Category Archives: Middle East

Love is Subversive- Written for Varal do Brasil

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“ Love is subversive”

 

It was what I thought  when I finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Love in the Time of Cholera”. Florentino lived stories where he was never present, waiting his whole life for a childhood love. In Colombia of the book, it was only possible when the flag separates them from it all, the flag of the Cholera. Because Cholera is contagious, and love could only exist in this way contained in a boat in a river because in society it corrupts everything. It corrupts all the visions.

This thought came to my mind a thousand times. Every single time that I have been to violent places. Every single time when I have been to very developed places. Why is it that love is so difficult?

In my whole life I have searched to give love to so many people in so many places. There was however always a point that I left. It was because the love that I searched to rescue me from myself, could not do it. Love made me vulnerable. It was because love was missing inside of me.

Love collapses something from which we are not prepared for Ideas versus the body. We feel love or some form of it in our body and we think about it in some other way.

I feel that love is compassion. Compassion is to understand what Asians philosophers; religious men, sociologists and many others have touched the idea that we are all of the time individuals in a plural world. Love collapses separation from the other. Love is human.

And as has Victtorio Arrigoni, the Italian activist killed in Gaza, said, we must stay human.

When I crossed the wall of separation in Israel, to get to the West Bank, (against the will of my friends) I, for the first time, met Palestinians. At the time I already used to write the stories of the people I met around the world. From Palestine I wrote about my daily life.

One day an Israeli philosopher with whom I was supposed to meet and kept postponing because I kept staying everyday one more day in the West Bank, sent me a text message saying he wished he could see what I was seeing.

I offered to send him the emails I had sent to my friends and within hours he sent me a text message saying,

“I cannot see you anymore”.

I asked him whether it was because of what I had written in my emails and he agreed. I was intrigued since I had not written anything about the occupation or the politics. I called him and he explained to me he did not know why it was so difficult. I insisted, after all he was a philosopher that was his job to make something familiar, strange.

“It is too human”.

It was difficult for him to say this. I was thankful. He followed by saying: “had you written about the occupation or the politics, I would have understood. I could have agreed or disagreed, I am prepared for that. But when you write about yoga or love or how they take care of you like we do here, it is too human”.

That day I went to Jerusalem to talk to him. I have never seen him again. But that has remained in my mind forever. When I write about the Human, I collapsed all separations, all of them.

And there is nothing more human than love, collapsing the mind versus the body dichotomy. It is very difficult to deal with all the confusion that comes from the enormous vulnerability of love, of being human of not being separate from the other, the others.

In Colombia, not along ago, I met a man from Gaza. He has a bar/restaurant in Taganga, (a fishermen village by the Tayrona Park). It was his way for fighting for Palestine: serving food.

In front of his cafe/restaurant, there were drawing of Handalas and “revolucion” written on the wall.

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Handalas is a cartoon. He is the most famous character by the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali. Handala is depicted as a ten year-old boy, the figure has turned his back to the viewer, and has clasped hands behind his back.

He has always his back turned to the viewer and hands clasped because Naji Al Ali was critical of both Israeli and Arab leaderships. He rejected all peace solutions that came from outside.

It is different in Colombia. When I arrived in Taganga, I first saw the Palestinian flag, and then the Revolucion written in the wall and then the Handalas. I introduced myself to Yassert, the owner of the cafe/restaurant as someone who loves the Middle-East and who has friends in both sides of the wall.

I went back to Yassert’s cafe every single day. I went back to hear his story, to drink his coffee, and to see his son, he had become a friend.

Right on the first day I had been there, I went back to my hostel and decided to research more about the character Handala. I read why he had clasped hands. He refused help of the outside world.

I immediately remembered that there in Colombia the Handalas painted in the restaurant of a man who had fought in the Intifada, who had been released by the Red Cross, held hands in a massive hug. I remembered that one carried a key, the other a weapon; one had a sling shot downwards. All carried by their shoulders.

I disliked seeing a weapon. I however, when I read that Naji al Ali had made them in clasped hands and separated, with their back to the viewer, felt relief. There in Colombia they held each other. There is one who carries a weapon in his shoulder, but his arms and hands supports the other. The neighbour.

I looked back on my mind, to remember that the WORD Revolucion was written differently as well. There was the word LOVE in the middle backwards. It was in bright red letters. There where love was so subversive that was kept in a boat, a man who had fought in an Intifada, serves food. He fights for his cause with his restaurant, feeding people, bringing those who are willing to talk to talk.

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And in his wall Handalas hug and the biggest word is LOVE.

Love, is subversive, but has not been contained by the boat of Florentino. Love is human. With all it perfect imperfection. And Vittorio Arrigoni, italian activist who was killed in Gaza, knew that.

I have been sometimes disturbed by activists who seem to all fight their own ghosts in other places. The same thing I have done myself in so many places in the world.

That day, someone I love, showed me for the first time Vittorio’s blog. His main message was “Stay Human!”

To love is to remain human. With the weapons, the cameras, and the fears. Love is subversive because it forces us to stay. It collapses all divisions.

So from Colombia, from Taganga, I thanked the universe, humans, god…. that cholera had been contained, but not love. Love exists in every part we allow it to be. That might be the path: to allow it to be in its full humanity, in all its perfect imperfection.

The Bracelet and The Key

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I have found my bracelet. Mysteriously like everything else that happens here in Colombia. In this mixture of  Africa, Europe and indigenous culture we can expect anything to happen. I however, never expected   for the first email that I got as a response to my last to come from Palestine, from my first Palestinian friend I had met the first day when I crossed the separation wall. That day it was the birthday of his best friend, and so Lorenzo (who is now here with me) was also there. It was in Ahmad s house that I met Lorenzo for the first time. This only came to mind as I read Ahmads email saying he thought it was a beautiful story and that he wished I found my misplaced bracelet, and that he wished he could be here with us.

