Join me and other Interlink authors Phyllis Bennis and Daphna Levit for a one-hour discussion of our books. Sponsored by the Arab American-Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). If the technology doesn’t work correctly, you may wish to try watching it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRpdYrflvdM&feature=youtu.be.
Launching a book in the midst of a pandemic
Copies of my second book, I Found Myself in Palestine, arrived from the publisher in the middle of March. The very considerate delivery guy put down the books and moved away. “I’ll sign your delivery receipt,” he said, “so you don’t need to touch my pen and clipboard.”
There is nothing normal about launching a book in the midst of a pandemic.
The cover was beautiful and I liked holding the compact little book in my hands, but it didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It didn’t feel like the culmination of literally years of work by me and the 23 writers featured in the anthology. Honestly, it seemed trivial.
Hundreds of thousands more people have died since then, and the stress of uncertainty in the United States and around the world has grown. But I’m ready to share the book with the world anyway. Some people are reading more these days, and friends tell me that the personal approach of the book may bring calm and inspiration to some people. I hope so.
There is nothing normal about launching a book in the midst of a pandemic, but I hope that I Found Myself in Palestine will remind people that Palestinians, like many others, have experienced uncertainty and death for decades and they have kept their humanity. I hope we can all do the same.
Do today’s concurrent actions by Central Americans and Palestinians show a historic convergence of protest?
Freedom is claimed not granted
Do today’s concurrent actions by Central Americans and Palestinians show a historic convergence of protest?
This article originally appeared in Transformation: Where Love Meets Social Justice
A photograph of Maria Virginia Duarte sits on my desk, and as I watch the coverage of the migrant caravan approaching the US border I think about her again. Maria arrived in the United States without documents from El Salvador in in the early 1970s. She became part of my family, and when I had my first daughter Maria dipped her finger in a cup of coffee and put it in my baby’s mouth (apparently in El Salvador that’s considered good for babies).
In 1986, Maria was one of the almost three million “illegal aliens” granted amnesty by Ronald Reagan, and she no longer needed to live in hiding. When she and her sister decided to visit El Salvador for the first time since they had escaped, I went with them. I met their relatives on both sides of the brutal civil war that took the lives of 75,000 people between 1980 and 1992. I took rickety buses on narrow, unpaved mountain roads to visit relatives who had no water, sewage or electricity. I was in the marketplace when in the blink of an eye, all the young boys disappeared into shops and houses just minutes before government forces marched around the corner to “recruit” child soldiers.
Nearly four decades later, Central Americans continue to risk their lives to escape conditions caused in great part by US foreign policy, only to find themselves unwelcome in the oft-touted “land of immigrants.” But something feels different this time around. Individuals and families are marching together. It is not “merely” thousands of scared people risking their lives to stay alive, as we have seen in the exodus from Syria. It is also a protest of sorts, a refusal to comply, and it’s being met not only with humanitarian aid, but with political solidarity.
It might just be me, influenced by 35 years of being married into a Palestinian family including 13 years living under Israeli military occupation, but no matter how they are portrayed in the media, the Central American caravan and Gaza’s Great Return March feel to me like a convergence. Regular people taking brave steps, inspiring others to join, and building community while claiming freedom.
Today’s protests stand firmly on generations of resistance. They are parts of movements, cultivated over decades out of smaller attempts and in response to increasing repression that has made clear to people that freedom is claimed not granted. And our claims for freedom must be global.
Of course there are many differences in the situations of the Palestinians in Gaza and the Central Americans on the caravan, but there are also a surprising number of similarities. The Central Americans are running away from their homelands to find refuge in the United States. They are challenging the borders that prevent them from living in safety with respect for their human rights. The Palestinians in Gaza are running towards their homeland and challenging the blockade of a “border” that illegally prevents two million people from returning to their homeland (1.3 million of whom are documented refugees).
