Travel Writing: a child born in Bethlehem

I scribbled this in my notebook while staying with a host family in Beit Sahour (next door to Bethlehem).  The family has bullet holes in their home -- a remnant from the 2nd Intifada, when standing on your balcony could be considered a crime.
______________________

Babies, I think, may be the international language of love.

All that is needed is one glance at the large, bright eyes, the guarded smiles, the small, pudgy fingers, the wild squeals, and it would take a hard heart to not surrender entirely.

Our host grandmother kisses the fat rolls of the baby's thighs, laughing at the child's delight, cooing at his noises.  Her voice, pitched high, speaks nonsense in his ear.

We watched as the grandfather, a man of few words and severe dignity (who would barely speak in our direction), became a child himself, playing games with his grandson in his arms.  Chuckling in his satisfaction and pride.

And I wish that all the mothers of Palestine could hold all of the babies of Israel, and vice versa.  Maybe then we would not be so quick to kill.

Collateral Murder

This video, recently leaked, epitomizes everything I hate about war. Everything that makes me sick. Yes, the soldiers believe (somewhat inexplicably) that they're firing on the enemy, but they aren't. They're children and reporters and the unknown faces of human beings with lives and joys and the courage to rescue the wounded.  And maybe that's the whole point.  That there isn't an enemy.  Only children and reporters and . . . you get the point.  But when we label them, it makes them so much easier to kill (and laugh while doing it).

May God have mercy on us all.  



From the website [shooting took place in 2007]:

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

This is an old post, from November, that I somehow failed to publish:

I watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tonight. Overall, not sure what I think of it. Some of the greatest horrors in history, seen from a child's uncomprehending perspective.

The brightness of the leaves, the beauty of the piano, all leading to what? An accidental death? A German child burned to death with his Jewish friend? So that his parents can learn a lesson? Can experience the reality of the horror?

The one part that really got to me was the beginning. The haunting paradox of the idyllic German household and the liquidating Jewish ghetto. Of living a normal life, a simple life, oblivious to the horrors taking place within your country's borders.

Looking back, how would you make sense of it? The decaying monstrosity that had taken place while you had been happy, while life had been normal. How do you recover from such an awakening?

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I wrote this reflection for my Modern Novel class in university. The book was highly engrossing, thought provoking, and — perhaps — profound.

The story is about Oskar, a precocious child who lost his father in the Twin Towers. The message, however, is about unity, healing, and the possibility of a wholeness that transcends hate.

______________________________________________________


Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a beautiful book. It is a book to be experienced, rather than just read. Blank space, color, photos, and small black words all combine to create a holistic picture that is greater than the sum of its parts. A metaphor for life. It is a book about pain, and loss, and the distance between people. But it is also a book about hope, and the journey back to wholeness. Back together.

By combining the story of 9-11 with Hiroshima and Dresden, Foer takes an American event and makes it universal. Rather than allowing his story to become a political or national commentary, he writes about the human experience. And by so doing, he demonstrates the power of art to bring healing. I would argue that Foer, by writing this book, allows us to see the events of September 11th with a new clarity. Perhaps not the clarity George Bush would have us posses. Not "us" versus "them". Not division. Not enmity. But unity. Pain and loss and death. The great levelers. The horrible monster under the bed that leaves us all equal. All human. All broken.

And in this way, I think that Foer’s book is truly profound. He has written about something horrible and real. A turning point in American history. A tragedy. A landmark. A rallying cry. But he has done so in a way that brings cosmos out of chaos (as Madeleine L’Engle might put it). A way that helps us be more human. Helps us feel more. Helps us see more. Replaces destruction with creativity. Focuses on love, rather than hate.

I love that Oskar’s journey passes through so many people’s lives. As he struggles to stay connected to his father, to feel and not feel, to make some sense out of anything at all, he touches and touches and touches. All the Blacks with all of their individual pains and joys. His grandmother. His grandfather. His doorman. The cab driver. The limo driver. His mother. The child, with all of his quirky habits, brilliance, and pain, is so very much alive. And without knowing he is doing it—without really trying to do it—he brings that life to others.

And this is why Foer’s narrator must be a child. For the overabundance of life. Of feeling. For the honesty of pain. Oskar’s “heavy boots.” Foer contrasts this perspective, and the new pain, with Oskar’s grandparents, and their old pain. Oskar believes the world can somehow be alright again if he can just find a lock that matches a key. Or dig up an empty grave. For his grandparents, life is more complex. They live in a world where nothing will every be alright again. Where words have run out. Or the space in which to write them. And without the words, how can gaps be bridged? And yet, they too journey with Oskar towards hope. Towards healing. Towards each other.

