Talate

The coffee’s good here. Really good. You learn to appreciate small things in prison. Haleema means wise in English. I appreciate that. I think it’s beautiful. By the time the “security barrier” is finished it will snake over 450 miles, annexing 25% of the West Bank—farms, houses, businesses. If I told you that it’s illegal in the West Bank for a Palestinian to dig a well, what would you say? Or what if I told you that the water that runs through pipes in Palestinian cities in the West Bank can be turned off by remote control somewhere in Israel? What then?

Smoke and the smell of unwashed bodies filled the room. “Don’t go outside!” Ibrahim shouted. I looked out the window. Each time I looked light from a spotlight reflected off the smooth glass of my lens reminding me not to look too closely. I stepped back from the window and reflected on a completely new feeling. Occupation. As I felt fear unlike any I have felt before the snarl of Hebrew over loudspeakers drowned out the rumbling sound of piston engines in the otherwise silent night in Bethlehem. And I could not help but wonder if infrared night vision could differentiate between an American and a Palestinian.

There’s an enormous cockroach in my room. Jeremy the cockroach. He’s there because I don’t kill bugs. Not because it makes me sad—I’m not that sympathetic; bugs just scare the shit out of me. No, I would rather pretend he isn’t there, that somehow he’ll dissolve into nothingness…but somewhere in the back of my mind I know he’s going to scuttle out when I least expect it. The thought crawls around in my brain, poking in my subconscious near the other thoughts I ignore with the vague hope that they will just go away. I lay in my bunk at night wondering what it must be like for people here—knowing they are just Jeremy, crawling hopelessly around in the brains of the only people who can save them from their prison. The difference is that Jeremy can pop out and scare me anytime he feels like it. Most of the people here can’t leave. They probably never will.

Still, the children laugh. Life goes on. Their ability to adapt to occupation will never cease to amaze me. They paint on the walls of their refugee camps, the place where they are forced to live because they’ve lost everything. Yet these murals don’t depict hatred and revenge. They are their dreams of life outside of prison. When I encounter a sort of fear I have never felt before, the men tell me that this invasion wasn’t so bad. I nearly cried I was so afraid. A boy said that if he did not have to hide from the soldiers with his family, he would have thrown stones at them with the other boys. They are beautiful and broken with strength I could never have imagined…while I pretend Jeremy doesn’t exist.

I stand there on the concrete, the sun in my face, my eyes squinting, and my skin burning. A bead of sweat rolls down my cheek. I stare at the wall—it’s big and overwhelming. I just stand there staring. The wall is made of concrete, but it’s not as thick as I had expected. Nonetheless, this “security barrier” cuts off the people’s livelihood, their olive trees, their fields, their houses. “Hate builds walls, hope builds bridges.” Who is hate, and why is he building walls? Who is hope, and where are all the bridges?

The explosions go off in the camp. The soldiers are back again, but this time they do not bother to use the roads in the camp. They’re going through the buildings, literally. They’re using explosives to tear through the camp, making huge holes in the walls of homes, causing horrific noise, great pain, and even death. As the little girl’s mother stood by the door waiting for the soldiers to knock, the wall and door blew up in her face and sliced her. The soldiers didn’t let the girl’s father call the ambulance until several hours later. The little girl’s mother died. What do you say to that?