The Central Americans are seeking the legal status of asylum, which is part of refugee law, while in Gaza, legally-recognized refugees are denied their right of return. In both cases, the US and Israel distort the law in an attempt to claim that the relevant protections don’t apply.
For example, the US government portrays Central Americans not as asylum seekers but as migrants – people who choose to move “not because of a direct threat to life or freedom, but in order to find work, for education, family reunion, or other personal reasons,” as the UN puts it (p. 17). This enables the authorities to evoke their rights as sovereign states to deny entry into their borders and say that caravan participants should apply using existing immigration procedures or face deportation. In fact, Trump has repeatedly called them “invaders,” subject to a security rather than a humanitarian response.
This is nearly identical to Israel’s portrayal of the Gaza protesters. They are deemed a security risk to Israel, criminal, and not subject to any rights and protections – certainly not the right to return to their homeland, the right to protest for their human rights, or the right to international protection from a belligerent occupying power.
In fact, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency,
“State responsibility starts with addressing root causes of forced displacement. Strengthening the rule of law and providing citizens with security, justice, and equal opportunities are crucial to breaking the cycles of violence, abuse and discrimination that can lead to displacement (p. 34).”
Yet in both cases, the US and its allies have not fulfilled their obligations to prevent displacement. Instead, they have invested in funding conflicts and then erecting obstacles to rights-claiming by those who are displaced as a result. Israel constructed an Apartheid Wall that has been deemed illegal; Trump is trying to construct a similar wall along the US-Mexico border, even citing the Israeli wall as a model.
One mechanism used in both cases is the outsourcing of foreign policy enforcement, often paid for with foreign aid. Israel outsources enforcement to the Palestinian Authority (paid for by international donors), while the US has outsourced enforcement to Mexico, again paid for with aid.
In both cases, governments and multilateral organizations are complicit in the violation of human rights. The most obvious example is the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), ostensibly created to facilitate the reconstruction of Gaza after the 2014 Israeli attack by putting the United Nations in charge of vetting materials and beneficiaries using Israeli-approved criteria.
In my own research (pp.59-66) I found that the GRM potentially legalizes the perpetuation of a wrongful act (the blockade of Gaza), and potentially enables the perpetuation of violations by Israel, while the United Nations did not follow a correct process in becoming a legal party to the GRM agreement and inaccurately portrayed its role as a mere facilitator. In addition, the UN and other parties failed to fulfill their legal obligation of due diligence to ensure that the GRM agreement did not violate human rights, and the agreement appears unbalanced in assigning rights and responsibilities in Israel’s favor, while obligations are borne by the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority. Finally, the GRM potentially compromises the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, humanity and independence (for example, by allowing Israel a veto power over aid beneficiaries).
It doesn’t take much digging to find shameful failure of international organizations to protect the rights of Central Americans too. A recent article in an official United Nations news source reported that the “Secretary-General António Guterres was urging all parties to abide by international law, including the principle of ‘full respect for countries’ rights to manage their own borders.’” The failure to prioritize the protection of displaced Central Americans, Palestinians, Syrians, Rohingya, Afghanis, South Sudanese, Somalis and so many more demonstrates that an ongoing battle between human rights and states rights is at play – an existential fight to realize (or crush) the aspirational potential of international law and global governance.
When the declaration of a “humanitarian situation” becomes justification for military build up, checkpoints, and collection of personal information that threatens security (which is found in both these cases), people increasingly recognize this as a rhetorical slight-of-hand. When Donald Trump says that Central American migrants who throw stones would be shot, a policy almost identical to Netanyahu’s stance against Palestinian rock throwers, people see what they are up against: This cadre of power-mongers intend to criminalize communities that seek to protect human beings from the unconstrained power of militarized states.
But people like Maria Duarte and my friends in Gaza have no intention of giving up, nor of succumbing to the cowardly strategy of divide-and-conquer. Like the generations of activists on whose achievements we stand today, we will respond by recognizing the parallels and similarities in our struggles and in our aspirations for a safe place to live with dignity and call home.
