Letters from Palestine (6 page)

“What the fuck did you say to me?” I turned
around and looked the man squarely in the eyes. Everyone else
melted away for a moment, and it was just me and him.

“I called you a fucking sand nigger. Don’t
walk on my sidewalk, sand nigger,” he replied calmly, and
clearly.

“This is a public sidewalk. I can walk
wherever the hell I want!” My reasoning was impeccable. Clearly,
this argument would sway him to retract his words. He grinned. I
looked down for a moment at a bottle he was holding in his right
hand.

“Is that mace?” I wondered out loud. The
smile grew larger across his face. My insides froze in panic, but
my feet turned me right around to run. Manaal had disappeared.
Shit. I made my way further through the crowds to find my petite
friend surrounded by a group of looming men—standing in front of
them, waving her finger at them, and yelling about human
rights.

“Manaal, seriously, not now!” I grabbed her
by the arm, near tears, and pulled her away. I will not cry, I
promised myself. I will not cry in front of them.

To my left, I saw a policewoman standing,
watching the events unfold, as if she were merely a spectator with
no obligation to protect the public. She was a black woman, and for
a moment I wondered if this reminded her too of protests during the
Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s, and the harassment blacks faced
trying to claim their rights as humans. She remained unfazed.

Manaal and I held hands as we saw the
thinning of the crowd and the opening expanse of 5th Avenue.
Suddenly, a man swung his cardboard sign down on our heads, hard.
Twice. I turned around and wrested it from him, breaking it over my
knee before turning back to Manaal to make our way out. Three young
women came over—tourists taking in the sights of New York—and began
yelling at the man who had hit us and walked us out to the edge of
the crowd.

“Are you guys OK? Christ Almighty,” said one
of them in a sweet Southern voice.

Manaal was crying. I was overwhelmed.

“Yes, thank you,” I managed as Manaal and I
turned to make it finally to the subway. As we were walking, I
looked down on my shirt and saw a big wad of phlegm.

“Eeeeeeeeew! I have Zionist spit on me!” I
shrieked, jumping up and down on 5th Avenue, “Eeew! Eeew!” I held
the shirt away from my stomach so it wouldn’t touch me. I was
repulsed at the physicality of it—that I had someone else’s phlegm
on my shirt—but also that another human had spit on me, the
ultimate sign of disrespect. Manaal took me into the Zara that
conveniently appeared on the corner, and we bought a new shirt for
me.

* * *

“I told you why I was so weird and jittery
that day, right?” I ask Neel—not remembering if I’d told him about
my experience at the protest before I showed up late to our
date.

“Yeah you did,” Neel paused and put down his
chopsticks, “Man, what an intense day . . . you know, I’m sorry I
didn’t call you after that—but I knew I was moving, and you told me
about all this shit, and I just thought to myself, ‘Damn, I really
care about this girl, but I can’t protect her from those crazy
motherfuckers!’ It was just too much, and I guessed you’d figure it
out.”

I took a deep breath. It hadn’t been a huge
deal emotionally—I mean, we weren’t in love or anything—it was just
a premature affirmation that we were too different to have
something serious. I looked at Neel and felt sad. Not so much that
he’d shied away from me because of my politics, but because his
explanation punctured my ideological balloon of Third World
solidarity. His brown skin betrayed his colonized past. I am sure
his parents and grandparents must have experienced colonialism,
oppression, and racism. But his history of colonization and
struggle is over in a way that mine isn’t. He was far from that
here and didn’t make the connection between the message of the
parade I had protested against and his own history.

Always I expect solidarity and political
awareness from people whose history involves being oppressed and
colonized—because to me the similarity is so clear. I think about
how much stronger struggles around the world would be if there was
real, meaningful cooperation and partnership between countries
which share common histories. I always expect politicization from
people based on their own histories. I still do. It continues to be
a rude awakening when people who come from countries previously
colonized—whose families experienced colonialism—are not
politically engaged with struggles. I don’t know Neel’s personal
family history, when his parents emigrated to the U.S., but feel
that now it is better to leave politics and history alone. He was
lucky that he didn’t have to fight for his parents’ country. I
still had to.

“So,” I began, changing the conversation,
“tell me about your new job.”

Letter from Rawan

Rawan Arar is pursuing her MA in Women’s and
Gender Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her current
projects include a gender ascription curriculum geared toward high
school students emphasizing the analysis of gender norms as
reiterated through popular culture, a qualitative study reviewing
the effects of the media on Arab-American male identity, and a
racial and ethnic appreciation curriculum incorporating the
accomplishments of racial minorities into high school history
curriculums.

Arar graduated with Honors in May of 2008
from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a degree in
sociology and minors in legal studies and women’s and gender
studies. As an Archer Fellow, Arar spent the spring of 2008 in
Washington, D.C., interning in the Office of the Administrative
Assistant to the Chief Justice at the Supreme Court of the United
States. In 2006, Arar began filming a documentary titled
The
Westernization of Women in Jordan
where she conducted
interviews with men and women across socioeconomic classes
discussing key feminist platforms that include the following:
marriage, family, and relationships; women in the workplace; body
image and beauty ideals; Palestinian immigration; and women in
Islam. As a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, Arar will be moving to
Jordan in 2009 to study peace and conflict resolution. There, she
plans to film her second documentary as well as research domestic
violence in Jordan and water conditions in local Palestinian
refugee camps. In the future, Arar plans to pursue a law degree in
an effort to promote human rights both domestically and
internationally.

