Day 1

I arrived at the Ben-Gurion airport on Friday afternoon, May 14. I was tired from my trip, and tired from the semester I had just finished at Reed. I had only napped for an hour or two before my morning flight, and I don't think that I sobered up until I was part-way to Philadelphia. I really wanted a cigarette. On the walk from the terminal to customs I was stopped by a woman police officer, "can I see your passport? What is the purpose of your trip? Are you alone?" Fuck...


(photo credit: Bruce's MidEast Soundbites)


....I told her that I was traveling alone, I was going to go to Jerusalem, to Tel-Aviv and the Dead Sea, as a tourist. "I see you have been to Jordan, and Egypt, and Morocco." I told her I was a student in Egypt in 2008, I had done some traveling around while I was abroad. "Where are you staying?" I told her that I was staying in a hostel, and that I had some friends in Israel who were into social activism. Oops. What kind of social activism? Gay rights in Israel... I was interested in seeing where my friend worked and learning more about it. She gave me back my passport. When I got to the customs man in his little tollbooth he looked at my passport, asked the purpose of my trip ("tourism!"), gave me a wide smile, and told me to step aside. Fuck. He sent me to a waiting space. There were two or three single Arab men in the room, and a young Arab couple- the woman was wearing a hijab. FuckShitFuck. This was clearly not a short-wait sort of a waiting room. A woman called me into a back room, I had to leave my bag in the waiting room. She asked me about my trip to Israel, what I was doing- I told her I was a tourist. I told her that I enjoyed my time in Egypt and Jordan, but was interested in Israel as well, and wanted to come spend some time here. No, I am not Jewish. No, I did not come with a friend. She went away for a while, came back, told me to go sit outside again. In the waiting room a man picked up his phone and started to make a call. The guard in the room yelled at him in English, "Put that away! You cannot talk on your phone!" The man went to put the phone in his bag, "Do not touch your bag!". The man sat back down. A woman appeared at the entrance of the room. "Heeder?" I picked up my backpack and followed her into an office. A man was sitting at a desk with a computer, the woman stood behind him. She looked like a total bitch. Also, sometimes I don't get along with other women, so I was hoping that the man would be nicer to me. Maybe he would think that I was cute and adventurous, a ballsy little thing all alone in the Middle East. "Why are you here?" I said I was a tourist. I explained the stamps on my passport. I gave them the business cards of my Israeli contacts. I was aware that social activists are not popular with most Israelis, especially the ones in uniform, but I figured that was better than pretending that I didn't know anyone in the region. Knowing Israelis was clearly better than knowing Palestinians, even if the Israelis were leftists, right? Maybe not. The woman was speaking to the man in Hebrew and he was (presumably) translating. "Sign onto your e-mail". I was taken aback. Okay. Using his computer I logged onto my Reed e-mail account. I had an e-mail from a Palestinian acquaintance K. Houssani in my inbox. K. is an older friend of a friend, and I had stayed with him a couple of years ago in Jerusalem. I had to answer a lot of questions about K.- how I knew him, was I staying with him, had we been in contact during my last year an a half in the states? They asked me to log into my other e-mail account. I logged into my second, and last, e-mail account. G-mail. There were only messages from the library about overdue books, and e-mails from Wells Fargo informing me about how little money was in my account. The woman said something in Hebrew and glared at me with her icy blue eyes. "What is your other e-mail?" asked the man? I don't have another e-mail. "What is your other e-mail?" There is no other e-mail! "What is your OTHER e-mail?!" I didn't really know what else to tell him- at the time I only had two e-mail addresses, and neither was that interesting. They told me to start taking things out of my bag. The woman snatched up my copy of 'Gravity's Rainbow' (which I still haven't managed to successfully read) and asked what it was. A fiction book? She flipped through the pages. They pulled out my journals, one of which had my list of couch-surfing contacts with names, locations, and phone numbers. "What is this?! Are you going to Ramallah, to Nablus, to Bethlehem and Hebon?" Fuckagain, I decided that it was pretty impossible for me to lie my way out of this situation. So I told the truth. I was there in Israel because I was doing a project about graffiti in Palestine. It's something that I had been researching for a while, my college had paid for my trip so that I could do original research, I wanted to go to the West Bank, if it was possible. I spoke to the man and, looking at his face, I realized how foolish I had been to hope that I could somehow charm my way out of a confrontation. The woman was a bitch, for sure, but this man had a cruel smile on his face. His eyes weren't icy- they were blank. I started to worry that I wouldn't be able to get into the country at all. I would have to turn around and take a plane home. The man picked up my wallet, took out my cash, and handed it to me. The man started to pull things out of my wallet and show them to the woman. My visa cards, business cards, a photo of my little brother, one of the whitest people I know. "Who is this?!" I started to tear up. My brother, it's my little brother! Why were they doing this to me? I just wanted to go smoke a Marlboro, find a place to sleep, take a nap, take a shower. Again, that cruel smile. "You can go sit down in the waiting room again. Leave your computer, your phone, your wallet and your books." I told them I wasn't comfortable with them having access to my computer without me there- could I stay in the room? No. I took my sorry self to the bathroom, where I cried for a minute, washed my face, and headed back to the waiting room. The room had lost some of its people (detainees?) , and gained new ones. I was still the only white person in the room. I leaned my head up on my backpack and closed my eyes. I drifted off, and woke up with the cold woman standing in front of me. "Come with me." We went back to the office with the man. "Do you know why you are here?" No. "Because you are traveling alone, we think you may have come here to make trouble. What is this project about graffiti? Do they not have graffiti in America? Why don't you study that?" Because it's not the same? I don't want to make trouble, just to see things. "I see." They sent me back to the waiting room. I waited, vaguely watching the comings and goings of other people, wishing I could smoke, hoping that I didn't get sent back to America. Finally, the woman with cold eyes came out and handed me my phone. A while later, my wallet and books. And finally, my laptop and my passport. The whole process took a good three or four hours. "You can go."