making up for lost time - tel aviv, jaffa, sinai

In my many months of not posting, so much has happened and yet it all happened so quickly that entire entries never seemed to materialize quickly enough to keep up. Sometimes I felt just like posting a photo and maybe one line. This was Purim, who knew it was such a party in the streets? I wanted to make some eloquent commentary about a Reuters photograph that was in the paper here of a little boy in Sderot dressed as a Palestinian militant, complete with a fake Qassam rocket, the same kind that real militants launch at this little boy’s southern Israeli town near Gaza. But nothing eloquent seemed to come, the picture already spoke for itself. A trip to Los Angeles and New York offered perspective and the welcome company of old friends, frutas in Echo Parque, a world of glittery palm trees and then snow and cold and favorite restaurants. Coming back meant more work, and with it the kind of stories that have gradually worn away at the easy optimism I packed with me a year ago. It got warm enough to drink iced coffee again and now it’s hot enough that there is no going back.

But most of all, what’s kept me away from the internet in the evenings and prevented me from even snapshot, half-baked musings is that I met a new love. Class is over but he is still trying to teach me Arabic. When people call from Gaza I can never remember how to say -Call again tomorrow, or -Call back in ten minutes. But I will never forget how to say -The humidity ruins my hair, and at least one useful thing –Mai isn’t here now. With the new love in my life, I am no longer thinking of green lines and red lines, but about how to negotiate the space between us. I am amazed at how I can argue so efficiently in Hebrew even when it displeases me so much that we are fighting. He bought me plastic, magnetic Hebrew letters that he put up on the back of his front door so he could teach me to spell. One day his craziest friend came over and used every single letter to write a long soliloquy I could barely read. Yesterday I came over to the door, looked at all the letters and picked out three to spell “sun” – which, like in English, is composed of just three little letters.

In Sinai I thought about peace. The consensus in the Israeli subconscious seems split in just two when it comes to Sinai (the furthest Israeli citizens can get in Egypt without a visa, and within spitting distance of Israel’s southernmost tip, the Red Sea city of Eilat). Sinai is now thought of either as a hotbed of potential attacks (at any minute, we are always being warned, Israeli packed pool sides and beach front promenades may be targeted) or it is thought of or rather described by a near ecstatic sigh followed by an “ooohhh Sinai” – almost painful-like, it’s that good. I was happy to finally extricate myself from the first category and find myself settled in quite nicely into the second category, filling myself up with sunshine and watermelon and feta cheese. I could have spent many more days contemplating my feet padding around in the Red Sea and doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted because that’s apparently what Sinai is “all about.” Peace is good, was the simple thought that kept coming to mind, especially when you are the one coming out on top of it.

compassion/fatigue

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.

l.a./new york

i suppose it's a little bit misleading to post an entry about los angeles and new york when i call this thing "tania in the holy land" but i think it's fitting nonetheless, and especially since i am writing this from my bedroom in tel aviv with all the glory of holy-land-tinged hindsight.

for the first time in over eight months, i made the dizzyingly long trip back to the states, via two planes, and after nearly 24 hours, landing in los angeles.

upon returning from paris, los angeles seemed spacious and empty, from buenos aires, safe and new, from tel aviv, l.a. is orderly. people wait their turn in line, horns rarely honk, cars stay in their lanes. i managed to discover new places - like a pirate themed bar in koreatown and my dad's straight-up hike which takes you to a breath-taking (and catching) 360 degree of the city - and also to visit my favorite spots and with my favorite people. nothing beats frutas with salt, chile, and lime on the shores of the lake in echo park or the margaritas at el carmen.

new york was cold and hectic. i visited with friends and criss-crossed bridges over from new jersey, to manhattan, to brooklyn and back again. i told the same stories about my work and life in tel aviv substituting new anecdotes and jokes where appropriate.

at various moments, i thought how nice it would be to come back to the states. i fell in love with my friends all over again and with sunshine in l.a. and snow in new york. i thought about how i could lose myself in the comforts of "home" and so much laughter. on the plane ride to new york from los angeles, i dreamt i was at another l.a. party, going from room to room where friends drank cocktails and exchanged easy conversation. but telling the story of my life in israel, over and over, and no matter how many times i could still get fired up about what i had to say, i realized it was no use giving up now.

perhaps eight months ago i thought i might have the answers to middle east peace. i thought with enough time here, they might be revealed and lift us all up out of the catch 22s and downward spirals we find ourselves in...now, i don't know much of anything anymore. i don't have answers, but i do still have a lot of questions and i'm not ready to go just yet.

today

holiday of holidays

the weekend before last my mama and i went to haifa to see family. i am proud to report that i dragged the whole family to the "holiday of holidays" downtown which is a not entirely un-hokey celebration of the convergence in december of three important holidays in the muslim, jewish, and christian traditions. or maybe it's more apt to just say - it's the only place in the world where palestinian-israeli christians and muslims, israeli jews, and santa all get together to eat kebab and wander the streets. the only place where, on saturdays in december at least, people aren't eying each other suspiciously and santa is yelling at the cops in arabic and hebrew to let through his procession of drum playing scouts and baton twirling beauties.

