Chapter 2.3: lâ ilâha illâ allâh [There is no God but God]
A New Midwife.
I met a man the evening of the rooftop morning. Skin tinted brown with a nose bigger than mine, he enunciated English thicker and heavier than I did. He wore a red polo shirt with the collar wavy from over washing, miming the gestures of his graying hair. The man could stare you down into a humble posture even with a little bit of flab around his chin; as if he had lived more life than you did–more pain, more fear, more love. He was a Israeli man. He kissed a Palestinian man on the cheek; the second man I met that evening on the rooftop of the hotel.
A simple kiss between two grown men would refashion my perspective. An akward statement? Indeed.
Rami was an Israeli. His daughter was murdered by Palestinian suicide bombers when she was fourteen in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, how could you be holy with blood in the cracks of your streets? You drive men mad. He was angry, as a father should be, and lived as such for several days. Eventually, he would meet Palestinians for the first time at a gathering of Israeli and Palestinian individuals who have felt the sting of death in their immediate and extended families. There are many.
He met men and women like Mazen. Mazen grew up in the Dheisheh refugee camp, a hub of families living displaced since 1948ʼs creation of Israel. Mazen lived his entire life displaced, hearing tales of their old family home now occupied by Israelis. The majority of his brothers and himself would see the inside of Israeli prisons for no prevailing reason. Mazenʼs father would be shot and killed by Israeli police for retrieving milk for his family one night. Milk.
There are many similar stories; similar people, regardless of nationality or lack of thereof. Overtime they would dive face first into their pain, into the conflict that has left its wound, built walls around that wound and posted guards in security towers at its four corners. The group would crumble that wall and begin to heal it, together.
Forgiveness was the result and the beginning. Rami could now kiss Mazen in greeting, hug him and call him his brother.
My brother Mazen...what haunting words to a house of racists. A radical unity that would make prejudice tremble in its oversized pajamas.
Rami, the bereaved father, and Mazan, the bereaved son, were bonded by pain, as Rami would say. The blood of the daughter and father wouldn’t be wiped away clean, someone else will do that one day- but it began to mean something vastly different.
What happened? What made their bond potent enough to crack, rupture and cave the security wall partitioning them?
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Continued on 11/7/11
Continued from Chapter 2.2
Chapter 2.1
Chapter 1
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