A Memo on Being Mixed

I recently read an article on a fellow mixed girl's experiences Coming out as Biracial. It was a great article, and much appreciated. She looks different from me, despite also being half-white, half-black, which sort of puts us in the same ethnic group while our races still remain divided.

Being abroad, I find that my identity is in constant transition. People never seem to know what to do with me. I dressed up as a Geisha on Halloween and over a dozen people asked me if I were Japanese, or tried to speak to me in an Asian language. I speak Arabic, so naturally people assume that I'm Egyptian or Syrian. When my hair is curly, most think I'm either of African or Latin descent, but when I straighten my hair I am suddenly from India, or the Philippines.

It's fun being mixed, causing people to question my ancestry, and I wouldn't change it for anything. But when over six million Americans are of more than one ethnic group, it still drives me to the brink of insanity when my nationality is doubted by people in other countries.

Someone will ask me where I'm from. I tell them the US. Ninety percent of the time, the looks that cross their faces are an amalgam of shock and horror. Then comes the inevitable curiosity. "Oh, but where are your parents from?" I explain that both are from the US. If you want specifics my mother grew up in Seattle, my dad in Wenatchee.  This never seems to suffice, so then I'm asked what my origins are - it's the polite way of asking why my face looks like this (though some have asked much, much less politely). I usually make something up in response to this question. Some days I'm of Egyptian and German descent, other days I'm Ethiopian and Irish, sometimes I'm Native American or Alaskan or Hawaiian.

I've had people on the streets of Paris assault me with criticisms when I'm too vague - "How do you not know where your ancestors are from? Your children will grow up with mental problems and depression because they have no identity..." - or use the N-word too liberally around me. I've gotten into arguments over the fact that there are - shockingly! - people of more than one ethnicity living in America while on the streets of Cairo.  And more than once, Ive been able to convince Lebanese and Jordanian taxi drivers that I'm Obama's niece - because after all, if I'm mixed and he's mixed we must be part of the same family.

The most recent of these criticisms however, came to me in Switzerland. A man asked me where I was from and I briefly explained that I was American with roots steeped in African and European ancestry. "What is with Americans and their 'roots'?" He chastised immediately. "I tell people I'm French. That's it." It was a fair point.  But didn't help him in the least.

I lost it.

After years spent defending my ethnicity, my nationality, my gender and my race, and of being asked why I look the way I do from almost EVERYONE, I had never once been attacked for being too specific. So I laid it into him, because after 22 years of perfecting my ethnicity's alibi, I am still riled up too easily.

And truth be told, the guy was right. I shouldn't have to explain every time I meet someone new that I have an ambiguous ethnic origin because slavery was a thing in the States and I am the bi-product of one parent who could pass the Paper-Bag Test and one parent who couldn't and as a result, I am mixed and mixed people all look so different that I don't really know why I look the way I do.

So now what?  What do I do the next time someone asks me where I'm from? People have a right to be curious. And most times I find that they mean well, and aren't attacking me for having brown skin, crazy hair, and high cheeks, maliciously. I guess I just look forward to the day that mixed babies become more accepted - if not the norm - and that people don't feel the need to question diversity so bluntly.

And until that day that hopefully my own mixed babies will see, I'll be Brazilian in the summertime, Lebanese in the winter, and whenever I'm back in the US, I'll check the "multi-racial" box on whatever form I'm filling out, proudly.

xoxo,

Forever, A Mixed Baby

My mixed cousin and I, respectively

Go hard or go...to the hospital.

Go hard or go...to the hospital? Right? Is that how the expression goes?

Sitting in my hospital bed, typing with one hand while the other stands perfectly upright swathed in thick sheaths of plaster, cotton, and stretchy canvas-colored fabric, I'm not sure why I wasn't able to use the smarter half of my brain this past Halloween night. Go hard or go HOME. Go hard AND go home. Just don't go hard and try and squash three people on the back of a motorbike.

But that's what we did, my boyfriend and I. I'd like to blame him for it - really I would - but the problem is that I'm also an idiot and when we drink our separate stupidities compound and combine. We've gotten lucky in the past - been more responsible and less moronic - but Halloween cast a spell over both of us, and despite the fact that my second day strapped to this prison-bed is easing into my third, I still can't deny that it was one hell of a night.

We danced, we took shots off of skis, we bartered with the Gambians down in Geneva's infamous Paquis, we smoked, we boozed, we ran, we screamed, and then in the wee hours of the morning after we'd left all of our friends or they'd left us, my boyfriend and I found ourselves in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no working metro, and no taxis. So we got on the back of sone random kid's motorcycle and asked for a lift that he was reluctant to give and I was reluctant to take. We sped through the night on that rickety two-wheeled wagon and more than half a dozen times I anticipated us crashing, which is why I'm still surprised at how shocked I was when we did.

