…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.