All Roads Lead to Jerusalem

by Jenny Lynn Jones

  For some inexplicable reason, though, I was still determined to go. I had a white-knuckle grip on this trip as the opportunity, my quick grab into the current of opportunities that seem to speed by at the bend of mid-life. On one hand, I knew that it didn’t make sense to most people. After all, we weren’t exactly hopping a plane for Hawaii. Still, I reasoned, Jewish mothers seeking to immigrate to Israel did not usually encounter the gasps and looks of horror that my news evoked in others. They just made me all the more determined that my kids, as half-Palestinians, deserved the same right to visit or live in their homeland as their Jewish cousins.

  Indeed, by the time I was done applying my heavy-handed reasoning to the issue of going to Palestine, I’d managed to almost convince myself and my husband that it would be crazy not to go. Things were going south for Muslims here in the United States, and my kids deserved to experience their Palestinian heritage, develop a relationship with their grandparents, and master their father’s native language, especially before adolescence permanently snuffed out the appeal of things like donkey rides, bleating sheep, and scores of fun-loving cousins. It was as George Eliot wrote, “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it.”

  And they wouldn’t be kids forever.

  It sounded reasonable.

  It did.

  CHAPTER 5

  Gold, White Satin, and Scent of Skunk

  Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not.

  Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness.

  Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

  - GEORGE R.R. MARTIN, A GAME OF THRONES

  Ahmad had reason to be skeptical about my decision to go to Safa, but I could see that he was also hopeful and maybe even a little excited that the kids could have a chance to get to know Palestine and his family. It was a pretty sweet deal, actually. He could still keep the high-powered job he loved, and I could handle all of that pesky teaching-the-kids-about-being-Palestinian stuff. It was kind of a crazy arrangement, but then again, we hadn’t really thought through the logistics of raising kids in two cultures.

  Unlike all the other Muslim families that we knew in our Seattle suburb, we were the only mixed marriage around, and that meant that my kids were also the only ones who really couldn’t speak Arabic. After all, their father spent long hours at work, so they couldn’t really learn the language from him, and although I could understand quite a bit and even communicate in a basic way, there was no way I wanted them to start imitating my Arabic (which lacked one simple, yet important thing—conjugated verbs). And then there was the fact that my oldest son, Ibrahim, didn’t start speaking at all until he was nearly four years old—yet another anxiety-producing quirk. And then, there was his unexplained liver failure, which would have driven me to drink had alcohol been permitted in Islam (thank God it wasn’t). Let’s just say that after more than eight years of intense speech therapy, I wasn’t messing around with bilingual experimentation until he was well on the road to solid communication.

  Unfortunately, language wasn’t the only difference between my kids and their peers. Although I hadn’t anticipated it, and for years worked hard against it, the gulf between my kids and those from non-mixed households seemed to grow with their ages. It was hard for them to make friends both inside the Muslim-American community and the larger mainstream American one, and I partly blamed myself.

  The Arab-Muslim community in our area of Washington State was a very small world, and it was through the various women’s gatherings that children stayed in touch with each other and developed friendships. Unfortunately, the community was also very insulated, and it was extremely uncommon for any of the women that I knew to have friendships with non-Arabs. Although I tried hard for many years to integrate and participate in the community, it was rare for us to be included, and that affected the kids and their friendships.

  Once, frustrated by the problem, my husband asked a Palestinian friend’s husband why we weren’t often remembered for their get-togethers. His response, “It’s just easier because they don’t want to speak English.”

  It hurt to think that I was my kids’ liability.

  It was the same with the non-Muslim Moms I knew from my children’s public schools, even before 9-11. It wasn’t as if the women were unfriendly or bigoted. I suppose it was just that we were so different, especially because of my dress (which usually came up early in conversations). I don’t think it was intentional. It was just easier for us to be overlooked for play dates.