In moments of crisis and brutality, I've heard that time slows or that people see whit light or memories flare up in living color behind closed lids. I experienced none of this. I saw only the parked car we were aimed at, felt the wind on my face, and the sudden lurch of my stomach as it made a Kamikaze leap into my chest. The sounds came next. So loud - impossibly so. I was lying on my back on the ground and could feel a tightening of my chest as I fought to breathe. I heard Ferdinand moaning into the concrete and could see bits if blood and motorcycle debris scattered all around me. I sat up quickly and saw him on the ground while I distantly registered our driver picking up the remnants of his bike and driving off, fragments if red plastic fluttering in his wake. I shouted to no one for an ambulance and remember how, when Ferdinand sat up - alive - the weight in my chest became relief.

I don't recall when the women in the road found us, but it must have been minutes or seconds, maybe. I do remember the one woman, Myriam. I cannot see her face, but I can hear her still sweetly whispering my name in the softest, most comforting voice I'd ever heard and likely ever will. She was the one to convince both Ferdinand and me to lie down, to calm down - I didn't - and to breathe deeply. The women stayed with us, comforting us as a mother would her children until the ambulance came in a blaze of red and blue and sirens screaming.

And then came the pain. It's amazing what shock and adrenaline can do to the human body - what they can repress. I had shattered most if the bones in my left hand and still could not feel it for the better part of half an hour. We made it to the hospital. I had surgery, Ferdinand had a Deliverance-esque smile and a mouthful of missing teeth.

I'm still here waiting for release as I eat a plate full of something orange, hoping that this scenario will eventually be funny. Even the fact that we were found on the side of the road dressed as a clown and a zebra was made less funny when I saw how shredded the oversized blue shoes were the next morning. It could have been worse than broken bones and teeth. A lot worse.

And in thinking about how much worse it might have been I must acknowledge that this has been my longest, most terrifying dream. And one year from now, one month from, now - next weekend - I will make a different choice. I will choose home next Halloween.

Transitions

Leaving Beirut felt as if an anvil had been lifted from my chest. Despite missing Lebanon, the conflicts in the region and the ceaselessly escalating violence did not endear me to the idea of living there, or anywhere in the Middle East/North Africa, for the foreseeable future. Syria needs time, Israel and Palestine need time, Egypt needs time. Time, and a prayer to changing winds.

I stepped out of Beirut, six months worth of stuff in tow, and found myself easing into the surreality of Istanbul. What a step. To leave such chaos behind and take a great leap, I felt as if I had plunged from the clouds and ascended straight to Valhalla. Hot, rancid air was replaced by a cool Mediterranean breeze. Salacious stares were traded in for crisp clean nods of a much welcomed indifference as I walked down the streets. Deeply divided religious and ethnic neighborhoods collided in one brilliant melee of culture. Entering into the Hagia Sophia and seeing images of Christ and Mary hanging alongside the names of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs was enchanting and enriching and warmed my soul.

The streets smelled of spices, salt, and the sea and as I wandered the narrow cobblestone roads late at nights I saw young people streaming in and out of clubs, flocking to waffle stands for one last midnight treat, while above it all the eerie sound of the muezzin uttering the call-to-prayer rose up in the distance.  I fell into Istanbul and fell in love with it in the same step. Truly, I did not want to leave.

Four days blew by in a rush.  Again, on the plane, this time leaving the Middle East behind me. Left behind, but always remembered. The Middle East will hold a particular place in my heart forever.

Beirut to Istanbul, Istanbul to Geneva. Life slowed down more and more at each progression. I sit now in a little chalet with Moroccan carpets on the floors and exposed wood on the walls. The doors to the balcony are open and a cool breeze floats in that pulls all thoughts of sticky heat from my mind and Arabic from my tongue as French falls effortlessly from my lips. I sit in silence. Silence, which has been unfamiliar to me these past few months. I am new to silence and struggle at first to find a rhythm. Then after a while I stop trying, and sink instead into the beat of my own heart. Thump thump. Thump thump. Life is easy. Life is grand. I understand that challenges are what shape our character, but as I walk through the streets of Geneva looking for a job, I see a "wanted" sign in a Creperie storefront. Challenges are what shape our character, yes. But it is always important to stop every now and again, slide the stick shift back to neutral and coast. Because we only have one life, and will only ever be as happy as we choose to be.

