Cam’s View of the World

Have you ever been startled into a non-reaction? Or been so scared that your heart exploded into your throat and you forgot to breathe for an hour or two? This happened to me yesterday afternoon. The single trash can in the house had gotten full after two weeks of throwing stuff into it. Apparently when you live in a house by yourself, you don’t create very much trash. I pulled the bag out, tied it up and nimbly stepped out of the front door and into the blazing West Bank sunshine. Since 2000 there hasn’t been a door-to-door trash service in this area. Rather, there are green dumpsters scattered throughout the neighborhoods. Everyone takes their trash there and whenever they get full, a big garbage trunk empties it and takes it away.

There are many cats in this land, but few people bother feeding the cats. Most are dependent upon their hunting skills along with their abilities to smell out the tastiest remains of a human’s supper. Hence the dumpster becomes a cats equivalent to a casino’s all-you-can-eat buffet. As I approached the green dumpster I noticed three men walking toward me. I lofted the bag of garbage in the air and squinted my eyes to see if I recognized any of the men. As the bag began its descent into the depths of the dumpster, an object flew up out of the shadowy maw of the dumpster and collided with my trash bag…WHAM!!! The upcoming object, with a freshly adjusted trajectory came barreling directly at my face. I stood my ground out of petrified shock. PHOOM, in a flash leaving only impressions of tigery stripes, it was gone

It left more of a feeling than any distinct thoughts. My heart had grasped my throat in a stranglehold while my hand was left suspended in the air. The three men turned a corner and continued to walk on. A passing taxi with a laughing driver broke up my imitation of a startled statue. I turned around and began to walk back to the house. Halfway there I remembered to breathe. By the time I put the key in the lock, my heart had returned to its erratic pace. A measure of calm descended back into my life.

I came to another realization this afternoon. It really isn’t that profound, just more personal than anything else. Here it is…Being somewhat color blind is somewhat annoying. After walking in and around Palestine for nearly a year, I noticed for the first time today that the stripes on the curb are sometimes black and sometimes red. It must have been just the right angle of the sun ray to light up the reds a bit more than normal. I had just assumed they were always black. This would explain why my car was nearly towed away last week while I was walking through the fruit market.

It has been just over a month since the spring semester at JUC came to a close. A few days later I moved to the town of Beit Jala, which is a suburb of Bethlehem. It is in the West Bank and comes under the responsibility of the Palestinian National Authority. The PNA is the government of the Palestinian Territories. However, a variety of incidences and events (including wars) has always kept full Palestinian sovereignty just out of reach. Israel still maintains nominal control over the security situation here. Additionally the source of most utilities (water, electricity, etc.) originates in Israel and so they are able to control the amount and flow of these into the West Bank. If things remain peaceful, then life continues with little disruption…some of the time.

There is one major thing that is always considered a disruption. Around nearly the entire West Bank is a security fence that Israel has constructed to separate the two peoples. In some places this fence turns into a cement wall 22 feet in height. This engenders many names–Security Fence, Separation Wall, Apartheid Wall, and more. Only those Palestinians with Israeli permission are allowed to cross through the checkpoints into Israel. Since I have a US passport, I can go back and forth all the time. I do so quite often. Last week I crossed in the wee hours of the morning to take a friend to the airport.

I am housesitting for an American family while they are back in the states for the summer. They left their car here and occasionally I have used it to go and buy groceries just two miles down the road. When Lindsey asked me to take her to the airport, I didn’t think it would be a problem since it was early in the morning. I assumed that most of the roads would be clear of the crazy Middle Eastern drivers, making the roads relatively safe. (If you think some of the taxi drivers are bad drivers in New York, you should see how they drive on their home turf) That assumption proved correct and the roads were relatively empty. Sadly, though, it seems that either I was too sleepy to notice the temperature gauge in the car, or that it wasn’t working right. Either way, about 20 minutes from the house, the car overheated and rolled to a stop.

Ackkk!!! It’s 4:38 in the morning! What are we going to do now? How am I going to get Lindsey to the airport? What’s wrong with this car?

Headlights flashed in the mirror and to our great fortune it was a taxi cab. He pulled over and after a few minutes of luggage transfer, Lindsey was off on her way to the airport. Yet now I’m still stranded with a broken car on the side of the Begin North Highway on the outskirts of Jerusalem at 5:00am. Most of the people I know from JUC are back in the states, so I couldn’t call them for help. I went through the names and numbers in my cell phone. Only one stood out that offered any sign of hope…Khalid Kattib.

