Where are you from?

Where are you from?

Could there not be a more innocuous question?

Four weeks ago, as the shiny-as-a-new-penny KA students moved into the dormitories, that query was probably the most frequently asked. Undoubtedly, it could spark conversation from the shyest of students, and especially for those of us from far away, quickly add mystique and excitement to our new surroundings. (“Egypt? Really? How exciting!”)

But in those first few days, this benign question sparked many more questions in me.

As I overheard a colleague volley the question to a young man, “Where are you from?” the student replied, “Palestine.”

His answer struck me as strange. Wait—I had just been talking to the same young man as he moved suitcases into the dorm, and as we talked, he told me that he had just been living in Virginia, and before that Atlanta. We had even shared some of our favorite BBQ places in the South—what a great bonding experience!! (Okay, food memories traveling to the frontal lobe of the brain—oh wow, I am remembering ROs, my Saturday BBQ hang-out in Gastonia, North Carolina where I would meet the Wetzell gals—Hey Mare! Order me a Jumbo Cheeseburger with BBQ slaw and a Cherry-Lemon-Sundrop this Saturday! And oh, the BBQ in Birmingham, Alabama, oh, yeah, at “Dreamland” where after you eat your neighbor’s weight in ribs, you gobble down the best banana cream pie around…)

Oh yeah, back to the pestering problem of that boy’s answer to the question, “Where are you from?”

He had just told me those cities in the United States. What does he mean he is from Palestine? How can you be from a place that is really just a state of mind??

By the end of those first days of orientation, as I stitched together my metaphorical quilt of information about these students, many, many of them had claimed, “Palestine” when asked where they were from.

So I went to my Saudi Arabian (but really from Jordan) colleague Fatina, the one I go to about all things involving technology, Middle Eastern life, and transportation to burgers and shakes (no, sorry, we’ve had enough food imagery for this blog entry) and said, “what gives?” How is that an answer to this basic question?

Whenever I ask her something Fatina usually gives this great sigh. The sigh reminds me of sighs I have elicited from others over the years, often tour guides in foreign countries. It is the sigh of, “well, you are getting around to figuring it out.” (I remember that sigh from our great tour guide Smaro, in Greece, when I had a Helen-Keller moment about the Truman Doctrine, and US-Greek relations, and she said, “You are smart John, just a little slow!”) “So, what gives with this answer Fatina?”

Fatina delicately discussed the issue of Palestinian nationalism, Palestinian identity, and also hinted that few to none of these students had probably even physically been in the region that historically is Palestine.

It was time to start to unpack the emotional-historical-national-spiritual-poetic-visceral baggage that is Palestine.

You may wonder why I am relaying this account nearly four weeks after I overheard this question and spoke to Fatina. Most of the blog entries have been written practically as the events unfold.

This one is different. This one is thornier and pricklier. And to be honest, I felt inadequate. I knew I wanted to write about this since that first day, but I would think about it, and decide, “no I’ll wait a few more days until I know more about the situation, the history, you know.” Finally, as the anniversary of 9/11 passed last week, I knew I should write about what I know as of right now. I remember that exquisite friend Judy, the one who encouraged me to start the blog, told me in her best teacher-mom voice, “Write your impressions as you live them. Revel in the naivete, track those observations John!”

I remember standing in Barnes&Noble in New York, staring at the entire row of books trying to explain the situation about Palestine. I wondered if I would ever have enough understanding to make sense of the issue. I remember a few months ago the scathing criticisms leveled at former President Jimmy Carter for his observations and visions about Palestine, and how it fits into the Arab-Israeli tension we have all grown up with.

So, it’s time to make a little sense of what Palestine means. I am sure I will come back to it often in my musings, eager to see how I revise and re-frame the issues and the emotions.

