New post so soon? Yes, I’m motivated to tell some tales of furthering the Rotary mission by spreading goodwill and understanding.
The next sentence, all five words of it, may get me into some trouble somewhere along the line but I think it’s worth it all things considered. I went to Palestine yesterday. I do mean Palestine, as in the area nominally governed by the Palestinian Authority, specifically Ramallah; I’m not ready to tackle all of the political issues surrounding The Conflict here in a humble blog which is intended to record my exploits as an ambassador of goodwill.
About a year ago, someone I consider something of a mentor advised me that, when talking to a large audience, I should “focus on the positive things I can say truthfully and, of course don’t be dishonest, but try not to denigrate other things.” I really liked the thought, and, thinking about it, it kind of reminds me of one of my favorite Disney quotes:
“If you can’t say somethin’ nice, then don’t say anything at all.” (Thumper, Bambi)

So, in the spirit of that advice, I won't speak about my experience at the Israeli border crossing, but I'm happy I can talk about my entire experience in Palestine, which was nothing short of amazing. I’ll explain in a later post, but I magically managed to be driving my car (my beautiful 1996 Jeep Cherokee which I need to take better care of). Trying to reach the city, which is just north of Jerusalem (known as Al-Quds in Arabic), I was completely lost driving along the separation wall. I decided to admit defeat, hang up my pride, and do the unthinkable: ask for directions. My first surprise when I stopped at a gas station was that the gentleman I asked responded immediately in Arabic, which is often not the case in Amman. Second surprise and long story short, I ended up with an elderly Palestinian man in my car showing me where to go.He got out of the car eventually, so he could head to Jerusalem, but he gave me exact directions to the Ramallah Movenpick, where I was scheduled to give a presentation to the Ramallah Rotary Club (is that the first time I mentioned my presentation?).

Driving through Ramallah 10 minutes later, completely lost, despite the precise directions my new friend had given me, I managed to get caught up in the after-school rush between the old Quaker schools, one for boys, the other for girls. I made it through, however, to my dismay, I ended up in the middle of town caught in a flood of people and stalled my car. No problem, just restart it right?...Turn the key…and no go. Immediately I am swarmed by about ten guys, who help me out of the street and started helping me to try to start my car.

First go, try second-gear rolling start. No go. Then another guy jumped in to try it just in case. Still no good. Okay, so I pop the hood and now I have about 6 guys around giving advice. One guy is visiting after some 40 years away; his current home is Florida, where he teaches English and has a family. After a while we determine the motor is overheated, which is baffling to me since I’d never had a problem before, my coolant was full, and my engine oil level was a solid “safe.” So one guy, Mohammed Muathin, a middle-age, tall lanky guy, decided to chill out with me and drink some tea. So we chat for about 30 minutes and decide to try the car again. Still no.

At that point we decide to try the Kahribajii (electrician) or find a mechanic. We roll around Ramallah in a taxi talking to different kahribajiis and nobody can help us because they didn’t have an ampere gauge. Finally we find one guy, ‘Ali, in the middle of one of the refugee camps who can help. We go back to my car with his gear, he tells me to turn the key because he wants to see if there’s a spark, and lo and behold the car starts. Go figure, bring the mechanic and the car behaves. Both the mechanic and Mohammed jump into my car and we roll back into the refugee camp to ‘Ali’s garage so he could double check everything.

The car problem has persisted, but so far I’ve been able to avoid catastrophic failure, despite some close calls. Anyway, Mohammed then drove off with me to take me to the Movenpick. At this point, Mohammed had been with me for three hours… just took three hours out of his day to help me out. Amazing.

So I go to the meeting to give my presentation. I end up only talking for about 5 minutes or so because they had a packed schedule, but I feel really good about what I got to say. Somehow the shorter time I had to speak forced me to be more focused on the message and I think consequently more poignant, thereby better achieving my goal of sharing a little about my home and hopefully bringing it closer to Ramallah.

Afterwards I took my friend, Laura, who was giving her own presentation, around (I haven’t mentioned her to this point because her journey to Ramallah had suddenly and somewhat disturbingly diverged from my own. In keeping with the positivity message, I decided to exclude that part for this blog, I'll just say she was held up at the border for almost 6 hours). I was taking her to meet her friend, a Ramallahan, with whom she was staying. We wander through the very confusing streets of Ramallah, which is spread over a few winding hills, necessitating winding streets. Finally coming into where we needed to go, at about 9:30pm, in the pitch black, my car dies again.

At this point, after all of the difficulties of the day, many of which I’ve not discussed, I’m getting pretty frustrate, as you might imagine. But along came Laura’s friend, Ahmed, and his company, who help me move the car out of the road to cool down. He then announced “Well, nothing to do now but wait then, so come have a drink with us and watch the soccer game.” So I went to hang out with them in downtown Ramallah. After about an hour, I decided I needed to get going because I was heading back over the border to get to class the next day. Ahmed then came along with me, helped me start the car, and took me all the way into the hotel where I was staying.