I was  exasperated first to find out Ahmad read me. I somehow never thought he did. Then I was touched he  understood it was important for me a lost  bracelet, as I did understand in life sometimes we put emotions in things. And I had mine  ( feelings of belonging) there. And somehow in reading his words, I remembered the keys Palestinians kept since Al Naqbah ( the great disaster when Palestinians lost their houses..). Palestinians kept
the key to the front door of their houses, when they had to leave them in 48, hoping one day to return.The key is full of symbolic meaning. And I till  very recently used to feel we should all just let things go and move on. Now thought I still carry this belief in me, I understand, we must do it, but not before profoundly understanding where it came from. And yesterday I understood that well.

We went out dancing, Cartagena is the land of dancing. I love dancing. I have friends from my hostel, but also locals now. And as usual I put people together. And I danced, and danced. And yet…. there was this loneliness in me last night so I walked away from my friends…and I wandered off. I was taken by a looking like middle eastern guy to dance. He was a brilliant dancer. And I was silent. I danced without saying anything particular of me. And I felt so happy. And suddenly just as he came from nowhere… he disappeared.

I, for my own shortcomings, felt abandoned, and even sadder… And I kept wandering in that place. I had a desire to cry. In fact, I just could not contain my tears… so I cried feeling like a boat that is wandering aimlessly and does not want to be seen by any fellow sails men. I remembered Ishmael in Moby Dick.

And as I made my way around and was taken to dance by other Colombians. I decided to just not care about anything anymore yet I was sad and did not want to loose connection to what i felt.. It took me so much to get here. I could not trace where it came from this saddness. Or maybe, I could the beginnings of it… but not deeply it…. I had no courage to follow the thread of my feeling of loss. And suddenly, I bumped into the guy again. And I decided to talk to him.

It was a great thing to do. Because now he has a story. My abandonment was just mine. And it had no relationship to the world.

This middle eastern looking like, came from San Diego. He was born out of a father that came form Colombia, and a mother from Mexico. Though he looked in his 30s he was 19. He had just started a trip through South America to find out where he came from. His own father left Colombia when he was 11 to become American . Chris, the boy, had never been here. He was also a climber and had saved money to come to a trip to south america. It would pass through Brazil as in California he joined some Brazilian church.

So we stood out and talked. He told me about being raised by a grandmother who usually had described the house she was from. It was hand made by the family. It was there that his father was born. Now he had been to Bogota and had visited this house. I had tears in my eyes listening to him trace back the journey of his life. Discovering all that he came from, and yet knew not. We spent hours speaking and I understood why I needed to make internal home.

I understood the keys from Palestine. I understood the need we all have to go back and understand things. This boy is wondering south america learning a new language and meeting people. He is deeply religious… and yet all I could see of his trip was how human it was.

By the time he finishes he expects to be able to speak better Spanish. He expects to talk more to his family. I expect him to find out, what is south american of him. I understood last night so much of this existential quest. I understood though I did not carry a key like that of Al Naqbah ( the great disaster) I also did wish I could go back to my home. Yet for all of us it might be unreachable. We do not need the key, nor the house, but somehow we need to understand where do we come from.

Being here makes me understand so much of me as a traveler. It also makes me understand Al Naqbah much more deeply. So I wish one day my Palestinian friends will, (like I hope I do) understand we dont need to carry a key, or a bracelet. We need to carry a bigger space inside. One that allows us to create what we are. I do understand though today that we all must take this journey to an nonexistent past by carrying some special things.

So as I mysteriously reencounter my bracelet, jut as I loose my key to my lock. I am taken by joy the bracelet is still containing me, while happiness the lock can be broke. I ask for someone to break it. I get my passport back, my money and I feel both contained by those I love, and yet free to find out where I ll go.

Joy the last form of Resistance?

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I arrived in the airport in Sao Paulo before 5 am. The airport was empty and I walked pratically alone to the imigration. As I delivered my Brazilian passport to a Brazilian lady who was working there that morning I said ” Good morning”. She looked at me and smiled and told me “good morning and welcome back.’

I pointed out that it was amazing for her to be in such a good mood that early. She explained she had been awake since last night, that her shift was about to be over.

“Oh, so you will be able to go to sleep soon :)”

But she was leaving in one hour straight to the university and eventually in the afternoon she would sleep for a couple hours before she would wake up to prepare dinner for her husband who would come home. She said all of that smiling and laughing.

The experience of leaving an Israeli airport where you have to get everything out of your bag, get asked several times the same question, that you are asked whether you are carrying a bomb, and why you have been to Muslim countries like Malaysia or Indonesia to arriving in Brasil where a lady sleep deprived who lives in a crappy neihbourhood where people probably get more killed in a weekend than years of Israeli conflict and still smiles (when she still has hours to go) is a shocking one.

Most of the time when I return to Brazil and I see the loudness and happiness of Brazilians I want to shout ” Why are you people so happy? Why is it that we laugh so much when it is all chaos?”

Not this time. This time I smiled inwardly and I felt an enormous joy to see that in spite of all Brazil´s problems people are happy.

As I am pondering about that my friend Jaafar writes me. He tells me he had just celebrated Eid ( the end of Ramadan) in Tel Aviv. I am puzzled. And I asked him how did it go. He tells me he was with friends and that they had swam in the beach. They made Israeli friends.

I ask him to tell me about it. And he tells me they were in a Restaurant  and that there were two girls that sat next to them. They asked whether they could join them. They asked in English. The girls were 18. They said yes. They did not know they were Palestinians. Once they found out they replied ” we are peace and love”

He tells me they did not know where Nablus was. I ask whether they knew where Schem is ( the Hebrew name for Nablus). They didn´t. In fact, Jaafar tells me he showed them the picture of it in the map on his phone.