* * *

One of the deepest pleasures of working on
this book has been the kind and depth of correspondence that has
sometimes developed between some of our contributors and me during
and especially after working with them on their stories. What
begins, of necessity, with a rather formal invitation on my part to
consider writing a piece for the book may gradually morph into a
more personal exchange of letters and, sometimes, a real, if
virtual, friendship, then blossoms, occasionally quite
unexpectedly, as our correspondence continues even after their
stories have been put to bed.

So it was with Rawan Arar, a young and very
gifted graduate student from Texas. Anna Baltzer had suggested her
to me as a possible candidate for our book, so in early October
2008, I wrote Rawan a brief note asking her if she would be
interested. She was and indeed expressed some enthusiasm for the
project, which was, of course, gratifying.

Our exchanges over the next couple of months
were brief, infrequent and pretty much routine, but in January
2009, having noted that she lived in Austin, I mentioned to Rawan
that I expected to be visiting my daughter in San Antonio that
spring and suggested perhaps we could meet. She replied that she
would be delighted to do so.

After that, our correspondence seemed to
open up quite a bit and became more frequent as we exchanged more
information about our interests, backgrounds, and involvement in
Palestinian issues. At one point, after Rawan asked me how I had
got into this work, I wound up writing her a fairly lengthy
account, some of which found its way, after a bit of editing, into
the introduction to this book. Shortly after that, Rawan wrote a
long letter of her own, which began this way:

Dr. Ring, Kenneth, Ken, who knows . . .
maybe Kenny is next. What do you prefer to be called? I’m torn
between treating you like a professor or my new best friend. I’ve
come to really enjoy our correspondence. In the hopes of attracting
writers for
Letters from Palestine
, I find myself talking
about you all the time. That, coupled with writing you, and your
inspiring dedication to human rights/Palestine, has made me feel
very close to you. Thanks for always taking the time to write
me.

Over the next few months, we would write when
we could, but Rawan was always very busy with her work at school
and with a miscellany of extracurricular projects, and ditto for me
with my own activities, so we could often only write quick notes to
each other. But the warmth in our correspondence remained.

Fortunately, my trip to Texas came off over
the long Easter weekend in 2009, but turned out to involve a big
family reunion with all three of my kids and all four of my
grandchildren in attendance. Nevertheless, Anna and I were able to
break away on Easter morning to spend a couple of hours over brunch
not only with Rawan but with her mother as well, because Rawan’s
family actually lived in San Antonio. It was an absolute joy to
meet Rawan face-to-face. She was just as lively, warm, and
quick-witted as her letters had led me to imagine, and full of
passion and dedication about the work she was planning to do. This
mainly involved making a documentary about Palestinian and Iraqi
refugee women in Jordan where Rawan was heading during the summer
of 2009 as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, once she finished
studying for and taking the LSAT exams for law school.

We want to meet again, too, if not in San
Francisco, then, well, maybe in Jordan. We’ll see!

After Anna and I returned home, my
correspondence with Rawan and our friendship have of course
continued. At last count I had more than thirty emails from her in
my file. So it is that this book, Letters from Palestine, has also
led to personal letters from Palestinians to me, which I have come
to treasure, as I do their authors. Now, here is Rawan’s letter to
you.

* * *

It may well be that we will have to repent
in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words of the bad
people and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the
appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit
around and say, “Wait on time.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As I handed the woman behind the counter her
change, a sigh of relief escaped from my lips. Two more customers
to go, then closing time. Drained, but still smiling, I asked, “How
was your treatment today?” Working at a spa, I was accustomed to a
routine response. I never would have guessed what happened
next.

I will never forget Wendy P.

Rawan Arar. Rawan Arar. Rawan Arar. Try
saying my name three times fast. It’s hard to blend in when the
first thing anybody knows about you, your name, screams, “I’m
different!” So when Wendy asked where I was from, her eyes burning
a hole through my nametag, I only hesitated a little before
responding.

“I am Palestinian,” I said.

I usually give people a chance to like me
before I give them an excuse to hate me, but something about that
day made me bold. Possibly intrepid because of exhaustion, maybe
too honest, something about that day made me say, “I am
Palestinian,” to a complete stranger. Ignoring my usual crutches,
“My family is from Jordan” or “I grew up in San Antonio,” instead I
said, “I am Palestinian.”

Wendy remained quiet at first. The look of
ambiguous acceptance only a stranger can offer quickly turned to
that of disgust. “
You dirty Arab!
” she shouted.

I froze. Mostly surprised. A little
confused. Anger bubbling with each word that followed.

You dirty Arab!
I bet you don’t even
shower! Why did you come here? Your dirty parents taught you to
have bad manners. Your dirty, dirty parents! Where is your manager?
I am going to get you fired. You won’t be working here anymore! Go
back where you came from! We don’t want you here.

I wish I could express my regret for losing
my temper, for saying witty, rude things. I wish I could apologize
for how I made Wendy feel like a racist bigot. I wish I could be
ashamed of my loud voice that commanded the room and how Wendy left
wallowing in self-reflection.

No. Instead, I froze. I took into
consideration my place of business, my coworkers, and the last
customer still standing in line. Polite. Respectful. Collected. I
responded the way my “dirty” culture and my “dirty parents” taught
me to respond, with courtesy.