  And then, there was the fact that I had definite issues. Already prone to social anxiety, it was hard for me to always put out the seemingly constant extra effort to explain myself to new people, or to always be the one to take the initiative in relationships. I was always the “other” in both worlds, and it was exhausting. In Palestine, I hoped, the kids would be surrounded by family, cousins, and peers, so I would be less of a factor because the entire village was essentially family, in one way or another. And best of all, we would no longer be a religious minority. It would be the first time my kids would know what it was like to be “like everyone else.”

  Ahmad and I were married for almost three years before our first trip to his native village. We had wed in a tiny private Islamic ceremony in our squalid university apartment in Oregon. It was 1992, and the local Mosque refused to allow us to marry there, citing vague “problems with Muslims marrying foreigners” (probably referring to the disastrous crash-and-burn “green card marriages” that are common among young Arab students seeking coveted American citizenship). Not to be stymied, however, we managed to get the job done on our own by gathering three of my husband’s friends to write out and witness the simple contract that is the basis of all Islamic marriages.

  The wedding itself was surprisingly easy. In fact, there were no vows at all. Instead, as in all Islamic marriages, the union was based on a contract between the bride (if she has been married before), and the groom. If the bride is previously unmarried, however, the rules stipulate that she must have a guardian (usually her father). In my case, because I had no Muslim family, I needed to appoint an upstanding man to represent me as my guardian, or wali. And I chose an Iranian man named Ali, a friend’s husband, to step into the role.

  So that was all we needed, aside from a written contract stating our intention to be married and my “guardian’s” permission. There was no wedding dress, but we invited three guests and I sported a sixty-dollar wedding band after the ceremony. Oh, and a two-dollar dowry that my new husband had to borrow from a friend.

  All in all, it was a pretty austere affair, and I kept it secret from my family, afraid to upset them even more after they’d discovered that I’d been wearing Islamic-style dress, “like a freak,” on campus. Of course, I could have just waited a few more years to get married, but I was nineteen and feeling more than ready to start my “grown-up life.”

  As for Ahmad, he was a bit braver and only waited a year to tell his family about our marriage. Still, they weren’t happy at the news, and his mother reportedly spent a week in her room crying over the loss of her son to an “Amerikeeya.” Knowing this didn’t help my confidence as we emerged from a taxi to face the village throng for the very first time. Thankfully, I’d managed to learn enough polite, parroted phrases and behaviors to merit a warm welcome and a demand—three days later—that we have a “proper” Palestinian wedding.

  Our Palestinian wedding was many things, but it wasn’t lonely. Imagine three days of belly dancing parties and a day perched atop a platform in a white, marshmallow gown, cemented hair, hooker-inspired makeup, and layers of solid gold jewelry that would put a 1980s rapper to shame. It was an awesome kitsch-fest, and might have been a pretty good memory if not for the disaster in the beauty salon that day.

  Palestinian brides traditionally go with close female relatives to a salon to be styled for the party, a favorite activity for village women, as it’s the only chance they have
to dress up and be sexy under their black abayas. Afterward, they stride into the segregated party, ready to unveil and shine, each hoping to be judged by the other women in attendance as the most beautiful of all.

  At the time, I didn’t really understand all the fuss about looking beautiful for a bunch of other women, but I went along with it. My Bethlehem beautician produced her vision for me and my sister-in-laws, who came out looking like exotic desert beauties. I, of course, was a different story.

  Layers of kabuki-white foundation, thick black eyeliner, and Christmas-red lipstick turned her vision of me into a bad hallucination, especially on my already pale, green-eyed features. Even worse was my hair, styled by a short woman with a Friar Tuck bald spot and thick glasses that magnified her eyes into giant black orbs. Somehow, she’d managed to coax my bangs into a perfectly formed, rigid wave, dusted at the crest with iridescent glitter ready to break on the smooth beach of my forehead. The true glory, though, was the pair of tightly coiled blond ringlets that boinged straight out from the sides of my ears like Slinkys. It was horrible.

