Teenage Prisoner

 I want to learn Arabic so I study from a book and make flash cards in my free time....which is good.  I don't have a huge social life here but I am slowly meeting people and feeling people out.  So when I have nothing to do, I study!  And then when I am bored with studying, I walk around the old city to the shops and practice my Arabic with people.  The hospitality here is incredible.  Everyone is welcoming me in and inviting me for tea or coffee.  Arabs are famous for their hospitality.  But as I meet people, I hear their stories.  Every day I hear stories about how it is to live here with the occupation. The topic of conversation is always the struggle they live with.  It is hard to deal with.  There is so much pain and suffering here.  I can feel it in the energy and see it in people's eyes when I talk to them. People are struggling, yet their resilience and light heartedness is unbelievable.  There is so much emotion everywhere. 

When I meet people and I hear their stories, I try to imagine their trauma.  Sometimes I want to cry with them. Sometimes I don't know what to do with my emotions and thoughts.  Part of me wants to leave so I can decompress and then come back because it's so intense here.  Maybe it's because I am a foreigner and the situation here is not normal to me but for these people, it's all they know.  They know it is not right and they suffer and struggle but they don't know what it is like to have freedom.  The level of insidiousness of the occupation is indescribable.  Like I said I hear so many things and each time I hear someone's story, I want to share it with the world. I want to notify the world that what is happening here is not ok.  I want everyone to come here, to visit the West Bank so they can see that these people are just people trying to live a life. They are not terrorists or evil or scary or dangerous or anything else.  They are just normal people, trying to deal with an impossible situation.  I don't know what to do with this. All this information. All these stories.  Each time I hear a story, I want to run and write an email so that people can read what I am hearing.  But I don't have time for this and I don't want to bombard my friends with every story.  But today, I am feeling moved to write about this guy that I just met.

He is 23 and finished school at 16. He didn't go to college because he comes from a poor family and he needs to work to help with the house.  His parents have 6 kids.  Four boys and two girls. His oldest sibling is 26 and his youngest sibling is 4.  His job is to hang out in Manger Square and try to get tourists to pay him to take them to different places.  Maybe Jericho, maybe the Dead Sea, maybe Hebron (the biggest, most populated Palestinian city, where they built an Israeli settlement literally in the middle of the Market and made it off limits to Arabs-probably the most provocative thing one could do.  I am trying to compare it to something to paint a picture and it's just not comparable.  Yea, thinking, thinking...nothing on earth can compare to Hebron.  Maybe it would be like if some random people from wherever in the world, came to Bethesda and shut down  Bethesda Avenue and built a huge stone complex and said anyone who was living here before is not allowed).  So yea, Hebron has become a political tourist attraction in Palestine. Maybe he will even take people to the Wall which is now a tourist attraction as well. It's definitely a site to see.  Not only is it overbearing with its gray cement sections and militaristic barb wired but it's like an art gallery.  People from all over the world come to Palestine to paint symbols of peace and struggle on the wall.  A dove with a bullet proof vest.  A little girl searching a solider while his hands are up against the wall.  A man throwing a bouquet of flowers.  These are some of the most famous...by Banksi, an underground artist from England.  I am going to buy some paint next week and I am going to leave my mark.  I hope I am here when the wall falls and I told someone today...if I am not here, I will come back from wherever I am to help knock it down. What a glorious, liberating day that will be. (Trying to stay positive but the reality is that wall is probably not coming down in my life time.)

So anyways,  Bethlehem is a small town and one of the only touristy things there is, is the Nativity Church, where Jesus was born.  And thank God Jesus was born here because if he wasn't, I'm not sure what some of these people would do.  The only chance they have to make some money is to sell something to the tourist or show the tourist around.  So this guy stands in Manger Square all day, every day competing with the Israeli tour companies. (Most tourists come with an Israeli tour company because everyone is told it's too dangerous in the West Bank to come alone....I assure you it is not). So only a few brave and/or defiant souls come to see Bethlehem without a tour group, and out of these people only a few want to see more of the West Bank and if you match that with the number of men out there trying to show people around, business is not so good for this guy.  Some days he makes good money, like today.  He made $60 and he worked four hours. Not bad, $15 an hour.  But sometimes he doesn't work for a week.  So it's nothing.

