Journal, March 4, 2006—Cambridge Massachusetts

Plans

Other photos and writing

Anticipating an ordinary life in the Occupied Territories of Palestine

The two photos show a retired school teacher in his friends' quilt and mattress shop in Ramallah, and returning spring birds in the tree outside my veranda, also in Ramallah. They are emblems of ordinary life, one of my themes (thanks to a suggestion from my friend, Sherif Fam, and a leading Palestinian poet, Mamoud Darwich), but this is not to deny or discount the reality of harsh oppression most Palestinians experience minute by minute.

Darwich says, "All we [Palestinians] want is to be ordinary."

Dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr, assassinated in highly suspicious and yet to be fully understood circumstances on April 4, 1968.

Last day at home, 6 hours before Katy [my daughter] picks me up for a ride to the airport, packing, fretting, forgetting, remembering, and wondering what might go wrong, what right, what will happen, will I survive?

But first, one relevant dream: I was in a house with my family, little kids abounded, cats also, and a large animal of some sort, foreign to the neighborhood, came racing thru and ran upstairs. I tore after it, cornered it on the landing, and saw that if I persisted in trapping it, it would attack me or the girl next to it. I backed off. The animal was something like a lynx.

What am I afraid of? The Israelis--they won't let me in, they'll kick me out, they'll detain me, they'll injure me, they'll kill me. The Palestinians--they'll kidnap me, they'll behead me, they'll rob me, they'll mislead me. Organizations that I might photograph for--they won't really need me, they won't help me, they'll not appreciate my photography, they won't use my photos. My photography--it won't be good enough, I'll get nowhere on the water issue, I'll make hackneyed photos or generic ones, my equipment will disappear or stop working, I'll wonder in the wilderness with no clear perspective, I'll be shallow and naive. My health--it will suffer, I'll get diarrhea again, or worse, maybe avian flu (can I safely eat chicken shwarma, should I shift to beef?), or hepatitis, or cholera, or malaria, or polio. Who knows, anything could happen when you're in my mind set just setting out.

And what do I look forward to? Making photos, for sure, all kinds, but esp about water. Seeing old friends-- like the barber, the beer seller, Diana, Joyce, Jean, George, Angela, Belan, who has been writing me welcoming messages from Gaza, maybe even Yassir at Birzeit University if I can drag myself out there. Or Helen if indeed she wants to see me. Making new friends-- at the AFSC in Ramallah and Gaza, the youth program in Haifa, the new International Friends Center in Ramallah and Kathy Bergen, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Seeing new sections of the region--especially more of the Galilee, Haifa, Tel Aviv, the desert, Jenin, all water related areas. Reconnecting with the Christian Peacemakers Team in Hebron and a-Tuwani. Maybe hooking up with the Abraham Path Initiative that Emily S told me about. On and on. A grand adventure. This is part of what drives and steers me.

Along with the light, the ever pervasive light, physical and metaphysical. And the Christ presence, the other luminaries' presence. Even Moses and Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael, and one of my favorites, Joseph.

And now I say goodbye to friends and family, some by phone, some by written message, some by prayer.

Today is unusually easy. I pack, meditate, pray, and with Katy drive to the airport, board a plane bound across the ocean for London, find another plane going to Tel Aviv, somehow get thru security, and arrive for 90 days of adventure and discovery.

Who will I be when I return on June 2, if I return? What will I have discovered, what can I broadcast thru my images and stories?

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites--acquiescence and violence. The nonviolent resister rises to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system. Nonviolence can reach men where the law can not touch them. So we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.

--Martin Luther King, Jr