They were surprised ” But that is Israel”. Jaafar tells me this laughing. He finds it funny they did not know where the West Bank was.

I wish I could have been there and seen all of this. I am not even sure what to think.

Jaafar is working with an Israeli IT girl in developing a new app. He asks me an opinion. I am not  an expert on it but I give it. And as this conversations happens through the internet I cannot help but think how small the world has become because of it. All the people I met because of Instagram, couchsurfing, and all the opinions I can now ask from far away on skype, email, Facebook etc. The fact that he can take his Iphone out and show where he comes from in a map to people who have long heard about Palestinians being their neighbours but who do not know the Israel they see is a huge part Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“How did you feel in Tel Aviv?” I ask him

” We had lots of fun. We laughed a lot!”

Strange. I had always felt Tel Aviv was a bubble for Tel Avivians. It was the first time I realised it could be a bubble to anyone.

Laughter seems to be always the refuge of the naive. Irony is said to be the only possibility when all is too painful. I ponder about that and realise only an intelectual could have come up with that. So caught up in ideas about ideas. Seriousness is always solemn and is seen as inteligence. In the world of the mind to laugh seems always frivolous, naive, out of touch with reality. But I am starting to think that those that laugh are the most in contact with reality there is. The most aware of the reality they can´t change. They laugh.

It comes to me the Tibetans. Always smilling. The Thai. Brazilians. Are these people so in contact with reality that they just refuse nowadays to let the harshness of it enter their bodies? Their minds? Is laughter after all the last possibility of resistance?

I am not sure. But it does definetely feel better to be next to those who laugh… I take my passport back and I wish the lady she will have a happy day. She smiles and says “It is already.”

A Small World

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The world it is a small place. Very small indeed.

Last year I was in the West Bank and I became friends with Manoel Ramos a Mexican who was studying in Bethelehem. I met Manoel when Jaafar my Palestinian friend drove me to Bethelehem from Nablus.

Manoel knew everybody. In his broken arabic he work almost like an informal counsel to taxi drivers, vendors, people on the street…  he gave family advice etc… I felt that Manoel could say anything he wanted because he was always smiling. Manuel once took me to see a couple of old men playing back gamon. In fact, we were just going to go buy something to eat but with Manoel it meant stopping everywhere to talk to everybody. So we stopped by these two older men who played back gammon every afternoon.

It was a beautiful image. Beit Sahour. The old old old Roman looking like buildings and men seating around this back gammon set. I took a picture of it. Some months ago I uploaded it on my Instagram.

Instagram for those who do not know is an phone app. It allows you to take pictures, put filters modifying them and to upload them online. Your friends can follow you and see what you are posting. You have also the option to see pictures of people you do not know. It all works by following how pictures are indexed.

For instance I took a picture in France and when I uploaded I wrote #France.  This picture will be indexed with everybody else who once wrote #France in their picture. You can index several times the same picture using several different categories. Ex: #France #Provence #Sunset #bicycle etc

When I take a picture and index it #Palestine and I click on the ‘#Palestine’ itself I can see all other pictures that were indexed this way. Depending on what you write there could be millions of pictures. If you write #cats there will be millions if you write a name of a small village there will be probably few. Depending on your patience and your interest you can browse as many pictures you want.

Sometimes I look into other pictures and if I really like  it I click on the name  of the person who took it ( a person who is unknown to me) and I am able to see what they have uploaded.

Anyway, I uploaded the picture of the two older men playing backgamon months ago. And I tagged it saying #beitshahour #palestine #backgamon. And one of these days while I was traveling France I received a message on the picture in Instagram saying “My grandfather!”

I was shocked.

“Did you mean he looks like your grandfather? Or is this your grandfather?”

“It is my grandfather!”

This girl’s ( who was unknown to me) had seen by chance a picture of her grandfather on my Instagram. I was amazed.

Then some weeks went by and I was already in the middle east posting pictures of Jerusalem and the West Bank when a girl I did not know started liking my pictures. She started to follow my pictures and one day she wrote me an email on facebook. It was a lovely email she told me she was Palestinian descendant but she lived in the US and that she was now in Jordan. I wrote her back and through Facebook we suddenly realised that we had a friend in common. Not only a friend it was Jaafar who took me to meet Manoel. Jaafar who I wrote about a couple emails backs, and who is not only her friend but it is her cousin.

I was amazed again. The world is so small!

Today as I land in Brasil I checked my emails and I got a message from Fernanda who I met because of Gabriel who i knew because he had once written about the middle east. I became her friend because she was going to Asia and I offered to give her tips. We met once. We exchanged several emails and today she had written me to tell me she was happy I was coming to Brasil.

She concluded in the email that the world was small. She had just met in Cambodia a Mexican that had met me in Palestine. I could not believe it. She had met Manoel.

Going Home

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Everybody who knows me, knows I am an impulsive person. Everybody who has spent some time with me knows I do things in the spur of the moment. For better or worse.

When I was in Brasil I arrived there against my will. I had broken my foot then.  I wanted to run away from inside. I wanted to go back to being a traveler in Asia. Listening and watching the stories of others. I could not see a place for me in Brazil.  My friends and family had the Brazilian inexhaustible joy and patience to put up with me always having existential crisis. They heard me buy and cancel numerous tickets back to Asia. And somehow I just could not ever go.

While I was in Brasil I went every week to the simple bar of Cidao. Cidao was something like a legend.  A tall black man that owned a small super simple bar that had great music every single day. I went numerous times to Cidao. I took dozens of different people there. I sat in uncountable tables with strangers. I knew his wife, his child, the musicians, and the people who went there as much as I did. I would often, stop there alone.  I was always certain it would be great music and there was always Cidao.

