Preparation

Jerusalem Road is completely packed right now. It is 10pm and the only time it was like this was after the World Cup game. People are coming from the Ramallah direction and heading towards the villages. 

I speak from behind tears right now. I was one of the few at school to fast growing up. I began in the third grade, and people pitied me. My teacher even stashed food. I had to sit in the principal's office until lunch was over.
College was the first time I was really a part of a Muslim community. But this Ramadan will somehow be different-- different because I have actual family with whom to celebrate. To visit, go to the masjid with, break fast together. Today I got to visit my grandmother during a break from work--in California, I had absolutely no one to visit.


We were on our own.


And still, the loneliness of personal struggle remains even here. 

I will be, inshAllah, putting up pictures, video, and some reflection for each day of Ramadan on my blog. This is the first time I am here for this holy month. It does not matter where you practice of course, but I am now getting a vantage point from a predominately Muslim country. And so far, people seem whatever about this time because it is coming in the thick of the summer. 

I take public transportation everyday for work, which is a blessing because it forces me to interact with complete strangers. And because I teach different classes here, I have gotten a small survey of opinions. One driver joked and said, "I heard Ramadan didn't make it past the checkpoint this year. Looks like I will not be fasting until Ramadan gets a visa." Another driver said, "Look at the streets. Yesterday it was packed because people were buying things and preparing for this month. But now, people are gorging themselves with food. No traffic--another blessing of Ramadan." Most of my students really do not want to attend class. I have had to reschedule every class to accommodate them. We never had that privilege in America.

People have flooded the city in preparation for Ramadan since it was just officially announced tonight, buying food, blinking lights, and new abbayas. But how can one seriously prepare for this month besides purifying their intentions? I pray God accepts our fasts and prayers, and that we commit for His sake and not some cultural or social implication.


I miss my family all over the globe and am imagining them in this moment, getting ready for the sacrifice ahead. I pray for those who have passed away. I miss them terribly. I wish everyone the best. I speak sporadically because emotions are flooding me as I watch this road of people coming and going, fireworks exploding along a road with one of the largest military checkpoints instituted by the Zionists. 


A road that leads directly to the third holiest site of Islam--now impossible for most to reach.

Only the heart and soul can measure how far we have come along.

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.

Work Summary and Assessment, Jalazone Refugee Camp

My Name
July 01 2010
Addressed to the School Principal
Sponsored by UNRWA, USAID, and my employer.

English Lesson 6E
8:00-9:30am

I received my lesson books, workbooks, and audio cassettes a day before the summer camp began. This left me with limited time to plan for our lessons on this first day at Jalazon Refugee Camp. But I have come to realize that there was no planning that could predict the climate of this school.

The absolute enthusiasm of my students was outstanding at 8:00am, so much so my sleep deprived soul was awakened. I found the students approachable and enthusiastic. There was not a single student during our introduction that refused to speak. Rather I had more of an issue of giving each student enough time to speak. They had so much to say about themselves, when I was merely a stranger to them.

We talked about the World Cup and our predictions. Got to know one another and moved into the first lesson in the book, "Famous People." We began at a local level and they listed only political figures. Some particular students listed only figures from a particular political party, and the students told me it was pretty obvious where that student was from. I was pleased that they were able to speak about such things in peace and comfort with one another. When we moved to talking about famous people in the Arab world, most of those they listed were singers or presidents/kings of various nations. I then asked them about famous Europeans, and they listed more political figures or soccer players. We then moved to America, and the first names they listed were Bush, Rice, Obama, Mitchell: people they were exposed to. I expected them to talk about singers or actors, but no one listed any. All famous figures were political, if not soccer players. One student suggested our next lesson be strictly about political figures and what they have done to their homeland.

