Tales from palestine # 2

November 4, 2007
Nablus, Palestine

The sound of the Israeli plane surveying the city is gone. It's strange not to fall asleep to the constant drone that seemed so strange just a week ago. How soon things become routine and familiar. However, here, the sense of familiarity incites no feelings of safety and comfort.
In just ten days, I feel more disconcerted and estranged from the world than I ever have. It's not just the idea of being in a different place, but the realization of experiencing a reality that you thought you knew, but in truth, might never be able to understand. Does that make sense?
My first night in Nablus, with Jihane, I woke up to every gunshot, every small rumble in the street. By ten p.m., there was not a single person outside in downtown, and I'm assuming, the old city. It's an eerie feeling to witness what seems to be a daily fleeing of the inhabitants when you very well know they are in their homes, too afraid to pop their heads out of their balconies in fear of being spotted by the chance surveillance or Israeli jeep.

I haven't been able to write things down in the past few days because I just don't know what to say or think. Every passing hour I worry that I don't know enough, haven't seen enough to be able to express the right amount of sympathy or opinion on the happenings. It's impossible when I am tucked away into my safe haven of an apartment far from the city center and the old city. In the mornings, when I read the news, it shocks me just as much as it will shock you, to read of the clashes between the Israelis and the gangs here. Really? Did I sleep through all that gunfire? Am I truly in the most dangerous city in the West Bank?

It's not just the physical distance, though. There's an emotional barrier between the foreigner and the Nablusi, not because they put one up but because I don't know if there will ever be a way to hammer down our differences. You can see it in their eyes; they are broken but unphased. I wonder what they must have seen to reveal equal amounts of determination and pain.

There is a boy here, S., who has graduated from music school, wants to study in Spain, drives the ambulances at night in the old city to take in the fighters when they have been injured by the Israelis, work with children, and really, has the biggest heart that anyone can have in such a situation. Yet, you can feel it in his eyes. He is tired, tired from experiencing a lifetime of pain and watching the country he has known his entire life suffer. One day, we were walking together in downtown and some random man stops him to tell him that his friend, who was driving an ambulance during his night shift as a volunteer and was shot in the back of the head by a stray bullet, has died. How many times has he heard that same kind of story, I wonder. Yet, he looks at me, with a smile, only betrayed by his eyes, and asks if I will be OK getting home alone. I stare at him in amazement, wondering if anyone can be as selfless as he is. By the time I convince him that I know the way, he is already running towards the hospital to have his last goodbye.

This is nothing. There are a million stories in this 9,000 year old city, but what is the point of repeating them all. Family members will still be used as human shields in the random night raids, students will still be kidnapped in front of the university, and this city will still be named 'the center of terror.'Everyone that I have met still stumbles on, morning to evening to morning, with a glazed look on their face, always willing to talk, and eternally determined to move on. Whether this means working for human rights, protesting in front of the wall, throwing stones at the Israeli tanks, being a martyr for their country, or leaving this lifetime war zone for a new story, a better future, they live on.