Cidao was nothing short of a legend. People had many different stories about him. He was a simply guy. An ex truck driver. He was never too customer friendly like people learn in Marketing classes. He was just Cidao and I guess that is why people like me went there.

As I flew to Israel almost a month ago I got dozens of messages via mail, text, whastapp, facebook of different people telling me that Cidao had just died. I was alone in an airport.  I knew no one. And I was quiet, still in total silence. I had competing emotions. Sometimes I felt really happy I had gone there so many times in this few months.

I also felt sad I did not go more.  I felt sad when I thought of his wife, and his now orphaned child. I wondered about the musicians, the bar.. And I tried several times to remember how was my last goodbye to Cidao.I could never remember it precisely.  It was probably a hug. And  I was sad it was not a longer one. I remembered that as I was leaving early, he said ” Ja vai?” “So soon going?” I explained I was about to go to travelling to France and that this was my last time there.

He replied that it was the last time on this trip to Brasil.

During these weeks so many times Cidao has come to my mind. I always pushed it away. I always tried to focus in where I am. Where I should go next. But yesterday morning it flooded me. And I decided to stop and think about it. And I realized that Cidao meant somehow a feeling of home for me. And that I keep going thinking that home will always be there. Cidao’s death represents for me the impermanence of life.

I noticed I would never be able to be there again. It is such an obvious statements but somehow I felt a cold shiver through my spine. And I suddenly missed not knowing about all the wrinkles I am missing the story of. All the children that were born in my family whom I will not mean anything to.

It came to me the image of me and my cousin seating with my grandmother one  month ago in Arles in  the South of France. We were happy. My grandmother described that state of  life like a dream. ” I can’t believe I am 88 and I can still travel to such a beautiful place with my two young granddaughters.”

We were all happy.We all found what we needed in that trip.

When they left to go to Brasil and I was left alone in the airport I felt devastated. Airports are the most familiar places to me and yet I felt they could not be anymore. I still took another flight and this time I came to visit those I already knew. I planned to go back to Asia to see the places I had not. But I just could no do it Not without first having a home.

Everyday I wanted to go home. And today  I impulsively bought my ticket. Was it an impulse. Yes and no. It was, in the way I bought it for tomorrow. But everything inside of me is looking to be home. And for the first time in a long time I know exactly where that is.

I have finally reconciled myself with the place I come from. As the great musician Benjamin Taubkin had once told me. It is a place where there is always space for creating something new. I am ready finally, for a new life!

Tel Aviv- Being a Bridge

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Tel Aviv. I meet Jaafar. I haven’t seen him since last year when I was in the West Bank.

I had met Jaafar in Nablus, because of Yahyah who is Sam’s brother. I had become their friend learning this way about all the intricacies of the thoughts of these young boys from Nablus.

They had driven me to Bethelem telling me they were already going there anyway. Which I realized quite soon it was not true, they were just being kind to me. I have written here before, about how difficult it was that time for me and my three Palestinian friends to be taken by my Italian friend to see the separation wall. I wrote extensively about how unhappy I was by his poor choice of making us walk inside of the metal bar corridors that lead us to the checkpoint. I wrote about how much I silently cried feeling like we were animals. How sad I  was to realize that my friends here could not meet my friends there. How much I hated that wall. I wrote about taking refuge in an icecream with them.

Now Jaafar is here in Tel Aviv. He works with computers in Ramallah and had been invited by Microsoft in Herzelya to go visit them. Microsoft had applied for the permissions for Jaafar and 2 other Palestinians to come to Israel. It is not the first time that he comes to Microsoft. This time however, he could not make it. They were held too many hours in the checkpoint.

I know nothing of this when I go meeting him. All I know is that at 8pm he would be free for not very long as it was a one-day permit and they have to return soon from Tel Aviv to Ramallah.

I walk the streets towards the place we are supposed to meet in but Jaafar sees me first. He is inside of a natural shop with his friends. I go in. I am puzzled by what they are buying. “Protein” they explain. “It is for the gym”. I laugh and walk around the shop. Being intrigued by the amount of health food they hold. They speak to the older Jewish Israeli owner in English. He is curious and wants to know where they are from.

They say they are from “Schem” the Hebrew name of Nablus. The old man says he had been there as a child. That it was a wonderful place. He wished he could visit. They tell him he should come. I am intrigued by how friendly the conversation is.

We walk out. And Jaafar and I go for a walk. Michal, my Israeli Jewish friend, is coming to meet us. I feel some joy about it.

We meet her, and walk while we talk about all that has happened since I last saw him. Who got married, changing of jobs, ramadan, etc….

I see in Jaafar’s face how happy he is to see me. I am happy to see him too.

I tell him about my settler friend. I ask him whether it disturbs him I had been out with a settler. He asks me what kind of a settlement it is from. I explain it was a neighborhood mainly consisting of Palestinian people. That I was told that there were Jewish people who had always lived  there. I ask him what he thinks about it

“I think it is ok.”

“Do you think they should be made to move back to Israel?”

“I think the new settlements yes. But people who have always been there no. Palestinians and Jews mostly lived in peace for years. The can stay.. but the new ones should go.”

I ask him what he feels about Palestinians Citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis). Should they move to Palestine once (if) there is a state? He does not think so. They live here. They are used to their lives here. They have always lived here so they should not have to move.

We are now seating in Habima beautiful square. Right in front of the Theater and right on the garden. We seat on a corner. Jaafar is to on the middle.

Michal asks him things as well. We talk about Nablus which Michal did not know it was the same place as Schem. We look for the etymology of the name. I tell him she wanted to come but is afraid.  He tells her she is more than welcome to come. She explains she does not have a different passport. She is Israeli and according to the law Israelis can’t go to the West Bankn ( unless they are settlers, or IDF soldiers). He tells her she could ask for a Permit like he had done it. She explains she feels it might be dangerous for an Israeli to go there. She says it politely, careful, as she cares about what he thinks, and because she also wants to know more, and is afraid. He suggests she does not go around screaming she is an Israeli and that she speaks English. But he does not believe she would have a problem.

