bag cover.

High sun on Eid al-Adha

Eid al-Adha is the holiday where the Muslims remember their father Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his son when God asked him to. In their version of this shared story, the knife remains powerless to cut Ishmael’s neck, and a replacement ram was provided. The Muslim world celebrates this provision (for by it they live) by similarly sacrificing a ram in remembrance, and even in atonement. I have spoken with some of my English-speaking friends who say this replacement sacrifice can erase the owner and his family’s bad deeds. What it also means is that there is a dramatic swell in business at the slaughterhouses and butcher shops. Of this, I went to see.

I connected with a friend of mine at seven in the morning after an earlier-than-usual mosque service. We went and retrieved his family’s sacrifice, a milk-chocolatey ram with short, curling horns, and milky streaks. An apple was brought to encourage the ram’s cooperation, but he didn’t bite; he sensed danger.

We got him to the butcher shop and here the air was soused with the smell of dam (blood). My heart twinged at the thought that our ram could smell it too, but no one seemed to be similarly concerned. We caught the first wave of slaughters, standing in that shop and I held the rams head between my thighs to block out as much sensory input as I could.  Again we tried to get him to eat the apple, but it was no surprise when he turned it down. Soon we relocated him to the pen full of those on death row, and let him forget what he had seen and smelt. Many of the sheep seemed to have that bland look about them as they walked in circles sniffing one another like dogs. Perhaps I was seeing more than was real, that my open eyes deceived me, but our ram behaved unlike the others. Perhaps he had seen too much, for he had a calm not of naivety, but of peril, and he was driving himself slowly as far away from the door that led to the blade as he could.

Inevitably, his quest was fruitless, but I will speak of the process in general, not locating the affliction onto our ram, though I watched as he was led through every step.

A sheep is dragged, bleating and resisting, onto the bloody tile where carcasses lay, twitch and kick. I have recognized only two expressions in the empty eyes of these simpler animals thus far: calm and fear, but as he finds himself on his back, sopping up the blood of his kin, his head raised and knife at his neck, I see for one brief moment something deeply pitiable. He looks at me in absolute terror, though this is not a terror of what might be, but what is to come. He has a knowing terror that breaches the limits of his reason, and here, just before the butcher swipes, the sheep’s eyes become piercingly sharp, dark, like winternight, and then in a blink, they fade into a grey, empty dusk.

I couldn’t tell where life ended and death began; here there is a moment of passing, where some try in ignorance to get back on their feet and escape, only to collapse into gruesome knowledge.

The ones who cry out are the hardest to see go, but each one’s throat is gaped open, their breath immediately rasped and barbed, and their dam joins the sea around us. Perhaps the most graphic part of the process occurs as the twitching and flopping begins, which can continue for what seems like far too long. Thunderous thuds echo as hinged heads hit the floor and the spatter of bloodrain follows as legs involuntarily kick. As I tried to hide our ram from this sight an hour before, I was hit with this fleshy precipitation. The whole place reeked, as deep red rivers found drains and wide-eyes and slacked jaws stared at me in horror from mounds of matted wool. In movies people are beheaded with such grace, if I may use that word so irreverently, and William Wallace’s lover greets this kind of death with a calm sadness. I wonder how terrible it really was to have lived under the shadow of the guillotine.

A calm descends, though, as the sacrifices finally still. Some men congratulate each other and seal the moment with some coffee. Today everyone wears their best clothes, and often their brand new ones, as is tradition to receive for Eid, and it proves to be a strange sight: bloodfloor under the feet of suits and ties and children watching the grisly affair. They wait for the skinning, cleaning and partitioning now, half for their family, half for the poor, and the butchers do this with skill and ease. Some pull a carcass aside and begin, while some open a whole in the leg and pump air between organ and skin, bloating the goat. And as the knife makes slits and the balloon deflates, he lays there awkwardly obese, sagging and limp.

I saw enough; I needed to go home and throw my clothes in the washing machine. I said farewell and blessed my friends, then averted my eyes from what I came to see, and left with a fuller meaning of what a sacrifice really is weighing on my mind, and the images behind the lids of my closed eyes.

...eat with your fingers

Among the Himony’s, and even elsewhere in al Khalil, I am somewhat of a celebrity. This is, of course, only because I am a foreigner (and not because I am a desperately humorous, relationally warm cultural changeling. Who? Me? Go on…). But, really. What this means is that I am always in the limelight, and my dear sirs and misses, that is quite stressful. Under the spot I am expected to talk, to understand, to eat, drink and be merry (for tomorrow we die), and to always wear my sixteen-dollar smile. But let’s be honest, sometimes I want to pout, mope and be gloomy (for tomorrow we wake up to the same damn goose, honking it’s beak-horn inches outside my window).

The party crowd

But there was a week I disappeared, though I cannot say I was pleased about it.

See, the seasons have changed and I find myself even cold sometimes. Yes, cold. The drama of it all gave me the flu, actually. Shukran, my dear Mother Nature, for lovely days of headaches, muscle pain and busy, exhausting dreams that stitched together ugly nights. Good thing I had Middle Earth, with her tales of dragons and great, big spiders and great, small hobbits, to have spent my many dreary hours in (while also dreaming of eating the goose that barked my sleep into exhaustion).

