I was lucky enough to go away this weekend to Haifa, a gorgeous town on the coast filled with a mixed Arab and Israeli population, good food, nice beaches and a chilled out vibe. It was great. I sunned (with SPF), I swam, I ate seafood and drank wine and played bananagrams, the world's greatest game, on the roof of a fancy hotel while the sun set gently behind us.
Not bad.
Now, as context for this post, you all need to know that spring is a special season here in the Holy Land. It marks the beginning of more robust protesting to mark Nakba Day (Palestinian "Catastrophe" Day that marks the founding of the State of Israel and thus the displacement, ethnic cleaning and general disaster that followed). I was here for this last year and wrote some good posts about it here. Thus the season is not new to me - the tear gas and sound bombs and exciting new stuff called skunk spray, which is even MORE awful than it sounds. This year finds the protests even more intense, as there's also the world's largest hunger strike being undertaken by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prison (don't worry if you haven't heard anything about it, the Western media has some how decided that 1,600+ prisoners hunger striking for 25 days plus (two for more than 75 days, a new record) isn't news. WHICH IS INSANE. If you do want to educate yourself about the hunger strike, more here and here.
So yesterday my friend and I were driving home from such a relaxing time up in Haifa. The traffic was insane. Some soldiers came up to our car (usually they don`t harass you going in, as who gives a shit who goes into the giant prison) and motioned for my friend to roll down the window. They started speaking to him in Hebrew, which he doesn`t know nor understand. We responded with confusion. They laughed and walked away. Just checking to make sure we weren`t Israeli, probably. My bud was in shorts and I am, well, me, so we didn`t exactly look Palestinian. But no matter, disconcerting but not unusual.
Then as we're waiting in line we hear something like a sound bomb on other side of the checkpoint. Fine, ok. It's that season. Fall Winter Sound bombs Summer. It takes us at least an hour to get through - and we're greeted with such a typical scene it's almost comical (in the tragic sense). Ground littered with stones. Young Palestinian dudes in a group near the checkpoint. Menacing soldiers across from them. Random pops and thuds. Horns. The smell of burning trash and tires. We hear fireworks and realize a car is driving down the middle of the road in front of us shooting firecrackers out the sunroof. Jesus. How dangerous. Then we hear live gunfire. Something semi-automatic. Awesome. I duck slightly in my seat.
You know, eventually we make it home, totally normal like.
The fatigue I feel here isn't from lack of sleep. It's from lack of normalcy. I am a rat in a cage who has yes, made a nice place of my cage, but it's still a cage. And no matter if that cage door is open to me when I want it to be, I still have to walk through it. And that is exhausting. I don't think I notice it actively, and I try to stay as disengaged as possible, but every check point and story and gun shot and whiff of tear gas is slowly scratching away bits of my sanity.
I get out and end up drinking homemade mango schnapps with my roommate and watching the sunset. I wonder if there's a general truth about Palestinians: one eye on the now, one eye on that notion of a country that seems as omnipresent yet ephemeral as this season.
Not bad.
Now, as context for this post, you all need to know that spring is a special season here in the Holy Land. It marks the beginning of more robust protesting to mark Nakba Day (Palestinian "Catastrophe" Day that marks the founding of the State of Israel and thus the displacement, ethnic cleaning and general disaster that followed). I was here for this last year and wrote some good posts about it here. Thus the season is not new to me - the tear gas and sound bombs and exciting new stuff called skunk spray, which is even MORE awful than it sounds. This year finds the protests even more intense, as there's also the world's largest hunger strike being undertaken by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prison (don't worry if you haven't heard anything about it, the Western media has some how decided that 1,600+ prisoners hunger striking for 25 days plus (two for more than 75 days, a new record) isn't news. WHICH IS INSANE. If you do want to educate yourself about the hunger strike, more here and here.
So yesterday my friend and I were driving home from such a relaxing time up in Haifa. The traffic was insane. Some soldiers came up to our car (usually they don`t harass you going in, as who gives a shit who goes into the giant prison) and motioned for my friend to roll down the window. They started speaking to him in Hebrew, which he doesn`t know nor understand. We responded with confusion. They laughed and walked away. Just checking to make sure we weren`t Israeli, probably. My bud was in shorts and I am, well, me, so we didn`t exactly look Palestinian. But no matter, disconcerting but not unusual.
Then as we're waiting in line we hear something like a sound bomb on other side of the checkpoint. Fine, ok. It's that season. Fall Winter Sound bombs Summer. It takes us at least an hour to get through - and we're greeted with such a typical scene it's almost comical (in the tragic sense). Ground littered with stones. Young Palestinian dudes in a group near the checkpoint. Menacing soldiers across from them. Random pops and thuds. Horns. The smell of burning trash and tires. We hear fireworks and realize a car is driving down the middle of the road in front of us shooting firecrackers out the sunroof. Jesus. How dangerous. Then we hear live gunfire. Something semi-automatic. Awesome. I duck slightly in my seat.
You know, eventually we make it home, totally normal like.
The fatigue I feel here isn't from lack of sleep. It's from lack of normalcy. I am a rat in a cage who has yes, made a nice place of my cage, but it's still a cage. And no matter if that cage door is open to me when I want it to be, I still have to walk through it. And that is exhausting. I don't think I notice it actively, and I try to stay as disengaged as possible, but every check point and story and gun shot and whiff of tear gas is slowly scratching away bits of my sanity.
I get out and end up drinking homemade mango schnapps with my roommate and watching the sunset. I wonder if there's a general truth about Palestinians: one eye on the now, one eye on that notion of a country that seems as omnipresent yet ephemeral as this season.
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