She explains she is certain that most people would be nice but she is afraid of terrorists. Her mother, she explains, would be terrified if she went to the WB. She is curious but at the same time she is afraid of going. She does not want to have to conceal her Israeli identity. He understands her fear thought he still thinks it would be fine.

I love Michal. And I understand her. I really do.

She is so young and so different than most people I know. She always is honest and says whatever she thinks. I met her in India and through having an accident in a bus we became more connected than ever. We traveled India together till I flew away. We sat for hours sometimes by the Rishikesh  bridge in India just looking at the people. The saris. Saying yes to every man, boy, girl, woman, parents who wanted to take pictures with us. We must feature in hundreds of pictures. We found it funny. And because we always took pictures of people we thought it would be nothing but balanced to let people take pictures of us.

We once traveled to Rajasthan in a fully packed bus. We were 5 westerners in the bus. The other 3 did not want to have any contact with Indians. We gave one of our beds out so that 5 guys could go spend a whole night there rather than in the floor. Because of this they took cared of us.

And then when I broke my foot in Thailand she took 18 hours of a bus ride to see me.

And now I am here with her in Tel Aviv. She seats next to my Palestinian friend and I know she feels as sad as I do when she hears he missed the appointment because of the check point. Though we don’t talk about it I know it is hard for her to see him. It is nothing about him or her. But these meetings they are too human. I was once told by a philosopher I met in Jerusalem he could not deal with reading me. I pressed him to tell me more about it.

” It is  too human Jules. If you talked politics I could fully agree or disagree with you. But when you tell me of the lives of people then I noticed something that is unbearably painful that as much as I am against the occupation it still functions in my mind in a certain way because we draw lines of separation”

I was thankful to him for saying that out loud to himself and to me. I knew it was incredibly hard to get it out of him.  But when two human beings meet as humans. Not as a category of a specific group, all ideologies seem to fall. You cant possibly sustain an occupation of normal human beings. So we play with people’s minds. Some are convinced that all of those on the other side of the wall are dangerous. Others think is just a portion. And even  the nicest feel that the existence of one terrorist is enough to occupy a whole country…

It work both sides as well… and in many places of the world.

It is hard to be a bridge.

I ask Jaafar to text me once he is back to the West  Bank so that I know it went all fine.

A few hours later I get his message “Back to reality”

It hurts to be a bridge.. It hurts that the possibilities of encounter seem yet for all like a distant dream. It is hard to cross frontiers and internal borders. No matter who you are. Yet, I still think we must always do it. We must all embrace the pain. With it comes a silent more complex understanding. An everlasting faith that  eventually, all walls fall down…

Love,

me

Jerusalem, different perspectives

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“What did you do when you were in the army?”

Elick smiles and says Amit was an Engineer. Amit is terrified.

“I worked as an engineer because there is no theoretical part to the army! Everything is applied.. but I was NEVER an engineer. I worked temporarily as one”

He says it with disgust. I laugh. I am in Jerusalem. I stay with Elick who I traveled Kashmir and Mc Leod in India with. Elick, for those who remember, had been raised in a Yeshiva in a very religious family. He had quit religion through literature to study physics, and in physics he discovered math.

I stay with Elick and his girlfriend Tali now. Tali has her last exams while I am there. She who also comes from a family of mathematicians. She however, grew up in the  secular world in Haifa a city where Palestinians and Jews live together.

Amit is apparently a mathematics genius. Someone who does not sleep, and thinks the whole time of geometry. He loves mathematics to the point that anything else seems to not exist for him. He finds physicists are liars as they are always making approximation about everything. He makes jokes about physicists. So calling him an engineer was nothing short of an offense.

He despises applied use of mathematics, he cares about the abstractions.

I laugh. Listening to this highly educated men talking about abstractions of abstractions. I left the West Bank and all my partial fasting ( I drank water) to cross Jerusalem in a festival day. Mahane yehuda, the main market is packed with artists … and I went from hearing the love stories and practical reality of the occupied territories to now listen to music and have very philosophical conversations which I can barely grasps about religion and math.

How can I do it? Sometimes I wonder. What kind of cognitive dissonance do I need to be able to cross the wall and have everything change so much in minutes?. How is it that now I go out with Elicks ex-religious friends to the Muslim quarter when the fasting has been broken to see it. They ask me about the west bank, How is it that I ended up knowing more about human lives there in few months then they have in all of their lives? I am surrounded by the ex-religious friends of Elick. Some are mathematicians, others doctors, and one, in special was a settler.

I never met a settler before. And now I went out with one. A settler who lived in a Palestinian neighborhood in the Westbank. He takes me there to see it. He speaks fluently Arabic. He is a beautiful man. He has never believed. He can’t explain me very well how is it that he quit the Yeshiva. He seems to have no politicalopinions though he is a journalist and studies the middle east.

He has Palestinian friends, though when he explains to me about these relationships he can see the details that my left wing friends in Israel can’t. He explains me the intricacies of the languages. I am confused. I never thought I d be in the Occupied Territories with a settler… and now I swim in the springs among religious Jews, while I am accompained by an ex-religious who was raised in the occupied territories..not exactly a settlement, but a Palestinian neighbourhood where there are only 4 Jewish families living.

I dont know what to think about it. It is definitively a first.

