All Roads Lead to Jerusalem

by Jenny Lynn Jones

  “Your car…” said the soldier, pointing to the license plate at the front of my Polo, “It is an Israeli car. It can’t go inside Nablus…Momnooh, momnooh,” he laughed, using the one Arabic word that seemed to be a part of virtually every checkpoint soldier’s linguistic repertoire: forbidden. This was as ridiculous as one could imagine. However, there were several places in the occupied territories that had this frustrating and incomprehensible rule. I just wished I’d thought to ask someone if Huwwara was one of them.

  On one level, I could understand the supposed logic behind disallowing Palestinian cars inside Jerusalem and Israeli towns—it keeps out “the Arabs” (whether that meant it kept out the terrorists, the non-Jews, or the riffraff depended upon personal interpretation). But this odd reversal of the rule—supposedly to protect innocent Israeli citizens from driving into places like Nablus and getting into trouble (or much worse) was complete and clear bullshit. Jewish Israelis weren’t exactly begging to drive their cars into downtown Nablus. Instead it was Israeli-Palestinians who were effectively barred from entering non-Israeli towns freely.

  Shit, I thought. I’ve come all this way for nothing. There was no doubt about it. I would have to be brave, leave my car behind, and use my Arabic to its fullest capacity to brave Huwarra’s public transportation. Yes, and I would do it, I vowed. But, as I was to find out, that was no small thing.

  I parked my car in a small, fenced area that I hoped would be safe and I crossed through a walking security checkpoint. I passed through a long, chain-link chute and emerged into a huge, noisy melee of crowds, honking taxis, and men shouting destinations in the city that I had no chance of comprehending. Always finding it better to ask women for directions, I hurried over to a small group of college-aged girls and asked them the way to the city center taxis. There, I found one and settled into it with another woman, happily waiting for enough other passengers for us to depart.

  Now, I normally have a better sense of social responsibility, such as waiting for my turn, etc. But there was something about this country on both sides of the Green Line that made embracing its residents’ seemingly general disregard for lines and common courtesy uncommonly easy. So, when my co-passenger brought up the bright-idea to jump taxi and make for the next one with only two passengers till take-off, I happily made for the new car, full of passengers, idling, and ready to go. Ah. That’s better. I smiled at my seatmate, and she winked at me in response.

  Funny how it only takes a second for smugness to evaporate, though. As soon as the first, now jilted driver spotted us—his lost prey—he sprinted over to the taxi, ripped open the driver’s door mid-acceleration, and hauled the man out like a light sack of potatoes. The car shuddered to a sudden stall.

  Thankfully, and as usual in the West Bank, other men intervened before an all-out brawl could ensue, pulling the two drivers apart and forcing a quick reconciliation. With additional problems averted, the driver returned to the car, pulled out a cigarette, and screeched out of the lot, cursing the other driver loudly out the window.

  Although my Arabic had been steadily improving, I still wasn’t confident that I could navigate a new city with my linguistic handicap, no map, no car of my own, and—as I was just realizing in the car as we neared the city center—no cell phone. Uh oh. Even my phone’s SIM card was “Israeli” and wouldn’t function in Nablus. Still, there had to be a way to find Father Ibrahim, who, according to Omar, would be happy to point me the way to the church at Jacob’s well and introduce me its resident priest.

  After I got out in the city center, I calculated my next move. I didn’t have a lot of time, and I certainly didn’t want to go back through Huwwara at night, so I decided to find the fastest way to locate Father Ibrahim. Hunt down another Christian—and to do that, all I’d have to do was look for a sign…

  People in the Holy Land love symbols of who they are. Golden Stars of David, Western and Eastern Crosses, and Quranic verses adorned the necks of the faithful (and the not-so-faithful) like nobody’s business, to say nothing of the clothing styles that clearly identified the religion, and even politics, of the wearer.

