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Voices From the Middle East:
Ala Uwainah
Bethlehem: a personal chronology
By Ala Uwainah
 May
7, 2002
Meditating on a beautiful sunset, I notice below the sunset
the town of Beit Jala, and just a step away from it lies the beginning
of Jerusalem's outskirts, wondering how with this proximity, they
could be a universe apart.
But, living here, I should have gotten used to this place's distorted
sense of "space," "time," and "direction."
I know it sounds a bit sci-fi, "distorted time and space,"
but it's true, when 50 meters are impossible to cross, and the weeks
pass like a commercial's break, if that's not distortion…
Well, you tend to develop these kind of ramblings in your head after
a meal of improvised food; a mixture of imagination, adventure,
creativity, and anything edible you could lay your hands on. I think
today's meal may be psychoactive, or maybe it's just the boredom?
Being a prisoner, your sense of time is mutated — you tend
to subconsciously turn everything into a time consuming activity,
brushing your teeth, showers, shaving, and sleeping, all seem to
stretch into longer periods of time.
Recently, I started inventing things to do. Reading books like
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance helped a lot, and so did
push-ups, staring into the wall, and really stupid video games.
They are all valuable allies against time. And, despite the fact
that a list of the things I've done in over a month would be much
shorter than this essay, time passed regardless of my existence.
May 8, 2002
A phone call is not the real thing…
A phone call is definitely not the real thing, but lately the tiny
spot in space-time occupied by the phone has become, in a way, the
center of the universe!
My mom has turned the phone into a shrine of maternity, with all
the sobs and sighs, her red eyes embroidered with veins. You see,
my brother got stuck in Ramallah. He left for school one day, and
couldn't get back after Israeli troops took over Yasir Arafat's
compound and sealed off the rest of the city. That was over a month
ago.
Knowing my brother he's probably ok, he can take care of himself.
We all can since we have to. Even if its not the most enjoyable
experience, you survive, you just do.
Oddly enough, this arrangement with the phone evened-out the density
of my relationships with people. I am equally close — or distant
— from everyone. And geography has little or no role in this
social arrangement. So people who live in Jordan, Holland, or the
States (as long as they are paying for the call), well, they can
be as close as the people living down the road, and some are.
May 24, 2002
A few days after the tanks pulled out, there was a sense of relief.
But that didn't last that long. The initial relief was quickly replaced
by worrying.
What I'm about to say might have some redundancy and I know it's
a sin in writing, but it's not a flaw in my style, it's the redundancy
of what's happening being reflected in my writing. Things keep happening,
so I keep worrying and worrying about them, so I keep writing about
them.
The first morning after the army left, I woke up at 5 am, an unusually
silent morning without any tanks, no armored personnel carriers,
and no loudspeakers saying in broken Arabic "Stay in. You are
under curfew until further notice." And that morning, as soon
as my brain warmed up (when you wake up at 5 am, that takes a long
time), all the worries started emerging.
It's obvious that worrying is a part of life. Not just here, anywhere.
But for people living here, every tiny minor detail and every tiny
minor moment is a potential source of worry. The feeling grows and
grows, leaving little or no place to any other pattern of thought.
Of course, everyone has his own set of worry factors (I just made
up that phrase). Of course, there are the ones we all have in common:
work, money, school. These are the big ones, and they tend to be
interconnected. You worry about money, and if you don't get money,
then school is out, and then you have to work, but work is impossible
these days. And you worry about not being able to go home if you
leave. Or not to be able to go out tomorrow if you do get home today.
Add to that the thousands of tiny worries that accumulate till
they make a mountain that's just sitting there in your way to wherever
it is you want to go. A mountain made up of politics, poverty, injustice,
loss of hope, and sometimes even the loss of the will to do anything.
So you just sit down in the middle of that road, the one with the
mountain, just wondering, "What if…?"
— Ala Uwainah is 20 years old and lives in Bethlehem.
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