Category: 2015

It was another lovely car ride up the East Coast. We came to a Rest Stop and availed our selves of the facilities and a much needed cup of espresso coffee. By the way, Dunkin’ Donuts serves up a much more delicious espresso than Starbucks. The premises and facilities in these stops have certainly moved up in this world from where they were twenty years ago. No Touch Bathrooms for one! Self-flushing toilets, no-touch faucets! A finicky paranoid’s hygienic dream! For those taking road trips, the Rest Stops are also very egalitarian. Whether you are rich or poor you are availing yourself of the same facilities, coffee and all else. Lovely!

On the road again, destination: Delaware, the first state, and feasting on a fabulous Middle Eastern lunch with a wonderful friend whom I have known since we were teenagers. On to the Jersey Shore and to staying with another gracious and terrific friend whom I have known since I was nine years old! Is there anything in the world that is more enchanting than to be with people who know my history, to whom I do not have to explain anything, with whom the reconnection is simply precious?!

And, oh, how I love the New Jersey law that still has attendants to fill up one’s gas tank. Why did they do away with this in other states? Some inane reason or the other, I am sure, as many of these decisions are, and the corrupt lawmakers that issue them!

The hedge fund managers and other investors here have turned what are supposedly summer vacation cottages into grotesquely huge McMansions. Not pretty, really!

In the car again and on to New York! New York! This city is definitely not as beautiful as, let’s say, Paris, Belgrade, London or Rome. Nevertheless, it has a magic aura to it, vibrancy and an excitement that I did not find anywhere else. Walking again through the familiar landmarks humming with tourists from all over the world, with New Yorkers and other American visitors, fills me with exuberance! Fifth Avenue, with all its familiar brand stores, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Broadway! Oh, how delightful! Lying on the pavement, in between the swank buildings where a one bedroom apartment goes for two million, and a five bedroom for twenty-five million, is a man who is spasm-ing either from drug withdrawal, or is very sick. Soon enough the NYPD appear on the scene, followed shortly by an ambulance. On the doorsteps of a church a few feet up the road are three obviously homeless people with their gear in small plastic bags next to them. How can this be, with all these billionaires and millionaires inhabiting this fabulous city? Really, why?

On to a twenty dollar cup of coffee at the renowned Plaza Hotel! Indeed! It’s nice to pretend that I am one of the rich and famous occasionally; however, the really rich and famous have upscale-d, and left the Plaza to the wannabe rich and famous. Frankly that five dollar cup of coffee at the corner café with ordinary people tastes just as good sans the snobbish airs!

My son-in-law guides us to the horse and buggy stand. He wants to take pictures inside the incredible Central Park. Our knowledgeable driver is pointing out all the landmarks on the left and right. We are all chatting. He asks where we are from. Virginia, we say. Originally, he asks? Ah, that accent! A dead giveaway all the time!

“I’m Palestinian. I was born in Jerusalem.”

“Really? My mother lives there.”

Wouldn’t you know it! From among all the horse and buggy drivers who do I get but the Jewish guy?!

“She might be living in my house.”

“Not in your house,” he says pleasantly, “but maybe on your land.”

Isn’t it ironic? Tragic? Unjust and unfair?

Later on, and after feasting on New York pizza (you can’t, absolutely cannot, visit New York without savoring a New York pizza) we take a walk in the High Line Park. Innovation and pure guts made two New Yorkers seize on this strip of an old and unused part of New York’s rail system, abandoned to the natural and wild foliage that sprang on and all around it and transform it into a lovely park with restaurants, kiosks, walking paths and open markets all around. It is as fabulous as the city in which it resides!

Back at the hotel I take an appointment from the hairdresser. That’s one thing about this city. It leaves you feeling filthy because of the thousands upon thousands of cars, taxis, people and Ubers. De Blasio, New York’s Mayor, I found out, is in a major feud with Uber. Like most politicians, he probably has an ulterior and corrupt motive. You see, the city’s corporate system has found another opening to advertise and create more consumers for its greedy exploitation. They have forced the Yellow Cabs to install a TV screen on the partition between the driver and passengers that is constantly bombarding riders with advertisements and what not! It is most irritating! De Blasio must have padded his wallet handsomely allowing this absurd enterprise! However, Uber has cleaner cabs, they arrive exactly on time, the drivers are super polite and it is much more of a pleasure to ride with them than in a Yellow Cab blaring advertisements at me! Pretty disgusting, Mr. Mayor! (I understood after coming back that he has pulled back from that adventure!)

