Travel Log #33

April 3, 2010
"What you've got to understand is that you're in a country where the whole population will pack their families into a car and drive five hours just to see one flower on one hill in the middle of the desert that only blooms one day in the whole year."

So says the tour guide, an ex-pat American who's been a Jerusalemite for thirty years.

She shows us the separation fence between Megiddo and the West Bank. A kibbutznik reminisces about the days when they could walk across the border--because there wasn't really a border--and buy spices from Jenin; about how his parents walked from Syria into Palestine, which soon became Israel.

We're with a group of college-age Americans. They joke and laugh and don't get it. I'm embarrassed. But I have to go back in a little less than three months.

Three years ago--more--I promised myself I'd never do anything stupid like changing the course of my life for another person and that from now on, I only work for myself, that selfishness is a virtue if practiced in the correct manner. I found people here, what I've always wanted and I want to stay but have to put that on hold. It's not for them but for me. They make me happy.

Time is Yokneam is over. I will miss it. I said good-bye to the children at Dalyiot. They clung to me and begged me to stay. All good things must come to an end.

On my last day of school, I went back to the gelato shop and ordered real ice cream instead of the yogurt and fruit. Little did I know it, but it became the last one for the rest of my life. But that's the price of healthy living. That's the price of life.

In the parking lots where the gelato shop is, there's a very large snow pile with children building snowmen and having snowball fights.

April 4, 2010

The snow was a mystery for awhile: why was it there? Where did it come from, in Israel, in spring weather? And why didn't it melt? I foudn the answer by asking the owner of the gelato shop: it was there because children needed to have fun in the snow. Snowball fights are an essential part of childhood. Yokneam (and other cities, too, apparently) import the snow from Mt. Hermon and replenish it every day. Hence its seeming immortality.

We are sent on another American delegation, this time, high schoolers. I am much more impressed with them than with the college students. It's the usual run-around: great food, hikes through beautiful scenery that lasts all day, the order to drink more water than the Mediterranean contains.

Back in Yokneam, I participate in a music workshop with the Israeli sperstar, Korin Allal. We became friends. She likes my music and wants to keep in touch. I write songs on-demand in three hours every week with a group of teenagers. At first they protest that I'm too old, more than seven years their senior sometimes. They get over it. I am late the next week and they cry relief when they see me.

"Thank G-d. I thought we were doomed, but you're here."

We settle into the task. Our songs are a mixture of Hebrew and English. I will never play or sing them on my own; they are a joint effort.

I become friends with them. I am forced to speak Hebrew and somtimes, to type it. Welcome to Facebook. The workshops are so good, I will return to Yokneam once they resume. I get rides with Korin. It is yet another example of not losing touch.

Now, I have journeyed north, all the way to Nahariyya, from Ashkelon. The journey took three hours. I am still waiting for Assaf. Trains pull in and out...He's here, so I go.

April 7, 2010

Nahariyyah is beautiful, miles of clear blue-green Mediterranean coast. Hermit crabs crawl around beneath the water alongside fish of many colors, little shrimps, deposits of salt. We pick up the crabs and set them on our legs. I watch as they timidly test the safety of their new environment, as their little limbs flit in and out of the shells.

The beach is a mixture of shelly sand and stretches of half-submerged rock covered in seaweed, slat deposits, and young coral. Fishermen spread out along the shore. Our feet are in the clear water. We wait for the schools of fish to crowd around them and feast on our dead skin. Here, the mutual dependency between human beings and the greater natural world is evident. In the distance lies the Israeli-Lebanese border, shrouded in a thin layer of fog. It's quiet now and if people didn't hate each other and there were no fences, I could walk across.

My train goes up and down the coast. As I wait in the stations, I make acquaintances. I am given undue attention by a number of men, who ask me if I have a boyfriend. They tell me to send him this message or ones similar: "He is lucky. If I only I were younger; if only I weren't married," etc. I am not used to this.

