Hello habibi,
Today was my first full day in Jerusalem (we arrived yesterday after a long drive from the seaside resort town of Eilat), so I thought that I would spit out a few ideas in your direction before they start to overwhelm me. I intend to expand on them as more information and more various opinions enter my malleable brain, so by no means should you take these impressions as the final word on Israel from the Nansean perspective!
Call me a tired postmodernist if you will, but I love a good juxtaposition. If I had the energy, I'm sure I could keep a separate blog just for listing every hilarious, surprising, or poignant juxtaposition that I have observed in the Middle East. Lazy as I am, I will only share one with you today. Imagine this: you approach a security gate in the Old City of Jerusalem that you know will lead you to the Western Wall. There are signs in a variety of languages warning you that you will not be admitted if you are not dressed with appropriate modesty. There are more signs alerting you to the sanctity of the space you are about to enter, about the holy presence that still resides in the stones of the ancient wall, about the proper attitude of respect with which you should enter the sacred space. You subconsciously formulate a set of expectations based on these many signs. You pass through the metal detector and proceed past the guards. You descend the steps, mesmerized by the huge wall that now faces you and the frenzy of activity at its base. The word 'fervor' bubbles up in your brain. But as you reach the base of the stairs, you look to your left, and out of an old stone archway process three teenage boys in tan uniforms and tall black army boots, around whose shoulders are slung large automatic rifles. Their pants are hanging so low that were their shirts not tucked in, you would be seeing more than you bargained for. But ah, the finishing touch is this: they are each eating an ice cream treat.
I'm pretty sure that you're all capable of reading into that.
Another funny thing that in reality wasn't at all funny struck me when I was returning to Tantur from the Old City on the bus (one of the Israeli buses, mind you, because the Palestinian buses are too full in the early evenings what with all the Palestinian workers leaving Jerusalem at the end of the workday). A rotund ginger boy of about fourteen stepped onto the bus wearing a t-shirt that read "BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD." Although he was not named on the t-shirt, I'm sure that we all remember that the author of that quotable phrase is Gandhi, the pioneer of non-violent resistance. I might not have thought anything of it had it not been for the Introduction to Islam lecture with which we began our day.
While answering the last question posed by the class, our lecturer Mustafa Abu Sway made mention of a Palestinian Christian man whose teachings he had followed in the 1980s. This man's name is Mubarak Awad, and he attempted to apply the principles of non-violent resistance to the situation facing Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. He was deported.
I realized that I was sitting on a bus in the most confusing city in the world. My mind has vertigo, and I won't count on it abating any time soon.
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