Familiarizing People and Places II

My first night at the Azzahra Hotel the fact that I was no longer with a large group of people hit me and I sought some company from those down in the lobby. The hotel is owned by a Palestinian Christian family. This has been their family business since 1961. Three of the siblings help to run the hotel: George, James and Ro'ina. There is a Jacob as well but I think he is a cousin.

Not knowing what or who I would find down in the lobby I brought my book, a jar of sage tea I purchased at the Druze villge Peqi'in, and some water. The downstairs of the hotel is beautiful. There are several salons with high ceilings and tapestries, rugs and such. There is also a restaurant with a lovely bar and a wood-burning pizza oven imported from Italy. The hotel restaurant boasts the best pizza outside of Italy.

I approached the bar and asked for a glass of hot water. This is when I met some of the characters of the Azzahra Hotel. Abad is one of the servers. He's on the short and petite side with medium-long straight black hair, wears eyeglasses and has some facial hair that makes him look like a manly mouse, if you will. He swoops through the restaurant whenever and wherever he is needed. He also likes loud music as he is a percussionist. Later in the night he turns on his Sony, music playing phone and plays air drums, banging his head up and down. This makes me giggle.

Abad gave me a glass of hot water and I took it into the more well-lit room. The tea I drank was dried sage. I mention this because at one point I started laughing at myself, trying to be indiscreet and nonchalant, putting dried sage leaves into hot water and realizing that in order to drink this tea, my teeth would have to serve as a sieve through which the leaves caught instead of slipping down my throat. Discreetly I kept pulling tea leaves out of my mouth and stuffing them into a napkin, while trying to read and be cool.

Quickly, I would say, I finished my tea and returned the glass. Smartest thing I did all night.

George, one of the owner-brothers and I began conversing. Why are you here? Where are you from? etc...I couldn't help myself and launched right into the questions that were burning.

George only returned to East Jerusalem last September. Since the early 90s George had been living in New York. He studied Economics at NYU and sounds like he had a pretty comfortable and stable life there. He visited his family, only through the airport in Amman because whenever he tries to fly out through Tel Aviv, he is interrogated for six hours and the hassle isn't worth it. He too holds a blue identity card.

I asked George if he returned for his family or for his people. He looked at me and said, "that's a loaded question."

I didn't know what that meant and asked him to explain.

He continued that things here are complicated. He came for his family because they needed help running the hotel. He's not so sure about his people. Palestinian Christians have a hard time amongst Palestinian Muslims. In fact, George's family came here from Syria generations ago because the Muslims in Syria were slaughtering the Christians. They found refuge in Palestine.

There is a lot of bigotry, George says. There are fewer and fewer Palestinian Christians in Israel, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, and also Bethlehem and Nazareth despite the close ties to Jesus Christ. It is an easier life outside of Israel, for both internal Palestinian reasons, and external reasons.

George invited me to join him for nargile. Naturally, I obliged. Sitting across from him, passing the pipe back and forth, allowed for us both to make the commitment to sit and talk. I was thrilled.

Conversing with George was an intricate negotiation process. I could sense that in order to get more information from him, I too had to be human. Amongst the socio-political analyses, the topics turned to discussion of family-- mine, his, music-- blues, classic rock, film---as a powerful medium for learning about the peoples of the world.

George told me that he can't believe I'm only here for a month. How is that enough time to really understand all the different people? He's right, everyone is telling me this. However, I believe my insistence for seizing the moments I do have inspired him to keep talking. Also, he had a sizable martini that Jacob called a "Bond martini", shaken not stirred with a lemon twist.

"In vino, veritas," said George.

George shared that in order for his family to be all together, a great deal of organization is necesary. Countries have to be traveled, permits ensured, and while his family is close, they haven't really been altogether in about 11 years.

I can't even imagine this reality, this truth. I admitted to him that perhaps one of the reasons I'm staying only a month in East Jerusalem is my fear of getting homesick. My privileged life allows me to walk to my grandparents' home, meet my mother and aunt for coffee with few interruptions or schedule conflicts, and any given night, I can have dinner with my mom and dad, or choose to skip out.

I began to wonder if families who are separated for so long eventually become estranged from one another. I imagine that if you are prevented by several forces from seeing your loved ones, eventually the pain becomes so intense that the spirit-heart-body shuts down in order to survive. And how does that affect one's psyche? Can you ever trust people? When things are going good do you doubt you deserve it and end up self-sabotaging your happier moments in time?

George isn't the only one in his family frustrated by the internal conflict of the Palestinians. His sister Ro'ina is also feeling this, so George says. It's difficult to feel a part of the community when you are looked down upon or discriminated against for being Christian.

Our conversation had to end however, as customers entered the restaurant. George excused himself to don his pizza-maker smock and took his place as pizza chef extraordinaire.