Khalid is one of twelve children and owns a Persian carpet shop and a jewelry store in the Old City of Jerusalem. His carpets are all handmade and some of them have over 3,800 knots per square inch! That’s pretty amazing in itself, but I know him more because of the mint tea he offers me every time I walk by. I met him last October when a friend introduced us. Since he knows I’m a student, he never tries to sell anything to me, but he is always happy to share a cup of tea and talk about life and the Middle East. Over the last eight or nine months I have gotten to know his family and several of his brothers and nephews. Since his roots in this city go quite deep, I knew that he could help me with a broken car. Yet five in the morning is a rough time to ask help from anybody.

Hospitality is one thing that is definitely not lacking in the Middle East. It is a cultural value that we sometimes forget about in the States. Although I would not have done the same in the States based on this casual level of friendship, over here I knew that I could…and even more importantly, I knew that it would be perfectly acceptable and that Khalid would help me out. Sadly, though, after waking him up and explaining the situation, I learned that tow truck drivers do not start work until 7:00-7:30. We eventually got in touch with one, but he couldn’t come get me until 8:00. Luckily this allowed me a few moments of sleep while I waited for the next three hours.

The tow truck eventually came and took me to Wadi Joz, a street full of mechanics in East Jerusalem. Khalid met me there with Ali, another one of his brothers. We took the car to a good mechanic that he knew and I soon entered a strange and interlinked world of Palestinian repair shops. Most of them did not speak very much English and my Arabic is only marginally better than none. My friend acted as interpreter, translator, and negotiator. I don’t know how much money I saved just by being Khalid’s friend. Here, it is all about who you know and what community you belong to. Without ever meeting me before, but since I am with Khalid, I am accepted into this larger community. The car was fixed within a day, but it took more than a week to figure out some of the little adjustments. So back and forth to the shop we went several times. By the last day, I was confident enough to go into the shop and talk with the mechanics without my backup support. I got to know a few of the younger guys and when the car was all finished, they invited me in to share their lunch with them. They helped me with my Arabic and laughed at my horrible mispronunciations.

The car broke down, which was inconvenient, but Lindsey made it to the airport on time. Getting the car fixed interrupted my normal life, but I learned about a whole other side of cars, mechanics and repair shops that I didn’t know before. This whole thing cost a lot of money, but I was able to call on the hospitality of a casual friend. This led to sharing several meals with him and spending a lot of time in his home. I got to know his children and his relatives much better. In the midst of this event I was invited to a going away feast for one his nephews. Half of a goat, stuffed full of rice, spices, and pine nuts, was served on a big tray. We all ate off of the communal platter until no more food would fit into our bellies. We then drank syrupy coffee and played cards into the evening hours. It was quite the experience, but it was so much more than that as well. No longer is it just a occasional friendship, I have now been welcomed into their family.

I could just chock up this whole affair as another one of the fun cultural experiences of living in the Middle East. Yet that in some ways devalues it. Being welcomed like this is far deeper than just an experience. While in their home, I did not receive the special honored guest treatment. Rather, I was just one of the boys, laughing, playing cards, and telling jokes. The conversations ranged from politics to current events to religion. Khalid and his family are all Muslims. Some family members are more religious than others. One twenty-four year-old nephew looks like he is part of the Taliban. (His uncles refer to him as Al Qaeda) However, none of them were rude or pushy about their beliefs. On many levels their family structure and morality would be far above the average back in the States. Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to convert, but it is so eye-opening and enriching to have friends who are devout followers of other religions.

Here is the car behind this story.  I’m not sure if it is an Inca Seat or Seat Inca.  Either way, it just seems like an odd name for a Middle Eastern car.

I found a book of poetry. Perhaps I am reading poetry just for pretentious reasons, thinking that it might impress someone someday. Or maybe I just needed a little distraction from academia for awhile. In either case, I have come across a few lines that I have enjoyed quite a bit.

