Voices From the Middle East:
Ala Uwainah
Ala reflects on being under curfew.
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to this Commentary!
By Ala Uwainah
 Each
time the troops leave Bethlehem, I wake up early the next morning
at 5 am, listening to the silence: no tanks, no armored personnel
carriers, and no loudspeakers saying in broken Arabic "Stay
in. You are under curfew until further notice."
And then when I'm trapped in my house, I have the anguish of watching
my mom. During the longest curfew, when my brother was stuck in
Ramallah for over a month, my mother turned the phone into a shrine
of maternity, with all the sobs and sighs, her red eyes embroidered
with veins. She spoke with him everyday.
Whether I'm free or a prisoner, the thousands of tiny worries accumulate
until they make a mountain that's just sitting there in your way.
I don't listen to the news anymore. I don't need to. Whenever something
serious happens — like a suicide bombing, it manifests itself
in my life. It comes to me, in the form of a closed road, a curfew,
or a tank rolling down the street. It always comes!
It has been like that for months. But now, it's worse than ever.
The shreds of Palestinian self-rule and mobility are being bulldozed
away.
— Ala Uwainah is 20 years old and lives in Bethlehem.
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