I went from a UN career in Beirut to a job as a waitress at a creperie in geneva and I can say with absolute certainty, that throughout these past few months I have developed an overwhelming appreciation for life's little, simple things.

Sincerely,
Transitioning to Happiness

Dear Beirut

Dear Beirut,

Despite everything, I'm going to miss you. Driving down the streets and zipping past all the luxury in the world juxtaposed against shell-shocked, bullet-strewn, rocket-washed buildings in varying states of inorganic demolition is somehow so quintessentially YOU and somehow so compelling, and riveting, and humbling and yes, beautiful too.

"Ma fii wasit", a taxi driver said to me today; "there lacks a center", an American tourist at one point repeated; "there is no soul", I said myself just days ago. And yes, all of these things are true. You hang on by a hair to this delicate balance of forgery and loss, trying to be better than the battery that so many years of turmoil and destruction left in their wake. And yet this is what defines YOU.  You are not defined precisely, nor are you defined by anything that I have the human vocabulary to name.  You are defined by YOU. There is nothing like you, nor will there ever be again. You humble those that approach you and you dare newcomers to enter - beckoning, and provoking them almost, with a sense of superficial glory. But this is not YOU.

YOU are constant indecision. As indecisive about your identity as any young creature, newly born. As indecisive as the rain. And this is what you do; you are undone and born again each and every day as I am undone and born again by you and all of your dilapidated enchantments. You are a city that reason forgot. Words like "allegiance" and "oneness" and "togetherness" don't exist here. Instead you are a beautiful disaster, for lack of a more elegant cliche. You are a monster in a dress, ceaselessly seeking redemption, or at least that is what you have made me. And as I aspire to you, I am left humbled in the end.

YOU are not a city easily destroyed - rather you are eternal and unflinching, forged from the fires of such endless cacophony. You bear with you countless battle scars from wars raged over you and with you and in your name. You are indestructible and I like to imagine that from your high perch, you watch the madness with a cunning grin. For this is what YOU are. Fire and ice and violence and inescapable wealth. You have lived one million lifetimes and you are reborn again and again and again. Like a desert flower - tough, strong to a fault and somehow also, like the desert flower, so delicate and disastrously complete.

YOU are ornate in your bullet-riddled throne and you are lavish and you are a tiger and fire and a hot desert sun and a gentle moonflower, forever in bloom. You will never be more intolerable than you are now, nor more intricately woven. You are a magic carpet of horrors and wonders and what you lack in "center" you make up for in your thick outer-skin. You are glass. You are metal. You are a young child with a coy grin and for all that I have suffered and loved through you and in you I can assure you that YOU are incredible and wretched and wonderful and you will never be forgotten.

At least not by me.

Love,
Your desert flower

In the Hands of Hezbollah

It feels as if stability in the region is balancing on a hair.  The entire international community is holding its breath. Sadly, we all seem to be waiting for the US – will they act unilaterally in their interventions, and if so, what will be the scale, the impact, and the aftermath?  

On a micro-scale, I have seen my Shia neighborhood vamp up its security to an alarming extent. Checkpoints are now ubiquitous, dotting each and every block.  All cars are stopped regardless of the passenger – I’ve seen men in military uniforms humbled by 15 year old Hezbollah officers as they are forced out of their Humvees, which are then rigorously checked.  At the checkpoint closest to where I live, the officers in charge know me by my first name, they know my nationality, that I take sugar with my coffee but no cream, they know my boyfriend’s name, his profession.  They know me more intimately than any law enforcement officer ever has and I know them and despite this, I am still stopped increasingly more often.

My six foot seven Egyptian friend with a beard was my first experience with Hezbollah detention. We were trying to get through on a Friday evening. They asked for his ID, not mine, and then pulled us to the side of the road when he attempted to speak to them in Arabic.  The experience was jarring, yet far from frightening.  I sipped on black coffee that tasted like tar as they questioned my friend.  I made polite conversation with the Hezbollah checkpoint leader while he calmly and condescendingly blew cigarette smoke in my face and after 20 minutes (and after being yelled at by my landlord), they let us go. Khalas. The end.  And that was the worst that I thought could happen.  I was mistaken.

We are one Lebanese-American, one Lebanese, and two Americans as we enter my neighborhood in Southern Beirut, Harat Hreik.  We enter the same way I always have.  The men there know me, but they do not recognize the other faces.  We are stopped, as I suspected we would be, and are questioned for the better part of an hour – what are we doing in Lebanon, how long have we been here and why, why do we live in Harat Hreik, what are our religions, professions, hobbies, hopes, dreams and aspirations – but eventually, they see that we present no imminent threats and let us go. 

