tamara wants me to say what i think of the situation, as we say in hebrew, the "matsav". everyone knows what you're talking about when you say that... they wouldn't mistake it for the situation you found yourself in when your last boyfriend broke your heart or the situation you had on your hands when he found out you'd been cheating.
it is one thing and one thing only -- the conflict. i am not sure why i don't post more often... if it's fatigue, or running out of things to say, or being too self-conscious about who might stumble across my amateur musings. future bosses? old lovers? smart friends? or maybe because i always want to write about my interactions with people and i feel it's not right to expose them.
the matsav, as they say, is not good. but has it ever been good? i found myself giving a presentation last week in front of a group of visiting parliamentarians from a european country. i began, the situation in gaza has not been good for some time but new and startling precedents are constantly being set. they looked at me as i spoke... and i wondered what good it was doing. here we were before them, a panel of concerned citizens, dreadful stories under our arms, personal calamities, and they, calmly drinking water and juice, eager to catch the next flight home. afterwards we snapped photos together and wished each other well.
and i went out into the afternoon air, frazzled, still gaining hold of myself after being so nervous to present before them, and before my peers. i berated myself for not telling more stories, for not hitting my points home, for not making sure these six pleasant men from europe would lay sleepless that night on their flight home for thinking about our matsav, about gaza and the people there dragged down further than ever on purpose by weary leaders with too much to prove. they would sleep well, those men, because i'd let the people of gaza down. i took one step after the other and finally shook myself out from under that ridiculous burden. i reasoned with myself, they'd been hearing it for all of the days of their visit and nothing would unseat them. as we are all so fatigued and we've heard it all before.
later that evening, i left my house to meet my great aunt at a play put on by a mixed arab and jewish troupe. i walked past an appliance store and all the tvs were set to the same newscast, showing last week's shooting incident in jerusalem. religious men and boys gathered in a street, their bewildered faces streaked by red siren lights. it took a second for me to read the caption below and afraid to be overcome with panic, as i am prone, i kept walking and tried to put it out of my mind. a few blocks later i called my uncle in jerusalem and was happy to hear he was safe at home with his family. i thought of jesse and i walking in paris and seeing the second airplane hitting the second tower on the television screens of an appliance store. as i kept walking, all the corner stores and cafes had their tvs set to the news, radio newscasts blared from stores without tvs. people had already begun to gather around, making exasperated commentary -you see what happens? and -peace, they muttered to each other. the tvs said who to care for, they said these are ours and those were theirs. they said our calamity exceeds theirs, our fight is moral and just. it is as simple as black and white.
i thought of all the eyes on all our dead here, the endless commentary and the endless taking "sides" as if there really are just two simple sides and two simples perspectives. i thought of how the calamity always seems to be getting bigger and how the only ones who act are those who rise up to create another.
