Israel and Palestine part 1

I landed on the shores of the ancient holy land of Israel, on a hot August afternoon. The streets were empty, there had been a shelling near by to the city so most folks were staying home. I checked into my small hotel and went looking for dinner. Here is where I most delighted in the Middle East. One market had mangos the color of an orange and burnt red summer sunset, kissed by ripeness. The next market had all kinds of pickled vegetables; jeweled beets, onions and cucumbers suspended in heavily spiced brine of peppercorns and sesame seeds. Next to this was a falafel joint with the most delicious falafel I have ever had. Freshly dipped falafel balls sizzled in oil while the chef stuffed my homemade pita with pickled vegetables, hummus, fresh greens and tomato, drizzled in tahina sauce. I was in ecstasy over the good eating. I was also feeling the eerie quiet of a place under the repression of being a military zone. Coming from Greece, the tourist land of the islands, I really felt the intensity of Israel right off the bat.

The next day I decided to head down to Jerusalem. I came to Israel and Palestine to be in the heart of the conflict and I was feeling lonesome and ready for the next experience awaiting me in my non-violent direct action camp. On the way there I stopped by the sea for a swim. In the middle of the sandy beach 3 large watchtowers had been erected. A chance to see if the enemy was coming for a water attack? Maybe originally, but as I sat soaking up the rays I saw there true purpose. There were signs in Hebrew all over the beach and a sketched picture of a drowning victim. As the children and adults played in the water and one got out a little further from the rest, a man with a huge mega phone from within the tower would yell until the guilty person swam back to the others. First lesson in Israel, we will go to great lengths to keep our people safe.

Jerusalem is truly the center. A great pulsing heart runs the middle of the old town, where I spent most of my time. Ancient stone walls, a fortress of sorts, encircles the very fractioned districts within the city. The Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have a piece of this fortress and all seem to try to go about living shoulder to shoulder avoiding the eyes of the other. In the Jewish quarter I saw old men wearing fur caps walking in groups in the middle of heated debate, or perhaps just talking, hard to tell. In the Muslim quarter old ladies sold their fruit using an ancient weight and measure system, my bag of glossy grapes on one side, small metal balancing bars on the other. They would open my hand and count out the sheckles I owed them. I did not get a real chance to visit the Christian quarter but I do remember one night finding myself close to the Armenian district. A large stone wall with one small window of deep red stained glass showed me the way into this private and mostly empty district. I had just learned about the Armenian genocide and could feel the thousands of silent cries as I walked down the empty, echoing corridors of the street.

I met up with my team in Bethlehem; I had to catch a small bus called a "Service" in Jerusalem, which got me to the checkpoint into the West Bank. Check points were a huge part of this journey, being a part of the restrictive movement of this place really made me see how maddening it is not to have freedom. I was only a visitor; I can only imagine what life is like for those that have to deal with border crossings everyday to get to school or work. The tension and frustration were on high at these check points, the soldiers seemed to like what little power they held over the people crossing, making up all kinds of ridiculous reasons why someone could go or not go. I had the American passport, they only questioned my motive for going to the West Bank. I told them to see the holy land, at that point, 2001, the second Intifada had not started yet and travelers from all over were still making pilgrimages to Bethlehem.

When I arrived at The Paradise Hotel I had a cup of Arabic coffee with two of the Palestinian organizers and was shown to my room. Most of my nights in Palestine were spent at Palestinians homes, the hotel was a place for us to come together as a group and do trainings. I have been told this hotel was shelled a few years after our stay and did not exist anymore. In Palestine much felt ancient and temporary at the same time. It is a place of contradictions and a consistent state of turmoil.

The rest of the group arrived and I got to see what diversity we held. There was a small group of Israeli's, many American Palestinians, some American Muslims, Christian Palestinians living in Palestine, American and Canadian Jews, and a medley of Europeans with a larger group of Italians. We ranged in age from young adults; I was second to youngest, 20 at the time, to elders in there 60's. The average age was probably 40. We had vastly different levels of experience, backgrounds, personalities. We had all come there with one thing in common, we wanted to see change and we were willing to be on the front line of making it happen. It was so inspiring to be in that group. There were many times I questioned how I had even ended up there but I knew this was an experience of a life time so I stepped in and rode the wave.

The Czechs in Texas

Dear reader,
I promise to continue the tail from my last post and take you to Israel and Palestine. For now I am taking a brief detour from the land of memory to write about some of my people, the Czech Texans.

Heritage
parts of who I am, part of the makeup of me
I, the duplicity of being many things and only one thing
Self, reclaiming polka, reclaiming dirt under the fingernails,
reclaiming the sound of a tongue never spoken in my home.
Choosing to focus on one part of me, the me of my last name the people of my fathers father, the farmers of rural Texas and Rural Moravia, The people who chose Texas in all her glory to make their home, tell me your story

I am learning so much living in Texas. It is a heart felt experience doing the research of my immigrant people's to the United States. I love seeing small towns on the map of central Texas that have my families last name as the name of the main drag. Being an immigrant minority with a hard to say last name has not been easy. I have often wondered who my people are? What does it mean to be from the former Czechoslovakia? Also how did my people end up in Texas? I am finding out the answers to these questions and constructing a film all about it. It is so exciting being in the throws of a new and very personal project.

