Brides get the best flowers in the summer

Every week or so I go to one of the florists in old Ramallah and buy a bouquet of flowers for the house. For about 2-3 weeks, every time I go in to the store, the bouquets are kind of lifeless, and a somewhat ugly blend of nameless flowers. I've walked out several times empty handed and disappointed. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I passed by the store on a Friday, and saw the bridal cars lined up with people scrambling to decorate the hoods and trunks of the cars with elaborate rose bouquets. Throughout the Arab world, this is what they do for weddings - decorate the cars with flowers. So the mystery of what has happened to the choice flowers at my florist is now solved. Yes, wedding season has begun.


Engagement season has also now begun. Single Palestinian men of a certain age who spend the majority of their year working abroad to put their education and skills to work in countries with much lower unemployment rates - such as the Emirates and the States, will return to Palestine in the summer to begin a mating ritual. Prior to their arrival, the female family members will begin asking other family members, friends, neighbors, etc. for lists of eligible "good women" to match with their sons. The simple fact that these men have a visa or passport status in a foreign country gives them a considerable edge over their domestic counterparts. And, a woman can increase her eligibility status if she as well has a foreign passport. The men will spend their few precious vacation weeks meeting with the women on the family-authorized list. And when they find one who suits them, a quick engagement celebration will most likely be held before the men return to their jobs outside the country, and continue a virtual courtship from abroad until a wedding date is eventually set.


The significance of the engagement varies throughout the Arab world. It is on one hand a show of support on both the families part to this relationship. And thus, it is a sort of permission to "date" in a society where it is generally unacceptable for men and women to be together freely in mixed company. So from that point of view, it is perhaps less of a commitment than what we typically think of an engagement in American society. However, in some countries, the engagement is given such significance that the reputation of the girl and her family is ruined if an engagement is broken. The girl is astrocized to an extent equalling the humility wrought upon an Arab woman in divorce as well.


I have the fortune to have 3 wonderful girls working for me - they are bright, smart, eager, energetic, and just simply great people. One is married and the mother to a pair of twin children. The other two both informed me of their engagements this week. Neither of them seemed overly enthused when they made the announcements, but I chalked it up to their timidity in mixing their professional and personal roles, as neither of them had spoken to me previously about these men in their lives. I wanted to know all about them. Come to find out, there was not much to know.


In the first case, the girl is getting engaged to a man she's worked with previously and they've been talking to each other for a year. She's going to get engaged to him, but she openly admits that she is definitely not sure if he's "the one."


In the second case, my colleague is a US passport holder. She has most of my male colleagues continually shaking in their boots because she is so damn competent. She tells me that the reason I've heard nothing about this love of her life is that she just met him yesterday. He's in from Dubai, searching for a wife, and after a 2.5 hour conversation, they agreed to get engaged. "Oh, so this is one of those 'permission to date' engagements, right?" I ask, rationalizing it all to myself. After all, the way she's explained it, I'm about to lose my best staff member to Dubai at some undetermined future. She makes a grimace as if I suggested some unpleasant work task that must be done today and responds, "Kind of, except we're also planning a wedding, for next March." GASP!


As I try to recover my breath, I ask, "OK, so what is it about this guy that after 2.5 hours you know this is it?" "Well, lots of people had been suggesting we meet. He didn't want to meet me because he said he was not interested in a woman with Master's Degree but then....." Her monologue continues and I hear about 5% of it after that point because my ears are suddenly blasted with screaching and screaming bells and whistles warning her to "stop, stop, stop". But of course, I know vocalizing it all will do no good. So I shake my head in support, with my own rather unethusiastic grimace plastering my own face. In the 2.5 hour conversation, they've made all their plans for the future, and since they have the same vision of what they should be, the road ahead will be paved with roses. The best roses in Ramallah, I'm sure.

Permits and other essentials

Permits are an essential part of life for most West Bankers, as well as those Palestinians holding Jerusalem IDs. The Israelis seem to make it a constantly moving target, changing rules, types of permissions, and timelines for permissions on a regular basis. Even after 9 months, I am learning something new about this world of permits. While I don't require a permit, most of my local colleagues and friends do.

I have a couple American friends who are married to Palestinian men. Their children hold American passports and Palestinian passports. Until the age of 16, the children are allowed to travel with their mothers through all checkpoints and the Tel Aviv airport without any special, additional permissions. One of my friend's 6 year old sons has recently become aware of the complexity of the permit issue, his curiousity begetting endless questions.

