I landed in London and if the last email was hard to write this one is even harder. It is harder as leaving the M.E I leave somehow defeated. After the last email I decided to go back once again to Palestine. I spent one day more, and crossing the border never felt so pleasurable. Somehow the paranoia that is all over Israel is not there even if there is not a single boy I met who has not been in prison at some point for not much more than simply being a boy and Palestinian. I walked the streets somehow relieved and sad. It felt like since the very positive passionate emotions are not allowed all that is left to feel in Palestine is anger.  As usual they greeted me for coming to Palestine. After there is not that many people who come without being escorted in ridiculous touristic buses. What is it they are afraid of? Oh, yes, there was one person who was killed these day. Forgive me for my cynicism. Palestine does that to you. It hardens your heart. The death of one person is sad. Any person. Watching American’s celebrating B Laden’s death was a particular shocking site. No I do not like Bin Laden but I stand with Martin Luther King on this one “”I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that”

And so I crossed back to Jerusalem and decided i should meet a cs I had been in contact through email for months. He is a brilliant guy, he is a physicist. He invited me to come to the kibbutz Tsuba where most people he explained me were somehow socialists and communists. He had lived there his whole life. Left twice. Once to go to India, the other to Latin America. he was curious to hear about my experience. genuinely interested. But he explained to me that the most important thing for him was for the state to remain jewish. As a brazilian i always just feel we should just think of ourselves as humans. I  heard him. he heard me. He took me around and explained me things I thought were absurd. “Druzes mistreat the Palestinians because they know them better. Mizrahim ( eastern Jews) also are more racist than Ashkenazim ( european Jews) because they know them better. I proposed that maybe they did so in order to dissociate themselves from the Palestinians, as after all they are arabs too. He disagreed. For him it is as a consequence of having experience with them.

He explained to me he was deluded with peace. “I am thankful every single day that there is no war. but there will be one. and hopefully they attacks us first and then either they exterminate us, or we will annihilate them all. it does not take much. a right wing leader, a militant military leader and you could have that scenario”.  I was speechless. what? but do you want that? can you imagine the suffering? ” i don’t want that but it is going to be that: us or them.” I was then greeted by his ultra zionist father who said things like ” we are different people and we should be proud of the wars we won. as an American i always think… what would Americans say if people started wanting to give back land to indians?” I offered that Columbus day was increasingly being criticised, that canada had created Nunavut a 2 million km square area for the inuit. that Brazil had demarcated several indigenous land reservations all premised on the fact of recognising the harm that has been done to those populations. he dismissed my statements. “here is different.” he was very friendly to me and pitied the fact that he had a class to attend. ” i really like talking to you. i am entirely against that coexistence school you wanted to do your research in. but this conversation is very interesting.” I confess I was more than happy he was leaving, as what do you say to a hardcore racist in his own house, when his racism is disguised in other forms?

I went back to Tel Aviv and then met my long time friend Maya. I told her boyfriend all about my encounters. He was fascinated. He was truly interested. As a meditation teacher, and someone who travelled for 3 years he like me feels we are not that different. he felt sad about me telling him about my ultra zionist encounter. After that I encountered yoni.

Yoni studied with me in Holland. we had not seen each other in 6,5 years. for the past 10 years he lives abroad. I had absolutely no recollection where he stood in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As soon as I met him I said jokingly ” did you come to celebrate independence day?” to what he surprised me by saying ” I will think of the Al Naqbah”. Al Naqbah, is in Arab the great disaster. While the Israelis celebrate their victory the Palestinians celebrate their loss. I was speechless. That is something I had never heard from a Jewish Israeli. “Jules, I am deeply ashamed of the policies of my country and I feel the only moral thing to do is to leave. to move somewhere else. That is why I have been gone for the past 10 years. I come every 2 years to see my family and then I go.”

Yoni who did his thesis on Spinoza, and now among other things teaches politics surprised me. I asked him what his family felt ” Well, they say they thing is horrible what is happening in israel, but they are good people. you know the drill Israeli leftists… ”

The day after it was time for me to leave. I was told to delete all my pictures from Palestine. To lie. To not say I had friends there. I decided against it. if the price to have my pictures, to stand by having friends is to spend longer hours in the security, maybe risk not being allowed ever back in I ll take it. Yoni advised me ” Fair enough. Just do not volunteer info you do not need to give. I know it is horrible but Israel does that to you.”

