A little more than two weeks ago. Jericho. The cool, below-sea-level city at the east side of the West Bank -- the Muslim majority town with a large refugee population -- where Palestinians go on vacation because it's quiet there and it can be challenging/impossible to get the permits or money to go anywhere else.
Ancient city of barely post-glacial-period hunter-gatherers, early Neolithic agricultural settlements, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Arab Caliphates, Crusaders, Mamluks, Turks, modern Israelis, Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, Jesus, and one thus-far uncorroborated but still provocative anecdote about trumpets and falling walls.
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Me and the other volunteers had just come back from a cable car trip up to the mountain where tradition says Jesus was tempted by the devil (but which is now topped by an Israeli listening post). Thus we'd just come back down the mountain, and were working our way toward the exit and the parking lot, planning to move on next to Hisham's Palace, which was some sort of mansion for Islamic higher-ups in the Umayyad Dynasty in the 700s A.D.
Unfortunately, those dastardly cable car operators had made the clever strategic decision of rerouting the only way out of the building through the gift shop.
Forewarned and forearmed, we readied ourselves to dash for the exit. No overpriced souvenirs or gaudy but reasonably high-quality jewelry for us -- or so we whispered to ourselves, urging our willpowers to stay strong.
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The adrenaline wasn't really actively pumping through me yet, but my nervous system had been formally notified and was already circulating some pretty fierce intra-office memos. It was on alert, you might say -- just for the thrill of dashing through a tourist trap.
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All of a sudden, I am on the defensive. I stop mid-dash to field a question. My interest in people forwards some angry notes and overpowers the previous order to "rush through the inconveniently-placed souvenir shop like a bull desperately trying to avoid buying any china."
"Me? I'm from America." (I can introduce myself in Arabic like a rock star.) I stay on alert to resume the dash the second he tries to sell me something.
"But where in America?" (A common enough question, but not common enough for me to change my stock answer to the "Where are you from?" question.) I can't tell if the man works there or if he just happens to be chilling in the watches section to stay out of the hot Jericho sun.
"The state of North Carolina," I say. "In the South," I add, trying to be helpful.
"I know North Carolina," he says. *Awkward pause* "That's where it happened."
Someone in my nervous system was already weirdly panicky about souvenirs. Now they pull the office fire alarm. Adrenaline sprints out of the bathroom and jumps in the pilot seat.
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Perhaps he even clarified. He might've added, "Yeah, North Carolina -- that's where the shooting happened." Or, "That's where the Muslims were killed." It wasn't accusatory at all -- he was just stating a fact. He might as well have said, "I know that state! That's where three innocent American Muslim students were shot to death in their apartment two and a half days ago." (But at this point he was responding to my broken Arabic with broken English, so I doubt he was quite that articulate.)
And even if he did clarify, which he might have -- it wasn't necessary. I knew from the way he said it, the unreadable but obviously still slightly readable look on his face, and the abrupt pressure change (in the normally quite breezy city of Jericho), that there was no other "it" he might've been talking about.
I really can't tell you exactly what he said -- the whole thing is a whirlwind-y adrenaline-filled blur. I started talking so fast I'm not sure exactly what I said either.
All I can do is tell you what I tried to say.
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I started in Arabic, but I switched to English somewhere along the line when a woman in hijab who'd joined the conversation told me in a soothing "don't strain yourself" kind of way to "just speak English."
I tried to tell them that I'd lived there -- not (just) in North Carolina but in Chapel Hill -- for the past four years, and that the community there meant a lot to me.
I tried to tell them that this is not what that community is about.
I tried to tell them that I know many people there, and all of them are in shock. Are angry. Are shocked that this happened and angry that it was allowed to happen. Shocked that people can do this and angry that things have come to this.
I tried to tell them about the rallies, the vigils, the celebrations of the lives that were taken, the cries of solidarity, the tears of sympathy and the many of all different backgrounds and faiths trying to stand up against violence and hate and xenophobia, refusing to let one act of random aggression and mad hate tear down anything built firmly out of human love and kindness.
Somewhere along the line I think I told them I was sorry. Sorry for what -- I have no clue. Sorry for the random acts of one unstable individual, sorry for being a part of the community, the culture, the country that -- one way or another -- allowed it to happen, sorry for America and its history of what many would call hypocritical meddling and brutal intervention in this region and in the Muslim world? I have no idea.
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Equally cryptic as my apology, the lady in hijab responded to my inarticulate word-spilling with a simple but sincere, "Thank you." Whatever she meant, it's the only thing that satisfies me enough to stop me from filling this fuzzy, mostly blank memory with doubt and regret. Perhaps I said what I was supposed to say.
It all happened so fast in such an adrenaline-filled, shockingly short, rushed period of time, that I have no clue what the man said, or how the conversation ended except that I'm sure I rattled through my list of conventional Arabic goodbyes. "God give you safety; God keep you; go in health; Peace; God be with you." Somewhat redundant or repetitive, but somehow satisfying.
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Two lessons. Or, thoughts, or something.
1) Perhaps this is why I'm here. To give America a human face and to speak for my communities stateside in saying "That is not us. That is not who we are."
And at the same time to add my voice to the many voices already trying to do the same thing for the dehumanized Arab/Muslim/Arab-Muslim communities.
2) People here are listening. They're often less ignorant of what goes on in America than we are of what goes on over there. But at the same time, they only hear the bad -- just like us! If all we hear is that "they" "are violent and they hate us" -- well oddly enough the primary, overwhelming message they get about "us" is that "we're violent and we hate them."
100% honestly there is a not insignificant amount of people here who are super afraid to send their kids to schools or anywhere in America. Not even because of anti-Arab sentiment or Islamophobia, but because of shootings and crime.
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And if anyone's caught up in the shooting and the nitty-gritty he-said she-said speculation and motivation and whatnot about why those murders actually happened: Even if the Chapel Hill shooting was 15% "parking dispute," 15% insufficient gun regulations, 40% untreated mental illness and stigma/general struggle with life and coping and being unable or unwilling to get help, 20% generalized hatred of all religion and only 10% motivated by specific anti-Islamic or anti-Arab hate -- it's kind of irrelevant.
That's like an Arab Muslim saying, "I shouldn't have to apologize for my religion -- it's only being used as a recruiting tool and justification when the real causes of terrorism are political and socioeconomic!"
It might be 100% true, and it might be quite reasonable -- but at a certain point it doesn't matter anymore.
http://bit.ly/1vNSmMh
(Of course it should matter, and I believe it does matter, but yeah. At a certain point it's irrelevant.)
(I'm putting some of "the nuance" down here at the bottom so it hopefully doesn't dilute or weigh down the punchiness.)
(Hopefully that ending came off more pragmatic and even-handed than just straight-up depressing or callous.)
(Sorry if that got unpleasantly political. Let me know if you want to argue.)
(Or just talk. You know. As you like.)
(miked3592@gmail.com)
(Originally posted March 1st, 2015)
