“Your word is a lamp to walk by, and a light to illumine my path.” Psalm 119:105
I tug on the gate, gently at first, then begin to yank at it with force, since it sometimes gets stuck in the mornings- mornings which are increasingly growing brisk- sharp, cool, and bright, unmistakably familiar signs that autumn has come. I walk quickly down the alley that leads from Antoinette’s flat, where Anna and I live, out towards the street. Ragtag neighborhood cats, curled up in people’s gardens or sitting on top of gates watch my passing with varying degrees of disinterest. When I reach the street, I begin to see other signs of life: children walking to school, people climbing in their cars for their drive to work, shopkeepers opening up.I pass the “Mini Market,” an impossibly small shop that Anna and I frequent. Although it is crowded with three people inside the shop, we are able to find inside it almost anything that we might want to buy, from phone cards to toothpaste, cereal to cookies. I might stop by the shop on my walk home from work to buy a diet coke and exchange a few words with one of the two brothers who run the shop. My first two months here I thought it was just one man who ran the shop; imagine my surprise when I went to the store one day and there were TWO, almost identical brothers standing there inside the Mini Market! The brother that I most frequently see has taken to asking me how things are going, and with a grin on his face, politely humoring my attempts at Arabic.
I reach the main road that runs through Beit Hanina, Shouafat Road, and take a right, past the “Garden of Eden” fruit and vegetable shop, the pet shop with the squeaking birds, and the little girl with the pigtails who stands waiting for the bus. We smile conspiratorially at one another. If I’m on the other side of the street I pass Ikermawi Restaurant, the best place for hummous and falafel in our neighborhood and Freij grocery store, the only Christian owned grocery store in our area, and where rumor has it, there will be a Christmas tree come December! Walking to work can be a bit of an obstacle course, because the sidewalk is already crowded with trash dumpsters, parked cars, broken glass, and other debris. It’s quite interesting to compare the potholed, worn streets of Palestinian East Jerusalem with the neatly paved and manicured streets and sidewalks of West Jerusalem or settlement areas in East Jerusalem like those around Beit Hanina- Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Ze’ev. According to the NGO Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, “The Jerusalem municipality collects around 30 percent of the municipal taxes in East Jerusalem from Palestinian residents. However, less than 10 percent of its budget is returned back to them in the form of municipal services.” As I reach the end of Shouafat Road, I come to an intersection. Behind me, the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina, to my right, a road heading towards the city center of Jerusalem, to my left the road to Ramallah, and straight ahead of me the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov. The regularity, orderliness, and general sameness of the buildings ahead of me stand in stark contrast to the sprawl of shops and homes behind me. While Arab people do live in Neve Yaakov, it is a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and I frequently see one of the large green Israeli “Egged” buses turning out of the settlement and heading into Jerusalem. Those buses do not go down our street, and likewise the smaller Arab buses that we use to get into Jerusalem or into the West Bank do not turn down their street, but head down the road towards Ramallah. This segregation of bus systems is a constant reminder to me of how complicated the situation is here in Jerusalem. Some of the Jerusalem buses run very similar routes, stopping at some of the same stops even, but I ultimately feel that the bus system allows for the maintenance of a geographical separation of people. One in which people can go from their neighborhood on their bus to their areas of the city of Jerusalem, all with limited contact with the “Others”. It’s essentially the same concept as settler roads and Israeli-only roads, in which people can travel between settlements and cities, minimizing contact with the occupied population. It’s one of the ways in which people living side by side are making conscious decisions to separate themselves from one another. Although it is perhaps much more outwardly apparent here, I must say that it makes me acknowledge and examine how humans do this with alarming frequency, particularly in urban environments, with the geographical separation of people of different socio-economic situations being one of the most common forms of this.
I turn left, starting down the hill on the road that leads towards Ramallah. Through a clearing of trees and buildings, the ugliest feature of our landscape comes into view- the drab grey, concrete face of the illegal separation wall, reminding me that Beit Hanina is a neighborhood divided. We live in the “new” part of the city, but with the completion of the wall in Beit Hanina in 2008, the “old” part of town has been effectively cut off from the urban center and easy access to Jerusalem, being absorbed instead into the Ramallah municipality.
The separation wall dividing our neighborhood
By now I am almost at school. Perhaps some of the young boys, the shebab, on their own walk to school have teasingly said “Good morning” to me in thickly accented English, and have responded with surprised laughter when I respond in Arabic! I begin to see the signs,"Barrier Ahead," and “Prepare Your Documents,” the rusty remnants of barbed wire, boulders, and concrete blocks that line the median of the road. They are the ghosts, the silent memorial, of what I understand was a particularly difficult checkpoint that stood directly outside the Helen Keller School, up until a few months ago. Perhaps the graffiti spray painted across our school sign is a result of this checkpoint: “Free Palestine Now.” The checkpoint was such a disruption to the functioning of the school that a separate entrance to the school grounds had to be opened up. Of course, it’s certainly a positive that this checkpoint is no longer functional, but as I reach the school gate, I am also aware that if I were to keep walking down the road, within five minutes, I would quite literally hit a wall. The kind of wall that only belongs around a prison- tall, overbearing, with coiled rows of barbed wire along the top. And were I to walk beyond that, another twenty minutes would bring me to another, fully functional checkpoint, and one of the worst in the West Bank- Qalandiya checkpoint.
But I don’t keep walking. I turn left, hurrying quickly onto the school grounds, full of fruit bearing trees, flowers, and olive trees. Perhaps the first bell is ringing by this time, and I know that I will soon be greeting the teachers of the school. I will soon be surrounded by the smiling faces of my students. And I’m happy. Happy that my walk through a landscape of occupation and injustices, full of reminders that we are a still long way from peace and equal rights in this land, has ended here. At a place full of bright and shining lights- children who bear great potential and an even greater capacity for love, and teachers who believe in the value of each child, and work tirelessly and hopefully for them. Happy because my path, my walk, brings me each day to a place full of illuminating lights for my time here, where I learn simply by being with people, talking with them, sharing tea, or dancing with the kindergartners during music time.
Thank you, Lord, for lighting the path that brought me here to Jerusalem, and for allowing my path to cross people whose love and lives inspire hope and encouragement, even in discouraging circumstances. May I bless their lives as they are blessing mine. I ask that you would guide my time here, leading me down not just the familiar roads, but also down new paths along which you would have me go.
