The choices of Mr. Sam Bahour

Ramallah is a city of surprises.  Barbed wire fences enclose massive refugee settlements on the outskirts while swanky cafes and restaurants boasting nouvelle Palestinian cuisine hug the hillsides and mountaintops.  Yasir Arafat’s tomb is a marble shrine with a reflecting pool behind it -- just above the street where Israeli forces besieged his headquarters for a month 12 years ago.  

How resilient human beings may be.

Sam  Bahour is a good example. The Youngstown, Ohio native now lives in Ramallah with his family. A hybrid American like so many of us, Sam was born to a Palestinian Muslim father and a Lebanese Maronite Christian mom.  Mother’s milk was concern for the homelands; he was weaned from American news coverage of the region to the reality of on-the-ground experiences beginning in 1987. As Americans, he and the interested personal and business colleagues who came with him were free to move from the Golan to Gaza. There were none of the checkpoints and walls that cripple crossover and contact today.  An IT professional he was particularly interested in opportunities for telecommunications as laid out by the Oslo accords.

“Read it,” he told our delegation from TRACK TWO: An Institute for Citizen Diplomacy and the Esalen Institute’s AbrahamicFamily Reunion project. “Olso stipulates (in an annex or appendix) a separate and independent telecommunications network” for the Palestinian territories,” Sam told us. That promise grabbed his attention and he set to work building one.  But he soon found out that the right to create a separate and independent network did not mean a right to the frequencies required for telecommunications to function. Frequencies were and are the purview of the Israeli government. Application process? A nightmare. Essential equipment? Waylaid at Israeli ports for two years.

Technology isn’t Sam’s only nightmare. When he came as a US citizen on an Israeli tourist visa he had to leave every three months, turn around, get a new visa and come back. This not only to maintain his economic development enterprise, but also to be with his family. Because he married a local Palestinian woman. 

After 15 years of three-month visas the Israeli government finally stamped “last permit” into his passport. Now it was time to get residency. Details of that pursuit I’ll save for a documentary film. Suffice it to say that finally he got his Palestinian ID – a guarantee as much as anything is guaranteed in this world to remain with his family. But the trade off is a new set of obstacles.

The Palestinian ID comes from the Israeli military. With it Sam can’t fly in or out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. His access to Jerusalem is restricted, meaning he can’t drive there any more. Like all residents of the occupied territories he had to leave his car at checkpoints and walk through a maze of gates, sometimes waiting hours on lines (see my April 4 blog), and take taxis on the other side. This makes regular business meetings difficult if not impossible.

He pulls his wallet out for show and tell: on any given day he needs to present up to five documents to go anywhere, conduct business, and validate his presence. That’s a tough row to hoe for an American accustomed to First Amendment rights.

“You can see the wall, the lines, the checkpoints, the soldiers,” he told us in an airy café atop a Ramallah hill.  During the evenings this place hosts poets and philosophers -- a wanna-be French Left Bank and New York’s Greenwich Village. “But you can’t see the restricted airwaves, aquifers, and administration.”

Ramallah is a town of visible dual and triple narratives; people finding, defining and fighting for identities; a town that’s hamstrung by past and present realities that yearns for a future it is just beginning to taste.

Disagreeing in Colorado October 6-7

Michael Lame and I got rave reviews for our presentation at Illinois College in Jacksonville. Karen Dean, head of the Habtoor Leadership Center, was especially inspired by our exhortations to the students to think as an active, time-intensive exercise.

On our way to the campus we stopped to see Abraham Lincoln's tomb in Springfield. I was deeply moved to be there. Why? We know Mr. Lincoln is not there. But the symbolism is. His life, courage, trials all there on the walls. I didn't know one of his sons died while he was in the White House. I didn't know his favorite literary references were the King James Bible and Shakespeare. He should become mine. Lincoln reminded me of the profound privilege it is to be an American. A privilege we must protect from intolerance and warmongers.

This Wednesday we're at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Then on Thursday I address the Air Force Academy and Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood!

LETTER XXXII: PILGRIMAGES, PART ONE

June 29, 2010

I suppose it’s all of life, really, but there are certain pilgrimages we single out. The hajj -- the journey to and from and back to Mecca – is one of them and one way or another you’ve been on that route with me before.

So here are two other small pilgrimages from this year’s great one: PART ONE, Jerusalem; PART TWO, the Baptism Site on the Jordan River.