in the evening i went with my cousin and his friend to dalyat al carmel, a druze village close to haifa which cascades down the hillsides in small points of light. we bought trinkets and i watched the sunset color the hills in amazing shades of purple and orange. my cousin made fun of me for taking so many pictures like a tourist. his friend said to me, mock impatiently, tania - where do you live? i answered, tel aviv. ok then, he said, you're not a tourist, stop taking so many pictures.

but these and so many things are still new to me - eruptions of conflict, brief semblances of peace and co-existence, sunsets, christmas lights in storefronts and bilingual hebrew-arabic speaking santas. looking at the sunset, i thought to myself, i was born on this mountain and if i had opened my eyes the first thing i would have seen was the sea below, spreading out dizzyingly as it does from so many places in haifa. so what does it mean to belong somewhere, for somewhere to belong to you, to long for a home in a place you have never seen or not long at all for the first home you knew? i am looking, my eyes wide open. the immensity of the sea from that high above is completely quiet.

crossing jordan

last weekend i met behrangy and his friend in jordan. we wandered the new, dusty streets of amman's upscale shopping area, all but closed down on an early friday afternoon. we ate with ex-pats in a big fancy restaurant. a sign on the wall said king hussein had once eaten there, as well as chris rock. we accidentally hit up a bar full of what one might call high class hookers, dancing for men and ordering them expensive booze. i was silently horrified, behrang's friend nodded approvingly. we ate syrian and israeli chocolate in our hotel room, while watching bbc world news and egyptian soap operas.

petra was full of tourists and people selling donkey rides and cheap jewelry. the ruins of its ancient city towered in shades of pink and orange over brits and americans in red and black checkered keffiyehs. i took pictures to show to friends back home - i imagined a new line called keffiyeh casual or keffiyeh contemporary. behrang and i snuck away to the fanciest hotel in town and ordered cocktails and mezze while his friend investigated the possibility of bunking with bedouins in the caves.

the next day i rode in a shared taxi the three hours to amman, just me and about 20 curious jordanian men. no one spoke to me at first, but then at the rest stop they all gathered around and tested their best english - shooting questions like the israeli border police at allenby bridge. i lied like a champ, pretending to be on god knows what kind of break from university in america...luckily it seemed that no one was keeping track of american holidays. i wanted to tell them i was israeli to see what they'd say but i decided it wouldn't be worth it, even if only one of the 20 wasn't so into the idea.

back on the bus, the guy next to me gestured towards another who had been talking to me, and said to me very seriously, 'beware of the boy.' my heart raced a bit and i asked why, looking over at the 'boy' with green blue eyes, his hair shiny with gel, his racing red jacket too big over his narrow shoulders and his freshly shined black leather shoes, crossing one over the other. he stared back at me, right into me, like fresh off the pages of a nudey magazine, maybe just pushing 22 and already bracing for a hard life of heart breaking. the man next to me leaned in close, his breath pushing at my hair, moist and warm, 'because you're very beautiful.' my heart slowed back to normal and i leaned back in my chair, bracing for the ride into amman.

slouching towards annapolis

it seems that i should weigh in on annapolis since i consider myself to be some kind of envoy of peace to the region (albeit in my own quiet, private sort of way).

what has not already been said about annapolis, about oslo, about israelis and palestinians in general?

well, maybe one thing, everyone needs to be a simulator. in my not so humble opinion, i believe there is a very profound need for people on the ground, just as much as the leaders and the scholars, to reach outside of themselves and see the perspectives of those on the "other side", look at the red lines that come up against their own red lines and the real limitations which for too many years have prevented a solution to this conflict. knowing someone's position is different from having to defend it as your own. you don't just learn the things they might say in a kind of mechanical way, you begin to react from a deeper place inside yourself.

nothing in the world will or should force either side to let go of its narrative of exile, loss, and suffering, but every day the situation becomes more complicated and the likelihood that this will all end with a handshake on the white house lawn more remote. israelis will have to realize and accept why their presence isn't loved in this corner of the world, and palestinians will have to accept that they aren't going to love everyone living on this land, because short of mass atrocity, this is all we have left.

there were two minor earthquakes in the region recently and it got me thinking - what would happen here if a catastrophe completely outside of the realm of the conflict struck? what kind of chaos would it bring, or unexpected cooperation maybe? or what if we all just fell into the sea, together, damned as we seem to be to suffer alongside one another these parallel narratives of exile and loss. what would the world look like without us? which conflict would rush in and take our place?

i was working out at the gym when they showed olmert and abu mazen getting off their respective planes near annapolis on the news. suddenly i couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. i felt filled with happiness, inexplicably. i know we are doomed to failure, in that cynical "realistic" place inside of me, but i couldn't help it, i felt drunk with hope in that moment...drunk with what if...?

everyone weighing in can only talk about the failure, this and that aspect of failure, the concessions, the injustice, the mistrust and fear...but i am here to talk about hope. on the brink of failure let there be one naive moment where we delude ourselves that all will be ok. let us believe that there are solutions and better days and then perhaps when we are really ready to look, we will know better how to find them.