…prepare for war

Well, there has been more fighting in Khalil, but you probably haven’t heard about it on the news. The entire city has erupted into war; men, women, children, all are fighting. And there isn’t one Khalili who wouldn’t find some pleasure in nailing a foreigner with good chuck. My friends and I are highly prized targets; it isn’t safe out there.

Each time I step out of my apartment I must prepare for war. My roommate David and I strap on gloves, wrap our heads in our kuffiyas and fill plastic bags with snowballs. See, an a’sifah has descended and covered the city with beautiful, sweet, peaceful snow. And everything has shut down (except the bakeries, of course). It means snowball fights and long cozy days (if you can get cozy in your icebox). No one goes out for any other reason.

Snowbride

If you can imagine it, I am not kidding. My neighborhood thunders with squeals and shouts of puffy militants. A delight has fallen with the snow and we cannot walk for ten minutes without greeting and joining any number of battles. You don’t have to know anyone to roll a tight-packed grenade and lob it into the fray. In fact, if you aren’t careful you may be the victim of some strong arm. And you don’t have to know who it belongs to. It is the absolute fruition of a winter wonderland. Snowmen, snowbrides and even snowtanks have risen into form.

Armed and ready

David and I needed to visit our friend, so after arming up, we plowed through the enemy defenses, wielding our makeshift machine-guns. But we only made it through one line of defense, one battle, before we were faced with another onslaught of artillery. Despite my kuffiya’d attempt at concealment, a shout arises “Hada Simon!” and our cover’s been blown. Everyone seems to forget past woes and unites under one purpose: destroy the foreigners. Occasionally we get an ally, but they usually defect fairly quickly and we even get backstabbed by malicious smiles and batted eye-lashes. It is a war, albeit one fought with smiles and laughter. In the slue I see someone I don’t recognize. “Dar min inta?! Himony? Ana keman!” My plea for brotherhood gives me some air and I use it to run. Wet, panting and laughing we escape to the street, leaving the fog of Himony battle behind.

Escaped and proud

It has been a good year so far, and a welcomed change from the constant and cold rain. New Year’s Day was quite fun as well. It arrived with a Danish welcome: I jumped off a piece of furniture “into the new year” and greeted it with hugs and well-wishing and some secret champagne. A delightful feast and a failed cake ended twenty-twelve. The Danes made a lasagna extraordinaire, I made the cake; I think my kitchen-luck expired with that turkey…

At three in the morning I was able to see my family through the internet and tell them how twenty-thirteen felt, since they were still in old time, and I spoke a sweet promise. See, I couldn’t sing it for the holidays, but I decided a remix would do: I’ll be home for Valentine’s Day, you can count on me, for I am returning to the States in February. My mother, of course, did a bit of a dance not unlike the ones she does when she shows off the food she is cooking. I smiled and we talked about what life will look like this year, as is custom on the first.

But it is more bitter the more sweet. I may be excited for Dunkin’ Donuts, but my coffee will be glaringly American; I may be anticipating old friends, but my conversations will be dreadfully English. So, as I did with my family, I do with my friends, though this time I emphasize the bitter. My news that I must leave is usually greeted with wide eyes, questions and sweet words of sadness. But I know I’ll miss them more.

And as we do at the heads of years, and especially in seasons of partings, I looked back to see what trail I blazed, and was almost shocked to realize it was a year ago I first stepped foot on the holy land and first inhaled the tense, Mediterranean air. And so a truth I was told in my youth has proved itself again, and I found it to be ugsome: the puissance of time is indomitable, and I am merely a pawn.

Goodness, that was a bombastic sentence, for, let’s be honest, the influence of time is what’s really unstoppable, and I am powerless to do anything about it.

Struttin' in style

The streets of Bethlehem play this poetic part in this whole adventure of mine, and I’ve been on them a lot lately. The Orthodox celebrated Christmas on the 6^th and 7^th and I was able to attend the midnight service. And so once again I was able to observe the birth of Jesus, though you don’t have to enter the church to do so for it is in decorations all over Bethlehem this time of year. And I remember walking down Manger Street a year ago, in full rebellion of the touristy funnel gimmicks, where my love for Palestine was birthed, and how it swelled when I bought dates and oranges in Ariha (Jericho) and took root when I visited the Israeli-Arab town of Nasrah (Nazareth) where great churches commemorate the immaculate conception, though I ignored them for the immediate connection with some Palestinians.

Waltzing down Manger Street

So I visited Stars and Bucks and was able to speak with my friend there, the first Palestinian I jawed on the first Palestinian street I trod, and I told him of his place in my great story. I did not spare the details: I was standing there partly due to him. He beamed with importance and I bought a Mocha.