But finally the cold sweats passed, and now my skull is no longer host to a small war. I can look at this computer screen and type without my eyes turning into subwoofers. Yaaeeey…

Blurry but enthusiastic. Old and young dancing.

Fall brings more than influenza, though. It brings earwigs! Uhhh…And a wedding! Much betterrr… This wedding was quaint and not as big as the first one I went to. Something about that thing was epic; this was more modest. The dancing was fun, the crowd smaller, the event shorter. We ate our small meal at the end of the ruckus and let the next day happen.

I haven’t yet mentioned that the young man who got married is my Arab brother, Ibrahim. So this time I got to be a part of the three-day affair; I got to help. Day two came and I rose early to join my family in the preparations for the big lunch they were to provide. The large hall we were in, owned by the Himony family and used for events like these, needed a cleaning. The night before hundreds of men had sat in chairs drinking coffee, tamir (sweet date juice) and eating sweets after congratulating the groom and his family. Spilt liquids, candy-wrappers and cigarette butts carpeted the concrete. So we flooded, scrubbed and squeegee’d it, leaving it shiny and ready for tables and chairs, chairs, chairs.

Me dancing with a young Himony

But we finished early and had some time to sit and rest, though the kitchen crew was working hard to prepare the food (as they were doing when we arrived this morning). I took to cutting pita bread into fourths and then preparing plastic bowls for the hoards of men that began to arrive after morning prayers, around noon.

Here is the process from pot to plate: Oily, salty, unbearably tasty mass-roasted almonds get sprinkled into plastic bowls. These bowls get filled with rice from a pot the size of a small tub and flipped onto a plate. The bowl is removed and a beautiful almond-capped rice-mountain stands, awaiting a hunk of lamb meat. When they are married (till teeth do them part) they head to ever-flipping tables and chairs to be et by friends and family. When satisfied and gone, plates return to the kitchen, get cleared, washed and reused. After all, we are feeding upwards of two thousand people (did I forget to mention that? Well it’s true. 2000. Two-thousand). Did I also forget to mention that everything is done with fingers?

Preparing the meal

 UnSANitaryyy! (That’s meant to be sung)

I spent the morning in the kitchen jumping between tasks: putting almonds into bowls or being the rice man (so fun) or passing the rice man empty bowls. And all was done with really greasy hands.

After the men ate the women came, around two. There are fewer of them and its all a bit less-rushed. We were able to prep many of the plates before hand, and barely needed to prepare any more after that. Then I moved on to do the dishes. For like, six centuries.

Meanwhile, some ladies remained chatting in the dining room, though the men had long-since disappeared. There is a tradition here where the groom’s close friends take him home, strip him down to his skivvies, wash him and give him a good shave (earlier they partook in the tradition of feeding him with their fingers. Remember, lamb and rice. It was messy, but smiley). I would have enjoyed experiencing the groom-grooming, but there are many things that require better Arabic to anticipate, so I missed it while in the kitchen. I was present, however, for the rest of the evening, albeit dirty and splattered. A great host of Himony men went to the family of the bride’s neighborhood, and once again sat down and drank shockingly sweet coffee and, from what I can gather, exchanged blessings. Then the bride, Raghada, got into the car with Ibrahim and away we went, a honking, screeching parade, until we made it to a wedding hall.

This hall hosted the women who, with dresses and make-up I only hear tales about, watch each other dance and eat cake and sit and gab. Outside the hall, impromptu music would spring up, hearts warm with enthusiasm, and a circle would emerge in the center of a crowd. Dancing would spark, as would some sneaky fireworks, and Himony men would be hoisted onto shoulders and celebrated. In between these jolts of joviality we stood around, chatted, waited, or ran into the small store to buy a snack. Mostly, though, cigarettes were smoked.

I admit, I didn’t have the stamina to keep going, though. After leaving the shelter of the kitchen I had, once again, garnered altogether too much attention, and my brain was too tired to keep translating. I had been on my feet since that morning, about 10 hours earlier, and hadn’t had a chance to freshen up. Plus the twerps, as I affectionately call the boys who find it their duty to be parasites around me, were being extra twerpy (or maybe my fuse was just a bit shorter). Either way, I found someone to drive me home, and I was never happier to see it.

I was blessed to have been a part of the wedding-machine, to work with my hands, to do something half-way rigorous, and to be out of the limelight a bit more than usual (and not because of my health deciding to run off and dance with Hades for a week). But it is inescapable (the limelight, that is). I wasn’t unhappy, though, to have been left behind at lunch with the women. I poked my head out of the kitchen and was beckoned forward for hearty, breasty chuckles about my relation to the family. These women, with their splintered faces, smiled matronly at me while in the peripheral I saw the younger ones lean in to whisper to each other and giggle. I’m sure they were mentioning my blonde hair and great, Caucasian features. Well, probably not, but I was offered a Khalili wife again, and I thanked the women and said Insha’allah, and then remarked about how expensive weddings were, with shock in my eyes.

But the truth is I don’t want a Khalili wedding. Not now. Sometimes I’d rather just be in the kitchen with oily hands than out there in the limelight. The wonder of being a foreigner has its stresses.