So I arrived in the airport and in my little interview i was given the highest security risk. when i was asked where I had been i simply said “everywhere”. When I was asked whether I had friends in Israel I told them the truth. Told their names . They did not explicitly ask me about Palestine so I did not say anything. I had to open my bag and take everything that was inside. Everything was scanned. then i had to answer more questions, then i was invited to go through a metal scan, then to a little cubicle where they asked me to remove shoes, belt etc. then a woman joined me and touched my whole body. I almost felt like asking her whether I should remove all of my clothes. I did not. I just waited. I did not feel angry towards her. In fact, if anything else i pitied her. It must be horrendous to live like this. feeling threatened by everything.

Some minutes before 8 o’clock the loud speakers in the airport warned us that at 8 there would be a minute of silence for the israeli soldiers who had died in conflict. It was memorial day. Once again the siren rang, just like in the memorial day of the holocaust. everybody stood still. So did I. I stood in silence and still. Looking around I felt sorry for all those who lost people. I mourned the death of Palestinians and Israelis. But somehow the saddest thing of all for me is that that siren seemed to rather than teach us about the evils of power and racism, and thinking of ourselves and other as so different to somehow legitimised it. I felt sad for my Israeli friends for not seeing how much they are missing for not crossing those borders. For believing that Arabs can be so different. How could that possibly be? Alex my friend had asked me in the morning “don’t you think the death of the soldiers is sad?” I  explained I thought it was sad any loss of life in any conflict. ” Well, I care more for the Jewish loss of life, you?” He asked me. ” I don’t. I care equally for the loss of lives all over. It is equally sad for me if a unknown brazilian or an argentinian, a british or a Zimbabwean lost their lives in a conflict. I am probably sadder if  I knew the person. I d be probably sadder if you died than any brazilian I don’t know. If Leila who is Moroccan died rather than an unknown brazilian. When we are talking of strangers their death is equally sad for me. Which group they belong to really makes no difference. And if we are talking of ethnic conflicts it is just sad.”

As the siren rang that is what I thought: For as long as we think some lives are more worth than others. Jewish over Palestinians, Americans over Iraqis, rich people in Brazil versus people who live in slums. For as long as it happens we will keep negotiating our thoughts to rationalise what is plain and simple racism.

This is probably the hardest email I will write. As crossing back the border to Jerusalem and going straight to Tel Aviv, after having spent more than 3 weeks in the West Bank, is nothing short of intense. Not the crossing itself, as it took me no longer than 2.5 hours to make it from Bethlehem to Tel Aviv. It is all in the symbolic, and since we live in the symbolic it is there that the hardest things happen. I crossed on the day that the news of the death of Bin Laden came out and the holocaust memorial-day was happening. Going through the checkpoint as a foreigner was relatively easy. It took a bit of time, but as soon as I held my foreign passport through the window for the young IDF soldier isolated in his cubicle to see I was let go with no questions. Palestinians took much longer. The power of symbols…different papers, different rights. I then walked the already familiar streets of Jerusalem back to Jaffa Street where I took the communal van straight back to Tel Aviv. As I was making my way I admit, in something like an automatic mode, I was called by a friend in Tel Aviv inviting me to come for a yoga class. I was thankful beyond belief.

As soon as I met him he asked me how I was. I explained about my journey in Palestine and he became entirely silent. I asked whether it bothered him that I spoke of people in the West Bank. He said that it did not. He was silent because he could not go there, so he was just learning. He was kind, but I knew it was not entirely true. He felt disturbed that I talked of Palestinians as normal human beings. I did not talk of politics, but simply of my encounters with the people I met. As soon as he could he left me.

It was not the first time it happened. A week ago, before I returned to Jerusalem, I sent a message to a philosophy student I knew from couch surfing. We were supposed to meet. I told him I was in the West Bank, so I thought the most natural thing to do was to ask whether he wanted to read what I had written about it. He did. Later on he wrote to me telling me he thought it was better that we did not meet. Reading my emails, the same ones you all have read, had really disturbed him. I insisted, we met, he was kind, a bit aloof to the extent Israelis are afraid and think of Arabs as different people. He brought with him an Israeli friend who is involved in putting together ex-fighters on both sides to talk with each other. Even this guy, who is so active in promoting a dialogue, was unconvinced that the people I met had told me the things they did. When I talked about my simple encounters with men and women, boys and girls, and told them about our conversations they just could not believe it.