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From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the land of Nod

All by myself I have to go,

With no to tell me what to do–

All alone besides the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

~Land of Nod

by Robert Louis Stevenson

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In recent months I have written so little on this blog. I often begin to write about my experiences over here, but I always get stuck before I am finished. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are my two homes here. They are separated by a mere five miles, but they are as different from each other as Mexico and Canada…and that is no hyperbole. In Jerusalem there are wide streets, traffic lights, clean sidewalks, big box malls, etc. When you drive out of Jerusalem and cross over into Bethlehem, traffic rules cease to exist, trash is tossed into the street, and seatbelts are unbuckled. If you wear your seatbelt in Bethlehem, it tells everyone that you are not familiar with the local culture and do not belong here. As crazy and different as these two places might be, they have become as familiar to me as the streets of Albany.

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I have made Arab, Jewish, Christian and Muslim friends. Many have welcomed me into their homes and lives as if I was a long lost relative. The strangeness of the Middle East has become normal, the conflict between peoples seems routine, ancient history is commonplace. When I walk down to the open air market to buy my vegetables for the week, there is little doubt that David guided his sheep across the slopes of these hills as a young boy. Modern day shepherds still do the same thing. As I have studied and lived in this land for a year and a half, I have forgotten what it was like to be a stranger to all of this. I recently helped a group of new students navigate from Jerusalem into the West Bank and then to the heart of the Old City of Bethlehem. With eyes wide open and questions unending, we walked past modern security barriers, open air markets, and 1,000 year-old churches and mosques. I had forgotten what it was like to still appreciate the awesomeness of it all. They helped me to remember a bit of it.

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When life is normal, why write home about it all? It’s kind of like that last line of the poem. The dreamer can never quite remember what his dream was like, and no matter how hard I try, it is hard to remember my first impressions before a year of study smothered everything. In addition to that, when I want to describe some of the things I’ve seen and experienced, I often don’t know how to be short enough. Some blogs I’ve never posted seem to be nearing book length by now. Reality is seen in the details, but the details can be overwhelming.

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I’ve had several phenomenal happenings over this last week. In my next post I will write about my epic with a broken car in Jerusalem.

My last posting was about my trip to Jordan with my school. I have since begun another adventure, but of the opposite sort. Through this past school year I have connected with an American family that lives in Bethlehem. They have gone home for the summer, and I needed a place to stay between the semesters. It was a perfect match, and now I am housesitting for them until they return. It is not a huge house, but neither is it a small one. It’s around 2,200 square feet and I am all alone for the most part. I am in a nice neighborhood, so there are people around, but the house itself is mostly empty except for me and my books. After the family departed and I began to think about the next couple months in this home, I realized that this will be the first time in my life that I have ever lived by myself for an extended amount of time. Whether it was in my parent’s home, my sister’s house, the apartment, or campus housing, I have always had people around with whom I could share life. This new thought of aloneness was very disturbing at first…and still is to some extent. In being all alone, though, I am completely in charge…and responsible.

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It is strange to be the one who is in charge of meals from the purchasing ingredients to washing the dirty dishes, but without consultation with anyone else. I have often done all those steps in meal creation before, but usually not just for myself. Other people are often involved in some stage of the purchasing, creating, cooking, cleaning and advising. Essentially what I eat now (as some of you already know) is completely based on my cravings. Last night I was desperate for chocolate, so I made brownies. I had needed some potatoes in my life earlier in the week, so I went to the open air vegetable market and bought 10 kilos of potatoes. I have since had hashbrowns at least once per day since that purchase. Meat is expensive over here, so I am now on my fifth day of a meatless diet. Knowing that I’m missing out on some proteins, I wandered down to Fufu’s Supermarket and bought some mystery beans in a can. I can successfully read Arabic words now, but I don’t always know what they mean. These beans ended up being some type of black-eyed peas with jalapeños. Once I mashed them together and served them alongside hummus, they really weren’t that bad.

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I guess my diet isn’t really meatless, for I have had eggs over the past couple of days. Hmm…are eggs really meat? I’m not sure what category to put those in. Ah well, they do make wonderful omelets and are a necessity in brownie-making, so I don’t think I’ll give those up any time soon.

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I have also come to the realization that a person should check to see if the top of the pepper shaker is firmly attached before vigorously shaking over one’s frying egg. This peppered specimen was given to the cat.

My cravings also led me to waffles the other night.  I was in the middle of making them when one of the neighbor kids wandered by.  I’m not sure what he was after, but he looked hungry, so I gave him some waffles too.  I think he was more interested in the syrup though.  His name is Araz.