Pamela J. Olson - Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland

CHAPTER 1

From the Midwest to the Middle East

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

till the right action arises of itself?

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

WHY ARE you coming to Israel?

The wide, suspicious eyes of the young Israeli border guard were unnerving after all the laid-back hospitality in Jordan.

Im just a tourist, I said, probably too nonchalantly.

What kind of tourist?

Well, Im a Christian, I said, starting to sweat and wishing Id worn a cross like Id been advised, and I want to see the holy sites.

What holy sites?

His tone suggested hed never heard of any holy sites in Israel.

You know, I said carefully, as if one of us might be slightly insane, like Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, Nazareth

Why Nazareth? Whats in Nazareth? He cut me off sharply.

It was just a random Biblical name as far as I was concerned. I didnt know it was an Arab town in Israel or what that meant. I certainly didnt know that the outcome of this, the first of what would be many Israeli interrogations, would change the course of my life forever.

But I had clearly picked the wrong answer.

Because, I mean, thats where Jesus was born and grew up and

What? He was what ?

He was Oh, right! Sorry, obviously he wasnt born there

Where was he born?!

He was born in uh

Christ. Id sung about where Jesus was born every Sunday morning growing up in eastern Oklahoma. But I had just finished reading a Middle East guidebook, so all my associations were shifted, everything was a jumble in my head, a border guard with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder was breathing down my neck, and I couldnt think.

Just start at the beginning , I told my fevered mind. There was a woman on a donkey, and they went to an inn, and everybody sings O Little Town of

Bethlehem! I smiled and shrugged expansively as if it were the most basic knowledge in the universe, trying desperately to look relaxed rather than relieved.

The guard finally calmed down. I just hoped he wouldnt figure out the connection between me and the two men behind me. If he did, we could all be in trouble.

Degree of Freedom

This wasnt where I expected to end up at age twenty-threejobless, planless, and lying through my teeth to Israeli border security.

I had graduated a year earlier, in 2002, with a physics degree from Stanford only to realize I had no interest in spending any more young years in a basement lab doing problem sets. Several friends were heading to Wall Street, but I had even less interest in finance than in physics. The things I enjoyed most during collegetravel, writing, languages, politics, sportsdidnt sound like serious career options for a math-and-science type like me.

Beyond that was only a massive mental block, an abyss of vague fear and paralysis. And I had no idea why.

Feeling dazed and ashamed, I took a job at a pub near the Stanford campus because it had the best dollars-to-stress ratio of any job I could think of, and the popular image of bartenders was almost sexy enough to make up for the savage beating my ego was taking.

After I settled in with the job, I joined a Jujitsu club, one of those things I had always wanted to do but never had time. In the first few classes I noticed a purple belt named Michel who had powerful shoulders, light olive skin, and slate blue eyes. He asked me out after practice one evening. He didnt have to ask twice.

Over dinner he mentioned that he was from Lebanon, a country I knew so little about I couldnt think of any intelligent questions to ask. I decided to start small. When he dropped me off at the end of the night, I asked him how to say Thank you in Arabic.

Shukran , he said.

I repeated the strange word, tasting it in my mouth.

He bowed his head slightly in an utterly charming way and said, No problem. Any time.

We only had three months together before he took a job in another city, but they were three very good months. He talked incessantly about his native Beirut and its picturesque beaches, forested mountains, crazy nightclubs, world-class food, and gorgeous women, which surprised me. Id always hazily pictured the Middle East as a vast desert full of cave-dwelling, Kalashnikov-wielding, misogynistic, bearded maniacs, and I figured anyone without an armored convoy and a PhD in Middle Eastern studies should probably stay out of it. But Michel made Lebanon sound fabulous, and when he spoke with his Lebanese friends in Arabic and I couldnt understand, it drove me crazy. So I borrowed a friends primer and started studying Arabic.

As the weeks passed, I began to notice a curious thing: I was pretty happy most of the time. I spent forty hours a week in a fantastic pub, and the rest of my time was wide open to enjoy friends and books, sandwiches and sunsets. I knew Id been vaguely unhappy most of my life, but I never realized the extent of it until the fog gradually lifted and left me in an unfamiliar landscape so bright it almost hurt my eyes.

My ears burned, though, whenever I asked my patrons at the pub, in all seriousness, if they wanted fries with that. All this happiness and free time flew in the face of my deeply-ingrained rural middle-class upbringing. Whenever I started hyperventilating about it, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that God and society could take care of themselves for a year or two whether or not I was staring at Excel spreadsheets all day. After that, if nothing better came along, I could always dust myself off, buy an Ann Taylor suit on credit, and put together a quasi-fictitious rsum like everyone else.