Living Stones

It's 10am on a Thursday, and the majority of my day thus far was spent atop an olive tree. Students in branches beside me had rewarded my appreciation for their Arabic singing with a couple verses of "Old Town Road", delighted when I sang along with them, dropping olives marking an unsteady beat below us.

But by 10 I am no longer in Beit Sahour picking olives, I am up in Beit Jala, awaiting a couple hours of grant writing and editing at the Environmental Education Center. When I am dropped off, however, only one person was awaiting my arrival; a friend of mine sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. He said his hellos, I think expecting me to rush into the office and begin work. But sans supervisor, I had no work other than to mess around on my email in the office by myself. I returned to the curb just outside the center and plopped down next to my friend, who for this blog I'll call Khaled.

Though my friendship with Khaled consists a lot more of smiles and feeble attempts at the other's language, it's still a friendship I consider as one of my favorites from the array of wonderful relationships I've been blessed with here. That being said, it is pretty difficult for us to communicate beyond entry-level conversation; "good morning", "how are you?", etc. All this to say, it was a bit bold of me to sit down next to him with no one around to translate. There've been multiple times where we've begun conversation only to be harshly cut off by the cruel weight of the language barrier. I leave these instances with a lot of frustration--the silence between us so pregnant with questions, remarks, and wonderings; all of them in the wrong language and thus unasked and unsaid.

But something struck me that day, it felt like it would just be stupid not to sit down and try to connect more with the person behind the language barrier. Through broken Arabic, broken English, and a fair amount of Google Translate, we had the longest conversation we'd had yet. He asked me how I liked Palestine, adding how "halowe" (beautiful) he sees it himself. He made sure to include Jerusalem as part of Palestine. I didn't want to, but the question had to be asked,

"Inte ruht a la l-Quds?" I asked (Have you been to Jerusalem?). Only twice, he told me. I already knew why, but he listed the explanatory English words he knew nevertheless; checkpoints, soldiers, inaccessibly yet necessary ID cards. His eyes begged no pity, harbored no animosity, yet humbly asked for me to understand.

From previous conversations, I knew Khaled lives in a refugee camp in Bethlehem. I was finally able to ask him that morning what I'd been wondering since I'd learned of his refugee status-where was his family originally from? He pulled up the Wikipedia page for a small village in Hebron which is now an Israeli settlement. Silently, we poured over the internet's pictures of a place Khaled's grandparents once called home. He told me he's always dreamed of going to Jaffa, a Palestinian-village-turned-settlement near Tel Aviv, right on the Mediterranean sea. I'd visited this village within my first two weeks of arriving in the Holy Land. Hearing this dream, I felt my stomach twist in guilt for not appreciating it more.

Khaled told me he still has hope, and taught me its Arabic word, "'amal".

"Min wen 'amal-ak?" I asked him, broken Arabic for: "where does your hope come from?".

"Nas" means people in Arabic. "hiloeh Filistine" means "beautiful Palestine".

Later that same day, after a couple hours of grant editing and email drafting, I left work early for the Reformation service at which I was expected in the Church of the Redeemer, Old City Jerusalem. Getting there held no ounce of physical difficulty for me. I hopped on a bus, flashed my blue passport at the checkpoint, and whoosh--I was in Jerusalem. Emotionally, however, it was the hardest bus ride I've ever taken. I thought about how highly Khaled spoke of Jerusalem that morning, even after being there only twice. Between the two of us, how is it that I am a mere bus ride away from this holy place and the one who has lived in the Holy Land his entire life is flat-out denied access? If Khaled and I were to switch bodies that very day he could enter a place he'd have to spend months, maybe years, applying and waiting for permission to access in his own body.

Walking through markets that have sold goods to travelers since before Jesus's time, I felt my privilege walk with me.

But, not two hours later, as I carried two heavy trays of yummy pastries to be served at the reception later that night into the Church of the Redeemer, something amazing happened. A bright young voice called my name,

"Mad-dee?' I looked down the stairs with which I was descending from the rooftop where we had accessed the kitchen to retrieve our appetizer-laden platters. One of my sixth grade students stood at the bottom, dressed to the nines in black shoes a little too big for him, a button-up black shirt, and slacks. A second student fell in behind him upon hearing my name. Once he saw me,

"Mad-dee, what are you doing here?" By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, a whole clump of my students were there, standing in the hallway, grins spreading ear to ear. I could have cried.

It turns out the choir from the school I work at had been chosen to sing at this service and had miraculously received, for this night only, special permission to enter the city. My heart leapt at being able to be in this place with some of the people that make this land so incredibly special to me. After a couple minutes of goofiness and grins, the students ducked into the next room to practice their songs. I sat on an arm of the couch and listened, Arabic words woven through melodies and harmonies of Palestinian song wafting off the stone walls of the church.

They had no adult director telling them where to sit, when to come in, if someone was singing too loud or off-key. They worked together, respectfully checking each other when needed, but clearly all striving for the wholeness of their music, nothing else.

I have never in my life heard such authentically genuine and passionate song, and heard Khaled's earlier words in my mind,

"Hiloeh Filistine"

Beautiful, Palestine.

View from the rooftop of Church of the Redeemer

my wonderful and talented and inspiring students