I am annoyed, but am convinced out of my irritation quite quickly.  The night is young and so are we and, without the presence of Hezbollah stalking our every step, we enjoy the rest of our evening.  After several hours, my American friend gets ready to leave.  I walk him out of the building and onto the desolate streets of Harat Hreik, to the second checkpoint nearest to me. I do not know the officers stationed there, but do not anticipate difficulties given that I have NEVER been hassled nor have I ever seen anyone else checked or searched – on foot or in a vehicle – in their attempts to exit through one of the checkpoints.  I see him to a taxi, wave goodbye, and walk back to my apartment.  My foot has barely crossed the threshold when I feel my phone start to buzz and ring violently.

I answer, “Hello?”

The American, “I got stopped.”

“Stopped?  Stopped where?”

His breathing is heavy.  For a big guy – over 6 foot 5, and 200 pounds of muscle, at least – hearing anxiety seep into his tone makes me apprehensive.  I stop in my tracks.  My roommate looks up at me and asks me what happened. I regurgitate the words the American just told me, my voice as stark and hollow as his had been seconds previous. “He got stopped by a group of Hezbollah officers about a block away from the checkpoint.  They’re questioning him and want to take him to a second location, but they won’t tell him why or where or for how long.”

She asks me to hand her the phone. I do.  Placing it on speakerphone I’m able to understand bits and pieces of the Arabic conversation that ensues.  The checkpoint guard clearly isn’t happy with her, and I hear him tell her that he can do what he wants when he wants and there is nothing she can do about it.  Throughout the course of the evening, I realize the stunning truth: he is absoultely right. After a few more words thrown back and forth meaninglessly, he tells us that our friend will be safe and will be released.  She asks when, but he does not give an answer.

Unsatisfied, we go down to the checkpoint. It is around 4am.  I shout at the Hezbollah police that I find, but they know nothing of the situation.  There is no dissemination of information from one gang of Hezbollah guards to the next – I am not sure, but believe this may be done on purpose, to make it that much harder for outsiders to gain entry into the vicinity.  I’m still furiously throwing around words like kidnap and illegal, but the officers don’t take me seriously.  My roommate talks me down.  With the last of the credit I have left, I call the American.  

“Hello?” He says.

"Where are you?"

“I don’t know.  I’m in a car.  They blindfolded me.” The line goes dead shortly after.  I call back, but get no answer. I call a second time, but the line is still empty, a blank void of nothing in which anything might have happened.

Sometime close to seven my roommate and I realize that there is nothing we can do. Hezbollah runs the streets – there is no army, no police to turn to – they are the law and order and everything else and we have run completely out of options. Dejected and defeated, we return to my apartment.

At 11 am I lurch out of my bed to the sound of a telephone call.  I answer on the first ring and I know it’s the American before he even says anything.

“Where are you?” I say. “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not okay. They held me overnight in an underground Hezbollah jail cell. They interrogated me until 10am.”

I’m shocked, and quite nearly speechless.  After a few seconds I manage to say, “Where are you now?”

He tells me the name of a location just a few kilometers from my house.

“Do you need me to come get you?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “I’m going to go work out.”

Confused, I ask why.  He tells me that he needs to go work through some of his feelings.  I ask him to elaborate.  “Honestly, for a second I thought that was it.  I was blindfolded, forced into a car, and taken off the map.  They could have killed me and no one would have known about it for days.  I was scared.”  I can tell that this is hard for him to admit, and I don’t know what to say.  Sorry?  Apologies don’t come close to conveying my true feelings on the subject.  I’m horrified, but more than that I’m just confused.  In an area of the city where one group acts as the judge, jury, and executioner, I could not know what that might have felt like – to have my whole life in the hands of Hezbollah – and to be unsure of my impending sentence.

I apologize.  He tells me it’s not my fault.  I tell him I know, but that I’m sorry nonetheless.  And just before he hangs up the phone he tells me that he has a lot more respect for Hezbollah now, after they let him go and drove him back to civilization.  “They kept their word,” he says.

I laugh humorlessly and hang up, but I do not go back to sleep.  Instead, I stare at my phone, screen now blank, as I try and fully understand the precariousness of his situation.  I try and imagine what life would look like from the inside of a Hezbollah jail cell and remember what he said – they kept their word – but most of all I try very hard not to think about where the American would be now if they hadn't.

