The good relationship with my BDSM-loving couchsurfing host Hassan suddenly came to an end one day. On the 6th day of my stay, I promised Hassan to make dinner as a return of hosting. We planned to have dinner at 8pm, but it got delayed as he was always like that. I think in his world there is no sense of time. After a long day of sightseeing in Jerusalem, I came home and worked hard to make my first sushi. I also made a dish of potatoes and beef, and waited until he came back. When the clock was hitting midnight, I finally heard the sound of his car.
Hassan came in without a smile and no words. “What were you doing? I have been waiting for you for hours!” I said. Without answering he said “where is the food?” in a low voice. As I presented the food on the table, he pointed out my potatoes and beef dish and said “what is Japanese about this?” Noticing his unusualness, I told him to taste it. After one spoon, he immediately said “no, I don’t like this. Prefer the sushi better” and poured the whole plate back in the pot. I was shocked. “Hey, what’s wrong with you? You just made me wait for the whole evening and tell me you don’t like the food. Even if something happened at work, don’t vent your stress on me like that!” He stood up after only eating two pieces of sushi and said “I’m done. Have to go back now” and walked out of the door.
Poor guy, I thought. In these days he kept telling me that he had enough of these BDSM relationships with his girls and that he wanted to get married to a decent woman and have children. “How about we get married? Me and you. I think we make a perfect couple.” He often suggested. I imagined that he never had decent women around. But that was his fault. The reason why he was still alone was because of his immature personality. The girls liked him for his easy-goingness and money. But as much as he thought his girls weren’t good enough to marry, the girls thought the same thing about him.
When we went to the Dead Sea the other day, him and his girls had a big fight. I didn’t understand as it was all in Arabic, but later I found out that the cause was me. Hassan kept comparing me to the girls for their lack of politeness, bad manner and not doing any housework. Hassan also kept telling them how much he liked me so they got jealous and had a battle. I saw bite scars on Hassan’s arm after I left.
Maybe it’s a good time to leave his house; I thought after dinner and packed my things before I went to bed. As I was falling asleep, I heard Hassan coming into the house with one of the girls. A few minutes later, they were fighting again but much more aggressively than before. The girl was screaming, he was yelling, I heard them hitting and beating each other, and she swept off all the things from the shelf making an enormous noise. I thought about stopping them but I didn’t thinking it’s not good to step into a couple’s fight.
The next morning I woke up and wrote a long letter to him and left a recipe that he wanted. Then I walked outside of the house. I thought about discussing it in person but this wasn’t a good idea since he only woke up after 12 everyday. I wasn’t only pissed about last night’s dinner but the thing that annoyed me the most was not respecting other people’s time. When I scheduled something with him I would always waste at least 6hrs a day just waiting for him and I thought I had enough of it.
I took a bus to Jerusalem and then transferred to a mini-van heading to the city called Hebron. Hebron was a conservative Palestinian city in the south of Jerusalem and was often the stage of conflict and massacre between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the recent years. I followed Hassan’s friend Maria’s advice; “If you want to see the real problems of Palestine, you must go to Hebron.”
Hebron was a small city but the streets were crowded with people. Markets were alive with merchants yelling out for bargain. There were no tourists let alone a single shade of Asian. I felt a bit shy to walk down the streets. As usual, many people said “Nihao” (hello in Chinese) to me but I also noticed the negativity in the way how they said it. I was never able to get used to the fact of people having a cold attitude towards me and sometimes mistreating me because they thought I was Chinese.
I put my backpack in storage of a candy store and walked down the market to visit Ibrahimi mosque. Ibrahimi mosque also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs is a sacred place for both the Arabs and the Jewish people. It is said that Abraham and Sarah from the Old Testament is buried here. In 1994 it became a scene of a massacre where 1 Jewish American man killed 29 Palestinian people who came to pray at the mosque.
The inside was more colorful and decorative than any other mosque I’d seen. When I see Islamic architecture like this, I can’t take my eyes off.
After my visit to the mosque I crossed the check point to the Jewish side. One of the Jewish soldiers talked to me so we chatted a little bit. I asked him if he ever used his gun that he was carrying. “We rarely use it. It’s usually very peaceful here. I never had to shoot anyone so far.” He answered. “Nobody likes to fight, really. Most of the people are only looking for peace. What is a reason to hate someone? I don’t hate the Palestinians at all.”
I felt happy to know that despite of his uniform and big gun, he was a normal human like me. In Israel, both men and women need to serve in the military for 3 years, so just because he was a soldier it didn’t mean he liked to fight against the Palestinians.
I walked down the road to and arrived in a very quiet area. All the houses and shops were closed, and there was no one living there. Other than the Israeli flag fluttering in the wind, there was no movement on the street. I found a sign on the door of one of the shops. It said that a Jewish husband and a pregnant wife were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomb in front of this shop in 2003. I learned that the whole area once belonged to the Palestinians as a main vegetable market but closed down after the massacre at the mosque and now only the Jewish settlers and the tourists were allowed to enter.