Nora Lester Murad’s new book is “Rest in My Shade, a poem about roots,” co-authored with Danna Masad and published by Interlink Books with support from the Palestine Museum US. More information at https://www.restinmyshade.com.
BIO: Nora Lester Murad is a writer and activist. She is co-founder of the Dalia Association, Palestine’s first community foundation, and Aid Watch Palestine, a community-driven aid accountability initiative. She blogs at The View From My Window in Palestine and can be reached at @NoraInPalestine.
More Important Than Becoming a Writer…
These days, I delete all emails related to writing and publishing. I work fast to avoid being intrigued by subject lines. With each click I feel a millisecond of clarity (nothing is more important than family), but the swishing sound of the trash emptying makes my chest tighten with something like grief: I have lost the joy of writing, at least for now. All I write these days are emails about treatment modalities and appeal letters to insurance companies.
Not long ago, however, I forced myself to read a blog post about book promotion because, while I do not have the energy to care much, my first book will be released in a few months; and I owe it to those who supported me to try to make the book successful.
With my guard down, I lost myself in the practical minutia of soliciting book reviews when I came across a sentence that started: “I am OCD, so I research every opportunity….” The casual reference to OCD upset me terribly. I wrote immediately to the writer of the article: “OCD is not being detail-oriented or hard working. It is a debilitating mental illness caused by a brain dysfunction.” Neither the writer of the post nor the blogger who hosted it wanted to write a retraction or clarification (although the offending sentence was removed from the online version). I understand completely. Being a regular person with imperfections can interfere with the trajectory of a writer’s “success.”
But the fact remains: There is such a thing as being “paranoid” (with a lower case p), that is not at all the same as being “Paranoid” (with a capital P). People suffering from mental illness and their families are harmed when we don’t recognize the difference. Even though every mental illness is different and every person’s experience of mental illness is unique, I know this much from my own personal experience.
My 14-year old has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and our lives revolve around it, are controlled by it, and are hurt by it in deep and inexplicable ways. There is no facet of her life or mine that is untouched by her OCD. Still, she is not OCD. She is a person with an illness, not the illness itself. Not making the distinction between the person and illness – explicitly and repeatedly – does harm. Therapists even suggest that kids name their OCD to remember that they are not their illness. My daughter’s OCD is named Jarrad. When my daughter has intrusive thoughts (constant, negative, terrifying thoughts that are completely involuntary), I remind her: ‘That is not you. That is Jarrad trying to trick you into doing compulsions. You must believe that you have the power to tell him to shut up.’”
I have read that most people who suffer from OCD know very well that their thoughts and behaviors are irrational (unlike sufferers of some other mental illnesses), and because they are ashamed, they often go through extreme measures to hide their symptoms. People close to them may think they are quirky or weird, but often don’t realize there is a problem until it interferes with daily living. At that point, OCD behaviors may be dismissed as a “phase.” They may be labeled as disobedient (“Why do you insist on always making us late?”) or considered weak (“Why can’t you just ignore those thoughts if you know they are irrational?”) For all these reasons, it is common for suffers of OCD not to talk about their illness and not get the help they need.
No one tells a person with a chronic, incurable, painful heart condition that they should “get over it,” but they often say just that to a person with a chronic, incurable, painful brain condition like OCD. No one would write, “I’m Congestive Heart Failure” when explaining that they can’t catch their breath at the top of a flight of stairs, but they don’t think twice about saying, “I’m OCD” when casually describing their tendency to aspire to perfection.
In fact, the whole family suffers when a loved one has mental illness. Since Jarrad pushed his way into our lives, more and more of my daughter’s time – and mine – is stolen by her anxiety and my need to either prevent it or respond to it. When she is compelled to remake her bed ten times so that someone at school won’t die or when she walks in a certain pattern up and down every aisle of a department store to prevent a bomb from falling, I get angry, overwhelmed and feel hopeless. I need and deserve the help of a community (and a mental health system!) that understands that my daughter didn’t choose to be sick. She’s not sick because I’m a bad mother. And she isn’t OCD! She is a complex, worthwhile, lovable, smart, funny, creative and fantastic person.