  Even the buildings often bore the mark of the owner or developer’s religion or politics somewhere—from door plaques to traditional and funky mezuzahs and flags (Israeli towns make post 9/11 America look positively flagless in comparison). In Nablus, as well as in other Palestinian towns, this usually meant that finding a Christian Palestinian was about as easy as looking for the figure of St. George, the patron saint of Palestine, always on his steed, slaying a dragon in carved-stone relief upon the lintels of their homes and businesses.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to walk far from where I’d gotten out of the taxi until I spotted George and his dragon adorning a small shop just off the main road, and I hurried over to what seemed to be a commercial tailor’s shop. I walked in and approached a middle-aged woman sitting behind a large desk.

  “Marhaba,” I said, switching from my usual Salaam to the religiously neutral Arabic greeting. “I’m not from here…could you tell me where I could find the church of Father Ibrahim?”

  I must have seemed more than odd. A foreign Muslim woman asking to see a priest in butchered Arabic? It’s not like you encounter that every day in Nablus!

  “Ahlain, Welcome,” she answered, rising from behind the desk and walking around to get a better look at me.

  She was middle-aged, short-haired and wearing slacks and a scoop-necked sweater, and she carried herself in the classy, confident, almost Sophia Loren-ish way I’d learned to associate with older Christian-Arab women. It was a blend of intelligence, pride, and attractive self-assurance (usually coupled with an excellent fashion sense), which came easier to these women. It distinguished them from their younger sisters, who seemed to prefer a more, shall we say, Fredericks of Hollywood style of dress.

  “Where are you from?” she asked, introducing the usual litany of questions that my foreign demeanor always evoked—Why was I there? Where I did I live? Why did I want to see Father Ibrahim? (whom, thankfully, she knew.) Perhaps most important, was I married or not?

  I did my best to answer her as quickly as I could, and though she still looked confused by me, and a little dubious about just what I was after, she carefully explained the directions to Father Ibrahim’s church, which I wrote down quickly in transliterated Arabic, and headed out again on my way.

  By the time I tracked down Father Ibrahim using the woman’s directions, it was becoming late afternoon, and I was desperate to see the “miracle” body before I had to cut the day short and call the trip a bust. I still had three checkpoints to cross to get back home, and miles of windy, hilly roads through settler country.

  Happily, Father Ibrahim understood my predicament, and after serving me the obligatory tea (and asking me the same questions as the dry cleaning lady), wasted no time in directing me to the site, which was in a much larger, and older walled church compound called Bir Yacoub, Arabic for Jacob’s Well—thankfully, just down the road from where he lived.

  Bir Yacoub is the site which Biblical Jacob purchased and camped on more than two thousand years ago. Today, a large, beautiful church is built over the deep well, which is situated in a cave-like crypt under the sanctuary floor. The well itself was definitely unusual, and when I peered down into its dark depths, I could clearly see the surface of the water, seemingly not more than twenty feet down. But when I threw in a coin, it took a full five seconds for it to hit the surface. It was then that the guard who took me down to the well told me “off the record” that the place is haunted. In fact, according to him, the water recently bubbled up to the rim clean and pure, at exactly the same moment the rest of the area’s water supply became mysteriously tainted. Poisoned, he said…

  Pretty cool story, I thought.

  But, as I explained to him, I’d come to see the body.

  A few steps up and out of the crypt and over to the right of the nave lay Archimandrite Philoumenos, the Greek Orthodox caretaker o
f the church, meters from where they found his body by the well, and only a week after a settler group had come to claim the site as a Jewish holy place. Although the killers were never convicted, the belief remained that it was a political/religious murder.

  That was what got him there, encased in a glass box and on display for eternity. I did wonder if I was missing something, though, because the body was clearly decomposed—broken skull and all. Maybe I was lacking a certain faithfulness in my eyes, but all I saw was just another victim. It wasn’t miraculous, or even inspiring. It was just a sad reminder of all those who have been murdered in what seemed to be an ageless—and hopeless—fight over holy land.

  I hurried out, but not before getting a recommendation for the best Kanafe joint in town, where I bought ten kilos to go and headed back to Huwwara.

