I’ve lived in the Holy Land for the last seven months. This is my last week in Bethlehem before I head to India for a month, so I’ve been taking care of business. My apartment is nearly packed up: a pile of donations, a pile to leave with friends and a pile to take with me.
Just a few days ago, I went to the Jordanian Consular office in Ramallah to get a visa for my upcoming trip. After traveling two hours to get there, it was closed.
I made a new friend, a guy who also needed a visa and was equally disappointed to find the office locked.
The policeman guarding the embassy immediately sauntered over to chat with us, gun slung over his torso like a shield.
He was from Nablus and only twenty years old, though he appeared to be in his late twenties. He was built, with dark skin and a great smile. His English was better than my Arabic, which really doesn’t take much. We bantered back and forth, not really understanding each other but we enjoyed the company.
Towards the end of our conversation we finally exchanged names. Mine: Cate. My new Irish friend’s: Johnny. The policeman’s: Hammam.
I giggled. Johnny gave me a strange look. Hamman rolled his eyes to the sky.
“Hammam?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Not hammam, it’s Hammam,” he said in clarification.
Now here is where I have to explain to those who don’t speak a lick of Arabic, that it is a very difficult language. Letters that, to an Arabic speaker sound completely different, to me sound exactly the same. Think of fifteen and fifty. If you say them fast, they almost sound alike. Maybe that is what it’s like.
I also should tell you that “hammam” means bathroom. (Where is the bathroom? “Wen El Hammam?”)
So for the next few minutes we practiced the difference between Hammam and hammam. I never quite got it. But Hammam was a good sport and handled my giggles with a smile.
“Your name means bathroom!”
“La! Hammam! Not hammam! Say it…”
Johnny and I finally decided it was time to go. As we walked down the hill, headed back to downtown Ramallah, he said, “I thought you were crazy when you started laughing at his name. You were laughing at a man with a gun!”
It was a fun morning, even if I didn’t get the visa I needed. It means I have to change my travel plans a bit, but I still smile when I think of Hammam’s refreshing sense of humor and tenacity to struggle through a conversation mainly in English. I had a great time.
Today I did another errand. I traveled to Jerusalem to send a letter.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “But I thought she lived in Bethlehem? Why would she travel to a different city simply to send a letter?”
Good question.
When I went to the Manger Square post office in Bethlehem, they said it would take at least 20 days to arrive, if not longer. All Palestinian mail is sent to Israel first, for security reasons, he said.
So the next day I traveled an hour to Jerusalem to go to an Israeli post office. I crossed a checkpoint and rode the Arab bus #24 into the Old City. Then I walked up the hill to the post office on Jaffa St.
There, I was able to pay extra to have my urgent letter arrive in three days.
As I returned to the Arab bus station to catch the #21 back to Bethlehem, I wondered what I would have done if I were Palestinian and didn’t have the golden ticket, or a special ID, that allows me to enter Israel.
My American passport gets me through checkpoints in a hot minute, but if I were a Palestinian without permission to enter Israel, that letter would have taken 20 days to arrive. I would have had no other option.
In the Holy Land, Palestinians are second-class citizens. They do not control their mail. They do not control their roads. They do not control their borders. They do not have access to the sea without Israeli permission. There is a Wall being built around them and, sometimes, they are the ones hired to build it.
Some of my stories from the Holy Land are about humorous misunderstandings. But most of them are about Walls and checkpoints, machine guns and raids, struggles and perseverance.
Cat Rabenstine is a freelance journalist living in the West Bank for the past seven months. She maintains www.withoutamap.org and teaches journalism workshops.