I ask him about it. And I am not sure I can reproduce what he told me. He lived in an area where Jews had always lived. during the 48 war jews had no water and were saved by these Palestinians who brought water for them to survive. He says he grew up knowing that. That he was taught they had to respect the Palestinians because they had saved them. I listen without knowing what to think. I don’t even know very well what the word “respect” here means. He talks of a Palestinian  girl he would marry if it would not mean to loose both all of his family and for her to loose all of hers. We listen to the Lebanese band Mashrou Leila. A highly politicized Lebanese band and he can sing all the lyrics in Arabic while it plays. He learned about them through the Palestinian friend. I, as well, heard them for the first time,  when I first arrived in the west bank a bit more than one year ago.

“Jules, you dont understand. These hollywood stories cannot happen here!”

I hear. I  pay attention to his linguistic explanations. I am confused. I ask him about how did his very religious family react to him quitting the Yeshiva. They never talk about it. It is not the first time I am with the ex-religious and I am always intrigued by them.

I am in fact always so intrigued about the people who quit their lives, all that was familiar. Elik though nonreligious finds his friends who went to the Yeshiva more inteligent than his mathematician secular friends. My secular friends who do not know the ex-religious have despise to  the yeshiva people. It all goes back to an economical ( and ideological?) situation. And again I cant do justice to explain this properly here. It suffixes to say that through the years the right and the left have conceded more and more rights to the religious to get their political support.

They are now in a situation where the religious population grows exponentially. They pay less taxes, are paid by the state once they have more than 4 children ( which most of them do). Their Yeshivas is  fully financed. They usually ( but not all) are very right wing and were exempted from going to the army. Now, as the law has expired there is lots of discussion on the matter. Whether it is fair or not for the religious to not go to the army. What modifications would the IDF ( Israeli defense Force) have to do to accommodate for young religious  boys who already are married with lots of children and are not supposed to have contact with women. And of course, this whole discourse on “fairness” also rises the question whether Palestinian Citizens of Israel ( also know as as Arab Israelis- who are the Palestinians who are citizens in Israel and  not leaving in the occupied territories) should not be required as well. This is a moot discussion of course. They do not want the the Palestinians Citizens of Israel in the IDF but those are the kinds of debates that are happening here right now.

I dont know what to think. As the improbable bridge that I have become I learn from all sides…challenging always my certainties. I end up as the bridge of a  Facebook conversation between my friend from Nablus Ihab and my Jewish Israeli friend Michal in Tel Aviv. She is curious to know what they think, She wished she could also visit Nablus and meet them. He thinks she can. According to the law she can’t. He understands her fear to come as an Israeli. Though he wished she could just come speaking English. It is sad to be that bridge.

I also meet an UN manager here. He is cool. He came from South Sudan. He loves the life in Jerusalem. He also lived before in Togo. He is from Belgium and thought he seems to be a problem solver I feel he does not really understand anything about the middle east. He is kind. He wants to help the project. But the coldness and the mechanic way he looks at things both shock me and surprise me.

Who knows…maybe it is what they need in the middle east.. to be more practical… more clear….but at the same time, this idea alone, seems soooooooo foreign here…

Love in The Middle East

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Love. I rarely feel equipped to talk about love. Love in the middle east or anywhere else in the world in fact. I barely understand myself so I observe other’s  lives  and love stories. I pay attention to them. What is it that is love? What is it that they value? And I am simultaneously taken aback by both how similar we are as human beings, and yet how different we seem to represent things.

I seat in the veranda with cats around me, Mahmood, and Ihab, and we wait for Sam in Nablus. Sam is my friend since the first time I came to the west bank. He is probably my most assiduous reader and has commented almost in all the texts that I have ever written. And Sam believes in Love, Love with capital letters. The archaic type you read once about in a fairy tale.

Sam has had a life that is nothing short of epic and yet he loves the same woman for the past 18 years. I now know his whole family. He is tall. He is strong. And now he is nervous like a child. He speaks Arabic. We are all tense. We all know what that call means. It is a call to render life in the middle east a bit like the Arabian Nights…

Sam, like most boys here, married when he was very young. In Palestine boys and girls rarely speak alone, and never touch each other if they are not part of the same family. They are expected to marry virgins. I know little about the Christian Palestinians but I realise that even the way they greet each other sets the boundaries of “no transgressions”. How you say Hello and how you answer establishes immediately which relationships are possible to you or not.

I know the Muslim Palestinian better since I have stayed in their houses every time I stayed in the West Bank. And they love like in a story tale. They love for years on end a particular woman they have never really known much about. They love them forever. They marry different girls to revenge from disrupted hearts. Some fight for them. I am something like a psychologist here. I hear what they don’t tell others. The stories of their broken hearts and that of others. I am puzzled by the amount of love they can feel, but I can recognise the fear everybody of my generation and younger seem to have of love.

I left my marriage a year ago never understanding what it really meant to leave. I never wanted anyone to have so much power over me. So I was married but I was never fully there. Not that I knew that consciously. Did I ever understand what it meant? I am not sure. I am not even sure I understand it now. I know I have been searching for rescue all over the path. In Gods, Goddesses, silences dances and eventually in Love.

I loved an Israeli in secret. I never wrote about it. It was a fairy tale like. A fairy tale like the rare ones you hear in Palestine. And as a fairy tale they can only exist in our imaginations. I crossed the world for it. And when I was finally there I was met by despair. I just needed to go away. I could not stay. I just needed to go. It was a palpable fear. A lack of air. A feeling of being a burden. A fear of possibly being abandoned and so I left while I could.

There is this stupidity about fear. It makes you generalise. It makes you less empirical and feel safe. I left and I suffered all the pain I could not even grasp where it came from during this year. The pain of my abandoned marriage, of my lost academic life, my house… It felt like I had been uprooted, so it was easier for me to relate to travellers and to refugees. The only big difference is that while refugees have a clear enemy..mine was never going to leave me, it would go with me everywhere I went.

