Lies, lies and more lies: To Palestine or not to Palestine

Hi readers.  Sorry it’s been so long – and yes, I’ve missed you too.  Dearly.  I’ve been running around the Arab world like a kid on Christmas morning recently: to Morocco and back, to Jordan and back, to Jordan and back (again).  I want to write about that, I really do, especially about the Morocco trip, as Morocco is in many ways why I sit here today, in this FRIGID apartment on this crap internet connection in the middle of the Middle East.  But that’s a subject that will warm me another cold evening – tonight, I want to write about my stunning ability to lie.

Israel has really taken what was already a solid skill of mine and pushed it into fine art territory.  And I hate it.  What do I mean.  Ok:

So this past weekend, two girlfriends and I went on a really lovely road trip up into the Golan Heights/Galilee area of Israel (and/or occupied Syria, pick your poison).  We booked a suite at a cute B&B, planned out wine tastings and vineyard tours and epic meals in country foodie havens.  Awesome, right?  It was, it was totally awesome.  Except for all the lying.  So, you can imagine that during this trip various people asked us questions: totally normal, right?  As for all tourists, they were the usual: where do you live, what do you do, etc. etc. etc.  Except that the act of answering these totally normal questions is utterly abnormal here.  Here’s the process:

Lovely B&B owner: Where are you girls coming from?

Us (looking at each other quickly to determine we’re all in on the game plan): Jerusalem.  We live in Jerusalem.

B&B owner: Oh, nice!  What do you do there?

Me (I respond because it’s easier for me than for my friends, one of whom works for the PLO and the other works in Jordan):  I work at a tech company.

B&B owner: Nice!  Where do you live in Jerusalem?

                                                                                          

Me (Again, I answer because I know my fake address area well, having memorized the neighborhood for when they interrogate me at the airport): Rehavia, near Rehavia Sushi.

Do you see how totally messed up this is?  I don’t want to lie to her.  My gut twists when I lie like this, for so many reasons: I hate lying, I hate that I can’t just say Ramallah, or Palestine, I hate this whole fucked up situation, I hate that I haven’t had the guts to just say Ramallah and deal with the consequences, I feel anxious that she’ll ask more questions, etc. etc. etc.  It sucks, guys.  So much. 

Now, you might be asking yourself, well, why doesn’t she just say Ramallah?  Because, the potential consequences are so unattractive and potentially dangerous: (1) She stops talking to us immediately (2) The air all gets sucked out of the room and it’s incredibly awkward from then on during our stay (3) She starts lecturing us about Israel/Palestine (4) She refuses to let us stay there and/or calls the authorities (5) She doesn’t understand we said Ramallah and thinks we said Ramla, an Arab town inside Israel proper (’48 Israel), meaning we then have to correct her and it’s horribly awkward (6) She politely smiles, asks a little bit about it, and then ignores us for the rest of the stay.  Or (7), she’s totally cool with it, but I have yet to meet this person.  Though I’m sure they exist.

See?  That’s why.  And I don’t always lie – it depends so much on the situation, the person I’m talking to, the amount of time I plan to interact with them, how I’m feeling that day, etc.  I wish I could say I never lied – I have many friends who don’t out of principle, out of wanting Israelis to be forced to recognize Palestine, Ramallah, the fact that ‘normal’ people live there, etc.  But sometimes, I admit it, I just want to have a relaxing weekend without the politics.  As if that’s possible, I guess.

You also run into hilarious situations where you’re muddling through on some Israeli’s poor English as he’s trying to speak Hebrew to you, then all of a sudden you hear him speak Arabic to a coworker, then you realize he’s Palestinian so you speak Arabic to him, then he grins and speaks Arabic back, and then you get a discount.  But for a solid first half of a conversation you had to idea he was Palestinian.  Then you can gloriously admit to living in Ramallah (it’s like a breath of clean air after a lot of smog, I tell you) and he is happy, and you are happy.

With Israeli authorities it is the worst – I hate lying to authorities.  But you just have to, you do, everyone does.  I must say, the first time I went into the US Consulate here in Jerusalem to get my second passport, I almost cried tears of relief when the guy behind the counter asked where I live and I said Ramallah (free as a bird!) and he smiled and told me he lived there too (he was Palestinian).  God BLESS America, I thought.

So yup, that part really stinks.  Great weekend, except for a little piece of my soul dying every time I said I lived in Jerusalem with a smile.  Best part: meeting a tour group of Massachusetts cops during one of my wine tasting tours, talking forever with them, hearing about their Israeli-sponsored ‘security’ tour and then getting an offer to go in and ‘tell them the real story’ when I go home for Christmas.  You bet I will, Officer Flannigan.  You bet.  Including that I live in Ramallah.