One important physical reminder of Palestine on our campus is right at the entrance to the school. There is a grove of olive trees planted in the last year, with a beautiful, gold plate on a dozen of the trees, honoring the founding members of the school’s Board of Trustees. But these are not just any old olive trees. These are olive trees His Majesty King Abdullah had transported from a famed olive grove in Palestine, about 30 miles away, a grove that historically stretches back to the Roman days of occupation. And of course the olive tree is symbolically seen as the tree, the fruit, of reconciliation and peace.

As I learned from Fatina on that first day of meeting the students, “there is no issue probably more dear to this region than the liberation of Palestine.” Many, many people who live in Jordan, especially Amman, are Palestinian refugees. She went on to say that even though they may never have set foot in Palestine, “the most treasured dream of Palestinians is returning to the Arab villages destroyed in Israel’s 1948 war of independence.”

Her explanation struck a chord with me—I had known one Palestinian in New York, a wonderful science teacher who had told me some stories about her family and what many of her people had faced. She relayed to me a simple, sweet story of her parents, and how for years and years after their expulsion from their home in Palestine, they still carried the family’s house keys on a chain around their necks, awaiting the day they could return to their home.

Home. There may not be a sweeter word! I remember once I led a book club through John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, and I focused on the importance of “place” and “home” in the book, and how those words can so easily create an ache in our soul.

As I thought about Palestine and Israel and their competing land claims, I decided to go back to the Bible and see what I might find about that sensitive region. I came upon this passage in the Old Testament: “If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it to us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.” (Numbers 14:8) I still quiver with excitement to think that I live so near that very land that God gave to Abraham and his descendents. It is just a 20-minute drive to Mount Nebo, the spot from which Moses gazed at that land.

Who now has “dibs” on that land? Why is it so important? I remember a 9th grade student naively asking in class a long time ago, “Why all the fighting? Isn’t it just a piece of land?”

Jerusalem is of course the most complicated in a host of complications—there are sites there holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In what must be a small piece of real estate crowded together are the revered Wailing Wall, which is the western retaining wall, the Jewish Temple Mount, the last vestige of the Temple of Solomon; there is the Dome of the Rock, the mosque celebrating Muhammad’s flight to Heaven; and nearby is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site determined by Roman Queen Helena to have been the place of the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. Imagine how burdened and enriched that piece of real estate is. It is an intersection of sacred sites, of absolutes, of righteousness.

Yet in all that physical proximity, there is so much psychological distance.

I am neither a Jew nor an Arab, but being in this area of the world, having lived in New York and hearing the cries for peace, and hearing the stories of Palestinians now, I cannot help but care. There is empathy and revulsion from hearing the stories of wrenching violence, of dashed hopes, of broken promises, and disbelief at the level of zealous intolerance.

Can both sides be right? Not surprisingly, both do have legitimate claims. One historical moment that has certainly exacerbated this tension came in 1917, as Britain faced dark days during the “Great War” (of course it wasn’t given the moniker, “World War I” until the sequel came ‘round 20 years later). In order to shore up support, Britain offered this important piece of real estate, Palestine, to Arabs in return for their support in the war effort, and to Zionists, in return for their support in the war effort. What a mess when Britain is on the winning side and both the Arabs and Zionists come to claim their lottery ticket!

After the devastation of the Holocaust in World War II, the United Nations paved the way for the creation of Israel, but of course, at the expense of the Arabs who lived in Palestine. And, as we know, hopes of peace doused in blood have been the order of the day for the last 60 years. Both sides claim victims. Each has suffered at the hands of outsiders, and each has been wounded by the other.

One of the best things of this Jordan experience is the opportunity to get inside the emotions of the Arabs who face that tiny Jewish state on the rim of the vast Arab world. This area has such yearning for peace. I see it in the newspapers every day. I hear it in the stories of people sharing family lore.

And yet, there is much suspicion and hurt. I found another Old Testament passage that may best sum up what I find about these two opposing sides. The passage found in Proverbs 18:14 reads, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit, who can bear?”

Such “wounded spirits” I see—will this be a season when hope and history rhyme?