Sincerely,
Ceaselessly Optimistic 

Checkpoints, Curfews, and Explosions

You can taste the tension in the air mingling with the acrid scent of cigarette smoke and the sweeter aroma of argileih that wafts just above it.  People are afraid.  

I live in Southern Beirut, where the car bomb killed nearly thirty people last week.  I live in a Shia neighborhood.  The twin attacks on Friday outside of two mosques in Tripoli, killing over forty people and wounding four hundred others, was likely an attack against Sunnis, or more specifically, against two well-known and ultra-conservative Salafi preachers. 

Lebanon is not new to sectarian violence. The divisions between Christian and Muslim and Sunni and Shia have been a longstanding struggle for this country for centuries.  However, this violence feels - not unprecedented - but different in light of the escalating violence in Syria, the mass influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon that number nearly 700,000 and are in addition to over 90,000 Palestine refugees from Syria that have also entered Lebanon, and now the recent explosions of chemical agents and Serin gas that, on Thursday alone, killed nearly 1,500 people in Syria's capital city of Damascus.  Things have begun to change.  Things are different.

The Shia Hezbollah, largely backed by a Shia-dominant Iran, provides military support to Assad and the Alawite government against the Sunni Free Syrian Army, backed by the West and other Arab and Gulf States. There is a prediction, one I hope does not come true, that has been echoed by many of the people I've spoken with in the UN, in local governmental and non-governmental organizations, on the streets, in taxis, and across a broad range of Arabic and English Middle Eastern news channels. Will the fighting in Syria spill into Lebanon? I wonder this less and less frequently these days. In my opinion, it already has. 

The region is spiraling fast. I liken the explosions and attacks of violence and terror in Beirut to contractions - last year this time there might have been one attack every four to six weeks, but now the attacks are happening on daily increments. What will my neighborhood, which was open and accessible just three weeks ago, be like one year from now - no, not a year from now - but a month, a week, tomorrow? 

The checkpoints in the southern suburbs of Beirut make it difficult to get around. I can leave my neighborhood, Harat Hreik, with relative ease. But no taxi dares to venture back here, given the likely chance that they'll be stuck in traffic for upwards of an hour, just to try and get to a neighborhood that would typically take no more than fifteen minutes to drive to.  

My building has a curfew now.  It shuts down, like a fortress, at midnight. I feel like the Cinderella of a monstrous dream as I hand my ID to the Hezbollah security guard at the entrance to Harat Hreik.  He was the one to detain me and my Egyptian friend the previous weekend; I could have gone through, but my friend couldn't - too Egyptian, too tall, too bearded, too Arab-looking?  This security guard - a fifteen year old boy with a walkie talkie dressed in faded jeans and a casual tee shirt - knows me by my first name now and asks me about my Egyptian friend, the one who, for over an hour, he interrogated and hassled. 

I thank him and take back my ID, then start to make my way down the narrow, dusty streets of Harat Hreik, which are oddly desolate and quiet this evening. I do not tell him that I think the conflict between Sunnis and Shias is haram - against God, and against Islam - and that by aligning himself with a group that is fighting a war that is not theirs in the first place he is indirectly jeopardizing the safety of everyone in Harat Hreik, in Beirut, and in Lebanon. 

He shouts a brief good bye after me, but I do not tell him thank you.  Instead I turn and say salamtak, or peace be upon you.  He stares, perplexed, but I do not give an explanation.  Instead I walk quickly down the quiet streets, which are so atypically dark that I nearly walk straight past my building.  And when I go inside tonight, I do something I'd never done before. I step into the bright stairwell, and behind me, I close and lock the door.  

Sincerely, 

Apprehensive, and Waiting

Sexual Harassment: A Case Study

I am a girl.  I have lived in three different countries in the Middle East.  Sexual harassment in the Middle East is something that I was told about at my very first pre-departure orientation in 2010, something that is written about in the news, something that anthropologists and social scientists dedicate significant portions of their lives studying.  I’m not new to cat calls and wolf whistles from guys on the streets.  This happens in the States, in Europe, and I’m sure it also happens in (most) other countries. However, in Arabic the term for sexual harassment often denotes sexual violence.  It’s as if harassment is so common and widespread in so many of these Arab states that even linguistically, it loses its value and its cutting edge.  It’s when things get violent that they really matter.  Below are a summation of my experiences in three different Middle Eastern cities: Cairo, Amman, and Beirut, and a brief account of how sexual harassment has touched my life.