Sadly, it is common for people to belittle her suffering by saying, “Oh yeah, I have OCD too,” or “Take advantage of your OCD to do well in school,” or when they tell me that I’m lucky that my daughter has OCD because their kids don’t keep their bedrooms clean the way my daughter does. Or they say, “She looks just fine to me!” as if they know what’s inside her brain. She often thinks that no one will ever understand her. She isolates herself looking for safety. Her healing gets harder.
I don’t know what it feels like to have OCD (as my daughter reminds me several times a day), but I do know what it’s like to love someone who does. I know what it’s like to spend every waking moment trying to get us through each day without a crisis, organizing our lives around what I think she can or can’t handle, and then changing plans at the last minute if she’s had a particularly bad nightmare or if a particular smell has triggered a breakdown. I know what its like to reorganize my priorities so that health is more important than just about everything else I ever cared about.
Somewhere inside of me, there is still a passion for writing. But right now, I can’t concentrate enough to read the stack of novels next to my bed, much less to write my own. Instead, I read about OCD, about trauma, about therapeutic doses and co-morbidity. When I talk about what we’re going through I learn that nearly every single one of us is somehow touched by mental illness. So why did so many people ask, “Are you sure you want to write about your experience and share it with the whole world?” Why wouldn’t I? We have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of (and yes, my daughter did encourage me to publish this piece).
Nora Lester Murad is not a mental health expert. She is the mother of three amazing daughters, one of whom has OCD and related brain dysfunctions. She participates in a family support group run by the National Alliance on Mental Illness – New York (NAMI-NYC) and believes fervently in their efforts to end stigma. Her first book will be released in a few months but the sense of accomplishment she expected totally eludes her. Simply put: Some things are more important than writing and publishing right now.
Palestinian Women Are Harassed and Humiliated at Checkpoints. Here Are a Few of Their Stories
Mariam Barghouti gives space for my youngest daughter to tell about her first Israeli interrogation at age 12 and for me to describe my recurrent harassment at Ben Gurion airport, in her article in The Forward, “Palestinian Women Are Harassed and Humiliated at Checkpoints. Here Are a Few of Their Stories.” Read the full piece here.
Iftar on the rubble
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss here.
My father was a social worker on Los Angeles’ skid row for decades. He felt deeply about the humanity of homeless people, and he did what he could to help each person to have a better life. Herb Lester, my father, saw homelessness as a humanitarian disaster; he saw it as the failure of governments to ensure the well-being of their people. And he felt a responsibility to act.
If my father was still living, he would have been appalled to hear about the demolition of Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa’s home in the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem. He would have been furious that Israel intentionally and systematically makes Palestinian families homeless.
The demolition of the Fawaqa home on May 4, 2017
I was thinking about my father on June 13 at the “Iftar on the Rubble,” which I organized with my friends at the site of Ashraf and Islam’s demolished home.
We planned the Iftar to show solidarity with Ashraf and Islam, and the tens of thousands of Palestinian families whose homes have been demolished, partially demolished, or sealed, and who live every day under the imminent threat of demolitions by the Israel authorities. I felt compelled not only by the humanitarian instincts I inherited from my father (and mother), but also by my profound disappointment in the United Nations coordinated humanitarian response, a prominent feature of the Jerusalem landscape, but not, in my point of view, an effective one.
Home demolition is not merely an Israeli administrative policy, as it is often presented in the western media. Home demolition is part of Israel’s political strategy to expel Palestinians from any place they want control, often through the establishment of Jewish settlements.
Given the magnitude of the impact of demolitions on Palestinians, I have long felt that the humanitarian sector should do more to fulfill its “protection” mandate. Protection involves reducing vulnerability, and for me, this means humanitarians should provide proactive, robust help to strengthen at-risk communities. Even after demolition, the response of humanitarian organizations is inadequate, bureaucratic, and according to some families, demeaning.