To top it all, back in Tel Aviv I went to meet a friend who had not written to me in ages. He had explicitly commented that he disliked that I was in Nablus on my Facebook status, and made fun of some pictures. But I like him, and I needed to insist on seeing him. He agreed to meet me. As I arrived at his house his first question he asked was what I thought about Bin Laden. I really could not believe it. He felt threatened that I had been in the West Bank. So, in his mind he must have thought something like she must then like terrorists. ‘Why do you like Arabs so much Jules? You really do not understand them. I am going to be very honest. I don’t like them, I hate them’. I heard his thoughts and simply replied ‘you actually do not know them. There is not such a thing as Arabs. There, on the other side, there are people who are not that different from you and me. At the surface maybe. We speak different languages, dress differently, invoke different ideologies, etc.. But scratch the surface and you will find people who have exactly the same searches we do’. He was unconvinced. Was I not harassed? Raped? Did they not want to grab me? I explained over and over again that I had never been treated with so much respect, even when I challenged and asked people about their most cherished beliefs. I explained to him that not all was good in Palestine. It is a fragmented society, with inequality, with some very traditional rules and some very religious people. Yet, treat them with kindness and they will go far in thinking with you, and help you understand them and yourself better. My friend became curious about these things, about the young 22-year-old boy who wanted to learn about Buddhism, about whether they could speak English well, about what things look like in the West Bank. But I felt he was scared. He was scared that I had been there. ‘So you prefer the Palestinians to us, the Jews?’ I hated the question, but as I think we have to deal with these questions I just said what I thought. ‘I like individuals in spite of the group they belong to, for who they are. Both Israeli and Palestinian society is very fragmented, there is no way of talking about Palestinians versus Israelis. It is also different depending on where and who you are with’.

He did not really believe me. He was threatened by my pacifism. I explained: ‘Listen, I realise that the things I believe in are the result of having been born in a culturally mixed place, where ethnicity is not important. I could be killed in Brazil, but not because of who I am. It would be circumstantial, people want money and I had money on me. Or I accidentally got in the wring place at the wrong time. That makes the way I look at things fundamentally different. I know of no one who has been in a war. For me fighting over land or beliefs is very alien. I have had a very easy life in Brazil, so I do realise that that makes me think differently. I have no idea how I would behave in a war, how I would behave if I was forced to be in the army. But given the life I have lived and the things I have seen from travelling and living around the world, I just feel that violence breeds more violence, and never really solves anything’. He looked at me and said: ‘See, you have not experienced a war. That is the problem’, he concluded. I looked at him slightly puzzled and said: ‘Well, I think that that might be the solution, right?’. He was silent. And that is why I hate what this wall does. That is why I hate what this division allows people the believe in. I hate the fear that captures them all. the fear that actually makes them believe that people across the wall are very different. I took my camera and showed him many picture of kids and of boys with me. And once again I was astonished of the power of love. How love is the most subversive force there is. I remembered Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ book ‘Love in the time of cholera’ that was next to me every day I stayed in Beit-Sahour. I remember at the end of the book that love is like cholera, it is contagious, so it must be contained, it can only exist in a parallel world, in isolation. Love threatens people’s notion of power, of control, of boundaries. And I realised with sadness that my love for both the Palestinians and Israelis I met, who were captured in the pictures of my camera, was what threatened them the most. My love makes them have to deal with the other as a human being. And to remain living as they do they simply cannot do it.

I know I have not written in a while, but it happens once all that is unfamiliar starts becoming normal. So as I laid yesterday by the dead sea and suddenly saw 4 young IDF soldiers come parading with their weapons where all there was were tourist enjoying the famous mud, and floating in water I did not even take out my camera to make a picture.

Jericho looks as what I imagine Iraq to be. I sat in the terrace of the restaurant looking at the mountains with no vegetation, the central square, the veiled women, the blue sky while I ate once again Falafel, Arab Salad and  Hummus. I then took a taxi to the dead sea. Abu Omar, my taxi driver spoke fluent English and explained to me all about the sacred places we drove by. There is something of incredibly unfair that I a non religious person have seen some of the most sacred places for Jews, Muslims and Christians. I watched and bow with respect but do not get any touched by it. What always astonishes me is how this places can create so much conflict.

We drove to the Dead Sea and as we reached the Highway we have to put seat belts on. The road in the occupied West Bank is controlled by Israel. So it is the Dead Sea. Palestinians cannot go there. Abu Omar drove me. I had to show my passport to pass through a gate and then another. And there I was again with Israelis and tourists. No Palestinians allowed.

Floating is ok. Spreading the mud in your body is ok too. But being in a fenced area is just not ok at all. Abu Omar gave me a rose. A Palestinian rose he explained. And then we drove back to Jericho. As we were entering the city we were stopped this time by the Palestinian police. And again I had to show my passport. I had to ask why, and Abu Omar explained it was because Israeli government does not allow Israelis to go to Jericho so Palestinian police has to control it.