Today I read an account from one of the earliest settlers in Cat Spring Texas, Austin county. He talked about coming to the US to flee economic and religious persecution in Bohemia. He arrived here with all his children and started off living with friends and relatives until they saved enough to have their own farm. At this time the civil war broke out and Czechs were being forced to join the confederate army.
"Here I was fleeing my homeland, where I was a serf to the ruling German Hapsburg, and now I am being forced to defend slavery and fight to keep it in place." It is heart breaking to imagine. Many Czechs hid to not be taken into the army or opted to do manual labor in Mexico, hauling cotton. The man who write the account had a son that died doing this brutal work. I am learning how the civil war affected immigration, also about the importance of the cotton trade with Mexico to keep the confederacy economically afloat. It reminds me of the maquiladoras today where Mexicans are being badly treated and payed unfairly to produce tons of cheap clothing for people in the US.

I want my sweet pea to know about her people. I don't expect her to take the same kind of fascination with it that I have, but I want her to know where her people came from and have sensual memories of this place. That is one of the reasons we moved to Texas, to soak up this land and build our own experiences into the landscape of stories I only heard growing up. I am learning a lullaby in Czech. I have the melody and am now working on the words. This song I know my daughter will take with her. It can be her special piece in a great symphony of heritages we have blessed her with. If this is the only Czech she and I learn together I know I will have done a good job, passing on one of our native tongues.

Memories of salt and travel

The air was thick with anticipation, I read about the non-violent direct action camp on Indymedia. I had talked to the Palestinian organizer. Plans were set. I was leaving Lesbos. Lesbos the ancient Greek island ruled by Sappho and still ruled by lesbians, at least in Scala Arosos, the small beach community I had come to love for my weeks stay camping next to the sea.

I made British lezzy friends, fellow beach campers with adventurous hearts. We swam, one evening, to a small volcanic island just off shore made up of small indention's shaped like ears. we deemed ourselves prince's of the Isle of Ears and watched the sunset before heading back to shore. I stayed up one night into the early morning with Charlie trying to get on one of the fisherman's boats. They wouldn't let us on, try as we might to convince them to take a few young, wild women for there private and profound ritual of catching our lunch and dinner. I was a vegetarian at the time and would not have eaten the fish, but still liked the romantic idea of being on the boat at dawn.

My days were spent swimming in the deep teal of the calm sea, laying naked on the beach, feeling the warm sensation of sand caking my bottom. Then, run in again, for the rush of salty aliveness that only comes from being in the sea. I did not want to bath afterword. I let my hair get mated into new configurations. I wore the same sun dress for days on end and would lick my arms in the evenings, feeling the days swim coat my tongue. The salty sensual experience would continue into the night as I danced with my new Greek and Norwegian friends at the lezzy bar on the strip. Pumping our bodies to loud euro disco and drinking shots of ouzo, letting the waves of the sea send our dance moves into snaking, fluid, motion.

I found a new rhythm to traveling solo in the Greek Isles. I hitchhiked by myself, spent hours alone with my journal and my cassette player staring out into the sea, learning from her and other travelers and locals how to open myself up and how to contain all that I needed within me and my backpack. Being in such a beautiful place made me also contemplate what I wanted to do next, how I wanted to make my dent on the world. I wanted to harness the power I felt at the WTO protests in 1999 and continue finding ways to reach out and get to know people. I was searching for my next move. The plan was to meet up with my dear traveler friend in Israel. I wanted to see what was happening there with my own eyes. I knew that newspapers lied and I wanted to trust my own perspective.

In the tiny internet cafe on Lesbos I found my answer. The afternoon the plan was set a traveling party of Greek merrymakers paraded into the cafe with a boom box and a giant watermelon filled with homemade watermelon juice liquor. They filled the mouths of all the patrons with a ladle laughing and dancing in the buzzing heat of the afternoon. What a happy moment, caught in time, a sketch of what it was to be a vacationer on the Isle of Lesbos.

I set sail for Israel and Palestine the next day. I booked a 3 day ferry adventure that would lead me to Haifa a city in the north of Israel via multiple small islands including Semi and Cypress. I chose the sleeping on the deck option for the cheapest travel. I wish they had this option in the states. What could be more romantic then sleeping under the stars on a boat, waking up to buy fruit and olive oil at small markets on the tiny islands we would pause at along the journey? Well it was romantic and it was also uncomfortable, loud and sometimes very bright. I found a deserted part of the boat to sleep. On top of a metal box that held life jackets, I made my sleeping bag home for 3 nights. It was a little quieter there, a little further from the roar of the ferry engine and also away from the giant, florescent, lights, that the ship had on all night long, blocking the glow of stars.

I spent my days staring into the long stretches of deep blue and writing in my journal, similar to my beach meditations, but this time with more purpose and anticipation for the big unknown to come. I also met travelers from all over the place. A group of Germans were also going to Israel to study and become Methodist ministers. I met up with one of the women in the group later on and stayed cloistered in her abby a few nights under a pink peppercorn tree. There was a family that was Lebanese American going back to visit relatives in Lebanon. I was embarking on a journey to a new part of the ancient world. A place I had only heard stories about from my childhood. Thinking of walking around the old city in Jerusalem, walking where Jesus had walked, sent chills up my spine.

The Islands and main land of Greece showed me a window into a way of living and being in the present I had never experienced before. The heat and water got me in my skin, the time to just be with myself changed me and taught me even more self reliance and self love and care. I liked being alone. I hope to give the same amount of freedom to my daughter to explore who she is and how she fits into the web of life and this world.