All pilgrimages include the trial of travel. Adventures along the path are inseparable from the achievement of destination. For Katie and me the physical journey to Jerusalem in March was arduous and revelatory. Everything you’ve heard about checkpoints, blockades, the wall, and humiliating treatment of indigenous and visiting Palestinian population is true. Sometimes those humiliations are graciously extended to anyone perceived to be “one of them,” too.

Crossing the King Hussein Bridge (aka “Allenby”) is a short bus ride across one of the world’s widest partitions. A no-man’s-land of dry, hacked off hummocks and razor-edged barbed wire keeps us officially apart.

It’s a great contrast to the welcoming vista across the Dead Sea, from where on a rare clear day we can see the Jerusalem skyline.

The twenty-something Israeli girl at the immigration counter grilled us for half an hour about where we were going and where we were staying. Where is your husband? Where was he born? Do you fly out to the USA from here? (Is this what they call an interrogation?) After repeating my answer as clearly as I could, surrendering our passports, showing her the phone numbers of my local contacts, I finally asked if she’d prefer we stay somewhere else? Did she prefer we return to Jordan? I bit my tongue on “Do you want me to marry someone else?”

It’s interesting how the repeated questioning works on the brain. I actually began to second-guess myself: what are my real intentions? I begin to sense the torture of torture although I've come no where near, alhamdulillah!

A long line was building behind us, including the kind Palestinian businessman who offered us the spot ahead of him on the cue. See where his random act of kindness got him?

Our intention was to go to Jerusalem, transfer to Bethlehem, stay the night at Mary’s House, and then walk 30 kilometers or so along the Masar Ibrahim el Khalil in Palestine with Hijazi Eid. We’d spend the night in a village along the way, complete our walk and return to the convent. The next day we would spend in Jerusalem and return late to Amman.

We intended to see, sniff, taste, and inquire just a bit about life “over there.”

Details of the trip fill pages in my nightly journal. From Bethlehem we drove the “Palestinian by-pass” road that steers the indigenous population away from Jerusalem, to a pathway up a hill just south of Awarta to begin our walk. We clambered over the remains of Bronze Age settlement s (3200-1200 BC) and in the distance saw the burgeoning Zionist settlements of today.

I know everyone has lots to read and I’m grateful you’re with me as much as you are, so I’ll just share a few lines from my notes on our walk through Duma to Wadi Kelt:

March 5

Forget breaking bread together. Women make beds together on their knees! Habib’s mother brought in the mattresses and blankets. The same thin mattresses that we’ve seen everywhere from Wadi Rum to Rasun village in Ajloun, Jordan. We’re in Duma, which means, “rest.” Habib, our host, has two home compounds. This one is for his mother and wife #2, with four daughters. Wife #1 is apparently in another town with three daughters. A wonderful grain and chicken soup for dinner soothed some of the ache of 12-14 miles up and over the hills. No wonder people fight over this landscape.

It looks like there’s enough room for everyone here: an Arab village, an Israeli settlement. Neither intrudes too much, as long as the buildings are flat and low. Even the water problem can be addressed, says Hijazi. “But they don’t want us here.”

Hijazi says the Israelis may build the wall through here, splitting the magnificent view and the people from one another, also the animals from their migratory routes. We saw gazelle!

March 6

Habib traded in Katie’s totally worn-out sneakers for a pair of his daughter’s Velcro-close solid sole sneakers. By the end of the walk the backs of her heels were “compromised” and the soles of the shoes, too. But nothing stopped us until lunch. Saw Canaanite tombs, caves and caverns.

March 7

At the checkpoint en route Jerusalem. We took the public bus with the occupied population. I would say “locals” but Israelis are “locals” too. Katie and I both had scarves over our hair because we planned to go to the Dome of the Rock to pray. As cars with Israeli licenses whizzed by, however, our bus was stopped and all of us stepped off. Katie and I were last on line to be inspected. The soldiers went through everyone’s everything. Except when it came to us. Katie “never felt so happy or so guilty to have an American passport.” I kept a stony face when I took off my sunglasses to look the IDF teenager in the eyes. As I stepped back onto the bus, the IDF guy broke into the song that was blasting on the radio: “That’s the power of love!”

The Dome of the Rock is more beautiful than I remembered. After walking around and taking some photos we went in. We prayed four rakats in gratitude then looked around and saw the place was filling up. Noon prayer was coming. Both of us wanted to stay. We prayed, together, with hundreds of others and a baby boy who would rather have been nursing. Katie, who had practiced saying The Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur’an,” read it in Arabic from one of the many available inside.