I befriend an Arab boy and his mother in the station at Tel Aviv University. She fusses over his wrinkled collar and his lack of a sweater. He is about twelve. We share smiles and I reach over and straighten his collar and we get into a limited conversation because of our limited Hebrew about the tardiness of the train and where it's going. I sit across from them on the ride andt he boy keeps stealing glances at me and smiling shyly. If we had a common language, we would have become friends. I tell them where to get off and I leave them. They smile and wave.

After my doctor's appointment is over, I stroll into the hospital Aroma. As usual, it's crazy busy and chaotic. For some reason, like three weeks ago, decades old shows of Tom and Jerry loop on the television. A woman asks if she can sit with me and I say yes. she tells me she's a researcher at the hospital but when I ask her for a title she doesn't know what to say. She researches the correlation between mind, emotion, and physical health: are physical ailments caused by a state of mind or a fluctuation in one's psychological state of being? Can one possibly cure the incurable with the power of thought?

I couldn't see it while speaking with her but in retrospect it sounds as if it's related to Noetics. Let her research and let her theory prove true. If cancer cells can be eradicated with just a thought, let them; if Beta cells can start producing insulin again, let them; if lungs can start breathing on their own again...You get the picture. I got her name and information. I'll keep in touch.

At home, I work on another batch of cover letters. Now, more than ever, I need a job. I have hope. Things are changing, too. Supposedly, gone are the days of the one-page resume. Now, employees want everything. I tailor it anyway, but don't stress over a page limit.

When I tell Israelis about cover letters, they don't know what I'm talking about. Here, it's all about the CV and the interview. I am already planning how I will work my return, budgeting in my mind depending on which job I receive in America, praying that there will be one. With benefits.

Meanwhile, I concentrate on the task at hand here: my internship. I have designed a project that I feel is of utmost importance, particularly today. It is directly related to why I came here: to find the truth behind the mythical conceptions of this place. What is it really like to live here, to grow up here, to think like a Jewish Israeli or an Arab? My only goal is to get as true and real a picture as possible. Coming from a background in dialogue and diplomacy, I believe that perhaps the only legitimately effective way to do this is through the collection of first-person narratives.

I strive to create a human connection, an interwoven story between people of different backgrounds who may or may not interact with each other but who harbor the deeply ingrained myths of the Other within them. I will collect the testimonies of representatives of different sects of society in this geographic region--Jews, Arabs, foreign workers, African refugees. What do these people think of each other? What do they merely assume? Why? have they ever actually met each other? What was growing up here or immigrating here, or emigrating from here and back again like? Why? My collection will serve as the beginning of a primary source database of like testimonials.

Much of my project will deal with transcriptions of audio and visual files, verbatim. I also intend to interweave them into my own narrative and couple them with some photojournalism. However, I'm working for a new documentary film company that specializes in the testimonials of genocide survivors. Some of the interviews will therefore be on film My initial meetings and correspondence with the film crew and interviewee contact for the refugees have been very successful and professional.

Of course, my time constraints by far exceed theirs as they already live here and I must return to the States. I will be beginning my interviews as soon as I can get my hands on as inexpensive a digital recorder as possible--this weekend hopefully. Then, I'll begin scheduling my interviews and finding an awesome internet cafe where I can park myself for three months for hours at a time while I transcribe, edit, write my own narrative, flip through my photographs, and edit those...and whatever else that needs to get done.

I can't even begin to describe how excited I am about this--and to be working with reliable people whose activism actually reaps results: tangible, clear-cut results that can be seen and felt in communities and individuals. This is exactly the kind of grassroots work I have always wanted to do and now that conventional diplomacy is barred from me because of my lovely new health condition, I don't have to make the choice between conventional and grassroots diplomacy. It has been chosen for me. Perhaps really good things do come out of terrible ones. Eh. it could be worse...Much worse. And in life, in general, I am happier than ever. I have everything I have ever wanted. Unclear though the future may be, I see one. And that's enough for me.