My friends and I felt that the least we could do to show these families–families who are on the frontline of the continuing Nakba–that they have real allies, that they are not alone.
On the night of the Iftar on the Rubble, local and international media were in attendance as Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa talked about the demolition of their home on May 4 and how they now live in limbo on the rubble of the demolition site.
Munir Nusseibeh of the Al Quds Community Action Center, one of Jerusalem’s most prominent lawyers, spoke about how demolitions are increasing and the danger demolition poses to the ability of Palestinians to stay in Jerusalem. Nurredin Amro, whose home was demolished on March 15, talked about his experience. His wife, Nabiha, spoke about the terrible psychological impact the demolition had on their children.
Powerful as it was to hear these families talk about their experiences, I think my father would have agreed that the real accomplishment was the Iftar itself. Muslims break the Ramadan fast at the sunset call to prayer, and that’s when the nearly 75 attendees pulled out the dishes they brought and set them out on long tables the Fawaqas had rented for the occasion. There were grape leaves stuffed by the Domari of Jerusalem, home baked cookies, whole meals contributed by the zakat society, and roasted chicken donated by Jerusalem Hotel and Café La Vie, dried figs and juice and more donated by Tanour Market and Abu Zahra Market. People from different walks of life, Palestinians and international solidarity activists, sat elbow to elbow and ate.
The sun went down and the temperature dropped, but people did not rush to leave. They stayed and talked and talked and talked. In the dim spotlight Ashraf rigged, an unusual mix of human beings enjoyed the cool Jerusalem breeze together on the rubble of the Fawaqa family home.
I felt my father’s presence with us that night in Sur Baher, Jerusalem. Like me, he would have been heartened by this real humanitarianism. It wasn’t programmed. It wasn’t funded. And it wasn’t part of anyone’s three-year plan. It was just people caring for people. And it felt hopeful.
- * * * * * * * *
UPDATE! We got excellent media coverage of the event. Here are some of the links:
Aljazeera Plus 2:09 English subtitles (this one already has 450,000 views!)
Aljazeera Online, 28:56 minutes, Arabic
http://www.aljazeera.net/reportslibrary/pages/69ccf346-e532-43d8-a38f-bbfc75dddb08
Falastin Al-Yoom, 2:24 minutes, Arabic
https://youtu.be/wCW3sx-WCVs
Ma’an Network, 3:07 minutes, Arabic
https://youtu.be/X8uw6Baajxg
Aljazeera, Arabic
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/alquds/2017/6/14/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%85%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B7%D8%B1-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%A3%D9%86%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B6-%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%84%D9%87%D8%A7
Al-Araby, Arabic
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/society/2017/6/14/إفطار-فوق-الأنقاض-مبادرة-للتضامن-مع-عائلة-المقدسي-أشرف-فواقة
AA Turkish, English
http://aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinians-break-fast-amid-rubble-of-demolished-home/841683
International Solidarity Movement, English
https://palsolidarity.org/2017/06/iftar-on-the-rubble/
Baby ‘Aya’ is only 2 months old, and she’s already a victim of home demolition
This story was first published in Mondoweiss.
Every single home demolition is devastating to a family. Every single family who experiences a demolition tells a unique and surreal story about the day when Israeli bulldozers rolled over their children’s schoolbooks, their grandmother’s prescription medicines, and letters from their uncle overseas.
Home demolition is one of Israel’s preferred methods of evicting Palestinians from land they want, usually to provide housing for Jewish settlements, in violation of international law.
I want to tell just one story — the unique, surreal and totally intolerable story of Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa and their four daughters — Ritaj, 9; Rimas, 7; Saba, 4; and Aya, a newborn.
On May 4, the Fawaqas took baby Aya for a newborn checkup. While at the clinic, they got a call from a neighbor that Israeli authorities had started to demolish their home in the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem. According to Ashraf, they had paid 25,000 shekels to delay the expected demolition.