Most Palestinian I have met dislike the Palestinian police. The Palestinian police is lead by an American. And as many have never ceased to explain they have no power at all. they are just a puppet of Israel and of the West. The only time i heard something pro the police was by a Palestinian who said it was better to have them bc if a Palestinian harms a Jewish person the police can arrest them, before the IDF would create much more harm to many more Palestinians. So they looked at my passport and once again I was wished a good trip by a smiley young boy holding a weapon.

I sat in the central square of Jericho first with about 20 women smoking Narghile, then with about 40 men eating ice cream. They spoke to me in Hebrew. I explained I was not Israeli. I was puzzled they were that friendly to me even thought they though I was Jewish. I took a picture and in return I got an ice cream as a gift.

Fatah and Hamas have supposedly made up. NO one wants to talk about that. Israel condemns it, so does the United States. And the people I have asked here rather not speak about it. Before I made it to Jericho I went back once more to Nablus. This time because I had forgotten my epilepsy pills and Sam is influential enough to be able to get them to me without prescription.

There I met a fascinating Palestinian. He told me about the injustice within Palestine. How rich families pay almost nothing to Palestinian workers. He is a country side man, and lives next to a settlement. “They stole our land, but they are our neighbours for 20 years. we have no problem with them”. He told me he was against injustice. And said in Khalil/Hebron there was too much. ” “When people tell me to boycott settlement products I tell them, lets boycott first Palestinian products of people who exploit Palestinians. The Settlers at least pay fairer wages”. I was astonished. Really? How do people react when you say this, I asked. ” Some agree some don’t. But if you are starving what can you do. you take the wages they give you. but there is too much unfairness within Palestinian society.”

So I write less and less. Maybe it is because all this incoherence becomes more and more familiar. My initial cognitive anthropological questions no longer interest me. As a result of seeing how irreconcilable my initial PhD questions, and the reality here is I decided once and for all to quit my PhD. As I have only one week left in the middle east I take every second with care, and awareness and I really have not idea where and what will I do very soon.

The West Bank is at the same time very similar and a world apart from Latin America. It is very similar in its disorganisation, in the possibility of creating everything anew every day, to find ways to solve problems that do not involve talking to any institution. It is very different in that they cover, they do not touch, they do not laugh as much as we do in Brasil. At least not in the streets.

Tonight I will have my first concert in Palestine. In a little restaurant in Beit Sahour. I will play once again Brazilian music as I did one of these days at the request of a friend. The owner invited me to play a concert. I said I was a bit embarrassed to do so, he insisted. “Don’t worry. Here were are just family.”

I finally entered the world of Palestinian women. And it happened as I ventured into Hebron- which in Arabic is known as Khalil. As these emails are being read by more and more people I feel I need to reiterate that I am no specialist in anything! I write about my encounters here in the Middle East. What I see as a non Arabic non Jewish South  American which is quite randomly happening.

As you might remember when I took the van to Nablus I sat next to an older man who had studied at the LSE in the 80s.doing  After our encounter he called me a few times to know if I was doing fine, and so it was decided I would come to Hebron to visit the city and he would show me around. Zuhair is from a very important Palestinian family and turned out that he told me about all the intricacies of Palestinian politics as he himself had been invited several times to be the mayor of Hebron, the minister of Education, a representative of the Palestinian authority and most surprising of all had been one of the leaders of the Muslim brotherhood in Palestine when still living in the UK. As a prominent Palestinian phd student who was very politicised in the 80 Zuhair decided the political think to do was not to be involved in politics. Holding a phd in international politics and thousand of books about the middle east in his house he was not short of opinion and stories. The most important one is probably that he thinks Muslims and Christians and Jews should live all together as they for thousands of years, and that no world power actually wants peace. ” it is a maxim divide and rule”

Because of Zuhair I had the chance to go to places in Hebron the ordinary traveller does not. I also had the chance to meet a traditional Muslim family. I was taken in and taken care with so much care that I could not possibly describe. I immediately met his wife Rima, and his sister the sweet Israa.  The first floor of the building was his office, the second his house, the third his mother’s and from the fourth he could show me all of Hebron. As I came in they offered me tea, and juice and food. Only later did I get to understand how serious was for Zuhair an important man to take in as a guest a young woman he barely knew. His family took me in with open heart.

After the first meal, Zuhair, and his sister Israa who is 22 and is about to get married in June to a Jordanian she met 3 times came to take me to the city. I was first taken to the centre of Hebron rehabilitation and I was introduced to the director. The centre is concerned with renovating the old centre, and giving benefits to Palestinians to move back in, or to stay where they are if they are already there. For those of you who do not know Hebron is one of the most tense and chaotic places around here. There are settlements inside of the city. Jewish orthodox ( although Zuhair says they are actually not religious bc real jews could not behave the way those people do).. abuse Palestinians daily. They throw so many things through the windows that as you walk through the centre there are iron nets covering the street. The Israeli army is present to protect the Jewish settlers and knowing that the settlers use the army as a buffer to do whatever they want. It was because of such daily abuses that the organisation breaking the silence was born. Breaking the silence is a very controversial organisation where ex IDF soldiers write about what they saw that was abuse. It is important to say that all Israelis I met here are entirely against the existence of these settlements in Hebron, and they also think these settlers are crazy and their actions despicable.