  Thankfully, I make it back to the village without incident. I was exhausted, but proud of myself for going. Whether the well was miraculous or not, I didn’t know (although I’d like to think so), and the dead priest on display was damn depressing. But one thing was for sure—something seemed to shift to the positive after the trip, as if I’d gained some sort of pilgramatic mojo.

  Whatever the reason, my family crowded around in the living room when I got home—even my father-in-law! They were very curious about the details of my visit, listening intently to my story, and happily devouring the Kanafe. Clearly, they were adjusting to my trips out of Safa. In fact, the next time I returned to the village at night, following another evening visit to the Temple Mount with the kids, their only response was a demand from my sisters-in-law to take them along the next time.

  To my surprise, no one resisted the idea, and I realized that the family’s definition of what was acceptable for women might just be changing—a miracle to rival anything else I’d seen yet on my visits out and about in the Holy Land!

  CHAPTER 21

  This Land is Your Land…This Land is My Land…

  I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

  -ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  When I’d left America, most people I told had been tactful enough to support my decision to take my kids to the region. It was only when I mentioned which side of the Green Line I was moving them to that some of them started to waffle. I was already feeling guilt, fear and insecurity about my choice and its impact on my mothering skills, so I didn’t really welcome any negative input. So I quit calling it Palestine, or Israel, for that matter. I even quit mentioning Jerusalem. When new people found out about my plan, or I had to explain it for some reason, I found it much more comforting for all involved to call it something more, well, cozy: The Holy Land. It just sounded wholesome and wonderful, right? Who wouldn’t want to take her children there?

  The fact is, Palestine, Israel, the Holy Land, whatever you wanted or believed it should be called was more than a name. It had been the center of religious devotion since the beginning of recorded time. For me, my love of the Holy Land might have been a mental quirk akin to “Jerusalem Syndrome.”

  The kids were something different, though. They were half-Palestinian, and I felt they had a right to get to know the place as a literal home, a birthright, and I knew that waiting for a time when the conflict might someday end wasn’t a reasonable option. In my heart of hearts I didn’t really expect that day to ever come.

  I came to this conclusion after spending time here. I knew that the reason why peace wouldn’t likely arrive here was because of the continuing military occupation (now going on for more than forty-five years)—an occupation that made life so miserable for everyday Palestinians that they literally felt they had nothing to lose, including something so basic as hope. And it wasn’t as simple as taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or even deciding if suicide bombings tipped the scales of suffering to the Israeli side. It was, as most Palestinians, and a growing number of Israelis were now saying—that the rusted, punitive military occupation made melding the two societies virtually impossible, for it was a machine that constantly turned out one constant and unwavering lesson to all it touched: the “other” was sub-human. This was the ugly, hate-filled reality that permeated the place: you can’t make peace with animals.

  I’d learned this fact so quickly because my pain threshold was pretty low compared to that of the Palestinians I lived among. Almost every Palestinian I knew in the village had seen a son beaten and dragged away by the military, had had their homes ransacked, been tear-gassed, and had been prevented from taking their children to the hospital when ill. They were even denied the right to travel (now, even to the Dead Sea)! But as awful as those things were, the real transformative power of the occupation was in the smaller, daily humiliations. Especially the checkpoints.

  The main Jerusalem tunnel checkpoint is a perfect example—a large, modern, multi-lane structure that best resembled a wide toll crossing. It was all the more disarming for someone like me because of its modernity, as if it could have been transplanted on the New Jersey Turnpike. Although many Israelis would say that this checkpoint was necessary for “security,” Palestinians call it a “machine of tyranny.” The way it was set up was inconsistent; there didn’t seem to be any rules. As a result, each individual soldier had the power to decide your fate that day based on his or her whim. If you needed to buy a dress for an upcoming wedding at a store on the other side of the checkpoint, say in East Jerusalem, it was essentially up to Zvi (who was probably pissed off at having to be in such a God-forsaken place to start with), whether you got that dress or not. So, too, if your child needed treatment at a clinic, or a group of school-children was headed out on a field trip, or you had an important meeting, it was up to the individual guard whether or not your plans would be approved.