Cairo: 

Sexual harassment may be the 11^th plague of Egypt.  This terrifying epidemic has seen recent escalation in the post-January 2011 Revolution time period.  I am not an expert, but from what I’ve learned both academically and on-the-ground, this explosion of sexual harassment and sexual violence may be attributed to the lack of law and order, endemic poverty, and skyrocketing unemployment rates that antagonize an already sexually-frustrated segment of the male population who, because of these factors and in tandem with a social culture that precludes men and women from dating (and often interacting) outside of marriage, lack the financial means necessary to marry wives and later provide for these women.

I had the opportunity to be in Cairo before, during, and after the 2011 Revolution, as well as a year later during the first presidential election since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak.   What I noticed before the Revolution was that while cat calls and wolf whistles were so common that it became irregular and surprising when men didn’t shout at me as I waked down the street, there are so many people in the streets themselves that it didn't feel particularly frightening. I never felt that I was in any real physical danger or that my life was threatened.  While the police don’t generally get too excited about anything in Egypt, as a foreigner, I still felt comfortable walking up to one of these policemen on the street corners and asking for help, no matter the situation. 

During the Revolution, the levels of street harassment were at an all-time low.  Men and women were protesting alongside one another and the bubbling feelings of excitement and hope pushed away all thoughts of fear and anxiety.  As sexual harassment reverted back to it’s previous state in the post-Revolution climate, something else happened too.  I don’t know what it was, but my best guess is the lack of experience in the new government somehow affected the state’s ability to provide an adequate police force (which you would think would be one of the top priorities in a new and fragile government). As a result, Cairo has seen incidents of mass assault, gang rape, and other cases of gender based violence in the very same square that was a symbol to the world of the strength and resilience of the Egyptian people.  Tahrir Square.  In Arabic, tahrir means freedom. 

The only time that I was ever physically touched in Egypt was after the Revolution, during the presidential race that saw the election of Mohammad Morsi as president.  Say whatever you want to me, but the moment some fifteen year old boy’s hand touches my ass, then it’s time to call it quits.  I turned and shouted at him and asked him, in Arabic, if this is the way he would treat his sister or the way he would want his mother walking on the streets to be touched.  He said no, then proceeded to slap my ass a second time before running off into the darkness.  Frustrated and angry, I tried to find someone to tell or some authority-esque looking figure with whom I might file a complaint.  But the streets were empty, and I found no one and I know that I am not the only woman in Egypt who has felt this way. 

Amman: 

Unlike Cairo, Amman is small.  The streets are desolate and empty most of the time, like a perfectly manicured little ghost town.  I lived there for three months after being evacuated from Cairo at the onset of the 2011 Revolution.  In Amman I was surprised that generally the women did not dress as conservatively as they had in Cairo, where the majority of girls wear too many layers of clothing to count and almost all wear the hijab, or hair covering.  In Amman many girls also wore the hijab though outside of that, dressed like I did – in H&M and Zara - as well as in designer brands at the apex of fashion.  I found also that the men in Amman did not cat call as much and on first impression, I felt that perhaps the sexual harassment there was not so bad.  I later had to criticize and amend this impression.  

In Amman harassment was not “as bad” in the sense that cat calling on the streets didn’t happen to me as often as it had in Egypt.  Yet while this harassment may not have been as abundant in terms of quantity, when it did happen it was scarier than anything that had ever happened in Egypt.  One of my friends was physically attacked on a bridge trying to get to school in the morning.  I was followed by a car while in a taxi.  My taxi driver, alhamdullilah, did some evasive maneuvering and lost the car by backing into an alleyway with the headlights off in the dark.  Two boys tried to force themselves into my friend’s and my apartment.  Walking alone day or night my friend and I realized that if we were harassed or assaulted, there was no one on the streets who would hear us, let alone come to help.

Beirut:

Beirut is a fascinating city.  There are such a varied and beautiful compilation of ethnicities, religions, nationalities, and races residing in the same tiny metropolis alongside one another.  Many people that I’ve spoken to claim that this variety is what creates such a messy political scene – you can’t have a Shia or Sunni or Christian president without pissing somebody off somewhere.  As far as it goes for being a woman in this city, I’m still shocked that I can wear shorts and a tank top out in some areas of town without receiving too many unwanted looks.  Where I live (in Hezbollah territory), life is a little more conservative, so if I’m going out I throw on a pair of sweatpants over my outfit and take them off when I reach my final destination.  I can still wear a tank top even in Hezbollah’s stronghold, which is more than can be said for where I lived in Cairo.  Last time I wore a short-sleeve tee shirt with a V-neck in Egypt a little boy on a bicycle had a great time throwing dates at me. 