As a result of the continuous occupation of the centre, and the violence inflicted daily, the centre is entirely empty. As I walked through the city I could see one shop after the other closed. Above me i saw the buildings where Jewish settlers lived, and the nets where laid glasses and bottles, and all kinds of things that people throw down. I saw the streets that are closed and no Palestinian has access to. I saw the buildings marked of bullets, I felt the tense atmosphere. I saw how many more km they have to drive because they cannot cross a street. I was taken to the Mosque of Abraham which is divided in two. One side for the Jews the other for the Muslims. There lays supposedly Abraham,  Sara, Isaac, and some other important religious figure that I do not remember the name of.

To get inside the mosque we had to go through a few check points. There stood young soldiers carrying riffles. I asked if I could take pictures of them. They agreed as long as I would be in the picture too. I did. It was a surreal situation.  I was asked where I was from, my religion, and then wished I good trip. I went in in a Hijab as sign of respect. I watched the tomb while I could see through the window on the other side and orthodox Jew taking a picture of the same tomb. Israa told me she would pray. The mosque was almost empty and Zuhair explained to me it was bc it was so hard to come in nowadays.

We then walked back home through the different centres. Zuhair emphasised how commercial centres changed place all the time as a result of the occupation. “It is actually much better for us real occupation than this fake state. we have no power. since the supposed separation there are more settlements being built than ever”. he explained.  Back in his house his daughter Mais who is the finance director of the rehabilitation centre was waiting for me. His other daughter came bringing her children. At some point I lost count of how many children where there. Badria, his mom, could not speak to me, but hug me, and said to me she wanted me to go to paradise. which meant I should convert to Islam. She wanted to take me in as her daughter. They treated me with an indescribable affection. I taught little Layan, 8, to count in french, and she practiced her english with me. She got so attached to me that she woke up the following day telling her mom she had dreamed of me and wanted to play with me again. I liked her so much that  I stayed an extra day just to be able to play with her.

I could not have full conversations with the women but I fell in love with them. I watched the continuous taking out and putting on of veils as different guests came into the house.  When I put a veil on to joke they all thought I looked so beautiful in it. It made me realise at least some of them really liked the veil. I asked Israa how she felt about marrying. Mixed feelings she said. Once I understood she was moving to Amman to marry a man she barely knew my heart tightened. Israa is the sweetest and I wish her anything but happiness. She invited me for the wedding.  As we walked in the streets she bought me a little bracelet. I who never really wear anything have it now around my wrist as a memory of the love I received from my new friends. When Rima, Zuhair’s wife,  realised I loved Zaatar she prepared me a special Zaatar bread. I ate all they fed me. I told them of my travels they laughed they loved hearing about it even if all that i did was not practice in their culture. I was invited for ice cream, I sat in a living room full of joyful children, women and men.  They laughed, joked, played with children.  Are we really that different? I could not help but think that we are not. These family was so religious. They followed all prayers yet they respected I was not.

When it was time to go my eyes filled with tears. I feel so thankful. How can it be all these people are so kind to me? They thanked me for bringing them smiles, laughter and joy. Before it was time to go Zuhair gave me a bag full of the “best Zaatar in the world”. ” Whenever it is done, you let me know, i ll send more to you.” He took me back to the bus station put me in the van and once gain gave the specific instructions to the driver. Next to me sat a Palestinian boy who went to university in NYU. We talked the whole time. Again he lived with Jews and Christians in New York. He was starting an organisation against racism. ” You see. These occupation harms us both”.