“Isn’t that a particularly upsetting case?” I asked a friend.
“All home demolitions are upsetting.”
“I know. But when Ashraf rushed home and showed the demolition crew the Israeli judge’s order to pause the demolition, do you know what they did? They noted the judge’s name, left the site, and returned one hour later with a new demolition order from the same judge. Ashraf says an emergency court session gave them legal cover for their immoral act. Isn’t that evil?”
“All home demolitions are all evil.”
“I know. But shouldn’t we get some more international media coverage of this case? Surely the world will be appalled that four children, including a newborn, are living on a demolition site under a thin awning stretched over the few sofas they salvaged.”
“There were twelve demolitions in Jerusalem that day.”
“What?”
“Nine Palestinian families’ homes were demolished in Jerusalem on that same day plus three stores.”
I had no words.
“It’s ethnic cleansing,” my friend said. “And sadly, it’s so common that it’s not considered news.”
I visited Ashraf and Islam on May 15, the day of commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, the ongoing historic expulsion of Palestinians from their land and the attempt to destroy their property, history and identity. I sat on the sofa amidst the rubble, my feet on the hard dirt.
Their little girl, Saba, served me some apricots.
“I see they left your chickens alone,” I commented as one walked by my feet.
“And the chicken coop,” Ashraf pointed out.
I looked and indeed, the chicken coop was standing. “Why did they leave the chicken coop?” I asked.
“I guess so the chickens would have shelter,” Ashraf said ironically.
Ashraf had lived in the house for six years. He built it with his own hands on land Ashraf’s family has owned longer than the State of Israel has even existed.
“That house was built without a permit,” Ashraf motions to one of the neighbors. “They told me they paid a lot of money after the fact and now they have a permit. And that family,” he points to another building,” tried for years to get a permit and was denied. They built without a permit and paid after the fact and I heard that now it’s considered legal.”
The Fawaqa family had already spent hundreds of thousands of shekels, first to try to get a legal building permit, then to pay fines for the home they ultimately built without a permit, and then to delay the demolition until after the baby was born. Now they must pay the expense of demolition itself (90,000 shekels according to Ashraf’s estimate), and the removal of the rubble (60,000 shekels plus a fine if the rubble isn’t removed promptly), and the cost of a temporary shelter. Ironically, Ashraf earned the money he’s paid for the home by working in construction. He works for the Jerusalem Municipality.
In order to have a kitchen, bathrooms and a place to sleep, the Fawaqa family ordered a prefab caravan, not unlike those that some Gazans, whose homes were destroyed by Israeli war planes, consider death traps because of the sweltering temperatures in the summer and the cold in the winter. Ultimately, they will face the cost of rebuilding, and if they build again, the new home will also be subject to demolition.
It seems there’s a great deal of profit to be made in the denial of building permits to Palestinians in Jerusalem.
I’ve visited several demolished families in Jerusalem, since my friend Nureddin was locked in a room with his wife and kids while Israeli authorities demolished the house around them. That experience, and the families I’ve met since then, have me feeling heartbroken and angry.
For Palestinians, owning a home is everything. They spend every penny they have on their homes, forgo every other need and luxury in order to build a home to provide security for their families. But clearly, while the international community makes every effort to uphold Israel’s right to security, little Aya’s right to security is violated with no effective action by those governments obligated to ensure respect for the human rights of Palestinians under occupation. Fortunately, Human Rights Watch did cover this case.
The legitimacy of a state comes from the protections and services it provides to the people in its jurisdiction. What kind of state has an explicit policy to destroy people’s homes? What kind of state has an elaborate infrastructure to make people homeless, impoverished and hopeless? Because that’s what Israel has done—made the destruction of Palestinian lives a national priority.
What do I say to Abu Fathi?
