work work work work

 My Arabic is terrible. It's important to start here because of the ramifications it poses for my ability to integrate and communicate in Palestine. After being woken up at 4:30 by the call to prayer that is piped out from mosques across the city, I fell back into a partial sleep until I need to get ready for work and catch the shuttle at 7:30. The prayers are quite loud, but it reminds of the Cheney trains, loud and caucophonic, but something that I am sure will soon become background noise to me while living her  I was able this morning to squeak out a few "sabah el kheer's" (good morning) to the individuals on my shuttle as I walked into my office at the university but still felt very foreign and out of place. I spent the first few hours reading  Haaretz.com, a relatively decent Israeli newspaper, and checking my email. I had sent an email to my boss Kherieh asking what I should be doing since I hadn't received an assignment yet, but as of this time have yet to hear back. She is out on maternity leave right now though and my co-workers in the office seemed to have nothing for me to do or little concern with my presence in their space. Eventually I was asked to help the Public Relations office by editing a press release about a recent visit by a Dean from Lancaster and happily obliged. There were few grammatical mistakes, but the wording, while comprehensible was obviously not by that of a native English speaker. The person who came to drop off the press release was a young man named Tariq, a gentle and soft spoken individual who had graduated from the university with a degree in English. I mad minor edits in the whole document, mostly employing my innate thesaurus to replace repetitive terms and slicken up the document. I found one sentence especially challenging though, because while I understood what it meant, the wording was cumbersome and was difficult to re-write. I sat trying multiple versions of phrasing until Tariq suddenly appeared at the office and informed that they needed the document quickly for a presentation that was going to be happening this afternoon in the auditorium. I asked for five more minutes and he complied, during which time I finally decided upon a phrasing that seemed to reflect some of my regular work back in the states. By no means do I consider myself to be a wordsmith, but I do think I have a talent for smoothly transcribing ideas in a way that appeals to readings that really bring out the concept behind the paper. I think it is best described as "schmoozing on paper" and was greatly honed during my work with IFC, the Fraternity, and ASEWU. By no means am I an author but more like the scripting version of a car salesman with morals.


I called Tariq and told that it was done and he came by the office to pick it up and thanked me generously for my help. He seemed like a really nice individual and even invited me to the presentation that was going on that afternoon that I had been preparing the document for, and I happily accepted.  I asked Yesmine, the person I have mostly been interacting with in the department, if I could attend the presentation and she said there was no point since it would be in Arabic and thus dashed my hopes of some form of stimulus in exchange for further office boredom. I really felt like an elementary school child trapped in a classroom who looks out the window longingly on a beautiful spring day. I would just stare out the window at the students sitting and walking all over the campus and so very much desiring to be a part of it all.

Nick came up from his office and was able to convince my co-workers to go with him to the presentation that I had been invited to. It turns out that the woman speaking was one of the few Israeli Arabs (Arabs that live in Israel Proper, not in Palestine) in the Knesset (Israeli legislature). I recommend reading about her here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haneen_Zoabi to get a full picture of who she is. Even though she was speaking in Arabic, I was lucky enough to actually be seated by Tariq, who translated for Nick and I. The Arabic language has this way about it that seems so much more emotive and passionate than any english speaker could ever be. She spoke about the need for Palestinian infighting and gave me a much clearer first hand account of how Arabs and Palestinians view the occupation and how Israel is trying to completely erase the concept of their identity and culture. Villages that had existed for hundreds of years with Arab citizens were being renamed with Hebrew. It demonstrates how Israel truly does not seem interested in peace, but instead the complete eradication of the historical presence of Arabs on the holy land. She spoke of how the Nakba, when Israelis pushed Palestinians off their land and began the greatest diaspora of the modern age,  is no longer taught in Israel. It would be like textbooks in america not mentioning how we took our land from Native Americans or the trail of tears. While it was sad to hear, the way she spoke incited a revolutionary spirit I think in everyone there, inspiring people to struggle, to preserve their culture, to embrace their heritage and never give in to Israeli oppression and occupation. I find that it is hard to talk about the plight of the Palestinians though because it is so complicated and the mass conception is crafted by such powerful rhetoric that now I truly see that you must be here to understand it. I was so thankful to have Tariq there to translate for me and afterwards he told me how much he enjoyed meeting me and that he would like to keep in touch. As soon as I get a phone here I'll have to track him down.