Palestine Book Project Day 2

I'm sure you're asking yourself how you could have missed the blog post titled Palestine Book Project Day 1, but no. Day 1 was last night, in the car on the way to Bethlehem.


Tarek was driving. I was talking. That's how we work.


I think it was somewhere on the highway close to Maale Adumim (one of the biggest Israeli settlements in Palestine) in the middle of  trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life (out loud, which is how I work) and talking about the photos of Tarek's family that we had gone through earlier in the day, that I somehow suddenly got the idea that, once it entered my mind, seemed so obvious that I wonder how on earth I hadn't thought of it before.


"I'm going to write a book about your mom!"


Of course!


Because among all the photos of Tarek's dad kissing Yasser Arafat's cheek, of his uncle posing for group photos together with dignitaries, and of a teenaged Tarek sitting with the revered poet Mahmoud Darwish, one picture stood out:

It's black and white. It's 1978. Tarek's mom is standing with two young men on a street somewhere in Beirut, with pants wider than any I've ever owned, holding a gun in her hands.

She fought in the war.

"Your mom is such a strong woman," I told Tarek in the car. Either before or after the Idea had entered my mind, I'm not sure. "It's not the gun. It's fighting for what she believed in until she no longer believed in fighting. It's marrying your dad even if it meant that her family turned their back on her. It's fleeing Beirut in the midst of a burning war. It's starting a new life in Syria. It's taking care of her late sister's daughter until a court order took her away from her. Raising two sons of her own while her husband was away most of the time, working with Yasser Arafat. It's working for human rights. Moving to Tunisia and starting a new life there. And then finally moving to Palestine in 1996, only to see Ramallah burn under Israeli fire a few years later."

Imagine.

So Tarek's mom (who has a name, but I haven't decided whether to use her real name or an alias yet, so for now she will be known as Tarek's mom, or Imm Tarek, if you will) will be the heroine of my book that I started working on yesterday.

It will be a story about love, war, dreams of freedom; about fleeing for your life, losing loved ones, winning new insights.

It will start in 1948 when Palestine was fought off the world map and her family forced to leave Yafa, and I wish it will end with Palestine being drawn into every atlas in the world again. But this is perhaps hoping for a little too much, so for now, I'll just focus on writing the book.

A Question

If you could order, say the Palestinian scarf (you know, the Yasser Arafat scarf, or hatta) online directly from Palestine, would you?


Or any other traditional or typical Palestinian things (embroidery, olive oil soap from Nablus...), would you?


Just a question. Answers appreciated.

Jessy the Mad Dog Becomes A Thief

So, Jessy the Mad Dog--you know, the dog who bit me, also known as the Israeli Settler who became a Palestinian--has become a thief.

A few months back we took her to the Grumpy Jewish Vet in Jerusalem because she had had a rash on her belly for a long period of time. She wouldn't stop itching and licking and none of the pills we gave her made her any better.

It was a long way going there, to the Grumpy Vet in Jerusalem. Jessy is, as previously mentioned, a little mad and bites everyone she doesn't live with, so we can't send her in a car to go alone and meet us there.

Why would you? She's a dog.

Well, if you're Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, you're not allowed to go to occupied Jerusalem without a special permit from the Israeli authorities, and even if you do have this permit, you're not allowed to go by car. You have to walk through Qalandia Check Point and you're not allowed to take a dog. Of course.



So we had to send Jessy in a car. But like I said, we couldn't send her alone, and since I'm the only one with a foreign passport (who can therefore go to Jerusalem in a car) that Jessy doesn't bite on sight, I had to take her. But since I can't control or carry Jessy alone (the importance of which will become clear in the next sentence), Tarek had to meet up with us on the other side before we went to the Grumpy Vet.

Because Jessy doesn't like the Grumpy Jewish Vet. She hates him. She won't go near his clinic unless dragged, pulled and carried over the threshold.

This is what we did. Twice in one week. And Jessy was super pissed off at us and wouldn't talk to us for two weeks.

We had betrayed her. Twice.

On top of that, the Vet told us she has a food allergy and that we can't give her anything except the special dog food he sold us for a lot of money. This meant that Jessy would no longer get chicken especially cooked for her, barbecue leftovers, or pieces of bread from us when we were eating.

This was too much for her little dog heart, and she not only didn't talk to us, she got depressed. She just lay in her corner on the couch facing the cushion for days. She wouldn't go out and run with me, she wouldn't go out and walk, she wouldn't eat her expensive dog food, she didn't come and meet us at the door when we came home.

We had betrayed her. Again.

It gradually became better, though. The rash went away, and feeling confident that it was the chicken that had caused her rash, we started giving her small pieces of bread again at the dinner table. And at the breakfast table, and at the lunch table (all of which are, incidentally, the same table). Before we knew it, Jessy got up from her couch corner, and things were back to normal.

Or so we thought.

But it turns out that underneath all of that white fluffy fur she harbors a deep, dark secret.

She can't forget about the chicken.

She must have been dreaming about it. It must have consumed her. The desire. The longing. For that sweet, sweet chicken.

So on Wednesday when we had a barbecue in the garden with people from outside, and we had left Jessy in the house in order not to have any unfortunate biting accidents, the desire had finally burned a hole in her self-control.

We didn't know it at first.

Twice, Tarek went inside to get something and found a piece of half-eaten chicken on the floor. Twice, he came out and asked us who had given Jessy food, blamed his father and yelled at him a little.

Then Tarek went in for a third time, and lo and behold! There was Jessy, on her hind legs, thieving grilled chicken off the kitchen table!

We scolded her, but couldn't help but feeling guilty. After all, if we hadn't taken chicken off her menu, she wouldn't have been forced into this new habit.

Yes, habit. The other day when we were watching TV, I turned my head just in time to see Jessy snatching meat leftovers from Tarek's dinner plate on the coffee table.

Jessy. The dog who would never have stooped so low as to steal food, has become a Chicken Thief.


I guess desires left unfulfilled will eat away at your character.