The hairdressing salon has an appointment available. Most of their customers are “in the Hamptons” for the weekend, as we are told! Pretty chi-chi city, huh?! On our way to the hotel though, and, yes, delightfully riding with Uber, the police stop all cars at an intersection. President Obama, we found out later, in a motorcade of about thirty cars (seriously?), was in town with his daughters. They were having lunch around Gramercy Park and then attending a play, “Hamilton.” Yes, even our President it seems loves visiting the Big Apple!

My hairdresser is a Japanese woman. She asks about my accent (I’m telling you, it’s a dead giveaway!) and where I am from “originally.” She looks very surprised; as if I am the first Palestinian she’s ever met? She also follows that by telling me that I look like I am in my late fifties, “maybe early sixties?” Could it be that the flattery is a bit of guilt for having harbored negative thoughts about “those awful Palestinian terrorists?” After all, she lives in New York and probably many of her customers are zealous Jewish women who believe that we are, in fact, terrorists. Ah well! Guilt, or no guilt, flattery of this kind nevertheless, and invariably, and even for a few minutes, tickles my senses! How gullible we women can sometimes be!

There is an abundance of workers in this city, a constant flow of menial and semi-menial labor, wait staff, lifeguards and hotel workers etc. etc. that keeps the rich and famous, as well as their children and breeds of dogs, well attended to. Many of these workers, I am told, are nowadays being brought in by a new crop of companies that hire them from their countries of origin. They contract them for a certain period of time, ship them over, house them, manage the paperwork required and make sure that they are shipped back after their stint! A lucrative business that together with laundered money deposited in the many empty brick and mortar apartments, the tainted money from the arms industry and from the hundreds of private contractors and financial blood-suckers who have made out like bandits from America’s never-ending war enterprise and Wall Street capitalist greed, all help keep this city awash with money!

We have dinner at a delicious French Bistro where we eat real authentic, fantastic French Fries! Remember when we shamelessly dumped French Fries and renamed them Freedom Fries during those first months of that terrible and unconscionable war on Iraq? We emptied the French wine bottles onto the streets also! So jingoistic! So ridiculous! So infantile!

The story of New York, with its Ellis Island once welcoming immigrants, its Rikers Island prison complex, its posh neighborhoods and wealthy inhabitants living alongside the drug addicted, the homeless, the desperate, the ignored veterans is merely a mirror of the country as a whole: it is undoubtedly a beautiful country, its salad mix of mostly wonderful people quite delightful. Nonetheless, it is always overshadowed by its unjust foreign policies and its unfair domestic policies; its corrupt politicians and many of its ludicrous laws. I guess that’s how it will continue to be unless people wake up and get seriously involved rather than remain ensconced in their immediate lives and petty needs. Yet, it is no different in this sense from any of the corrupted world capitals with their wicked Ruling Classes versus Us. However, New York remains uniquely New York. Decadent Gotham, Thrilling and Pretty Amazing!

There is an allure about the seas and oceans that especially draws and exhilarates people who grew up close to them. So it was that the minute my eyes saw that vast blue expanse stretching itself far beyond the horizon my spirits soared and I began to feel the rejuvenation coursing through my veins. The coast of the Atlantic Ocean is certainly unlike that of the Mediterranean Sea; its waves are more robust, its waters murkier and colder, its tides stronger. Nevertheless, my enjoyment was immense as I allowed the strong sun to go deep into my bones and to penetrate my every pore. Oh, what joy!

As I looked around me, I was astounded at the number of people. It seemed as if every inch of that two mile shore was occupied. Children darted in and out of the water, squealing delightfully, building sand castles, digging trenches, and some bawling and clinging to parents who were trying to introduce them to the ocean! Oh, what bliss!

The joyful children prancing around me evoked images of four young boys playing football on another congested beach, Gaza, on the beautiful Mediterranean, where Israeli fighter pilots mowed them down in early July of last year. The four of them perished! It was a deliberate and unconscionable act of terror meant to furthermore intimidate, subjugate and oppress the Palestinian people. Memories like these tarnish the joy that I am feeling. It is such recollections that are etched painfully into my brain, and there seems to be no end anytime soon for their horror.