Sexual harassment here doesn’t seem to be as widespread on the outside looking in; however, as a colleague of mine pointed out, when men do stare they look at you like as if they're hungry.  I don’t know if it’s me and if so, what I’m doing wrong, but I have been physically assaulted twice since I arrived here three weeks ago – both times, not by complete strangers but by people I knew for a few hours and who I had just started to trust.  The first time might have been called a misunderstanding – if I’m being generous – but the second time when I’m locked into into a bar by the bartender and have to shout “stop” at the top of my lungs, then I find it hard to believe that there could be any misunderstanding.

I like to be an optimist about everything, but honestly I’m just tired.  I am female.  This should not be such a troubling concept for Middle Eastern men to grasp.  And while I have always condemned the foreigners who hang out with only foreigners in their little enclaves of foreign-ness, rarely ever interacting with the host country or its citizens, I am starting to understand why they do this.  I am more and more often beginning to think that it would be impossible for me to live in the Middle East for an extended period of time without losing every tattered shred of sanity I have left.  I miss not worrying about being attacked on a bridge or in a bar or being followed home at night.  I miss going through my wardrobe and not having to think about the risks involved in choosing to wear a tank top over a tee shirt. And the craziest thing of all is that I love the Middle East.  I continue to crawl back to it, like an abuse victim to its abuser.  But as my patience wears thin, all I have left in me to do is ask the men of the Middle East to look at me as they would a sister, speak to me as they would a friend, and treat me like an equal.  My breasts do not change the fact that I am still human.

Sincerely,

Tired and Annoyed and Human

A beautiful day in Beddawi refugee camp

I am an intern for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (or UNRWA, in case you don't feel like stumbling over that mouthful) and had the opportunity recently to travel with a photographer to one of the refugee camps in Lebanon. 

The camps that UNRWA works with are those meant for Palestine refugees coming in from Syria. The individuals in these camps are displaced, most of them for the second time, and as of July 2013 the total number of Palestine refugees from Syria living in Lebanon has reached over 92,000 people. This number is expected exceed 150,000 individuals by the end of December and does not include the mass influx of Syrian refugees who have moved to Lebanon in response to the Syrian crisis or Palestinian refugees from Palestine that already inhabit the country. 

I traveled north with this photographer and toured the UNRWA school in the Beddawi refugee camp.  The camp, unlike what I had previously expected, was not a compilation of tents and other makeshift structures, but a city.  The city operates autonomously from the Lebanese government and even the Lebanese Armed Forces are not allowed to enter beyond the gates.  Instead, the city is run by the Internal Security Forces, a coalition of the various sects within the Palestinian camps, and it administers its own laws, rules, regulations, and order.  It's a fascinating and complex system that I still don't fully understand, but what I do know is that even though Palestinians in Lebanon are denied many of the basic services and civil rights extended to Lebanese citizens, the kids I found within the camps were resilient and incredible and inspiring and filled me with a renewed rush of hope.  The remainder of this entry will be written in images, rather than words, because nothing I could write would be able to capture the energy and excitement of the Beddawi camp kids. They were, to put it simply, incredible. 

Sincerely,
Inspired 

The Predictability of Lightening

I’m having one of those moments where you go to a new place thinking everything is going to be just peachy – I have a taxi waiting for me there, I know Arabic already, I have friends in town who are going to take me out on my very first evening.  No.  Wrong.  False.  Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh.  I hear one of those buzzers in my head when you get a question wrong on Jeopardy. 

So far I’ve been overcharged about 20 bucks by my taxi driver, I arrive to my apartment and the power is shut off because the generators for the building overheated.  Forget about power in Lebanon.  State regulation has made it so that the simplicity of receiving 24-hour electricity – something we take for granted in the States and Europe and elsewhere – has now has become a luxury.  Power is as unpredictable as the wind.  An hour after the first power outage I’m out looking for phone credit.  I’ve forgotten my passport, which is apparently a prerequisite, so I go back to the apartment, then back to the credit store then back to the apartment only to realize that they’ve given me a SIM too large to fit my phone.  Til tomorrow then.  Hanshoof.  We shall see.  Inshallah.  God willing. 

Grocery shopping goes well, though I fumble through Arabic conversations in a dialect I do not know, putting me back to square one in that department.  I’m also confused as hell about the money and still not used to paying for things in quantities of 20,000 or more.  I go home and make pasta that’s little more than noodles in broth and I sit in the room with the AC and check my emails.  The power goes out again. 

