Confessions of a Tourist Critic.

One day as I was walking down the street [apparently when all of the most notable things happen], this guy approached me asking where I was from and if I wanted to see the famous Banksy artwork on the wall around the corner. I responded to him in Arabic, saying I knew about the graffiti and actually lived in Bethlehem, as a student--not a tourist. However, he continued with his spiel, not quite believing me...which bothered me a little too much. Slightly frustrated, I kept walking and saw the guy's friend waiting for him nearby. Funny enough, it just so happened to be someone I know (a friend of a friend from Atlanta) who I greeted enthusiastically by name. "Oh, I guess you really aren't a tourist..." the guy who had been talking to me earlier admitted. Ha! I had proved myself! [and obviously felt some pride about this feat]. 

Later that afternoon, I met up with an American friend and relayed the story to him as a somewhat momentous success. Also living here in a more long-term sort of way, he understood how I felt in regards to this desire to somehow be differentiated from the tourists who constantly come and go. We talked about seeing them on the streets and feeling some sort of slight aversion or annoyance at their apparent naivete. But we also both recognized that there are some egregious flaws in this mindset... Why is it that we react to them this way? Why do we go out of our way to try to show that we are in a separate category (as my story so clearly reveals)? Perhaps this can be attributed to a subconscious belief that we are somehow superior to them...but is this really true?  

Sure, I speak enough of the language to get around and have tried my best to study the region in a sensitive way and have actual friends who live in Palestine. I have been here long enough now to grow accustomed to my daily routine without constantly feeling like an outsider without a clue. But still, this doesn't erase the fact that I am a white-skinned, light-haired, western-raised foreigner in this place (regardless of my shifting degrees of awareness about this reality). This in and of itself represents and communicates something wherever I go--in a way that I'm not sure differs so substantially from the tourists who I tend to view with some level of inexplicable disdain. 

Working through this, my friend and I came to the conclusion that perhaps we seek to place these tourists on the outside in order to define ourselves [you know, the familiar model of any sort of categorization or modern-day citizenship configuration]. We want to be different, in order to be considered somehow better, or at least convince ourselves that this is so. Beyond this, perhaps our criticisms of them are actually projections of our own faults and fears regarding our role here... Wow. 

Realizing this is helping me to re-shape my thinking, and hopefully my future actions [a sometimes tiring process that feels especially incessant yet necessary here]. It serves as a good reminder to remain continuously aware of my "outsiderness," even as I become more comfortable in my surroundings. I must keep working to ask thoughtful questions, shy away from assumptions, and have an attitude of humility rather than arrogance. Also I must strive to be aware of the role that my own country and government has in this specific environment [it's not positive], as I think this requires me to acknowledge a certain sense of liability. 

Additionally, thinking about this provokes a passion in me to actively advocate for more responsible tourism (and foreign living) in whatever ways possible--whether through educational means or economic awareness or just basic sensitivity towards people's humanity and suffering [i.e. it is in most cases not okay to take pictures of people or their homes without their permission, just as an example]. As another example, it is good to be aware of who is benefiting from the tourism industry vs. who is being exploited. This has particular relevance in the West Bank, where tourism-dependent Palestinian industries are crippled by Israeli-run tours coming in for the day, advising tourists not to spend money in Arab shops, then bringing them back to Israel for accommodations--leaving the hotels here nearly empty. This is a real reason to be bothered, but the implications are not just for "them"--there are applications in my daily life as well. 

In summary, seeing myself as part of the problem, rather than conveniently removed from it, allows me to be much more responsible and sensitive in the long-run. I hope it can also enable me to extend a little more grace and little less anger towards the the outsider (often conflated with the oppressor) in both the "other" and myself--as I think we need to strike a balance between these to be able to produce effective change. Neither naivete [being unaware of potentially harmful dynamics] nor excessive blaming [not seeing these at work in ourselves] will result in a genuine difference made. May we all learn to live better together...

A Unique Invitation.

So the other night I was walking down the street in Bethlehem with my American friend Sam. Now there are a lot of great things to know about Sam, but the first thing that stands out is that he is exceptionally tall. This garners him a lot of attention on the street here in Palestine in general, but this evening was an extra special case... 

As we were walking, this teenage girl in a passing car literally leaned over a full back seat to stick her head out the window and scream in Arabic something along the lines of, "Oh my gosh, you are soooo tall!!!" Then a few minutes later, the same car came back around on the street and beckoned us over. At this point, we could see that the car held an entire family, with the grandfather driving and the high school aged girls and a baby in the back seat. They were so excited to talk to us, well mostly Sam, and offered profuse compliments and exclamations about how amazing he was. Then they said, "Please, you must come over to our house!" Sam and I looked at each other and responded, "Uh, we can't tonight, but maybe another time." So the conversation ended with Sam offering his name for them to find him on Facebook, and the two of us walking away smiling and laughing at the encounter. 

I had my doubts about this girl actually finding Sam on Facebook, but really I shouldn't doubt these things. Fast forward to the next night and we found ourselves in their living room sitting on the couch with what appeared to be the entire extended family staring at us [seriously, I counted and there were 14 people]. We spoke mostly in Arabic and soon learned that the family worked with olive wood to make these beautiful necklaces for sale in the old city near the Church of the Nativity. After showing interest, we were invited to see the details of this firsthand. 