And I was blessed by this much more than the service, for he is why I came: the Palestinian who goes to work and speaks Arabic and smiles in such a way that I cannot understand. I didn’t come to go to church. So I find myself in the living room of Abu Noor, with his wife and children laughing, enjoying a gas heater and whatever we can find on YouTube, whether Arab music or American, or some Saudi insanity or Palestinian patriotism. And we learn and share and stumble through translations and stories. Here I am always welcome as a son, and it is the room that is most sweet, where I make deep-contact with sparkling irises, eat delicious food, and regret my plane ticket in the quiet places of thought.

Cozy dar Anwar

Last week we watched the Nativity Story with Arabic subtitles to see how the Christian version of the Christmas story goes. Anwar agreed that it was “too similar to Islam.” And by too he means very, though he can’t seem to get that one down. I spend most of my time here at Abu Noor’s. If I have weeks left, I will get as much out of them, for in this way I prepare myself for the great battle with depression that I will face when I cross the Atlantic. I have sworn to myself not to let the days pass without engaging with that which I am here for: the Palestinian who goes to work and speaks Arabic and smiles in such a way that I cannot understand. And now, after living here, I cannot forget it either. And I won’t. I will study Arabic, find Arab friends, and never forget what I have seen and heard and who I have met in this bittersweet land. Those are my New Year Resolutions. Those, and going to the gym, of course.

…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.

…lift something

Two days ago was the 4^th of July and even though I know it happened, I have no memories of celebrating the fourth outside of America’s borders. So here’s to making memories. I allowed a bit of homesickness to be shaken, not stirred, with a bit of pride. I put on some red, white and blue and planned a hamburger-and-corn-on-the-cob-and-potato-salad dinner over a campfire in the nearby countryside. Two Danes, an Aussie, a Kiwi and a Palestinian celebrated with we-three-Americans and joined in reveling in our rebellious histories where we defied great Britain and lifted off the yoke of bondage. I suppose that’s a bit dramatic but hey, it’s the Fourth. Lets get dramatic. The Danes spoke of freedom from the Nazi occupation, the Oceanics dreamed of a queen-less future and the helicopters overhead said enough for our Palestinian friend.

We sang the appropriate patriotic songs (this rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” was the most meaningful of my whole life), and ended the evening with some illegal fireworks. Between those and some successful cooking over the campfire, we agreed that our dads would have been so proud. The night was thoroughly American.

And I was happy for the evening off. Some classes were cancelled so we could celebrate and my aching body rested from going to the gym. Yes, I’ve been going to the gym. Codo Gym, where flexing bodybuilders and WWE champions glare down at me with their shining build and skimpy undies.

One of my many encounters with a native has turned from pal to gym-buddy. Walking home one day, I met Karram, who looks exactly like a blue-less Avatar; he works at a men’s clothing shop that I pass everyday, and so another pit-stop was added to my commute. A couple of days later he asked me if I wanted to go the gym. Never before have I answered ‘yes’ with such confidence, for after two months of sitting at a desk and eating bread-with-anything, I really wanted to go to the gym, really. My only hang-up: he didn’t get out of work until 10pm. Late, but worth it, even with my mornings being cut shorter. It’s a necessary evil, I suppose, to vanquish the real enemies: muffin topper and lethargisizer.

And it was immediately satisfying.

It is a funny kind of gym, though. Without any women it is a kind of frat-house where some bros are chubby, some are fit, and some are stuck in the 90s with oversized biceps and chests and hair parted down the middle. The equipment is mostly good, but there is only one or two of each machine. And the treadmill stares right into a mirror, so you can see every loose section of flesh flail as you sweat and grunt and regret what you had for lunch. Running has always been good for self-reflection, I suppose.

But weights are weights and, despite the use of kilos as measurement, they work just fine. So I lift them. And though I am there to stay fit and active, I am turning into the gym entertainer. See, I am American so I must know great workout music. They ask me about Eminem and 50 Cent and play music that sends me back to high school dances and then take the weights out of my hand and demand that I teach them to dance like an American. I dodge this by joking, “you need a woman to dance like we do in the states.” They laugh and high-five me; it suffices. Back to weights.

It doesn’t happen like this in the States. No, when I enter the gym here I greet the other usuals with handshakes and smiles and waves to those who are momentarily weighed down. They shout out “Marhabbah Wisam!” I hold a membership for “Wisam Himony,” which is my Arabic name. Here I am always Wisam. I fill up my water bottle, wave to the men ironically smoking by the window, and get started.

But on the Fourth, I was Simon. I lifted the Arab identity and remembered the eye-contact-less gyms of the States where we pretend we are the only ones in the room. I skipped the Arab frat party for my own American one. And as my family in Maine camped in the woods without me, I set off some fireworks and celebrated a home-away-from-home. And on Thursday, I was Wisam again.