The Disputed Land

I apologize for leaving everyone hanging. Most of you have probably stopped reading at this point, but for you die-hard fans I am going to finish this thing up.

The next day Paul and I arose on the early side. We had plans to meet up with Amin, a friend my sister made a few months earlier on a "Walk and Talk" peace conference. We told him we would meet him around 11am at the bus station in Ramallah. We got some breakfast and headed over to the Damascus gate to catch a bust to Ramallah.

Entering the West Bank was easy as cake. Approaching the check point I could see the blank slabs of cement stretching off into the distance, making up the controversial wall I've seen on TV. As we rolled through the checkpoint the wall took on a much different facade. On the Palestinian side the wall reflected the voices of the oppressed and mistreated, covered with protests for peace and comical yet depressing cartoons. Making our way through the traffic filled streets of Ramallah we got to the bus station a little after 11. I called Amin, he said he would be there in 5 minutes. One thing that you readers back in the states have to understand is that there is a major difference between US time and Middle Eastern time. 5 minutes Middle East time is approximately 45 minutes US time. So around 12pm Amin showed up and brought us back to his office.

Amin's main occupation appeared to be teaching. His office was a classroom and it was quite obvious that english was his subject of choice, although he also taught french. As we waited in his office drinking arabic coffee we got a taste for some of Amin's other occupations, which included selling perfume to two women that came in for a minute. Amin, like most Palestinians we met, seemed to do a little bit of everything, making money whatever way he could. After Amin had mixed some perfumes for the two women, we left to see the city. First stop was Arafat's tomb. I had not realized it, but his tomb is in the PLO headquarters. That was only a minor detail though, Amin was friends with one of the guards and we where able to walk right in. After, we walked through downtown Ramallah. Amin seemed to be the life of the town, greeting every other person we passed. As we walked we gathered a following made up of Amin's cousins and friends. Once our following had grown to about 7 men, we stopped in Stars & Bucks (not to be confused with Starbucks) to get out of the midday sun.

At 3pm we had to head back to the office because Amin had an English class to teach. Being the gentleman that he is, he invited Paul and I to come teach the class with him. The class consisted mostly of having his students ask us questions, which quickly took a political turn. Paul and I tried our best to answer their controversial questions, and the class ended up being a lot of fun. When the class ended we headed out once again to a little restaurant that we were told served very authentic Palestinian food. Of course once we got there more and more people kept showing up. The food was fantastic, and the company was some of the friendliest I've met. One man there actually knew our uncle from his classes at Berziet University in Ramallah where our uncle is a professor.

Around 8:30ish Amin walked us back through Ramallah to the bus station. Before reaching the bus station we met another friend of Amin's. He was a very friendly man that had gone to school with Amin. The man had a pleasant wife and two very playful little kids, it was a picture of a truly happy family. It was not till we where walking away that Amin informed us that man had spent 13 years in an Israeli prison.

We found ourselves once again approaching the checkpoint by bus, this time from the other side. There was no rolling through the checkpoint from the Palestinian side. The bus came to a halt and everyone filed off. We where herded into a building with a series of large metal gates, each one funneling to a turnstile. Above the turnstile was a red light and a green light. The turnstile did not turn until the green light was lit, at which point everyone pushed and people where forced into the rotating metal teeth two at at time. Once through the first turnstile, there was a second gate. Once again you had to wait for the green light to turn on and fight your way to the turnstile. Behind the second turnstile was a security station like those you might see at the airport, the only difference was that the guards sat behind thick glass and gave instructions through a microphone. Once you had done everything they asked the opened the turnstile in a third gate and you where free to go. The whole process took Paul and I about an hour and a half, at which point we boarded the bus on the other side and headed back to Jerusalem. This checkpoint experience left both Paul and me stressed and in bad moods. I can't Imagen what it must be like for the Palestinians people having to do that every day.