  I didn’t want to be fussy, but I just couldn’t stand it, so I gingerly dipped into my shallow vocabulary pool and threw out a half-formed sentence that was received like fish to a school of sharks.

  “Please…um…makeup not pretty to my eyes…”

  At this, Miss Peepers smiled, the corners of her lips upturned in derision, and sneered, Khalis ya binit!, “Enough girl!” She quickly pushed the jar of cold cream I was reaching for out of my grasp, and then her coworker chimed in.

  Yimkin Binit…she laughed, “Maybe a girl,” which meant, “She?! A virgin? Yeah, Right!”

  In American terms, she’d called me a slut—one of the worst insults in the Arab world. And nobody in the room, not even my sister-in-laws, said a word to defend me. It was then that I realized that my prestige level was at rock-bottom. After all, a skunk called “stinky” certainly would never take offence. So, why would a Western woman be insulted by a comment insinuating that she was somehow “loose?” It was simply a given.

  This was a traumatic moment that left me with a bitter taste that lasted for many years, a moment that shook my confidence that I’d ever really fit into this new society, and a moment I subconsciously vowed never to repeat—whatever the cost!

  CHAPTER 6

  The Culture of Marriage

  I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I’m not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

  -TONI MORRISON

  The time my new husband and I spent in Palestine only amounted to a few weeks, but I spent the following years desperately trying to be the good Arab homemaker I imagined I should be. Rather than a healthy desire, however, it became pathological, ultimately malignant. There is a saying that “housework, done right, can be deadly.” I think it was supposed to be a joke.

  Oh sure, I knew that I probably had some lingering childhood trauma left over from my parents’ divorce, some need to pick what I saw as a super-traditional and comfortably rigid family model to mold myself into, like a baby soothed by excessive swaddling. Add to that the kind of humiliation I’d felt in the wedding salon, and I believed I had to prove that I could be “as Arab as the Arabs.”

  I worked on my Arabic and mastered as many of the cultural nuances that I could—enough to impress the growing throng of my husband’s relatives who were relocating from Palestine to Seattle as part of the high-tech boom. I cooked, dressed, and behaved as Palestinian as an American girl from Oregon could, and even began doing things I didn’t agree with, and weren’t “Islamic” at all, but were cultural expectations. These included serving men before women, giving men the best portions of the food, staying out of sight when men visited, always keeping my voice low and my manner demure, and never laughing out loud. They were all things that bought me acceptance, but nonetheless ate at my soul because I didn’t believe in them.

  It has been said that “in order for something to keep its best nature, it must be put to its best use.” Mindlessly emulating a culture that I didn’t truly embrace on principle wasn’t my best use, and believe me, my nature suffered. I became depressed but kept up the pretense of acceptance. After all, I still wanted to get as far away from that “skunk syndrome” as possible.

  My solution was distraction. I had babies and I worked even harder. By the time my daughter was a busy toddler, my oldest son, Ibrahim wasn’t talking and then got sick; dealing with my depression became a luxury I couldn’t afford. I turned to antidepressants for as much relief as they could give me. Still, the years saw my depression linger, slowly transforming under the surface, and sharpening into a bitterness that was becoming impossible to for me to ignore.

  Trying to be the “perfect wife” no longer did it for me. I didn’t want to serve men before women, and what did that mean, anyway? And I wanted to laugh as often and as loud as I felt the need to do so. I, and the forces of life-experience and maturity, had merged to create a recognition of the difference between faith and culture, the limits of belonging, and the importance of personal integrity. I began to long for the freedom to develop the authenticity I’d never given myself before marriage.

  Part

  Two

  Destination: The Holy Land

  CHAPTER 7

  Home in Safa

  Beginnings are always messy.

  -JOHN GALSWORTHY

  It took fifteen hours to fly from Seattle to Amman, Jordan, followed by a full day of lines, inspections, and interrogation at the scorching hot Israeli border. This multi-day journey to the West Bank is ordinarily a tough trip for adults, but throw in a toddler and two tired kids and it becomes a living hell, especially when Karim, my two-year-old, threw up in the middle of a metal detector before we cleared Israeli customs.