Later that evening as we sauntered home, the sirens blared and the alert structure was activated with the emergency loudspeaker system urging people to leave the beaches and to take shelter as there was turbulent, stormy weather and lightning expected. In less than twenty minutes, the little town shuttered down and went eerily vacant. Sirens, alerts, alarms bring to mind those terrifying moments in the early years of Lebanon’s civil war and ongoing to date in Gaza and in many other places, before the missiles and bombs race through the skies and swoop down on innocent civilians and their abodes smashing their sense of security, jarring their hopes, threatening their families. How painful it is!

As I sat on a bench enjoying the feel of the crowds walking, shopping and noshing, I looked up and read “Rehoboth Avenue.” Again, thoughts and memories! Won’t they ever give me a reprieve?!?! Rehoboth is the name of that first Jewish settlement in Palestine. The year was 1890 and Palestine was still a part of the Ottoman Empire. Those first Jews who came there were fleeing pogroms in Russia. How tragic that any people should be thus uprooted simply because of their ethnic makeup! They were the first wave of maligned families. Then, more pogroms in Europe and more refugees, followed soon thereafter by those fleeing the Holocaust. How did that whole catastrophe of the Jewish people in Russia and Europe evolve and then sweep the Palestinian people into its tragic orbit creating uprooted refugees out of us and continuing since then to visit more and yet more tragedies upon us who had Nothing to do with the pogroms or the Holocaust!!!? How is it possible that over sixty years after that Palestinian catastrophe humanity has not yet found a solution to this disaster; a peaceful exit strategy for both people?

That evening the highest court in the US, SCOTUS, came down with a decision legalizing marriage for same sex couples who were now to receive the full benefits of matrimony that only heterosexual couples had been entitled to thus far. We were having dinner at a restaurant across the street from a well-known gay restaurant. We all toasted the ruling as we sipped our wine! Rainbow flags seemed to come out of nowhere and flap all over the little town; cheering and merriment flowed out of every nook and cranny! What an event! What justice! I was delighted! If human beings can achieve fair and unbiased decisions such as this milestone of a law, then why can’t we spread our justice all around, to Palestinians, too? If reason prevails, we can certainly do so! However, it is not reason that triumphs in politics. It is the intransigence of the Israeli Government and its extremists; the same as extremists in the US had thus far deprived the LGBT community of recognition, respect and justice. How does one differentiate between justice for one set of humans and not another? Do we, perchance, have a new definition for justice that I am not aware of; a progressive justice and a different conservative one?

On the beach again the next day, I look out at the ocean horizon. A commercial vessel is bobbing its way along. In the Mediterranean Sea a Swedish flotilla is also bobbing its way headed for Gaza with first-aid equipment and solar panels amongst other “non-lethal” products. I wondered if the Israeli Government would allow it in to besieged Gaza, the world’s largest inhumane penal complex where 1.8 million Palestinian men, women and children are oppressed, subjugated, continuously provoked and occupied by a ruthless enemy. (Of course not, as I found out after we returned from the beach.)

Nevertheless, and despite all the ongoing depressing news around our world, I try to think cheerful thoughts as I am laying there on a beautiful shore surrounded by happy people and I allow myself to believe the momentum that seems to be gathering energy all around the world. It has been manifesting itself for a while now, but I have been withholding my hope, terrified of being smacked down again as was so often the case in my life!!

The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement has been gaining traction all over the world and the Israeli Government has been paying attention. It is what ended South African Apartheid. Could it possibly repeat itself here?

Recognition of the Palestinian people, once and not so long ago, was disallowed, almost prohibited, their story untold, repressed. However, recently, it has been permitted it seems, and Palestinians are telling their stories in the hundreds of books, songs, blogs, videos and movies that are being shown and shared all over the world; reclaiming the true history of their existence and not the false one that was rewritten by Israel and believed by the West; celebrating their national dress, their authentic foods, their artwork again, all over the world. It seems as if the planet is waking up and realizing that which it had willfully ignored for all those years.

So before Samantha Power, Marie Harf or Josh Earnest come out and say something that pisses me off again – which they constantly seem to do – I want to say that despite my fears, I do have hope for the future. While Joyful Reality in Rehoboth and Bitter Memories from my Palestinian saga jostle each other, I think of what judicious sages throughout time have told us: we cannot appreciate Joy if we had not known Sadness.

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word “happy” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” Carl Jung.

Maybe it is such beliefs that temper both my joy and sadness; that make me appreciate both and that give me the patience and calmness to rise up and face each day with hope that the world will come to its senses one day soon and that freedom and justice will prevail. Or, is it simply my old age that has endowed me with this foolish perception?

Beaches! Some witnessing Joy, others constantly anticipating Terror!