As Zuhair drove me the day before through the refugee camp, around the settlements, showed me road blocks, I felt exactly the same. These settlers cannot be happy living isolated. My friends in Israel cannot live well living in fear,  my friends here cannot live well living under an occupation. I feel they are missing out so much. I who stand in the middle having the chance to meet the best side of both cannot stop  thinking of Dubois’s words ”

“And herein lies the tragedy of the age:not that men are poor,.. all men know something of poverty;not that men are wicked,.. who is good? Not that men are ignorant,..what is the truth? Nay, but that men know so little of man. W.E.B du Bois (The souls of Black Folk)”

Nablus became my second home in Palestine. Sam lives on his own but the house is always full by his younger brothers and his friends who come to eat, to work, to talk, to hang out. There is not much Palestinian boys can actually do to have fun. They smoke Shisha, play football, play cards, talk. They do not go out dancing, or meet girls, or do much of the things we do in the west. As a result of a combination of factors I ended up spending a lot of time with these boys. They are a gate into a secret world to me as they do not hesitate on answering anything I ask them about. They do not try to impress me they seem to say whatever comes to mind even if it might be something that I might find absurd. They take care of me. So when I decided to leave and  come to Bethlehem Sam told me I could take a ride with Yahya his brother ( the one I had the sex conversation with), and his friend Jaafar and Sami.

They came to pick me up the following morning, I thought they would give me a ride to the bus station. No they explained they would give me a ride to Bethlehem. I asked if they were already going there and they said yes. So I thanked them for the ride and started what turned out to be probably the most emotional day in my trip so far.

We drove through the beautiful mountains of Palestine. I did not know Sami and Jaafar yet so we talked a lot. Eventually we reached our first check point. An Israeli soldier stood outside with a weapon and asked us for papers. We gave our passports, he was surprised at seeing me there. Asked me what I was doing, I told him I was travelling, he asked me whether I was enjoying my trip, I told him I was. He smiled and wished me a safe journey. He was not abusive at all. I don’t know if it was as a result of me being there. I asked the boys. They said when you are in a car is easier then when you are in a bus.

We kept driving had to show our passport in a few other occasions. Suddenly they entered a place. A supermarket. I asked why we had to show passports to drive into the supermarket and they explained to me it was because the people there were Jewish. I looked at them a little puzzled  “are we in a settlement supermarket ?” we were.  I asked them how they felt about it and they explained to me they did not dislike Jews, they disliked the soldiers.  I asked them about the Bedouins and the Druzes. And they explained to me the Druzes were the worse people there was. °The Israelis when we volunteer in hospital boss us around, but the Druze kick us. THey are mother fuckers. They always kick us.”

We came outside and entered a completely full supermarket where Jews were shopping for Passover. It was crowded beyond belief. We walked around and when it was time to pay I thought we would have to stay h ours. I had few things on my hand and very soon a lady offered to let me go before her. It was strange. I did not feel any antagonism from the people. When we needed an info and I asked a soldier, the boys with me talked to them friendly.

We kept driving. And as I noticed they had no idea how to drive to Bethlehem I discovered they did actually not have to go. They were driving me there! I asked them and they said “no, we were travelling there nonetheless”.  I knew it was a lie to make me feel better, I felt thankful once again. Once we got here, and I called my Italian friend they asked me if they could hang out with us. I said that of course they could and so we started our tourist day. We had coffee, went into the nativity church. Lorenzo, who is from Italy and was baptised by John Pope the II himself kept making jokes. As someone who is an atheist and despises religion he joked around. I asked him not to do so. I do not particularly care for the church, but I do for the people in it.  My friends who were Muslims,  were respectful of the Church and the people inside. They showed me every corner, took pictures of me, of them, of the Church.

We left and wandered the streets. Lorenzo suggested seeing the wall. The wall that separates Israel from Palestine. We drove there. We parked and I was first happy to recognise the posters that JR the last TED talk prize winner had put in there (http://www.ted.com/talks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out.html ). JR printed pictures of Palestinians and Jewish doing the same jobs. Made enormous posters and glued them on the wall. Who is Who kind of thing. Two years later after the pictures remained there. We walked along the wall. The wall that separated us from Israel. My friend here from my friends there. As I walked and looked at drawings that ranged from messages of hope to messages of anger I felt dead silent inside of me. I suddenly could not take it. All came together in that moment in that wall. I walked in silence my eyes filled with tears. My Palestinian friends walked in silence. Lorenzo kept talking as if it was a tour. I did not know how my friends felt. I did not want to be the one crying. I could not stop myself. Tears ran through my face. I could not even think exactly why. we walked and walked till we reached the check point.

Lorenzo said he wanted me to see it. I refused it was enough. I had seen enough. He said it was important. So we walked inside of a corridor or Iron bars, feeling like in a cage, next to my friends. I asked over and over. Do you guys want to do that ? they said it was ok. I knew it was not. I did not want to take this tour. I was mad at the insensibility of Lorenzo. This is not just a tour! But we kept walking tears streaming down my face. we reached the end, saw where passports are shown. Where everyday Palestinians go at 3 am to wait for 3 hours to have the right to cross to the other side to work in construction work. Only to return the same day.