Children Speak about Gaza

Here's a video clip about Gaza BEFORE the recent violence. I still find it rather applicable.

Part of the clip shows interviews with Palestinian children. One boy asks: "Could you live here? Could you? You couldn't because conditions are horrible ["difficult"/"hard"], and you'd be terrified whenever the missiles strike and the walls begin to crack."

Another child recounts the experience of being under fire: "The shelling struck the window, everything broke and got burnt. Why did they break my things? And break my toys? . . . We threw it all in the garbage . . . the food we eat smells like gas. We don't want to get rid of our clothes, even though they smells like gas . . . let the Israelis come and smell our clothes and see our home."

The clip (which can also be found at Behind the Lines: Poetry, War, and Peacemaking) is originally from the documentary Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority. The film is the winner of multiple awards from various film festivals (including Best Film and Best Documentary), and has a very impressive list of experts interviewed.

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance . . . it is the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking.

Death Bullets Kill

I am a pacifist. What my father might describe as an "aggressive" pacifist. I do not believe in using something as ugly, terrible, and destructive as war. Ever. Not even for the "greater good."

That kind of oxymoron, I think, is akin to blaspheme.

I believe there is always a better option. A more creative option. An option that may demand more of us -- may require sacrifice and humility and love -- but will ultimately create life, rather than death. And will therefore reflect the nature of God, and what it truly means to be human.

For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15

There is no stray bullet, sirs.
No bullet like a worried cat
crouching under a bush,
no half-hairless puppy bullet
dodging midnight streets.
The bullet could not be a pecan
plunking the tin roof,
not hardly, no fluff of pollen
on October's breath,
no humble pebble at our feet.

So don't gentle it, please.

We live among stray thoughts,
tasks abandoned midstream.
Our fickle hearts are fat
with stray devotions, we feel at home
among bits and pieces,
all the wandering ways of words.

But this bullet had no innocence, did not
wish anyone well, you can't tell us otherwise
by naming it mildly, this bullet was never the friend
of life, should not be granted immunity
by soft saying -- friendly fire, straying death-eye,
why have we given the wrong weight to what we do?

Mohammed, Mohammed, deserves the truth.
This bullet had no secret happy hopes,
it was not singing to itself with eyes closed
under the bridge.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

Go here to hear the author read her own poem.

Peace Studies

I was recently awarded the Hazel Steinfeldt Peace Studies Scholarship at George Fox University. This is the essay I wrote for the application:

Peace and Justice
1 February 2008

Peace. It’s a simple word. Five letters, one syllable. And yet, it’s probably the most complex concept I’ve ever encountered. And one of the most controversial.

I’ve been a pacifist for as long as I can remember. Why, exactly, I’m not sure. None of my family members share this conviction, and I was not raised to be a Quaker. And yet, the aggressive pursuit of non-violent justice has always made sense to me—always seemed an intricate part of being a Christian, and following Christ. From the time I was a child I have not been able to read the Sermon on the Mount without believing that Christ was, and is, calling us to a different way of living—a different form of existence. Calling us to selfless sacrifice, and costly, uncalculating, love. And no matter how hard I’ve tried, I have never been able to reconcile these values with war, violence, or force. I believed, and still do, that Christ was giving us the right (and perhaps the imperative) to lay down our own lives for others, but never to take their lives from them.

In tenth grade I was faced with the challenge, and privilege, of grappling with the pursuit of peace and justice in the context of a very specific conflict: the Palestinian-Israeli issue. My parents are anthropologists, and my whole pre-college life was spent in the Arab world, from North Africa (Tunisia) to the Middle East (Egypt and Lebanon). Because of this, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has always loomed very close on the horizon, casting its shadow over much of life. However, it was not until the middle of high school that I truly encountered the issue head on. That year, my father, a professor at Bethel University, created a curriculum for me to study the conflict in depth. And I did, reading books from every perspective imaginable: Christian and non-Christian Zionists, liberal and conservative Jews, Muslim and Christian Palestinians, and Arab Israelis. I was thoroughly confused, thoroughly frustrated, and thoroughly ready to grant apathy my soul.

But then I met the children. I went to Lebanon to volunteer in a refugee camp for two weeks, and I found my passion. I looked into the face of Palestinian children—children who would not cry or laugh or dance or be children—and I saw Christ looking back. By the end of my time there my heart was utterly broken—torn for a people most of the world, and most of Christianity, seemed to have rejected. My family moved to Lebanon the next year, in part so I would have greater access to the camps, and I spent most of my time working with the Inma Center—an NGO created to help restore hope to a desperate people. I returned to my studies, but this time with purpose, seeking to understand the people behind the conflict, and through understanding to somehow restore justice to a broken land. I wrote papers about Christ’s love for Palestinians, and chose to attend George Fox University because of its Peace Studies minor, Quaker heritage, and heart for the oppressed—a heart that I passionately believed mirrored God’s.

