Dichotomous Living

I work for the Palestine-Israel Journal as the online content editor. This job involves trying to increase our online reach to a global audience and I had hoped, a more local audience in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, copies of the print journal are unable to reach the Territories because the mail going to and from is highly censored and often delivery is interfered. Weekly, we receive calls from Gazans and West Bank residents about their desire to receive and read the Palestine-Israel Journal and couldn't we find a way to help?

Over the past few months I've been researching and trying to implement the idea of the online subscription for the PIJ, but many obstacles have arisen. At present, the main block to accomplishing this task is that we are out of funding. The end of March 2008 signals the second month that my colleagues at the Journal will go home without pay.

Everyone except for me is going to the office as they live in or near Jerusalem, even though they are not receiving compensation for their work. At this time I cannot afford to make the commute back and forth without pay so I work primarily from home and I also have part time work at a preschool that offers me hours with pay. I have to take the job that pays.

This means that since the Jerusalem yeshiva shooting, I have not traveled to Jerusalem. I exist solely in Tel Aviv. I study Hebrew at cafes with rich chocolatey cafe mochas, walk to work in the afternoons, jog on the seashore and spend several hours cooking creative dishes from the weekly organic vegetable from a local farm that I pick up at a nearby Gan (preschool). I sit at my computer, I follow the news in Israel, in Tibet, in the States, return and write e-mails, practice yoga, enjoy the evenings with Eitan and relish the time I spend with two of my close friends here -- Clare and Anne-Sophie (fellow Israeli residents due to having an Israeli boyfriend).

In Tel Aviv, there is no indication of any conflict, injustice, difficulty or anything even hinting that Israel isn't anything but a thriving country with malls, restaurants, young, old, dogs, cats, too much pollution, tourism and a falafel stand on every block which reminds me that I am in fact in the Middle East.

In Tel Aviv, life is...normal. Sixty kilometers east, in Jerusalem, life has changed for a certain population.

Working from home means that any changes to the PIJ website or final edits and drafts of the PIJ newsletter must be executed from my living room in Tel Aviv via e-mail and telephone. I speak to my webmaster, Nidal, and we communicate about the appearance, content and the never-ending battle between my Mac and the PIJ PC computers that for some reason, do not receive files from me, that can be opened.

Nidal's first language is Arabic, his second is Hebrew, his third is English. At times, there are miscommunications. But we are friends and we laugh on the phone about our love lives, whether or not we've found the "one to give my heart to for all my life" and the frustration we have with our zany bosses. If something goes amiss with the website, we fix it and eventually the job gets done.

Nidal doesn't tell me that since the shooting in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva that he has trouble returning to his own home in the Old City when he goes home from work because there are heightened restrictions on the age and number of men allowed to enter the Old City on Fridays.

He doesn't complain or curse the State of Israel because the woman he mentions he'd like to marry cannot live here as she is a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship (and if he marries her and goes to Jordan he will have great difficulty coming home and may have his identity card revoked).

Instead, he is more concerned with whether or not I'm looking for a new job and how my love life is going and when we will see each other again.

However, my dear Najat, who challenges and loves me with each interaction we have, does share with me her life, post-yeshiva shooting. But not until this week.

Last week, she didn't want to talk to me, she was too angry, too scared and too upset to be living a reality she tries to forget, but which always forces itself into her face.

Yesterday I asked her how she was doing. She replied with a cheerful voice happy to hear from me and asked when I'd be coming to the office. Again, I asked her how she was doing and what was happening in Jerusalem. I heard her voice drop from sunny yellow to twilight purple. The laughter left her voice as she told me she did not sleep well the night before.

She lives near the neighborhood, Jabel Mukaber, where the yeshiva shooter was born and raised. Since then, helicopters are constantly hovering overhead searching for suspects. Najat's neighborhood is near to a settlement. Right now, each day and night, Najat, her family and neighbors are careful when they step outside as settlers are throwing stones at them and their homes.

Najat usually drives to work. The checkpoints between her home and the office (which are all inside of Jerusalem-- not in the West Bank) are too much hassle. She does not want to be harassed or stopped or questioned about something she has nothing to do with. She's taking the bus, it's safer and easier. She is tired and upset and completely unable to do anything about the situation.

We talk about these things after I've returned from a lovely jog with the sea breeze blowing in my face, while I wait for the boiler to heat up the water for my shower.