Then Back to Amman

I had a fantastic trip to Jerusalem! I stayed (as I always do) in the Old City at a converted Austrian palace, right amongst the Stations of the Cross. It is nestled in the narrow streets and tunnels that crisscross the ancient city. I love just wandering off, looking at the shops and markets, inevitably getting lost. It's hard to describe the power of the place. After a peaceful night's sleep, I left the Damascus Gate and headed to the West Bank. I worked with UNRWA (The United Nations Relief Works Agency) to find two schools. They were fantastic and we settled on schools in the Shou'fat Refugee Camp inside Jerusalem. It was heartbreaking to see the conditions in the camp, but the people there were fantastic - I admired their spirit and professionalism. Everything went well, and I was off to Amman.

I made my way north to the border crossing, and once again, had to wait almost an hour for the bus that made the four mile trip to the Jordanian side. An old Loggins and Messina song comes back to me, "It's an hours flight, but it takes all night to get from Cairo to the Promised Land." I chatted in a mixture of Arabic and English to several men who were also waiting for the bus. I did notice a lone young man standing outside reading an English novel. Once again, I couldn't tell if he was an Arab or a Jew. Eventually, we all made it over to Jordan, through immigration and customs, emerging to try to find taxis back to Amman. As I approached a taxi, I heard a voice behind me asking me if I would like to share a taxi, it was the young man I had seen earlier.

We got into the taxi, and he introduced himself. He was an English professor at a small college north of Jerusalem. He was Palestinian, and on one of his many regular trips to visit his wife in Amman - she could not join him in Palestine. We talked, once again, about border hassles and other annoyances. Soon though, the conversation turned towards the Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine. He was very critical of the PLO and Hamas, as well as of the Israelis. He just didn't understand the tensions and the war raging around him. He did admit that he hardly ever got to talk to an Israeli, and he lamented that the two groups didn't seem to want to learn each other's languages - how does one communicate to another, if one doesn't know the language, asked this English teacher.

The conversation was eerily similar to that which I shared with the young Israeli on the ride over. Both of these guys were intelligent, decent human beings, and they had no idea whatsoever how to reach out to each other, metaphorically or otherwise. The afternoon was even that more odd as we drove through a snow storm as we climbed up out of the Dead Sea area. We parted ways on the outskirts of Amman, and honestly, I no longer knew what to think. Here was an entire generation, much without the inherent animosity, with no tools to change the issues and conditions they despised.