And that is why I am here, studying writing and literature, and preparing to return to the Middle East to pursue reconciliation and peace. It is the calling I have felt on my life since I was fifteen-years-old—a calling I do not believe God has released me from. I have no expectations that it will be easy, and I know it will not be simple. But I do believe that love is powerful, and that sacrifice is God’s calling on the lives of believers. And so I go forward in faith, to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. My life is Christ’s, may He do with it as He pleases.

Refugees, Afghani and Otherwise

While I'm on the subject of children, and my experiences in the Bourj-el-Barajneh camp, I thought I might as well include this excerpt from a paper I wrote this February. The essay was for a class on the modern novel -- specifically, a response to Khaled Hossini's The Kite Runner (a book about Afghanistan that I would HIGHLY recommend). My paper's first several sections dealt with migraines and Tunisian friends, and were otherwise irrelevant to the present topic, so I've excluded them. The text in italics is from Hosseini's book.

Fragments of a Broken Life:
Intersections with Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner
The Talib, looking absurdly like a baseball pitcher on the mound, hurled the stone at the blindfolded man in the hole. It struck the side of his head. The woman screamed again. The crowd made a startled “OH!” sound. I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands. The spectators’ “OH!” rhymed with each flinging of the stone, and that went on for a while. When they stopped, I asked Farid if it was over. He said no. I guessed the people’s throats had tired.

∞

I’d never seen the children so happy. So engaged. For days they had sat at tables. Moved little. Smiled less. Now they were dancing. Twirling tiny fingers to the sound of an Arab drum. The darbooka.

I sat watching. Stunned by what I had seen. The remnants of the puppet show still stood behind them. The background bloody with tanks and dying Palestinian martyrs. Small pieces of crushed paper littered the floor. I could hear the man cheering. “Throw the rock! Throw the rock!”

It wasn’t violence. Not really. Asking children to throw paper at cloth puppets. No one had died. And they deserved a game. Had enjoyed it.
Why, then, did I feel so sick?

∞

I felt a presence next to me and looked down. It was Sohrab. Hands dug deep in the pockets of his raincoat. He had followed me.

“Do you want to try?” I asked. He said nothing. But when I held the string out for him, his hand lifted from his pocket. Hesitated. Took the string. My heart quickened as I spun the spool to gather the loose string. We stood quietly side by side. Necks bent up.

∞

It was just a little boy and a glue stick. Hardly what I expected my life’s climax to entail. I was there to make a difference. To change the world. Instead, I watched a child refuse to touch me. Talk to me. Smile. Day after day.

I always hoped they’d place me in a different room. Somewhere where I wouldn’t see his eyes. Dead. Flat. Empty. The eyes no three-year-old should ever look through.

But every day, I’d go to the Bourj-el-Barajneh camp, in Beirut, Lebanon, and have him waiting for me.

No. Not waiting. Sitting.

By the end of two weeks, I didn’t care anymore. Not about Palestine. Not about Israel. And certainly not about the living-dead that inhabited that preschool. There was no hope there. Not for them. And not for me, as long as I stayed with them.

So I decided to leave. To go home. To do the sensible thing, and preserve my sanity. To scour my memories until I saw no child’s eyes. Watching. Accusing.

My feet were skipping that last day. Counting the seconds in my head. To oblivion. To freedom. We were helping the children make a craft of some sort. Gluing something to something else. The boy was looking down at the table, dazed as usual. I barely noticed. Offered him a glue stick. Because I was supposed to. Preparing to do his craft myself.

I wasn’t even looking. My hand held out to him. Prepared for nothing.

I felt fingertips. Brushing my palm. Moving the unwieldy yellow block. Attempting to lift it.

I went back the next day. And the next.

A Rant Against Apathy

I warn you, this is a rant. A rant driven by deep anguish, but a rant nonetheless. I wrote it during my senior year of high school, while applying to colleges. Westmont (in California) asked me to write an essay about something I was passionate about. This is what they got.

It may seem over-the-top. After three years in America, with distance and language between me and those children, I may agree. But at the time I wrote this, after six months of centering my life around that camp, these emotions were burned into my skin. It's hard to explain now, with essays due and finals looming, exactly what it was like then. When a harsh word against Palestinians, or a careless remark about the greatness of Israel, would send me into racking sobs. Have you ever looked at a child, and realized that they've experienced more pain than you can imagine? That they have no hope? I don't think heartbreak is ever more real than in that moment.

