When I went skydiving my freshman year in college, I waited until afterward to inform my parents. This strategy proved effective again when I afterward revealed to them my risk-taking one-day visit to the West Bank.
Why would a 25-year-old, Jewish American woman want to go to the Palestinian territory Israel captured in the 1967 war?
I am enrolled in the master’s degree program in architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I went to Jerusalem to find a site for my thesis design project, an Israeli-Palestinian academic conference center.
I was raised in a Zionist, Conservative household, and had visited Israel twice before. I feel a tremendous spiritual and physical connection to the country. But I knew very little about the daily life of the Arab “Other”.
Several professors who had heard about my project mentioned Layla, a Palestinian woman who received her master’s degree in architecture from UWM two years ago.
She is now living in Ramallah and teaching at Birzeit University. She had a Facebook profile, so I sent a message introducing myself and telling her my story.
Layla replied promptly and offered to show me her hometown. She also assured me it was safe for foreigners. With a little hesitation, I accepted.
Would Ramallah be an impoverished ghetto? Could Palestinians smell me from a mile away and would they lynch me like the Israeli soldiers during the second Intifada?
As I researched the logistics of getting there, my strongest concern became crossing the border. I was prepared to take private taxis the whole way if my safety required it, and perhaps to avoid the Qalandiya checkpoint in north Jerusalem.
On the day of our appointment, I woke at 6 a.m. and departed my gracious hosts’ home in Betar Illit, an Orthodox Jewish settlement west of Bethlehem. I chose not to tell them about my trip before or afterwards.
I entered the back of an Illit bus and sat on the right side where during the first half of the 45-minute ride I could watch the security wall winding through the landscape.
I took a taxi from the Central Bus Station to Damascus gate. Just north of the gate I boarded a servees, a private, 15-person minivan patronized solely by Arabs, and headed to Ramallah.
Twenty minutes later, the van approached the Qalandiya checkpoint. To my surprise, the van drove through without slowing or stopping.
On the West Bank side, graffiti covers the security wall, clearly a popular form of non-violent resistance. A little girl with pigtails held a balloon in one stencil, and another showed a woman wearing a headscarf and shouting, “I’M NOT A TERRORIST.”
As we drove along apartment towers under construction, my expectation of a ghetto vanished. Ten minutes later, I debarked at Al-Manara, Ramallah’s bustling downtown. I had been prepared for two-and-a-half-hours of travel time, so I arrived an hour early.
Layla picked me up in her blue Toyota and whisked me off to a thoroughly modern café. She proved an excellent guide.
Her mother is a professor of microbiology at UWM, has called Milwaukee her home for 20 years. Layla had attended elementary school in Milwaukee from third to sixth grade.
Surprisingly, the city was very small and we walked from one end to the other in 20 minutes. Most women we saw wore headscarves, but no one made any comments to either of us even when I took pictures.
New stone buildings under construction stood next to dilapidated ones. The predominant façade material, local stone, dotted the landscape in a familiar fashion to Jerusalem, a mere nine miles away.
Layla pointed out where she goes to the gym (yes, it was co-ed) and guided me through the shuk (open air marketplace).
Next Layla drove me to her grandparents’ house south of Al-Manara for lunch. It became clear that she belonged to a wealthy family. The houses in the neighborhood were large, detached single-family buildings in impeccable condition.
Her grandmother was waiting with smiles and a delicious meal. For dessert, Layla picked a peach in her grandfather’s garden for me.
We drove around for the rest of the afternoon, passing by Birzeit and some outlying towns. We finished at another café with a refreshing glass of mint lemonade.
After she dropped me off just before the Qalandiya checkpoint, Layla and I hugged goodbye and agreed to meet again in Milwaukee. Again, my beliefs about checkpoint security were unfounded; I reentered Israel with as much ease as I had left it.
Regardless of the politics and bloodshed between our people, I consider my experience in Ramallah with Layla Saffarini to be valuable. Almost all my preconceived notions about the physical environment and people were untrue.
Now I can begin to design for co-existence, better knowing and understanding a Palestinian woman, whose hopes and needs are not so different from mine.
Jodie Mendelson is a graduate student in architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Loading ...