  Finally, after passing our last inspection, we jumped into a taxi for the drive through the white-hot hills of the Judean desert to the village. It was only May, but the temperature was hovering around 115 degrees, and when I touched my son I could tell he still had a fever. The car had no air conditioning, so I held Karim next to the open window until we passed the main checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier slung his rifle to admire our Disney passport covers. Finally, we had arrived in the Holy Land!

  When we arrived in Safa, my husband’s family crowded around the taxi. There were aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters…as usual, too many to count, greeting us in typical Palestinian fashion, with hugs and kisses all around, followed by a traditional welcome meal. My seventy-five-year-old mother-in-law and three of my sisters-in-law: Asya, Sawsan, and Sa’eda, prepared us Mansaf, a dish of lamb cooked in yogurt served over a table-sized platter of steaming rice and sprinkled over with fried pine nuts, minced, bright-green parsley and sliced lemons.

  I appreciated their collaboration because they hadn’t really gotten along since my brother-in-law, Khalid (Asya’s husband), married Sawsan a couple of years earlier after his brother died in a car crash. We were exhausted and jet-lagged, and although Karim was no longer vomiting, he was burning up with fever. Still, we followed custom and finished the meal, along with the obligatory rounds of tea and Nescafe, before I finally stood to take the kids “home.” First, though, I asked another of my husband’s brothers, Dr. Muhammad, a general practitioner, to take a look at Karim, who was getting worse.

  We crossed the dirt road to our new house. It was an empty, hulking stone building still under construction, and we tried to settle in, but Karim, who had seemed to get better after a night’s sleep, became ill again. In fact, he was getting so dehydrated that Dr. Muhammad suggested I take him to a children’s hospital, the best one in the area—run by a Catholic charity in Bethlehem.

  Although this wasn’t my first visit to the West Bank, I’d never spent more than three weeks at a time there, and thankfull
y, I hadn’t needed a hospital before. Unfortunately, my first dose of Palestinian health care didn’t go well. I expected it to be poor—and it was, but that wasn’t the problem. What surprised me the most during the long night I spent sitting next to Karim’s metal hospital crib was how mean the nurses were. I watched them sleep through alarms at their desks, not bothering to wash their hands between patients, yelling at the mothers, and allowing German tourists (presumably donors) to photograph the sick children through the large sliding-glass doors on the ward.

  I was jet-lagged, worried sick and pissed-off, which was probably what caused me to finally stage a mini-revolt with the other mothers on the ward. That culminated in a full-blown screaming match until the head nun finally intervened.

  Thankfully, Karim rallied enough to go home, but I left shaken and more apprehensive than ever: afraid that I’d placed my kids at risks I hadn’t anticipated. Moreover, the experience brought back feelings of worry and impotence that I had struggled with during Ibrahim’s brush with death, concerns that I’d thought were long forgotten. I decided that even if I was being paranoid, I would be sure to buy an Israeli-licensed car so if I ever needed to drive one of my children to a hospital again, we could go to a modern one in Jerusalem.

  I’d quickly learned that if you were out on the roads in the West Bank, you’d see a difference between the license plates. Like a passport, the colors designated where the cars (not just the people) were allowed to go. By and large, it meant that anyone with a yellow plate (Israeli citizens and foreigners) could drive from the Red Sea on the south to the Lebanese border at the northernmost tip (provided they stayed out of Palestinian only villages and towns). Palestinians from the West Bank, however, were restricted to driving so called “Arab cars,” with green or blue licenses so they could easily be spotted as such. They were restricted to designated roads within the West Bank only. These cars were never allowed to cross into any part of Israel over the Green Line, including Jerusalem. It was a huge difference, and as a tourist living in the West Bank, I was fortunate to be able to choose between the two.