Stories from Behind the Wall-Introduction

My mother suggested writing a book. I have been wanting to write a book for a while now but I wasn’t sure what the book should be about.  Should I write about my first trip around the world?  Should I write a love story about my travel experiences?  Should I write something that I would also need to research and include facts or just write from the heart?  I had fear and everything was stopping me.  Am I good writer?  Would people like my work?  Do I write well?  Is it interesting?  Would it sell?  I don’t want to waste my time writing another travel book.  I mean yea, when I think about it, it is pretty awesome that I got to travel alone as a female, around the world and have all these cool experiences and meet all these interesting people but there are so many people that have done that.  What would be different about my travels compared to the last person who visited Angkor Wat or did some yoga in India, or drank chai with the Bedouins in Petra.  I couldn’t think of an edge.  Yea, it was powerful and probably inspiring to many people but it’s been done.  The story has been told.

When I traveled last time, I wrote emails home about my experiences.  I had an audience of about 50 people.  I told them stories about my travels, about people I met and experiences I was having.  I explained about the culture from what I was seeing, hearing, feeling and talking about while in the place I was visiting.  Part of it for me was keeping in touch with people and to hopefully inspire people to follow their hearts and their dreams but it was also to let people know what is going on in the world.  To educate people. There is so much going on in the world and I feel like a lot of people have no clue.  I didn’t, before I traveled.  You just can’t know until you see it.  Until you are there with the people, in the country, eating the food, having the cultural experience, attending the wedding, giving the beggars money, seeing the poverty and the glory.  I always thought I knew what was going on and I felt educated.  I read many books and saw many films and had lots of international friends.  But there is no education or thrill like getting on an airplane and flying across the world to pop out in a totally different place with people who do not think, act, or look like I do.  It is so unbelievably exhilarating. 

During my trip, my dad taught sixth, seventh, and eighth graders and he would print the emails and make his classes read them.  They would have discussions about the countries I was visiting.  When I came home, I went to his class and showed them pictures and spoke about India, Israel/Palestine, Tanzania, Jordan, Vietnam, etc.  They asked me questions and I told them through my experience what I knew.  It was a wonderful learning experience for them and an awesome sharing experience for me. 

This time, before I came to Palestine, I traveled around Laos, Thailand, and China.  As I traveled, I wrote emails about what I was experiencing.  I knew my Dad would print the emails again and I hoped I was having an impact on his students.  I also hoped I was teaching something to my friends and family who read my stories and experiences.  When I arrived in Israel/Palestine, I started to get nervous about what I was going to write.  The experience is different living somewhere.  The adventure of globe-trotting was finished for now and I was going to be volunteering in a peace organization for three months or longer.  I was scared to write about the political situation.  I was scared to write about what I was seeing, what I was experiencing, what I was feeling.  I didn’t want to offend anyone.  I didn’t want to have anyone mad at me.  I didn’t want to push anyone’s buttons.  I especially didn’t want Israeli security to find out that I was volunteering here and deport me.  But every day I was experiencing so much and I couldn’t hold back.  I was being confronted with segregation, apartheid, military occupation, racism, fear, hatred, resentment, ignorance, and religion.  I was being confronted with an unbelievably unjust situation.  I was being confronted with the fact that the story that the world has been told is not true.  What is happening here hasn’t been explained or if it has, people still don’t know the real truth or don’t get it or don’t see it because the main stream story has become common knowledge, common history, common fact.  But the truth is not always what you hear.

 I have always been taught to question what I am told.  I have always been taught not to believe everything I hear.  Question, question, question. That is how I ended up in the West Bank in the first place.  Two years ago, I came to Israel and I wanted to see how the Palestinians were living and I wanted to see how the Israelis were living.  Every time I asked about the West Bank, people would say, “oh don’t go there, it’s dangerous.   There is nothing there, why would you want to go there?”  Over and over, I heard things like this.  Fear, racism and negativity about the West Bank.  And honestly, the more I heard these comments the more it made me curious about going there.  Myself.  To find out what they were talking about.  I had no clue what I would find.  And I was terrified.  But what I found changed my life.

You know how your life feels like it has a trajectory?  Like it is going somewhere, leading somewhere?  You learn things and gain experiences and it seems it all amounts to something and leads to the next thing.  I felt like my life was on this path.  I was going in a direction.  I was bobbing around the world. Having adventures in India, laying on the beach in Thailand, falling in love in Sri Lanka (with an Israeli soldier by the way), going on bike rides in Bali.  I worked in Australia and shopped in the malls in Dubai. My plan was to go home and save money again and keep globetrotting.  Maybe find a husband along the way who would want to live nomadically with me.  Who knows but I was going to do it!  I was having the adventure of a lifetime and then I crossed into the West Bank and everything changed.  The moment I left Israel during my first trip and flew from Tel Aviv, I knew I would be back.  I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but there was something telling me I would be back.

Now it is 18 months later and I am back-Behind the Wall in the Palestinian Territories.  Like I said earlier, I spent a couple months in Asia, doing the backpacking thing.  I wanted to have a vacation before I came here because I knew it was going to get real, real quick.  The vacation would end and so it has.  And the question of how and what to write in my emails was lingering.  As the days were going by, the experiences were racking up.  I was hearing so many stories, meeting so many people, witnessing so much pain, so much destruction, so much hopelessness. So I decided to just be real and keep emailing my friends and family about the experiences I was having.  The stories needed to be told.  I had to channel the energy.  Each time someone would tell me something traumatic they experienced, I didn’t know where to hold it.  I didn’t know what to do with everything I was hearing.  Sometimes I would get sick of people telling me stuff. Do we really need to talk about the occupation all the time? Sometimes I would go home and just lay there, my mind racing.  What could I do?  I am just one person and this is the biggest conflict on earth.  The unsolvable problem.  The conflict started in 1948…67 years ago.  (As I write this, it’s Nakba Day…so exactly 67 years ago.)  I don’t speak Arabic or Hebrew.  I don’t understand the culture.  I don’t fully understand the conflict, if I am honest.  I don’t understand the trauma, or the fear, or the racism or the deep seated hatred.  And I can’t pretend that I do.  But I do know that I have been taught that I have to keep my small little part of the world clean and do the best I can with what I have been given.  So this translates to showing up every day at my volunteer position and working as hard as I can for them.  And it translates to writing down what I am seeing, hearing and experiencing and sending emails to my family and friends so that maybe the dialogue about the issue will change.  Maybe the real Palestinian story will get out just a little bit.  Maybe I will have a small impact.  Every small impact together will create momentum towards peace for both peoples and this Holy Land.  So I have decided to tell the stories as I heard them. Or I will share my experiences being here as they happen. I am not going around interviewing people.  I am allowing people to tell me things authentically.  I don’t want this to be interviews.  I want the stories I hear to be from their heart, telling me as a fellow traveler of this world and as a new friend.