And that is why I understand why some Palestinians marry other women they do not care about. It is because though they are not afraid of bombs, fasting when is incredibly hot, or the war they are terrified, like me, of Love. Some lucky ones among you might not understand it. But those of you who do know what I am talking about know how our brains can just flee any situation. While they escape to live temporarily safer lives instead of paying the price of real truthful commitment. While in the west we entertain ourselves with other relationships, in the middle east they marry someone else.

But not Sam… Sam marry young, and according to him, for all of the wrong reasons, and so he divorced her. And then he married an American even though he had always loved for the past 18 years the same woman. A woman who would not say yes to a divorced man, nor would she say yes to anyone else.

In the middle east love is like the earth…it belongs to someone forever, and you either fight for it or it will destroy your life and someone else’s.  And now after, 18 years, we wait for that one call which is to settle for good whether the woman Sam, now divorced again, always has loved would accept him or not as her husband.

We are tense. Sam is tense. He can barely contain his anxiety. We seat waiting. Seconds .. Maybe minutes but the weight of the years weigh in the air. But suddenly all the heaviness seems to lift up and be replaced by enormous agitation in the air. I still have not heard it, but I feel the particles dancing around me. That huge tall man is under uncontrollable joy. The answer is yes!

Not a yes that was said by her. She could not speak to him. Her brothers, and nephews were giving the answer that was given to them. That is how it is how it happens here. Sam is over the moon. Now that the men have agreed to it that would be much harder for her to change her mind about getting married. He wants to marry yesterday. It is Ramadan so things must wait.

Aida, his mom, is over the moon she has accompanied this love story for the past 18 years. Now it was her turn to visit the lady bringing gifts. The lady was very happy I was told. Every person is happy. I am invited for the wedding. I go buy clothes with them. I feel a mixture of total admiration and just awe.

I needed so much to be rescued like that in this past year. I needed so much a god, goddess or a man to rescue me from myself. But now I look in admiration. I can admire it, but I am fine. There is something true about time. There was something soothing about me waking my parents in the middle of the night and hoping to sleep with them on a broken foot. An internal agitation that never seemed to leave me. I remember my father just saying half asleep noticing my pain, saying calmly that ” It will pass”.

It did. I am now in the Middle East and I still travel but now I have a home. It did not depend of God or a man. It is inside creating itself. Sometimes I loose it. Sometimes I run outside but it is creating itself. And when I see Sam’s joy I admire the commitment to it rather of letting my cynicism win the argument. When I hear of the Palestinians who married someone else as a form of revenge, of self-preservation I feel sad. And in this deeply religious and contested place the only prayer I can possibly utter is one to love. I rarely pray but when I do I pray that I too learn to be patient and that I never let my mind leave when all that I am wants to stay.

Love, me

Keep Living, Nablus

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I want you all to always remember that I am not a Middle East, Palestinian or Israeli expert. I am not hoping to say that what I say can represent the whole of the people of anywhere. People vary a lot everywhere, but they especially do here in the Middle East. Remember always when you read me that these are but the experiences of a woman who crossed the wall a few times and in her path encountered the people she did.

It is but my experience with strangers that through the journey have become friends. Whatever ideological or political beliefs you come from remember that we must always be more empirical about what we think to be true. I am not saying this is Palestinian or this Is Israeli, I am just telling you what happened to m when I encountered these specific human beings.

Now that I have taken this out of my chest I will write about what it is like for a 30 year old separated women to travel in the middle east after already having been here before.
First it is to be taken to be a friend. In my particular case, with my previous abandoned PhD research it also means to avoid whenever I can political conversations. Which is to me almost impossible. It means that most people ask you about babies, and husbands. And that they all wish you all the best, which here means a family.

It means that being sick in the house of the family of my Russian Jewish friend Maya, or sick in the house of the family of my Palestinian friend Sam is basically almost the same. They are  100% of their time changing everything around for me to feel better. And also that when my natural feeling of wanting to go away to not disturb them even more are usually met with shock. They hold me, comfort me, and tell me I can always stay.

That is how yesterday after fasting another day I ended spending the day in the living room with the two brothers (in their twenties) of my friend Sam and Aida his mom. It is hot in Nablus and I enjoy fasting even though they tell me to eat and drink bc I am not Muslim. I explain I am doing it to recover from being sick and they accept it even though they don’t understand it. Then I show pictures of Brasil on my Facebook to Aida, and her sons. We attempt some conversation and little by little I no longer need language.

We lay down in a mattress in the living room. It is hot. Then her sons show me songs in Arabic they like on youtube. Songs about what happened to a rapper who did too much drugs and his family collapsed, then Bob Marley, and they finish by showing me Lady in Red. There is something incredibly cute about these beautiful tall Palestinian men being moved by the songs they are. And when it is time to break the fast we all gather around a table.

I had not eaten for 24 hours and today I feel good. I seat around the table. Yahyah, who
I knew from before, has now gotten married. He brings his wife and we eat. Bread, lentil soup, Hummus, Babaganoush, falafel, zaatar bread, salad and some other things I cant remember the name of.

They laugh, talk, eat. They translate to me. I practice the little Arabic I know. We use my Iphone to show images of things I don’t know how to explain. Coffee is served and I who love the smell of cardamon refrain from it. I am fasting and have been taking coffee totally out. It is hard. Extremely hard. We have some arabic desert and then we go into town.

Have you ever been to a Muslim place in Ramadan? The night is precious. Here The temperature cools down. There are children running everywhere. Couples hold hands. There are bands playing traditional songs. There are Palestinian flags. Lots of street vendors selling coffee that the cardamom seems to carry you flying like in a cartoon. Corn with spices. Almonds. Nuts. Meat and who knows what else. Shops are opened. Balloons fly in the air people and cars walk in the street and you hear the joy of people.