Add to the permit issues, the equally complex ambigous permissions of checkpoints and border crossings between the West Bank and Israel/Jordan. For example, there are three border crossings between the West Bank and Jordan (all border crossings are controlled by Israel). Palestinian-Americans (US passport holders who have Palestinian routes) are only allowed to use one of those crossings. Or, take the various checkpoints between Ramallah and Jerusalem - one for settlers (and other "special people" - foreign passport holders, work permits). Another one for VIPs, but which seems to be open to about anybody depending on the whim of the Israelis soldiers. And the last for all others.

The other day, I was convoying out of Ramallah to a horse ranch. Among 10 of us, each of us had a different set of permit/visa/passport issues. We decided to use the "special people" checkpiont, seeing if we could manage to get through by putting the American blonds in the driver seats. It worked by us all showing the one identity card we all held in common - a US Government ID.

After I showed my card and passed through, my friend's son piped up from the back seat, "Mom, does she (pointing to me) have a permit?" "No, she doesn't." "Then how did she pass through?" "We showed a card that says who we work for." "oh" Yes, "oh". No further questions, but I of course was very curious about why this child would mark me into the category of being a permit holder? Has he learned that its West Bankers that have a permit? Does he assume because my son has an Arabic name and he went to the same school with him, that we are Palestinians? Or is his understanding of the permit much broader and his questions were an attempt for him to narrow the category of his understanding (ok, check the box, she is not a permit holder?).

No matter how annoying I find the procedures, all the thought that has to go into anything before heading out the door (I actually forgot my passport when we went to the horse ranch- you'd think after 9 months of this place I'd know enough not to leave the house without it), and the time lost in dealing with Israeli procedures (I faced 40 minutes of questioning by Israeli officials at 2am when returning recently from Paris), I try to keep my compalining in check in front of my Palestinian friends - they by far have it worse than I. And, at the same time, whenever I do hear my friends complain about the craziness of all this, it somehow makes me feel better that they themselves realize how highly abnormal everything is.

And that is why when people talk about "peace", and "security" and all this other BS, I have to resist the desire to stand up and yell, "Have you seen, have you witnessed, have you felt what these people go through on a daily basis in the name of all it?!?" And yet, the international community seems to shake its head in some common diplomatic, "ah yes good point" when Israel talks about the multitude of conditions it adds to each new endorsement of the "two state solution." It is amazing to me how a people who established a State in the name of ensuring that human rights were never again violated against an ethnic or religious group, can turn around and defy all standards of human rights on another ethnic/religious group. At least twice the Palestinians have stood up and said "enough is enough", and yet who hears them over the barbed wire and concrete encircling the West Bank?

No envy. No Fear.

I'm not quite clear what inner strength is. Neither am I clear what courage is. If I have to think about a definition of those, it confuses me, as if the definition should be something fully tangible.

I had the wonderful opportunity recently to catch up with a beautiful friend whom I lived for two years during an overseas stint with over a decade ago. The stark differences in how we each remember our experiences gave me an incredible opportunity to reflect on how paths are so individually tread. Even ten years on, her reference point is that overseas post. With a husband and two small children, she is seeking every opportunity to return, to connect, and I wonder, to relive? As for myself, that post was a reference point best left in the past, and my future is seeking challenging opportunities in which I can learn and grow. I feel no great need to connect to that past, except if it helps to better inform my future.

If people tell me that I am courageous, I block it out – literally, it will go in one ear and out the other. I am not courageous when my knuckles turn white from grasping the armrests on a turbulent airplane ride. I'm not courageous when the questioning from Israeli authorities leaves me trying to mentally jump through an obstacle course of lies. I am not courageous when I know I have to do things differently at work to get a different result, but I prefer the less energy-draining path of not thinking about a way to take on my problem and find a solution.

Inner strength to me assumes a block of ageless granite which can withstand winds, rain, storms, and heat without a single chip, bend, or watermark. Maybe my age marks are not so visible, but there are plenty of internal grooves and marks (samskaras). I try to remold them – is that the elusive inner strength? I hardly feel like a block of granite. I feel more closely affiliated to a fledgling bird that has been dropped from its nest. Inner strength eludes me when there is still one more heated conversation I need to have with the Ex to help him more fully understand his fathering responsibilities. Inner strength eludes me when I know that getting out of my shell is much better for me than hibernating in it. Inner strength eludes me when I have to pull myself out of bed some mornings.

