Expectations

A lot of driver education teachers in Ramallah like to bring their students to my neighborhood. I'm guessing its because the streets are wide and traffic is generally sparse.   Most, if not all, the students I see are female.  Which is telling, considering how poorly skilled the Palestinian male drivers are.  And these young women are extremely timid drivers, which if you've ever been in the passenger seat with a novice driver at the wheel, you'll also know they are the worst kind of drivers.  I'll never forget a driver's ed class I took in high shool when our teacher decided to instruct us on urban highway driving.  I was behind the wheel trying to merge into three lanes of oncoming traffic on the aptly named "Driving Park Bridge" in Rochester.  I remember glancing in my rearview mirror and seeing my three classmates in the rear seat huddled together in fear, and the instructor beside me in the passenger seat with his white knuckles grasping at the dusty dashboard.  I was the most timid driver in the world.  Ah, but that was then and this is now

Last week I came very close to being in my first very serious car accident here.  I would say by about 12 inches exactly.  The accident, however, did occur between the car in front of me, another one that was trying to overtake me on the left (a taxi no less, what is it with taxi drivers?), and a woman in a vehicle pulling out into oncoming traffic.  I detoured around the crashed vehicles, parked my car, and walked my shaky legs over to the crash scene.  I honestly expected to see people yelling and screaming at each other, I mean the adrenaline caused by the near crash had my nerves up!  But instead, I watched as a man ushered a woman into the back seat of his car and then turned to speak to the policeman.  I approached him and confirmed tat it was he whose car had impacted the women's car so hard that the entire front end of her car was slashed off.  I told him I was following right behind him ad had witnessed what happened (the woman pulled into oncoming traffic without ever stopping or looking), and asked if he needed my help with a statement or anything.  He responded in the most calm and polite tone, "No thank you.  I think the woman was sleeping or distracted.  So I have put her in my car to let her calm down and not worry."  I was so stunned to witness an incredible amount of civility between people.

I never thought of myself expecting anything different, but maybe all my travels and life experiences have left me a bit jaded . I've come to realize that I do in fact rarely expect to meet strangers who treat each other with respect and dignity, especially in a setting such as the West Bank where the occupying force strips the people of their dignity on a daily basis. 

In fact, with such few expectations, I have come to witness incredible acts of generosity and simple kindness over the past few months.  After a week's worth of rainfall recently, I took my son out to a normally dry riverbed to enjoy the rare waterfalls and instantanous acquatic life that had sprouted up in a valley not far from our house.  While I have been on plenty of outing with friends and colleagues, it is rare that I wander off alone with my son.  But as we hiked in and out of the olive groves along the narrow and rocky riverbed, we were continously invited by families to join in their picnics.   Families spoke to us in English and Arabic, asking where we came from, what were we doing here, and how we liked their country.  None of it was instrusive or uncomfortable, and the conversations always ended with pleas from them for us to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee.   A few young boys even approached my son who was trying to build a mini-damn out of stones and handed him a week's worth of chocolate chip cookies.  The look of surprise on his face was priceless!

Since then, I have been working on returning to the "mind of the beginner" as a foreigner in this culture -to remember and see things as if for the first time, without expectations.  In doing so, I have been rewarded greatly.