My friend and I talk about their lives. How did he meet his wife. Whether he is happy. I ask them if they get upset I was in love with an Israeli. They say it does not matter for them because I come to both sides of the wall. But that talk brings us back to the many talks we had before about the region. We talk of Syria and they assert no one really knows what is going on in Syria. I ask them if they think there will be another war just like my Brazilian journalist friend had told me before and they say they don’t think now , but that they think that eventually it will happen.

I ask them if they are not scared of it. They are not. And I cant really assess if they don’t think it will affect them, or if because they have experience with the Intifada and the conflict between Hamas and Fatah they are just used to it. Used to the possible enormous violence towards them? they know I don’t understand and they explain to me that they don’t complain that they just go on living as this is all we can do.

We reach home. And I go to bed and I fall asleep. I am suddenly awaken by explosions. If I were in Brasil I would think they were firecrackers. Here I just don’t know. I hear cars racing. And a siren. it is all so close to my window. I am terrified. Is this a war? Is this the IDF coming in the middle of the night? Fights between different parties?

The more I hears cars racing the more scared I am. I am so close to the window and to scared to look up. But as there is nothing you can do I write. I call my friends in vain. After a while I stand and I walk to the living room where Aida sleeps during Ramadan. When I get there I see her sleeping deeply.

I still don’t know if it is a war, or celebrations of ramadan. Yet somehow I realise like I had in Bolivia when every single Bolivian passenger slept while we almost fell in a precipice that humans get used to anything. Somehow my fear eventually vanishes as well, my heart slows down and I too not knowing what is happening in the Middle East fall asleep.

I wake up with a call from my friend to tell me it had been nothing. It seemed so distant now. Another day was starting I squat to shower feeling happy that today Aida would teach me how to cook Mahalabia a desert I adore.  Yes, that is what people do, they just keep living.
Love,
Me

All too familiar- The Middle East

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There’s barely anything as pleasurable for me as to squat on the ground and let water gently swim down my back as if it was a gentle caress. I still remember how my first bucket shower ( while I volunteered in Thailand ) went from total dislike to becoming my favourite activity of the day. I remember how the hot bucket shower available in the himalaya mountains in Ladakh put a smile from ear to ear on my face. There the bucket was given to me with boiling water  and I decided with the cold water available in the bathroom which temperature I wanted it to  slide down my body. It usually made me remember how little pressure, knobs and water we need to have a wonderful time.And so tonight, the water, I chose to be cold. I let it pour down my exhausted body in this hot sunny day. I had never imagined this morning I would be sleeping where I am now. I have been on and off sick since I arrived in the middle east. I went from being totally cared by my Israeli friend Maya to suddenly be totally cared by my Palestinians friends on this side of the wall. But when I woke up I knew none of it. I just left Maya to go back to the place I am officially staying in Tel Aviv but as I reached the station I decided to take a bus to Jerusalem.

I love Jerusalem, where even the newest tram can create confusion in the minds of those who live in this city known to so many for so many thousands of years. As I stood close to the machine under a boiling sun watching religious of all kinds pass one in front of the other. As I heard them have discussions ( I could not understand) with tourists, and soldiers while being “helped” by some kind of worker (whose job seemed to be to take the money of a few people to buy the tickets for them rendering the automatic , self-service machine useless and taking longer than a counter )I had to laugh….It somehow felt suddenly that I was back in the middle east.

I met a friend in the beautiful mahane yehuda which is one of my favourite markets in the world. As I walked through it I just wanted to stay in Jerusalem forever! I remembered every friend that disliked Jerusalem and I thought they must not know the secret details. I realised within seconds they probably feel the same about me. The truth is that in all its chaos I love Jerusalem for its incoherence.

My friend invited me to stay but somehow I knew where I was going. I promised to come back but since my feet knew where to walk to I took the path. I was coming to Nablus in the West Bank. I knew where to find the bus, I knew how to go from Ramallah to Nablus without having to figure out where the bus station was. I walked the whole time remembering how all too strange and difficult it had felt the first time I came. I knew no one, i knew not my path, my Israeli friends were terrified I was coming here alone. But I just came. I confess, that as I walked I felt some slight pride for that stranger so much stronger and braver than I am today. It has been a while since I don’t try for the first time an unknown language, and an unknown shower.

It is Ramadan and I am once again in a Muslim place. Not eating to get better had not been understood by my Israeli friends, nor is it here. Luckily, it is Ramadan and I am not the only one fasting.

27hours of fasting and no desire for food even inside of Mahane Yehuda That is how sick I have been. But when the Harira breaks, and the fasting of Ramadan has been suspended till is morning… When all your friends are around a table to drink their first sip of the day, to eat there is no way you can resist it even if you are sick. I sat and I ate. Close to the whole family of my friends I sat listening to conversations in Arabic I don’t understand with joy. I looked a mother next to her adult children talk and laugh. We attempted conversation in her few english words, and my barely non existing arabic. And once again I remembered how much we can get trapped in distant discussions where we know so well the language. There in a “real talk”, in one that your barely understand, you seem to get more. You seem to put more effort into listening. Or maybe you just observe all else that language would have stolen from you. I broke my fast with these all too familiar faces. I did not understand them but they knew me. I had been here before.

And then yet not feeling great I squat to shower. I remember all the other times I had squatted before. I feel thankful I am here. I feel happy to have reencountered these people I met around the world before.  I once again remember the part of “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” where the author understands why his young son can’t understand the beauty he sees in the birds on the road. The beauty he states lies on the fact that they are familiar and you recognise them. So I gently squat down remembering it all, all the places I have squatted before, all the joy that came from that act. I suddenly remembered how much joy I feel for having reencountered my friends.  And in a all too familiar sentiment flushes back through me, I realise what is so obvious,  that In both sides of this wall (that I hate so much) I feel anything else but love.

Love,
Me