We made our way back through the cage. I cried in total silence. My friends contorted me. Jules it is ok. It is our life. I asked each one of them how they felt. Yahyah had never seen the wall. He was just as shaken as me. ” I feel bad. Not for the wall, but because we cant resolve this”. Jaafar told me ” We are the same people some day we will live together. I just don’t understand some people in both sides don’t want that”. I cried even more. Knowing fully well that I loved my friends in both side of the wall. Knowing they are good people. Good people who sometimes misunderstand each other. Knowing that Kosta could be Jaafar s friend in another world. They really would. They have the same gentle soul. They work in the same field. They took care of me to the same extent.

I looked at JR pictures thinking I could not separate one from the other. Just as I cant with my friends. And I hated the wall. I really did. I hated all that allows us from believing people are different as a result of culture. We are not. We say different things. We represent the world somehow differently. But even these dissipate at a closer look.

I did not know what to do. What could we do now? I suggested Ice Cream. Just because I had not idea what to say. They all took on to the idea. So we drove to the  Italian ice cream shop in Bethlehem. We asked colourful ice creams and sat under the sun. We sat for long enough to let go.

And so we decided to go back to the centre. In the centre we were invited by some activist to seat in the memorial of Victorio the Italian who had been killed in Gaza.  I thought that maybe my friends would not want to do that. It was too much. First to have an Italian make them walk inside the fenced corridor, the symbol of the oppression. Then to seat for an Italian who might or not have been killed by Islamists. I did not want to do the ” us x them” thing. But in their enormous generosity they said “Jules lets seat at least for 5 minutes”. I agreed. “Let s seat for peace”. So we did. We sat on a circle in memory of an activist who was supposedly killed by Islamists in Gaza. We sat, foreigners and Palestinians in a circle. In front of the Nativity church where supposedly was born the man that preached love to everyone.

I actually do not know where to start this post from. I am still in Nablus. I should probably start by explaining that It is in Nablus that most Israelis told me not to come to if I was to come back alive. It is in Nablus that all finishes at midnight as the Israeli soldiers might spend the night in the streets. I have not seen a single Israeli soldier yet but I also have never been to the streets pass 10pm.

What I have seen of Nablus is entirely different than what I was told about. I walked last night through the streets with Lorna a young English couch surfer without ever feeling scared, or ever anyone coming to bother us. I walked the old city with Sam my host and was greeted by incredibly friendly people. As there are not that many tourists walking through the markets in the old city is just easy and lovely.  The city is thousands of years old. No one hassles you, there is no bargaining and as I am being chaperoned by either Sam or his brothers I never have any hassle at all. People are incredibly politicised here. They always want to tell you about about the occupation. I ask them about Israelis and they say they do not like the army, but do not dislike the Jews. They often ask me about Chavez, most people I encounter in the streets can carry out a conversation in English and seem to know a lot about the world.

Sam, my host,  lived in the US for 11 years, and his story deserves a book so I won’t do  the injustice of summarising it here. He is a generous man, with enormous ideals of creating hope and opportunities for the new generation of Palestinians. He took the time to take me to walk the city, the old city, have breakfast in the most special place. Because of him I saw every hidden little place of Nablus. I saw the spices shops, and the hidden rooms in the back where laid the treasure collected by Bedouins. I saw the shop that sold pistachios, and other nuts and seeds, and the back rooms where the old ovens roast them. I saw where arabic coffee is breed and was shown its secret ingredient: cardamon! I visited the oldest turkish bath, established 130 years before jesus, I saw where the Intifada first started, I saw where was the “interrogation room” for traitors in the middle of the old city, i drank teas, and coffees, and tried all kinds of spices.

When Sam had to go to to work, and Lorna left to Ramallah I was passed to Sam’s brothers and his friends. We went for a walk at night and then to a coffee shop. In the coffee shop I started a conversation that turned out to be way more controversial than the Palestinian and Israeli conflict: sex!

Yahyah is 24, Ahmad 23, and Brahhim 22.  They joined me for coffee and what started as me asking about their daily lives, what they did to have fun, turned out on me asking about their girlfriends. Both Yahyah and Brahim had girlfriend for years. I asked what they did with them. And basically they did not do anything. I insisted on the question and was revealed to an enormous world of contradictions. They both had had sex before with married women but would never have sex with a woman if they loved her unless they married her. In a mixture of romanticism and Islamic fanaticism they explained to me that once married they would devote themselves to their wives. If a woman does all that for you you have to give her everything! they explained. When I asked how about if they would marry a woman that is not virgin they said no. Even worse quite without a problem they recognised that they would kill their daughter or sister if they were to have sex before marriage. I asked if it was a common practice and they said no because girls don’t have sex before marriage, and if they do they are married to the guy.