It’s amazing how quickly your eyes adjust to darkness.  It’s amazing how quickly your body and sanity and lifestyle adjusts to what you are provided.  The second power outage lasts less time than the first but I am ready this time with candles, which are already burned down to their wilting brown wicks and are adorning every surface of every room.  I have learned one thing from my experiences abroad in the Middle East: nothing comes easy.  But this time I am ready.  So darkness please, come swift and strong. 

Berlin, du bist so wunderbar

They say that New York is the city that never sleeps but for me, whenever I hear that slogan, I will always think first of Berlin.

The sun is shining as the boy and I lug our (my) suitcases up 5 flights of steps to a beautiful, quaint Berlin apartment. The weather is warm and the city - the vast, sprawling metropolis - is silent, as if waiting for something, someone, me, us, him.

We attend a play at the Berlin Ensemble theatre. We see Peter Pan, directed by Robert Wilson with music by CocoRosie and I sit there, captivated by the sheer beauty and horror of this epic that only a city like Berlin could have produced. The sets are dark and the costumes are dark and the makeup is dark and sickening and lovely. Tinkerbell reveals a set of yellow, diseased teeth as she beams at the audience. She jerks and twitches her way across the stage in a black tutu with hints of underlying green. Wendy bounds after her with mechanical gestures and bats those big, pretty eyes which are framed by lashes as long as the legs of bulbous black spiders. She lifts her skirt up over her knees to reveal legs like splinters and canters around as she sings "to die would be a great adventure", breathing life - or rather, death - into the ballad. Peter comes next, flanked by a troupe of lost boys all in black, and the song that accompanies them rises and falls in dreamy, incomprehensible notes that are likely more akin to screams. I am spellbound by the nightmare, and yet caught in its grappling hooks as the delicate raptures of childrens' sing-song voices pull me from the comfort of my reality.

Berlin is unique in this way. Buildings warped by age and decay and a history of violence are now covered in the violent colors of street art and graffiti. "Exzess, miene liebling," one wall reads. Excess, my darling. I am reminded of the play and the way layers of glitter gleamed from the crest of Peter Pan's crown as he sang. Glitter showers the stage - its cast, the audience, the air, everything.

Excess, most certainly. But it is not an excess of wealth or of beauty or of things. It is an excess of life and spirit and motion. The city has soul. It is a tumult of paint-spattered sidewalks and derelict youth dressed in the haute couture of tattered elegance. There is always cheap food and cheaper beer and somewhere to be though the perfunctory act of needing to be somewhere never matters. So put down your talisman, because Berlin will guide you into the darkness and you will wander nowhere and find everything as you stumble through the city of excess and decay and glitter and spirit and light.

So come, meine liebling, because tonight will be a great adventure.

Paris, til we meet again

As the semester comes to a close I sit in a small Parisian cafe with a friend I’ve made over the course of the past months speaking in a mix of French and English. We listen to the sounds of the other patrons – French, something more guttural, German, another language I can’t identify, Chinese – while the sweet aromatic tendrils of coffee seep into our clothes. I look forward to saving the smell for later. It always reminds me, this cafe, of the idealistic Paris I’d envisioned and have, in some small part, gotten to know.

This past weekend I was in Lyon, for Fete des Lumieres. A festival of lights commemorating the day that Mary saved the town from the plague. They’d all prayed for her protection and put lights in their windows, as if they could send their prayers to heaven’s gates through flame. I watched a young girl and her mother light candles from a balcony’s window, and it was easy to imagine in that old, small town, a different generation from centuries earlier doing exactly the same.


Being in Lyon was a good time to reflect on the experiences I’d had in Paris – frustrating, but good too. The people in Lyon were significantly nicer than their Parisian counterparts, and made me wonder what my time in France would have been like outside of a major metropolis, and just outside of convention… But my reflections can’t be filled with regret as I know that once again I’ve been blessed by a series of experiences so exquisite its hard to imagine I’m deserving of them. The chance to meet new people, and stay near to close friends; the opportunity to go to Tunisia and translate, fully submersing myself in an alien environment, and being challenged to a grueling extent; the chance to live with a kooky host family that I won’t ever forget; to be in Paris, and work on my French…

I’m a lucky girl.

I only have a few days left.

A semester that was just as mad as the summer that had preceded it. Its amazing how relaxed I feel now, sitting over this cup of coffee and flicking through pictures of Lyon’s ancient monoliths bathed in modern day lights. This stillness comes in spite of the fact that my life feels like constant motion – a wheel rolling in a vacuum through space. I think of how quickly I have changed and how drastic those changes have been. Throughout the course of my college experience, each year – each semester – has marked a new beginning, and a sweet end. And now is time for yet another…

Enchante, Paris, and farewell.