I wish I could revive this passion. Feel it as more than a memory. But America is deadly to real conviction. Of this I am convinced. What is it about this place that breeds apathy? Is it because we are so far removed? Because we are too comfortable? Too rich? We are so blind to misery -- and that, I think, is killing us. We take our own lives, not because we feel pain too strongly, but because we can't feel any anguish but our own. And that was never Christ's intent.

Karith A. Magnuson
Westmont College Application
Essay 2 (a)

Introductory note: I have grown up in the Arab world my entire life and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has always been a major issue of discussion. In tenth grade I studied the conflict intensively and read many books and arguments from both sides. I also did two short term service trips to the Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon to work in a preschool/kindergarten there. Last year (in eleventh grade) we moved to Lebanon (spring ’04) and I worked weekly in the same camp, a major part of which was still in the preschool. I know that there are two sides to this story, but this paper was not written for the purpose of arguing those sides. It is simply my response to what I have seen with my own eyes, and is meant to be nothing more, and nothing less.

* * *

Heavy drops of tears run down my cheeks. Life isn’t fair and don’t just say it’s true. I’ve seen the eyes filled with tears, I’ve kissed the faces that won’t smile. Don’t tell me God intended it to be this way. Don’t say that He just loves some people more, and others less. They’re beautiful, they’re perfect, the tiny hands, the tiny feet. God made us all and yet we get things with our birth that they can never have. Why do we learn to love when they must learn to hate? Why are we born with hope, when there isn’t any left for them? Must it always be this way? Must childhood be stolen along with heritage and dreams? My soul cries, “No!” My heart bleeds, “No!” And I long to scream, “Oh Lord! How long must it go on?”

Aren’t we all children of God? Weren’t we all created in His image, with the ability to think and reason, the capacity to love, and a soul to long for greater things? Why must one people always strive to destroy another? Why do they succeed? Why have we learned to look the other way? I was always raised to believe that there were certain things that every person had a right to, things like education, liberty, and hope. Why didn’t someone tell me that it was all a myth? Why didn’t anyone explain that the colors of one’s flag are seared into one’s skin, and that the faster one withers and dies the sooner one need not feel the pain?

Over forty thousand people live in one square kilometer, unable to work and denied education. They have no citizenship and yet the name of their nation has branded them forever inferior, dangerous, and hateful. They have no electricity or running water, or even streets on which to play the greatest sport in the world [1], and so they play marbles instead. A whole generation has grown up in this camp, with no hope, no identity, no voice, no future and no way out. Their children and grandchildren are now learning the lesson too—learning what it means to be associated with their history and their pain. By three years old many of them have forgotten how to smile, or maybe it’s simply that they never learned. And what about the rest? Those few children who refuse to give up, who still laugh and play and fight for their right to a childhood. What of them? What will become of them when they discover that the world will not have them, whatever their potential and their dreams? What will they say when they realize that they, just because they are different, have been denied what others are born with? How will they say it? What if it’s with rocks and hate, guns and bombs? I suppose then we will know that we were right.

In the gathering darkness I see the silhouette of a cross and the wood is drenched with blood, and every precious drop was shed for them. What would He say to us if He saw what we, the world, have done? What will He say to us? I don’t think He will say a thing. I think He will just weep, a silent drop for every moment of their pain. They are His children, whatever we have let ourselves believe. They don’t belong to us, or to hate, or to terrorism, or to despair, or even to Palestine. They are His alone, and I fear the cost for the pain they have suffered will be dreadful indeed.

[1] All Arabs everywhere play soccer, or real football, no matter how poor they are. If they don’t have a court they play on the street, if they don’t have a ball they make one with tape. Not being able to play football is a huge blow to Palestinian boys

Palestinian Refugee Children

Hm . . . I'm not sure when I wrote this piece. I think it was revised from the beginnings of a college application essay, written a few years ago. Anyway. A reflection on my time in the the Bourj el Barajneh refugee camp -- Beirut, Lebanon.

Red Tears

There are so many faces. Some are streaked with tears, others roar with laughter, all are smudged with dirt from the streets on which they live. Tiny faces for tiny people with tiny hands and tiny ears. Little people that Jesus died for, but have probably never heard his name. They’re beautiful: some dark, some lighter than myself—an attribute of crusader blood that still flows in their veins. Little people, dancing people, crying people. Three-year-olds, four-year-olds . . . some are even five. All are children.