Almost two years ago, I wrote an article about Marwan Abu Jammous (Abu Fathi) and his family in the Khuzaa area of the Gaza Strip. At that time, they had been living in a temporary caravan provided by a donor for almost one year, and no permanent housing was on the horizon. Despite the billions of dollars donated after the 2014 Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of people (or hundreds of thousands, depending on how you calculate) still lack adequate housing. It has been 1003 days since the 2014 ceasefire after which there was supposed to be massive reconstruction.
I visited the Abu Jammous family last year and they were in a new caravan, a wooden one, which was touted as an upgrade from the aluminum type.
But it floods in the winter and is unbearably hot in the summer. There is still no prospect of permanent housing. Some other families have gotten assigned to donors and are re-constructing around them, but when I asked, no one could tell me the criteria or process by which some families were chosen before others. It might not matter so much if everyone quickly got what they needed, but they don’t. Reconstruction now seems virtually at a standstill.
Abu Fathi calls me every couple of weeks. I call him back because he has no credit on his phone. His children talk to me one by one, each of them calling me “auntie,” breaking my heart by begging me to visit. Of course I can’t visit without a permit from Israel. The Gaza Strip is under an illegal blockade and very few people can get the special permission needed to enter or exit.
Rumors are there will be another attack soon. Escalations often happen during Ramadan. Ramadan starts tomorrow. What do I say to Abu Fathi when he calls?
Meanwhile, a relative of the family sent me a short video of their dinner time this week. With no electricity and no cooking gas, Abu Fathi sat in the dark and cooked over coals with his five kids. There is nothing romantic about not being able to give your family a safe, warm, dry place to live and enough nutritious food, not to mention the pervasive fear of more bombing, with no place to escape.
Please, contact your representatives and the media. Tell them you want them to put pressure on Israel to end the blockade on Gaza. It’s just wrong. It’s just so very wrong.
Through the Window of Juwahir’s Old, Gray Chevy
This story is about my sister-in-law, Juwahir. No, it’s about her car. No, let’s be honest. It’s about me.
It was a struggle to write it.
This Week in Palestine asked for a “positive” story about Palestine for their January issue themed, “The Common Good.” I could not for the life of me think of a single positive thing about Palestine. I went to sleep sure I’d miss the deadline, but I woke up with this fully formed story. It is one of my favorite stories of all time.
You can find the original here on pages 56-60.
**********
Through the Window of Juwahir’s Old, Gray Chevy
My sister-in-law died at the age of 40 leaving four beautiful children. Breast cancer moved to her lungs, then to her brain, and stole one of the kindest and most humble human beings I’ve ever known. Five years on, there is still a hole in the village in the shape of her life-force.
Her husband gave me Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy and told me to donate payment for it to people in need. I sent it to Syrian refugees in Jordan. I still try to do good in her memory every day. When it’s very hot, my daughters and I pick up old ladies who are burdened by kilos of vegetables balanced in baskets on their heads, or old ladies dragging bushels of wild thyme they harvested in the mountains. We drive them home and they bless us and we feel we’ve honored Juwahir.
But driving Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy through Palestine isn’t always easy. Through her window, I have seen a lot of stupidity.
Just last week I pulled into a parking space marked with the logo of the beauty salon where I had an appointment for an expensive procedure. The doorman came out to tell me to move — it was the private parking space of the owner of the salon. I looked up and down the block and there was no other place to park. I remembered my uncle in the US who had owned a jewelry store where excellent customer service wasn’t a matter of greed, it was a demonstration of integrity. “Are you really sending away a paying customer so you can keep a spot empty for the owner?” I asked incredulous. The man smiled as if to say it wasn’t his fault, but I was tired and stressed and I left in a huff. Yes, I have seen a lot of stupidity through the window of Juwahir’s old, grey Chevy.
But I have also seen decency.
There was a time I stopped at an intersection then inched forward right into a car that was soaring by. The only damage was to the guy’s hub cap, but if I’d hit the body of his car, he might have flipped over. That experience scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t bring myself to drive for weeks. My husband and I often walked passed the guy’s house, and he waved whole-heartedly and invited us in for coffee.
