Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Quality of Life

The other day I went to a friend's house who I've known for 4 months. This is the first time I've been to her house because until recently, it took 45 minutes to get to the village in which she lives which is about 15km from central Ramallah. Now, it only takes 20 minutes.

This friend is a Palestinian-American, in fact she was born and grew up exclusively in San Francisco. On a family trip back to Palestine she met her future husband, fell in love, and decided to marry and make her life here. In so many ways, she is way more American than even myself, and here she is living out in this small Palestinian village - I seriously admire her.

So back in 2002, the main road from the village to Ramallah was cut off for use by Palestinians in the name of security, as the village is surrounded by a few big settlements, and those roads are now for the exclusive use of the settlers. Since then, they've had to travel a small, rough back road that made the trip 45 minutes in length. Since both her and her husband work in Ramallah, they did this every day, twice a day. But since I met her she's been talking constantly about, "when the new road opens."

The road was permitted to be built by the Israelis, as what they call a "quality of life road." Ironically though it was not paid for by the Israelis - the international donor community paid for the road. My friend chuckles when she talks about the road, "heck,its true, I don't care about the fact that we were banned from using the main road for 6 years, now that I get to make a trip in 20 minutes that for 6 years took 45 minutes - my quality of life has improved dramatically!" But I wonder what they must feel when they look across their village hillside sometimes and see the settlements and imagine the qualityof life issues on the other side.

I went to the Jerusalem zoo this past weekend. I was standing in line behind two American Jewish families - one seemed to be visiting the other perhaps. One man turned to the other and said, "Whatever our complaints are about living in Israel, one good thing is that we can use our credit cards anywhere here." My mouth dropped open, my eyes rolled and I thought to myself, "is that the level of issues that most Israelis deal with?" One person's quality of life issues certainly is not another's.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

To witness

It can be difficult to witness all that is going on around me without becoming a part of it, or without it becoming part of me. I told a friend recently that my greatest fear is when all the abnormalcy around me begins to feel normal. She insisted that it will, at some point, come to be a new normal for me.

On my recent visit to the States the most enjoyable thing I did was walk. It was a good 10 degrees with the wind chill most days, but I insisted on walking everywhere. Its empowering to choose where your own two feet can take you. The power and freedom of anonymity, space and place is extraordinary, and the absence of those elements is very disempowering.

The knowledge and language of life here centers around checkpoints, and cease fires, and protests, and arrests, and incursions, and settlements.

I've woken up a couple nights from a deep sleep in what feels like a panic/anxiety attack. I've never had them before. I wonder if this is a new element of my life, like all the knew language and knowledge I've had to pick up. I try to talk myself out of it by reminding myself that I am safe in this moment. But my "logical mind" tries to convince me of all the ways that I am not really safe. This is not the kind of new normalcy I want to let creep into my life.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

I don't run

I'm still a little shaken up by yesterday's incident - I got caught in some tear gas and my son was in the car with me. I slept well last night, but when I woke up this morning, I could still feel the adrenaline running through my blood. I remembered reading somewhere that when you have a flight or fright response, the best thing you can do is move to convince your body that you are responding to the "flight" response.

So, after I walked my son to school, I decided to go for a walk myself. About two minutes into my walk, I suddenly felt this need to run. I started running, and running, and running. The odd thing is....I don't run. That is the main reason I sucked at high school sports, or at least one of many contributing factors. I guess I was spurred on by the music on my ipod, and the feeling of rain in the air, but I'm guessing that adrenaline must have pretty much saturated my blood.

Now I feel better - a lot better. I feel the calm in my core, and I feel focused again. This may have been the trigger that I needed to kick my butt into "extra vigilence" mode that I should be in anyways when it comes to my security. I am safe now.