With great pride, the family led us through each step of the process that takes place in a workshop nearby their home. We saw everything from the slicing of the olive trees into smaller workable pieces to the punching of holes then the cutting out of beads before being smoothed and shined then finally strung together. They explained how everyone in the family has a different role in helping to create the final product. I asked if it would be okay to take a picture as they were demonstrating how to cut the beads. The younger boy jumped in to create a scene of three generations working together:

The workshop employs about 12 men in the community, while the women help to string the beads together to create the jewelry. Their business is very reliant on tourism which often fluctuates, but they said it generally does pretty well. We were offered necklaces as gracious gifts, and also purchased many more. Needless to say, some of you will be getting souvenirs with a very special story behind them :)

On another note, before leaving, we were brought to visit each of the neighbor's homes in a succession of 5-minute coffee conversations and a chance for a photo-op with the tall American. Sam cheerfully obliged, as hey, this was the reason we made it there in the first place! 

Sam being a good sport, 

holding the finished necklaces

Overall, what a unique invitation: both the way it was given, and also what we were given a glimpse of as a result. 

familiar yet foreign still.

gathered sitting on the grass with this family that is not my own,

breaking bread, sipping tea, in this backyard with the olive tree. 

the sun fills us with warmth, the breeze offers its gentle touch. 

friday sermons from nearby mosques oscillate within earshot. 

i catch words here and there, in a tongue familiar yet foreign still. 

mostly my mind wanders, somewhere between this land and home. 

felt differences are present, but surprisingly they don't seem so stark. 

the hospitality of this culture i've long known from my endlessly giving mother.

this baba, like my father, tells silly jokes and gardens and listens to classic rock. 

sisters here too bicker over "borrowed" clothes, but at the end of the day love. 

kids on this street make up games outside, a reminder of the childhood i cherish. 

some things know no barriers of the imagined boundaries we create. 

arab or western, christian or muslim, citizens or stateless: human.

 

...

the other night i had a dream, set in my neighborhood across the world.

gathered with family and friends, we hid in terror, silenced and confined. 

peering through the window, we watched soldiers shoot civilians outside. 

our existence turned to fear, confusion, tears--never knowing who to trust. 

in the end, we had but one chance to stay alive: isolation, life as refugees. 

sometimes the differences forced upon us lie below what we can see. 

A Careful Consideration.

Lately, I have been almost paralyzed by all that I feel I need to write. Everyday, I start stringing the words together--in my head as I walk through these streets, jotted on the pages of the thick notebook I have almost filled, weaved throughout class discussions and conversations with strangers and friends. I have sat down to type a new post three or four times, but no way of articulating what I want to communicate has seemed quite right. 

I want to try to tell you what I am learning in and about and from this place. Yet I keep finding myself conflicted over how to speak most truthfully, sensitively, compassionately. I feel a sense of responsibility in my storytelling, and I don't want to give you any wrong ideas. Thinking back to some of the representations that I have seen and heard of Palestine in the past, the weight to speak well of my experiences here becomes even heavier. But reflecting on the ways my own perception has changed and is constantly changing, I realize my pursuit of any "perfect" explanations is futile indeed. 

I think what I am most afraid of is somehow allowing you to subconsciously believe what I have found to be at the root of this conflict, which runs parallel to the beliefs that fuel every other system of oppression on this earth: that Palestinians are less than human. 

This is what the news will tell you--that somehow Palestinian deaths are not as tragic as their Israel counterparts. That these deaths [even of hundreds of innocent civilians] are justified, deserved, not worth reporting beyond a cold body count [if even that], in a word: unmournable. The news will tell you the same thing about the value of their living, taking a stance of total omission in regards to obvious human rights violations that are simply undeniable when witnessed in person. Context is never given, histories are erased, flat-out lies are advanced without question--in essence, lives are dehumanized. 

I want you to know these parts of the story. I wish you could travel through a checkpoint and watch your fellow classmates be shoved around, degraded--for no other reason but that they are Arab. I wish you could see this wall, barbed wire and watchtowers and all, that acts like a cage--cutting off families from their relatives, farmers from their land, Muslims and Christians from their holy sites, Palestinians from the right of movement and self-determination. I wish you could enter a refugee camp and see the mural of names of all the villages that people were forced to flee during the Nakba (the "Catastrophe") of 1948. I wish you could walk through the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and witness Israeli settlers literally harassing and stealing more land right out from underneath the Palestinian residents.

I wish you could see, so you could know, so that the struggle of these people--who are just as much people as anyone else--could no longer be ignored. This is why I feel I must write, to try my best to convey these things, to try to provide a window into the political situation around me. I feel that I need to take these pieces of my experience here and put them into words that can be shared across oceans. Yet in attempting this, I feel a sort of inexplicable tension, and alarmingly, a risk of a different sort of dehumanization. 

I want you to know these parts of the story--but I don't want you to think this is the whole story. To focus only on these details, as real and important as they are, seemingly lends itself to a potentially inaccurate or even dangerous representation. I say this because I fear painting a picture of Palestinians as no more than their political struggle. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned through living in Palestine thus far is this: Yes, the conflict affects everything here, but it is not everything. In other words, the occupation colors all aspects of life for Palestinians, but it is not their sole concern, their only source of identity. To give this impression seems to me to undermine their humanity in a more subtle sort of way. 

You see, Palestinians work and study and laugh and dance and fall in love and dream about the future... just like everyone else, of course. They are not simply the subjects of political debates or the content of statistics--as crucial as those things can be. They are fathers and mothers, daughters and brothers, students and friends. Most of the time, they are just living, you know--being human. 

This reality, which in so many ways should not even need to be said, is precisely why the stark violations against them demand attention. Yet it is also what must be carefully guarded in our conversations and representations of this place--so as not to lose sight of the human behind the struggle for human rights. In conclusion, it seems there is a delicate balance to strike: We absolutely must not overlook the plight of Palestinians, as if they are somehow less than human, yet we also must not reduce them to their political struggle, for the very same reason. The world needs to know that Palestinians are unjustly oppressed, but it must never be mistaken that this is all that defines them.