Barely Keeping Up

I guess the good bloggers have to travel with a laptop or do a lot fewer things each day, because obviously between our busy schedule and the erratic time in Internet cafes, I am falling ever further behind in describing this trip. Just to pick up from my last unfinished post, which began to tell what I did on Sunday (and this is Thursday night, so you can see my problem), I met up with the unnamed Israeli woman activist (let's call her W) at 2 p.m. at the Damascus Gate (remember "12 gates to the city"? I'm not sure if Jerusalem really does have 12, but there are a number that allow you to enter the walls around the "Old City" from the modern parts of town, and they make convenient meeting places), and we took a bus to Azaria, or Bethany as it's known in non-Arabic, a city just over the line from East Jerusalem into the West Bank. Our original goal was to meet a young Palestinian woman journalism student who was interested in perhaps coming to study in the U.S. at Mt. Holyoke for a year, but for various reasons she could not make it to our meeting place, which was at the apartment of Suzana Zorko-Arar and her family. But Suzana turned out to be one of the most extraordinary people I've met on this trip, so the afternoon was well worthwhile. She's a woman in her mid-late 40's, with four children (Wahid, 19, Nadia, 16, Omar, 13, and Salma, 7), who grew up in Croatia, studied linguistics, and met her husband, a Palestinian, while in school, married, and came to live with him in Palestine. She is an amazing grassroots activist, who has organized a summer camp that is attended by both Israeli and Palestinian children, a circus that has traveled all over the West Bank performing, and a women's embroidery cooperative that produces beautiful embroidered handbags and pillows which she is currently trying to market abroad. She's also set up classes to teach people English and computer skills. She met us at the bus stop and took us on a walking tour around Azaria, particularly to see the wall, which suddenly slices into town in the middle of a commercial street at one end, preceded by a field of rubble where the Israeli military tore down buildings to do the wall construction, and is visible at the other end of town not far off down a hill, with one of the huge settlements (perhaps Maale Adumim?) "sheltered" behind it. As we were looking at the wall in town, which is covered with interesting graffiti from many international visitors, and taking photographs of one another posed in front of it, an Israeli military jeep drove up and parked right next to us, and a soldier -- rifle, as usual, slung across his chest -- got out and asked us what we were doing. "Just taking photographs," Suzana said calmly. He started to ask further questions, but she was having none of it -- "just ignore him," she said to us, which is what we did, and eventually he drove away. Suzana pointed out that East Jerusalem lay just beyond the wall, and used to be a five minute trip from Azaria -- but now, because you have to go all round about to get there, is a twenty minute bus trip. That is, of course, for those that have permits to go -- most people in the West Bank are not allowed to enter Jerusalem. Cut off like this from the city that is their natural source for jobs, shopping, social life, many people are unemployed and feel caged in -- a story repeated everywhere we went in the West Bank.

After the wall, we went shopping for lunch food -- pastries and fruit -- and walked up to her apartment to meet the family. Her husband (I'm embarassed to say I've forgotten his name) turned out to be a vegan (I don't know why I found this so unlikely, but I did) and he and W., who is a vegetarian, got into a long food discussion while Suzana and I talked about her work and her ideas. She is very cynical about all the Palestinian political parties and politicians -- Fatah and Hamas alike -- and believes in working totally outside the political structure, person-to-person. What she is most eager for is to establish more ties with people from the international community, both one-to-one and through sister city type connections, which has been happening with Great Britain in particular recently. She's a woman of enormous energy and vision -- as I said to some of my travel colleagues, until I met her I had Fannie Lou Hamer as the highest star in my pantheon of heroines, but Suzana is definitely now right up there with her. I want very much to build further connections with her in the future.

We also had a lovely meal of tea and cakes and fruit, and Suzana's husband, who is an amateur herbalist, gave me a gift of sage, wormwood, and melissa that he had gathered and grown. The time I spent with them was so enjoyable it was hard to tear myself away, but I finally had to go to rejoin my colleagues in Jerusalem. When the bus stopped at the checkpoint going into Jerusalem, a soldier came on board (as is standard) to check everyone's papers. When he came to where W. and I were sitting, I showed him my passport, and then W. started to search through her bag, looking into its various compartments, and not coming up with anything. I immediately realized that she was feigning searching for her passport because she couldn't actually show him her papers (because it is illegal for her to travel to the West Bank), and I didn't know what to do -- whether to say she was with me, or vouch for her in some way. But I remembered the advice that Hannah and Dunya, our guides in our original visit to the West Bank, had given us about what to do in uncomfortable situations: remember that the people with us had dealt with such situations many times before, and we had not, and the best thing to do was to keep quiet and follow their lead. So I did. Finally W. said to the soldier, "I must have left my passport in Jerusalem," and he asked her, "What nationality are you?" "American," she said, and -- after a moment -- he said "Okay," and moved on to the next seat. After the soldier had gotten off and our bus had started up again, I apologized to W. for keeping silent, saying maybe I should have vouched for her, but she said that I had done just the right thing. "What if he hadn't believed you?" I asked, and she said, casually, "I would probably have been arrested," but indicated that it was no big deal, it had happened to her many times before. The entire experience threw me right back to my time in Mississippi in 1966 -- where people were having constantly to dodge arrest, and being an "outlaw" seemed the only honorable thing to be. So, another day in Israel-Palestine.