* * *

One small girl dances to the music she loves, swaying her hips and turning her small fingers. Dark eyes shine with joy as she moves to the rhythm of Arab drums and Arab cymbals. A child watches from where she sits, her legs unwilling to mover her, her spirit unwilling to break. Solemnly she looks, and lives on her dreams. The boy in the center giggles and flirts, golden curls adorning his head. He’s witty and gay and smart as can be . . . not that it matters much. Two dark heads bend together, troublemakers both, bright eyes gleaming with mischief. And there he sits, the boy in the corner, who won’t move or laugh or speak, but only look with eyes that dimly remember their tears.

* * *

On the blue door of the building, large for all to see, the Dome of the Rock is present, like a symbol of hope that yearns for faith. It does little to keep out the cold, or even the rain, and the penetrating chill, which seeps between the bullet holes, reminds us all that we are still alive. And there on the wall of the dilapidated school, in a refugee camp in the center of Beirut, hangs a flag. The flag. The flag that keeps them here—separate, alone, and dangerous. The flag that has replaced their future, and is the only manifestation of their pride. Its stripes are black, white, and green—vibrantly declaring an allegiance to a nonexistent nation, but it is the red that draws my eyes. Red, that color that flows beneath humanity’s skin, and at crucial, penetrating moments, emerges to stain the world. It is the color that reaches across history to bind the ovens of Auschwitz to the bombs of Hebron, and entangles them both with the memory of a dying God hanging on a cross. It is the color of Palestine—land of death and restitution. Land of the dancing children.

A Poem for Childhood

This poem was written for a child who died.
For me, it draws images of all the children, in all the refugee camps, who never had a chance to have this. To experience life in all its simplicity and wonder. Never got to be children, or have a childhood.
All the children who grow old too fast.

Language at 19 Months
for Corbin and Karith

things are very simple here
yes means yes and no is flexible
we know this

pain hurts we do not want that
but when it comes we cry
i curl up somewhere and wait

you see laughter is sure to follow
we laugh because we’re happy
sometimes it’s hard to laugh alone

the sun is bright here
it burns my eyes and nose
a girl gives me her hat

she’ll be my friend forever
forever is longer than we’ll live
she’ll be my friend forever

there’s glitter here too
the darkness even sparkles

colors are colored a thousand times thick
someone smiled at me
her skin must have been layers and layers

and oh how i wanted to match
so i hugged her face with my hands
she left glitter on my fingers

a woman closes her eyes and talks to the sky
says she wants to see its face
i do
-Kohleun

Gaza, and a Boy's Face

Here's a link to another post about Gaza, tabula gaza: exists in a cage. I think it's just a good reminder that this conflict is not abstract. It's all too concrete. Too real. And it involves real humans, with real stories, and real faces. That fact doesn't change, regardless of how far away we feel.

Peace, Surfboards, and Gaza

Here's a link to an article from the New York Times. It's a bit outdated (from this summer) but it's an interesting look at a Jewish surfer's unique attempt to reach out to Palestinians in Gaza.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 21 — The noted American surfer, Dr. Dorian Paskowitz, has high hopes for Gaza, and like the waves, he will not let anything stop him trying to see them through.

On Tuesday, Dr. Paskowitz, 86, a retired Jewish physician from Hawaii popularly known as Doc, personally delivered 15 new surfboards to Palestinian surfing enthusiasts there.

Later the article mentions:

One of the Palestinian surfers, Muhammad Jayab, described himself in the article Dr. Paskowitz had read as sympathetic to Hamas. That did not put Doc off. “To be able to go to your enemies and give them something that makes them happy is a most fulfilling adventure,” he said.

The article is bitter-sweet, however. Keep reading and it recounts how two Palestinian children, aged 10 and 12, were shot to death by the Israeli army.

Palestinian Children: Living Without Hope

An interesting look at childhood in Gaza, posted this summer:
tabula gaza: Children of Gaza

It reminds me a lot of the children I worked with in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. They were growing up, in many cases, without water or electricity. Crammed into rooms of dilapidated houses, in one of the most densely populated sq. kilometers in the world.

Their school, with the Dome of the Rock painted on the door, was completely bullet-ridden. The top half, gone. Rain came through, and pooled on the slanted cement. Children wore their coats inside. If they had them.

And many of them, just 3-years-old, wouldn't smile. Wouldn't laugh. Wouldn't be children.

Others, despite the anguish, were still overflowing with life. Tiny little trouble makers with glowing eyes, and bouncing curls.

I still remember watching one of them dance. She was tiny. Probably the smallest child I've ever seen. And she loved the music of her people. Turning her fingers to the rhythm. While in the background, a historic puppet show demonstrated how children were shot down with tanks and guns.

That is their life. Where do we go from here?