When the car died on my way to an important meeting just before the busy Sharafa Junction in Ramallah, I leaned out of the window and summoned a small group of young men on the sidewalk. They pushed me into a space in front of the bookstore before there was even time for a traffic jam to form. I hailed a taxi and phoned my landlord to ask him to have a mechanic meet me at the car two hours later. But in just 15 minutes he walked into my meeting, took my car keys, supervised the mechanic, and it was all fixed before my meeting finished.
When the car died between two Israeli settlements as I left my friend’s house in Susya in the South Hebron Hills, a man and his wife with what seemed like ten kids in the backseat stopped and filled my radiator with water. They followed me for more than one hour, refilling the radiator every couple of miles, until we reached a military checkpoint they couldn’t cross with their Palestinian license plate. Although I didn’t have his name or mobile number, I believe he was genuine when he yelled from his window, “Call if you need any more help!”
When the car died in Beit Hanina, I went into Ja’afar Supermarket to ask for help and ran into a friend who offered to deliver me to work – on his bicycle! I found a nearby service station, but the mechanic wasn’t yet at work. A neighborhood boy went to wake him up. He arrived soon, coffee in hand, without complaint.
Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy is a piece of junk but I can’t say goodbye to it because I can’t say goodbye to her.
Last week I had one terrible day after another. It seemed everyone around me was ignorant and incompetent and selfish and I just wanted to be alone. I dropped my daughter at her circus class and parked in front of Zaman Café where I could sit in the car and use the wifi. I guess I stayed too long because when I turned the key to pick up my kid, the car battery was dead. I collected my daughter in a taxi and brought her back to the old, gray Chevy where we tried to figure out what to do.
Within minutes, the shabab who work at Zaman and the shabab who work at Shishapresso across the street were in competition to see who could find jumper cables first. They accosted every single customer in their respective cafes, and when the cables were found, a small mob gathered around my car debating which bolt was positive and which was negative – it was a community affair.
For years one of Juwahir’s hijab pins remained stuck in the soft ceiling above the rearview mirror and I’d rub the white plastic tip when I needed strength and perspective. I’d imagine her fixing her scarf before she went to the health clinic where she worked or before she led a religion meeting for women, or before she popped into her mother’s living room to greet me warmly with her slightly lopsided smile. The pin got lost at a car wash years ago but I still touch the place it used to be.
Through the window of Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy, I have seen shooting and teargas and arrests and home demolitions. I have seen children sent by drug-addicted parents to beg at military checkpoints and women and children abandoned in poverty by cheating husbands. I have seen students disrespect teachers and teachers disrespect students and I myself have endured periods when I felt that nothing I did mattered in the slightest.
Then I remember Juwahir. I get into her car and go out into the world to do the work that has to be done. If I need anything, I just look at the world through the window of her old, gray Chevy, and I see good people like Juwahir. Ordinary decent people.
When Nurredin calls me at 5am, it means something bad is happening
When my phone rang before 5am on May 17 and Nurredin’s name flashed on the screen of my cell phone, I knew it was something bad.
“The bulldozers are here!” he said. “For your house?” I asked, suddenly wide awake. His home was partially demolished on March 31, 2015. “No. They are demolishing the Tutanji and Totah homes. Right now! They are demolishing right now!”
I had visited the Tutanjis before, when they expected a demolition and called for internationals to help them protect their home. When nothing happened and weeks went by, they thought they were safe. They were wrong.
Of course there was nothing I could do except cry and spread the word. Then I got in my car and went to visit. I took some film clips and Institute for Middle East Understanding put them into a very nice little video.
Later that week I went back to visit and Hoda Tutanji insisted on making me coffee, despite not having a kitchen! I wanted the world to see what it means to demolish the home of a family, so I made another little video.
That same week, three other homes in the neighborhood went under demolition order.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 15
- Next Page »