I couldn’t believe that such a thing happened in this peaceful place and that I was standing in front of it. I must have seen it in one of the many news of Israel-Palestine problems on TV. Before I only saw Israel and Palestine as dangerous and crazy countries; a special area in this world where they madly killed each other for religion. But it was not much different than other places. People had normal lives, loved their family and laughed a lot just like any other people. That is why I felt more sadness seeing this empty ghost town.
After walking from the ghost town to the market, I saw an Asian girl walking from the opposite direction. Then I realized that it was Ayumi, a Japanese traveler friend whom I met once in a hostel in Armenia and reunited again in Berlin last December. “Ayumi!!” I shouted. One second later she recognized me and screamed for joy that the whole market heard her. “What are you doing here?!” We couldn’t believe that we ran into each other in such a small town in Palestine. I haven’t talked in Japanese for a few months; in fact the last time I had a decent Japanese conversation was back in December with her, so it felt strange to hear my own voice.
As we hugged each other laughing, the old man at the shop in front of us came out and smiled at us. “She is my friend! I can’t believe this coincidence. The world is very, very small!” Ayumi said with excitement. He replied, “Indeed, the world is very small and life is so short. Can I tell you something? This is why we must love each other and help each other to continue life in this small planet. Comparing to the history of this earth, we are like visiting guests. Our life goes so quickly. It passes by like a breeze of wind. There is no time to hate each other, to kill each other. We have to live together.”
To me, his words sunk deep within my heart especially because he has experienced all the sadness and hardship of life as a Palestinian refugee, and yet he thought that way. I couldn’t let go of his words as a by standers comment but instead was so touched that I could feel tears coming out. I didn’t like to cry in public, so I discreetly wiped my eyes and went to sit down at the bench with Ayumi.
She said that she has been traveling around Palestine for a month now and that today was the third time to visit Hebron. “I came to see the Jewish settler’s tour. It’s a tour for local Jewish settlers and Jewish tourists usually from America who came to seek for their identity. They walk around the old town to learn about their heritage as there are many important sites for the Jewish people. Their main purpose is to try to show their presence to the Palestinians. Around 40 settlers and tourists will come escorted by more than 60 soldiers. It’ll start very soon.”
I noticed that there were other foreigners waiting on the streets. “Some of them aren’t tourists but they came as observers from an international organization. It’s better to have a foreigner’s eye so that the Jewish settlers won’t harm the Palestinians. Jewish settlers often break and damage the items sold at Palestinian stores and harm them by throwing stones or bottles at them. It is more likely to happen if no one is watching. Jewish settlers are said to be the most aggressive and violent. Most of the murders of Palestinians citizens are carried out by them rather than the soldiers. They are allowed to carry guns and won’t be blamed for their actions. ” Ayumi explained. It was hard to imagine such religious and innocent looking people doing that but later when I googled it, I was shocked by the images that I found.
Soon the separation gate opened and 10 soldiers came out carrying machine guns. “These guys are snipers. They will clear the way first and climb on rooftops so that they can shoot from above in case of danger.”
Then about a hundred settlers and Jewish tourists came out escorted by more than 50 full armed soldiers. The settlers wore traditional clothing and many foreigners took pictures of them to report to their organization. Some of the Jewish women even posed for the camera. “They really have no idea why we’re photographing them.” Ayumi said in disgust.
We followed the “tour” that went on for about an hour. We couldn’t see what they were doing as soldiers made us keep a certain distance with them. As the tour went into the market, all the Palestinian merchants and shoppers were forced to leave the place. When I looked above, I saw 2 soldiers standing on the rooftop with their guns. Three little Palestinian boys followed the tour with us. Ayumi and I wondered how these negative circumstances will affect the mind and soul of a growing up child.
As there weren’t much I can do, I kept filming and taking pictures the tour. I thought that attention was most important as it discouraged the Jewish settlers from doing bad and encouraged the Palestinians for learning and experiencing the pain that they went through, even if that was only a tiny bit in a whole. Many Palestinians welcomed us and told us to spread the word of what we saw in Palestine.
After the tour, I decided to stay in Hebron for a night rather than moving cities after dark. Ayumi invited me to stay with her Couchsurfing host Mo, so we went to his home and I made dinner for him.
I looked back at my day before going to sleep and thought that it was a very good choice to come to Hebron. This was the kind of thing that never ever gets broadcasted in Japan so I was glad to know the reality. On the TV, they usually only showed the worst but they never told the details, making everyone wanting to avoid the country. During this trip I had fully experienced the exaggeration of the media through traveling in countries like Russia, Iran and Egypt. And each time I feel the necessity to see everything with my own eyes.
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