I was appalled. What? So you guys would kill me? They would not because I am not Muslim so I can do whatever I want. The conversation was truly fascinating. Their ideas of love, sex, respect are sooooooooooo different. What became even more insane was that once we came home and I told Sam  about their views he became furious. It became a discussion over the Koran. Sam saying that what they said had nothing to do with Koran but with their own hypocrisy as they were all not virgins either. He said they just used the Koran to say whatever they wanted but the Koran itself made it almost impossible for someone to be charged with sex crimes. Half of the talk was done in arabic. It became heated. They eventually agreed that if they loved a woman they would marry her. Ahmad would stand up for her, Yahyah move to another country.  They wanted to know my views on love. I told my views ” total freedom. if you love someone don’t constrain them”. They were amazed. The other boys who were in the house joined the discussion.

I asked then ” what if you were married to someone you had sex with out of respect, and then married realised you were friends, and then  fell in love with someone else”. They were completely taken by that thought. What would they do. Yahyah stooped thought about it and  said “if my wife was good to me i could never hurt her. I would just stay with her”. I insisted ” even if you loved totally someone else”. He was confused probably never thought of that before. He hesitated. ” If my wife had saved herself for me, and would be my wife I just could not leave her” he said.  In this mixture total absurd stealing of women’s sexuality these boys feel they respect women much more. Whoever is this girl they marry is their little princess.  Then they don’t  want them to work, or suffer. I pushed the limits i asked all and a bit more. I showed pictures of my gay friends. I said to them that were I came from no one would marry a virgin. It was absolutely fascinating. In a strange way I feel that women here are both constrained and protected. What a mysterious world.

Yet with me pushing it all, saying thins like ” I am whore to you all then, right?” they were always incredibly kind to me. Incredibly interested in finding out what was it that I thought? How about kids? How about love? How about Allah? Some do pray, most of them don’t. What fascinated me the most was their truthfulness. How they would just basically say whatever they thought. How passionate about the notion of love. How naive, crazy and sweet all at the same time. The English girl with me here had said the night before ” all over the world men want to have sex, here they want to marry.” It is incredible they actually really do.

These boys are just boys. They do not want to live like in the west. They think we don’t really value relationships. Yet they would like to have a club here where they could go out and dance. They go to  segregated schools. Never talk to a girl. Boys walk hand in hand and kiss each other cheeks when they meet. And even though Lorna, the english girl, and I stand for all that their religion does not they not only are very interested in learning about us, but also want to make sure that we understand they are not bad people. ”

Yahya I am shocked would u really kill your sister?” Sam furious screamed “our sister has had sex b4 marriage and who does he think he is!? I d kill him if he touched her!  ” Yahya looked at me exhausted and said “of course I would not. But that is what I am supposed to say”.

So I am seating now in the living room of Sam my new host. I am in Nablus the city lots of Israelis told me not to come to if i were to return alive. So far things could not have been better. I took a communal taxi from Ramallah to Nablus. I drove through beautiful hills. To my left sat next to me an older man/ As soon as I sat down he started a conversation. It turned out  that he did his studies in England, and his PhD at the LSE in the 80s.  So we drove having a lovely conversation. On my right was a young boy. He worked in Jerusalem in the Christian quarter even though he was Muslim. He did not immediately speak to me, but instead spoke to the old man about me. I could tell, so i asked if he could speak english. ” Of course he said” He was a student of Economics in the University of Nablus where all to  my surprise was taught in English.

Zuhair, the older man, told me about the koran, about his experiences in England and told me I was divinely protected. Once I arrived in Nablus he did not leave until talking to my host, putting me in a cab, paying for it and insisting for me to visit him Hebron. I thanked him, and said I would definitely come. I was already planning to come to Hebron, and now having someone to show it to me, a fellow student from the LSE made it all even easier.

The cab left me where Sam had told Zuhair to take me to, and as soon as I came out of the cab a cute young Palestinian boy came to me and said. ” Are we looking for you? Are you here for Sam?” I agreed so they walked me here. As I arrived I met another couchsurfer, a lovely English girl, Lorna,  who studies at UEL in London. I was immediately offered coffee, and then food, a computer, showed around. It felt great. The hospitality in this side of the world is just breathtaking.

We talked about politics, and psychology. Sam asked me about Lula, and Chavez. I spoke a lot as I usually do.  He explained the people here jews, and arabs are all the same. Delicious food was brought over and I decided to stop for a second just to write this message. I thanked Sam for hosting me. He said he likes having people coming to see how really this side of the world is. What else could I ask for? I feel so happy that I do get this chance to see once more how similar we are all over the world.