 But anyways, that is the background of this guy.  That isn't even the story I wanted to tell. The story I want to tell begins even before that when he was 14. He and his family are going on with their lives.  And with no prompt or pre-warning, one morning at 3am, he hears s pounding on the door of his house.  “Open the door, open the door!”  Israeli soldiers pounding on the door, screaming.  His father goes to the door, disheveled and half asleep. The Israelis ask him for his papers and his family documents.  Then they ask if his son his home.  The soldiers wake him up.  His siblings are crying and screaming and his mother is screaming and crying and they take my friend away in the middle of the night.  He was 14 years old.  Just a teenager.

They take him out in the middle of the dessert where they have these prisons.  The prisons are huge tent camps.  They put him in a room by himself for three days.  He just sits there, thinking, crying, not knowing why he is there and what is going to happen.  Then the soldiers come and they sit him at this table. Four soldiers and him. They all have automatic weapons.  14 years  old. No parents, no lawyer, no nothing.  Just four Israeli soldiers with guns, interrogating him in this room.  They said he was throwing stones.  But he wasn't  throwing stones.  They kept saying he was throwing stones.  He kept telling them, he didn't throw stones.  He didn't even know what they were talking about. He wasn't even near anywhere, where people were throwing stones.  (Who knows, he could have been lying to me and to the soldiers but even if he was throwing stones, I don't think what happen to him is equal punishment. In this situation, throwing a stone at a moving, bullet proof military jeep isn't necessarily an act of violence, it's a demonstration of frustration, it’s an act of defiance to send a message.)  The soldiers interrogated him for hours each day in this small room about the stones.  Then they would put him back in the room by himself with a little food and water.  Then they would come and bring him back to the small interrogation room and question him.  He said this went on for four days.  Solitary confinement and then the interrogation room.

After a while they started telling him that he should work with them.  That they will give him a car, they will give him clothes, they will give him Israeli papers so he can go back and forth from the West Bank and Jerusalem.  They told him he didn't have to do anything, just give them a call if he hears anything about terrorists or anything they may want to know.  He said no, he would never do that.  They threatened him and told him, if he didn't work with them then they would put him in jail.  He was terrified but he was smart and even at 14 he had Palestinian pride...or maybe it's Arab pride....or maybe it's male pride....or human pride....maybe it wasn't even pride....maybe it was integrity, yes that's what it is....this 14 year old who was being held in solitary confinement and being interrogated daily by scary soldiers with automatic weapons...kept his integrity. 

So I guess, eventually the Israeli soldiers figured he wasn't going to budge so instead of taking him home, they took him to another prison.  The big prison.  And he was kept there for three months. He didn't know when he was getting out the entire time he was there, until one day they came and said he can leave.  14 years old, held in jail for no reason, except for maybe he threw some rocks (which he says he didn't)....and because he didn't want to sell his soul.  Some new clothes, an Israeli Id, a car....not really worth it when u end up a slave.

 I have heard these stories. I have read about these stories.  I have seen movies about these stories.  It is part of their policy, to work Palestinian kids, to get them to like them and trust them, and bribe them with everything so that they tell them what's going on.  I have even read about it from “Breaking the Silence” which is an organization that is made up of people who used to serve in the Israeli military and they speak out about their experiences while they were in the military. They say their tactic is psychological games and terror. But to hear it from a person while he looks me in the eye as we drink tea at a restaurant, while he looks me in eye....it's a whole different experience.  How does one get over trauma like that? That guy will forever have trauma and fear on his heart. I mean what can I do with that, what do I do with that.