The lesson went smoothly. I appreciated my volunteer's enthusiasm and her ability to jump into an exercise when I invited her to participate and lead. For the most part the student's have a very strong command of vocabulary but do not respond in English as much as they could. I say "could" because they openly stated they feared to slur or mispronounce words while saying incoherent sentences. I found it interesting the text's passages referred to the Muppets and Sesame Street, things that are culturally irrelevant to the students, making the passages harder to understand. But they enjoyed learning about Kermit and what American kids are exposed to, I suppose.

I mean, this program is in part a way to expose them to American way of life, teach them English, and encourage them to attend American institutions of learning.



---------All the while a settlement is literally in their backyard.

Overall I have a better idea of where to head with our English lessons. I need to focus on more grammar, but I must say their skills surpass most of my adult students.


Art Lesson 6E
9:30-11:30am

I sat in Ms. Censored and Mr. Censored art class. The first project involved geometric designs and pattern making. The youth enjoyed this because they were free to create their own stencils from which their pattern would be derived.  The second project involved them tracing their hands. On their left hand they had to write things they disliked while their right hand had written on it things they enjoyed.

Many students enjoy, sports, food, and music.

"I hate Isriael."
"I hate occuppattion."
"I do not like soldiers."

Left hand.

Lunch
11:30-12:00pm

A student and I played basketball together. Before I knew it the entire class was on the court and I had students from other classrooms wanting to play. It got somewhat crowded since other boys were using the same space for a soccer game. But it was nice, especially when other teachers joined in. We decided to make it a part of camp to play a sport together during the lunch period. We will play soccer Sunday.

Drama Lesson 6E
12:00-1:30pm

We began by defining drama. The students themselves articulated that drama was not always something serious, but just entailed acting and presentation through various means. They specified that entertainment could be of various genres. After this discussion we did a bit of charades. I gave them abstract terms to present, and after much effort most of them were able to present the word to their classmates. However,their classmates mostly guessed in Arabic rather than English. After this I gave three groups of students each a scenario to expand into a story and act out.

The first group was told to be a family at the dinner table.

The second group was told to be guests at a restaurant that overcharged them.

The third group was looking for a friend's lost wallet.


The third group went first. They created guns from folded paper. Bandannas to cover their faces. One person got shot, two arrested, and two acted as cops doing the arresting. The acting was very physical and violent, and completely lost the direction of the scenario.

The second group then went up. It began rather calm, with the waiter bringing in the orders to the guests at the table. The waiter charged them four hundred dollars, and one of the guests got up from the table. He yelled at the waiter then began to beat him. The skit ended.

The first group sat at a table eating dinner. The father figure asked each of his kids questions. The father was upset with the religious performance of his son, and began to curse him. He cursed his wife and daughter. Then he beat the son. The son ran to the corner of the room crying to his mom. The dad smacked him one more time, and then skit ended.

The focus was not what I instructed. All of the skits focused on violence. That was their medium of exchange, their means of presenting: to shoot at one another, die on the classroom floor, pretend to smack each other, and curse. The first group insisted they were the best because at least they focused on religion.

Then you and my boss came into the room, handed out those colorful shirts and caps refugee children often wear for US funded corruption schemes, and that was that.

Chemical Hair Straightening Politics

Before I cut my hair and created an afro, people thought my Arabic was perfect and that I had resided here in the Occupied Territories all my life. But when I embraced my curls and the nest that rests upon my head, I suddenly became a foreigner. It just does not make sense in my mind, how it can be that when I do accept my natural hair, my natural being in my natural homeland, my new conceptual being creates me into a foreigner. This place is just full of paradoxes.

Today I visited the apartheid wall, and I realized my identity was not the drawings painted on the cement slabs. It was not the landscape that was separated by the barrier, the hills, and valleys, and villages. My identity was the space between each slab, inches deep in the massive barrier. It did not bleed, but hid between massive entities, people who spoke on my behalf, made decisions, drew boundaries. It was that tiny space that society left for me. I could speak, but it would be between two worlds. My hair would be indigenous yet at the same time alien. When the wall does come apart, and there is no space, no cement, no guns, and just freedom, when there is room for my giant hair, what would Palestine be?