Exiled within Skin

The hanging wired lights quivered in the summer breeze which carried with it peanut shells, the scent of cotton candy, and the shout of men stomping and dancing in century old tradition. The festivities lit the old buildings every summer, on the very street my great grandfather, grandfather, father, and brother had all walked during nights like these.

I could not help but imagine these young men becoming those images in an old photo, one you hold up and wonder at, put down, and see the same street deserted. If I left, that is what this place would become, a ghost.

The pregnant woman chomped on her peach in the dusty, unkempt office. "I said 'wait.'" She did not look at me but continued to speak Hebrew behind her desk, glaring at the screen before her, and grumbling the universal sound for anger. I went back and sat down watching all of her kind getting serviced before me, and finally she called my name in her disgustingly colonial accent. I laid out each paper that gave a reason why I deserved to be here, documents signed off by white men to justify why I should be allowed in my homeland.

The bass of the speakers pounded against my thoughts. The women chattered around me. They smiled at me, kissed me when they greeted me, and said it was nice that I had given up my American life to be here. They laughed, they chased their children. The men stomped even louder with every chanted verse of our existence. Everyone seemed happy.

I drank up tonight like a wine, and became drunk with worry and delight all at once. I felt pride in the men dancing in the middle of the circle, clapping and leading their brothers in dance and song. But would I see this again, would I one day be a bride sitting amidst the walls of my tribe and finally making that commitment to reside here with the love of my life, Palestine. I thought of exile, that horrid thing that death brings upon us all when we leave life, the reason why my father is not in the crowd standing next to his brother, dancing, crouching and jumping back up to clap.

I am facing death.

The pregnant woman in the office told me to get a renewal form. I told her I did not know where to get one, and she yelled again at me. When I  returned after looking around, I told her no one was around to help me, and she reached behind her desk and gave me one.

"Wow, it was just right there. You must have forgotten where you placed them, but then again, all you had to do was reach back."

No response. Life here is talking to the wall, the famed "security fence."

I sat down. I saw as she examined the documents and what her computer told her.

All I remember in the midst of dancing, of old women screeching like roosters in praises of the bride's beauty and her new husband's happiness; all I remember tonight is that the Dome I saw this morning could merely become a memory. All I remember tonight is the manager of the pregnant woman telling me to leave, that I should not be here. 

"What is there not to get? Leave now. Go back to wherever you came from. To Los Angeles. Go, leave. Now. Get out of my office. We are done."

"Why? Please just give me a reason why this is happening to me?"

"Because you are Arab, you have family in Ramallah. And your grandmother is Palestinian. We cannot do anything for your kind. Go back to where you came from. America."

In their large revolving circle of generational life, the men chanted songs that had tears of absolute desperation running down my cheek. They sang of living in strange lands, and what it does to the soul when you know exile has been stamped into every record book except the one angels keep of you. Tonight they sang of how no one can find peace until they return to that place where no one can say, "Go back."

Al ghurba. I am living it now, here, in my skin of olive trees, dirt roads, and echoing calls to prayers, that flesh stretching over so many shattered hopes.

I am searching for myself in the shadows of thought.The only places the soul has to go are heaven or hell.

Today, I am praying to God for forgiveness.