Voices From the Middle East:
Ala Uwainah's Road Stories
"Nowadays it's even worse. My life is in deep freeze."
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By Ala Uwainah
 If
any of you spend a lot of time on the road and happen to hate it,
you should try the roads and foot trails of Palestine. You see,
traveling from point A to point B down here is not that simple.
Hundreds of Palestinians count on knowing all the As to Bs around
this place, to cope with the suffocating presence of swarms of Israeli
soldiers, who are, like me, immature kids in their early twenties.
Nowadays it's even worse. My life is in deep freeze. I live in
Bethlehem. I go to university north of Ramallah. In the good days,
it took 45 minutes to get there. Now it takes two and a half hours
and I arrive at school with mud on my face. Half the days I don't
even make it. At each checkpoint along the way — and there
are many of them — you have to stand 30 feet away from the
soldiers and approach them one at a time, and show that you have
no explosives or bombs on you by pulling out your shirt. Only after
you go through that process will they let you pass.
Even a few months back, when things weren't this bad, I had a first
hand experience with Israeli military intelligence. I was going
to the university one morning by taxi. Suddenly I was awakened by
a soldier asking for my ID. I handed it over, but instead of letting
me go, they rounded up eight or nine others and took us to a nearby
camp.
There we were, waiting for our turns, and I started thinking about
humiliation, life, politics, relativity and quarks, quasars, and
well, anything you could think about when sitting alone for six
hours. They double searched me, and took me to meet this fat guy
in a pink shirt. After 15 minutes of interrogation, I was free at
last.
I'm superbly lucky; I only missed a few exams because of that detour.
Most others are not so lucky.
— Ala Uwainah is 20 years old and lives in Bethlehem.
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