I woke up early to get an early start to the border. Scratch that- I got completely lost again. I drove across pretty much every corner of Ramallah and its outskirts thinking I was heading in the right direction. Finally, when I realized how hopelessly lost I was, I asked for help and ended up with another nice gentleman in my car who was heading my way again. When I dropped him off, he gave me directions to where I needed to go, I headed about 100 meters down the road, turned the corner, and my car promptly died again. Great.

So I get out, get some water and try to wait for my engine to cool down. I ended up being in the way of a small supply truck and when I told them what was up, they immediately began going through ways to help. After about 15 minutes, we decided to try the rolling start method and- surprise, surprise- it works. As I’m thanking the two guys who helped me by pushing, out walks one of the guys from the day before who smiles, we great each other, and he happily points me in the right direction to get back to the bridge.

That’s pretty much the end of the story of my time in Palestine, as far as the interesting part, anyway. I learned a lot; even things I knew beforehand and had seen beforehand, seeing it all again simply drove the lessons deeper. But since I plan on at least one or two more posts about this trip, I’ll spare more reading for this post and include those lessons later.
As always, thank you for your interest!

Respectfully,

Brennan

To be straightforward, I have had a number of problems in beginning this post. Other than my own mental blocks, I’ve reached another fever pitch of potential topics on which I would like to write, all of them bouncing around in my head. It’s something of a catch 22 where I just put off doing the writing and then more potential topics build up and then I put it off even more… After sitting on it for a long time, I think I’ve decided I will talk about two things. First, I will make good on my promise to tell the story of Dr. Fear, for a lighthearted break in my one-person cacophony of political indignity. Then I will discuss some things that are bothering me about general conceptions from the West about the Middle East… in other words resuming that one-person cacophony.

So the story of Dr. Fear: Dr. Fear is my Methods of Research in Political Science professor. I debated for a while with myself whether to call him Dr. Fear or Dr. Dreams. Fear came from our first class, which he began by asking “Who has fear?” A number of people raised their hands timidly, in response. He then asked, “Who does not have fear?” A number of others of us raised our hands, of course me among them in order to establish my macho confidence which every young 23 year old guy is supposed to have (… right?). He looked us all over and said “I don’t believe you.” But then he looked at me, pointed, and said “Except maybe you.” I’m not sure why, maybe because I looked different from everyone else in class, but I wasn’t really sure how to respond.

I was set on calling him Dr. Fear from then on, somewhat wryly, until he gave a completely off-the-cuff speech on the importance of our work. Now I know a lot of people question the aim of the political, or “soft,” sciences and often outright scoff at them. Not surprisingly, I find myself somewhat defensive of my chosen track in those “soft” sciences, but I’ve never been extremely articulate in my own stance. Dr. Fear, interrupting himself in the middle of a lecture, suddenly asked “Why is political science important? Why is our work important and why is it important we actually seek the truth?” He looked at our blank faces for a second, and sensed our panic (you can imagine, a professor who begins his first class with “who has fear?” is not going to be the easiest professor). He answered himself by saying “Because politics directly impacts peoples’ lives. It impacts their livelihood. But more than that, it impacts peoples’ dreams! And bad policies not only hurt lives, they can destroy peoples’ dreams! That’s why we do what we do!”

That tangent brought me a whole heap of respect for this Professor, whose real name is Zaid ‘Eyadat, because he’s right. I think back to my friend Khalid, whose own dreams are so restricted by his identity as a Palestinian in Jordan; and Jordan is certainly not the only country in the world in which dreams and hopes are destroyed and lives are deeply impacted by politics and political decisions. As poignant and articulate as Dr. Fear’s speech on dreams was and despite the impact it had on me personally, given the dilemma between naming someone Dr. Fear and Dr. Dreams and being the young macho guy, I had to go with Dr. Fear. It just sounds so much cooler.

To conclude, quickly, I’d just like to comment on something that has bothered me in a lot of ways over the past few weeks as a result of numerous comments of a type that, at one point, I thought were simple banter. I’ve recently come to realize there is a large, if not dominant, aspect of an insidious yet subtle seriousness hidden within those comments. So:
Despite the tendencies of popular portrayal, such as on wayward covers of Newsweek or “scholarly articles” depicting the common Western conception of an Arab Muslim complete with horns, fangs, and wild unkempt hair, the Middle East is not full of demons. Women are not attacked in the streets for not veiling their faces. Men are not required to wear a crazy-long unkempt beard, except in the most crazy-unkempt places, such as the former Taliban held Afghanistan, which in all honesty should not even be considered part of the Middle East to begin with. Here in Jordan, you never see a weapon (meaning a rifle or “gun”) in the streets except for those carried by the police or the internal Gendarme. In fact, having inquired into the process, it is much more difficult to acquire and keep an assault weapon here in Jordan than it is to do so in the vast majority of the United States, where I would be able to attain one in days if I so wanted. I’m not saying that to knock on the United States, I am saying that to praise some aspects of the Middle East and try to confer the sense that for all of its negative reputation, the Middle East is not a terrorist filled wild-west scenario. In fact, by far the most dangerous part of my day is driving, but that might be said for any place in the world.

Thank you for your interest. I hope I said something worth reading.

Brennan