Then we wandered the narrow, kitch-filled streets. At some juncture the “Palestine” and “Dome of the Rock” key chains and post cards transformed into menorahs and Israeli flags, with Mother Mary and Via Dolorosa souvenirs coming in second. Looking around we were the only ones with scarves; too much leg and cleavage for my taste. But behind the counters Arabic was spoken.

***

All pilgrimages include the trial of travel. Adventures along the path are inseparable from the achievement of destination. The destination on this journey to Jerusalem turned out to be our return home to Amman: wiser, somber, enlightened, and grateful.

Remembering Debussy on Israel's Anniversary

May 15, 2010

In the month of May many people celebrate Israeli Independence and grieve al Nakba; they lament ongoing violence and fear the next strike. In this sense, times have not changed much since the sad spring of 1974 when the 26^th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel was bloodied by attacks on the towns of Kiryat Shmona and Maalot in the north. Forty Israelis, including many teenagers, were killed by Palestinians; 27 villagers and refugees were killed and 130 wounded in south Lebanon in retaliation.

I was 17 at the time and had finally been made principal flute in the New York City All City High School Orchestra. As daughter of the city’s best-known Arab, Dr. Mohammad T. Mehdi, champion of Palestinians and challenger to American policy in the region, I struggled through a lot of prejudice to prove my talent. A “blind audition” secured me the chance to solo in Claude Debussy’s “L'après-midi d'un faune.” Every flute player longs for that opportunity. My chance was the night of May 16, 1974.

The attacks happened the day before the concert. Israeli teenagers, like us, were taken hostage by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They were killed as Israeli troops came to rescue them.

My teachers, fellow musicians and the conductor already knew my father’s politics. Everyone recognized his voice from myriad television and radio news programs. Back in the day when “Arab” was the prefix for “terrorist,” Reporters knew that Dr. Mehdi would provide context to acts of violence. He reminded audiences that Palestinians, an exiled people, still longed for their homeland and that some would resort to fighting to get it back. He did not condone their violent methods: hostage taking and airline hijackings. But, he urged the American people that once the Palestinian demand for a homeland was righted the Israelis will be able to live in peace.

Today most people acknowledge that until there is resolution for the Palestinians, the conflict will continue. My father’s message in the 1960s and 1970s was way ahead of its time. Decades ago he was called anti-Semitic and extreme but by the time he died so suddenly in my arms on a cold February day in 1998, he was heralded by many as a moderate that also appreciated the quandary faced by Israeli Jews.

“The Afternoon of a Faun” was programmed just after intermission. Nearly 100 high school musicians sat behind the drawn curtain at Avery Fisher Hall and listened as a representative of the Board of Education came on stage.

“Everyone knows about the tragedy that happened yesterday in Israel. I ask all of you to please stand for a moment of silence, out of respect for the 21 children who lost their lives at the hands of Arab terrorists.”

The room rumbled into a thousand people starting to stand as a shout rang out, filling the hall.

“Golda did it!”

My father meant that he believed the children wouldn’t have died if Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had not ordered troops onto the scene opening fire. He meant she should have pursued negotiations with the hostage—takers. His spontaneous statement didn’t encompass all the nuances he meant. I, for one, didn’t know exactly what he’d said; I only knew it was his voice and so did everyone on the stage around me.

Instantly my heart boomed so loudly I thought it would echo in the timpani. I grabbed for air, scratched for breath. I took my flute and made my way off the stage, desperate for composure. Gabriel Kosakoff, our conductor and a man who abhorred my father’s politics, came to my side.

“Are you OK?”

“Give me a minute.”

Out front people were confused. My choir director was crimson. Mom was stoic and my sisters were mortified.

The audience settled down. I returned to my chair. Maestro resumed his podium and looked at me: when you’re ready.

I mustered everything I had. I played for my friends who believed in me, for my brave family, for the father I adored and hated right then, for everyone who wanted me to fail, and for those poor, innocent kids who were killed and the people killed in retribution.

Thirty-six years later, as Israel celebrates is 62nd birthday, and Palestinians mark the “Nakba” or catastrophe, 1948 continues to count its victims in lives and livelihoods every day. Until we see a just solution, unless voices like my fathers’ and my own unite together with Jewish voices demanding peace, more Ma’alots and Gazas are in store. I play my flute and take up my pen, hoping the call of the faun may one day trump its hunters.

This article also appears on the Common Ground News Service and the Arab Writers Syndicate.