I thought I would envy my friend – husband, beautiful home, children – everything I wanted. Everything I think I still want. But I did not feel envy. I felt an odd sense of contentment at my fly by the pants life decisions that brought me to the footprint I occupy today. My friend told me that in a recent conversation she had with a mutual friend of ours that they decided that age has made them more "bitter" – I'm sure I audibly gasped when she said it. Bitter is definitely not an adjective I'd ever like to own. Realistic - YES. A little less optimistic – YES. Bitter – NEVER.

There was one day a few years back that I woke up and literally felt my vision had changed overnight, as if somebody had taken off the smudged, rose colored glasses I was wearing. I felt like I've heard people describe their vision after getting Lasik surgery. Literally, the blue of the sky was starker, the contrast of the green trees against the sky was more vivid, and the outlines of houses and buildings were sharper. I can't describe what happened to spark this sudden clarity in my eye sight, which had an equal impact on the clarity of my thoughts. But because of that, I am sometimes fearless. And it is as if the ability to see clearly, trust clearly, know clearly, is the antidote for bitterness, and maybe fear and envy as well.

Enter: The other side of the world

Entry and exit into Gaza is only possible with an Israeli-issued permit. The "permit" is not actually a piece of paper or any substantive form of any tangible item so far as I can determine, but is a simple permission in some system that puts a name onto a permissable list. Entry and exit into Gaza than requires a second bureucratic step known as "coordination" made possible by Israelis. One day last week a member of the US Embassy security team phoned me out of the blue and said, "you are admitted to enter into Gaza on Sunday." It's not an invitation I could lightly turn down.

Directly prior to my leaving, I fortunately ran into an American friend who had entered Gaza in the past few months. She offered to give me a rundown of the procedures for getting through the border crossing (no simple procedure when it comes to any of Israel's border crossings) which I can summarize as "just keep walking, keep going through the turnstyles, there will be nobody around, you won't know where you are going, just follow those who offer help

With those helpful instructions running through my head, I pulled up to the Erez terminal on a bright, hot Sunday morning. Erez terminal is quite a sight - from the outside it looks like a clean, effecient, spanking new airport terminal. Except it is completely empty, there is no movement, no sound, no voices. I hand my passport to an Israeli soldier seated in a triple-glassed booth and then I wait for 20 minutes in the glaring sun waiting for my name to be called. When it is, I proceed through a metal gate and toward the entrance of the terminal, following the simple signs with arrows that say "Gaza". After a border guard grilled me with questions inside a glass booth, my passport is stamped and I make my way through a series of turnstyles (through which only fit a person and one small piece of luggage), then down a narrow, grey, silenced corridor which ends at a cement wall. In the cement wall are two large steel doors.

When I managed myself and my small bag through the final turnstyle, I was standing in front of the two large steel doors suddenly feeling as if I was at the moment in that Jim Carry movie, "The Truman Show" when Truman realizes that he's reached the edge of the set and he is being watched. Security cameras sit high on the wall. And suddenly, one of the steel doors opens automatically, ashuring me through to the other side

A smiling Palestinian greets me on the side, takes my bag, and leads me down a long, open aired cooridor where he passes me off to another bag handler who accompanies me a kilometer down a gravelled, pot holed road toward my waiting colleagues. I handed over some money for the baggage handling and I was then officially on Gaza territory. One additional checkpoint is left - a few cement barriers in the middle of the road where Hamas officials take down my name and the name of my organization, then welcome me to their country.

Its a country that has seen many changes, where current events change the landscape of the Strip in unpredictable fashion at a continual interval of every 3-5 years. Its immediately evident that this is the most populated piece of land on earth - miles and miles of cement buildings reach to the Meditteranean shores. The poverty is also immediately evident - in the smell of rotting sewage, in the site of a young, shoeless man limping down a street, and in the sounds of the donkey carts limping slowly down the paed streets with their human loads. And finally, it is evident who is in charge - the green flags scribbled with Arabic hang from every available light post, building and tree. Bearded men in clean, crisp navy blue uniforms bring a discipline to the streets that is definitely not evident in the West Bank

I watch and observe this place that seems like the other side of the world, if only because the journey was so strange.