  I saw this as a set-up ripe for abuse, and the grossest examples came to light: A Palestinian man was forced to play his violin in front of the soldiers in exchange for passage, a child died of an asthma attack because his parents couldn’t get him through the checkpoint in time, or a woman was forced to give birth at the side of the road (according to the United Nations, more than sixty Palestinian women have given birth at Israeli checkpoints since 2000, resulting in thirty-six deaths).

  And that’s not even considering the constant humiliation of having to plead your case. It was bad enough if you were alone—but believe me, there was little in this world that could create a searing hatred faster than having a teenager treat you like scum in front of your children. All of these things hurt both the Palestinians and the Israelis, for this phenomenon had begun the death knell of Israel’s golden self-image. The much-heralded “Light Among Nations” was often found behaving like a common thug.

  Still, some Israelis understood the tremendous damage that the checkpoints (and the occupation, itself) was doing to the long tradition of Jewish ethics, and to the eventual prospect of peace. Organizations like Peace Now, B’Tselem and Machsom Watch (made up almost entirely of older women) volunteered to stand and watch at the most infamous sites. As the organization’s spokeswoman, Adi Dagan, explained their position in a 2004 Mother Jones article, “Grandmothers on Guard,” “If they would just check people to make sure they’re not carrying bombs, we wouldn’t object…The problem is that the barriers serve as limitations on movement, and have a drastic effect on lives of Palestinians. Palestinians don’t get to university, to work, to hospitals—the checkpoints totally disrupt civil life.”

  Take, for example, one of our earliest attempts to go to the Old City as a family. Whereas I could almost always pass the checkpoint, it was exponentially harder when the kids were along. It was not because they were security risks (at twelve, nine, and two), but because, as to the checkpoint soldier on guard often told me, “They are Arabs.”

  Still, it depended on the individual soldier, and I estimated that we could successfully pass the Tunnel Checkpoint about seventy percent of the time. In a few years, though, the percentage could dwindle to zero
because according to the nebulous laws of the occupation, by the time my kids had reached high-school age and above, they would no longer be allowed to cross the major Israeli checkpoints. That meant no access to Jerusalem, or any place inside Israel, no small thing when you considered that Israel controlled all of the airports, borders, and even the Seas: Mediterranean, Red and Dead.

  Sure, the Holy Land was still my oyster, and I could go where I pleased because I was classified as a tourist, just as any of the estimated 20,000 new Jewish immigrants from places as far-flung as Russia, France, and South Africa could go where they wished. This would not be so for my kids. If Amani, Ibrahim, and Karim, whose father’s family traced its origins to the area back at least ten generations, were going to visit all of the Holy Land, time was definitely a’wastin’.

  That’s why when I visited the Temple Mount with the kids, I was determined to make as many good memories in the place as they could. The only catch was they were stuck with me, their linguistically challenged American mom, to show them the fairly complicated ropes. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but it was the best I could offer, especially because nobody in my husband’s family had the permit necessary to visit the city at all.

  You couldn’t just walk into the Temple Mount if you were a foreigner, and there was a large number of guards and police to keep errant tourists away from its hallowed grounds (after all, who knew what crazy antics we were capable of)? Even though I was a Muslim, and as such was officially allowed to visit freely, I had an unfortunate habit of losing my cool at the last moment. Somehow, I’d make sudden, shifty eye contact with whatever guard happened to be in my way.

  It was always a ridiculous deer-in-the-headlights move—almost an involuntary tick; Are you sure you wanna let me in? My insecurity made me conspicuous, and I was always stopped and required to “prove” my religion by reciting verses of the Quran in Arabic to the Israeli policeman or woman (who were essentially the “outside” gatekeepers). Then, once I was inside the Mount, I’d have to repeat this with one of the Islamic guards on site.