Between late nights studying, overdue grocery errands and hour-plus bus rides across the city to my internship, the initial thrill of life in a new city has faded over the past few months. Daily life is driven more by to-do lists than the adventure typically associated with study abroad. This past weekend my friend Trisha from Northwestern came to visit from Amman, Jordan; a city 45 miles northeast of Jerusalem yet in a very different world. As we exchanged stories of life in the Middle East I was reminded that I came here to live and experience the region and not just to write more papers and take tests.
I went around with Trisha to a lot of the definitive Jerusalem landmarks — the Old City, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the outdoor marketplaces, the King David Hotel. We took in views from one of my favorite rooftops in the city: a six-story hospice in the middle of the Christian quarter of the Old City. There was the Jerusalem I’d forgotten: rolling hills covered with oriental-domed houses, winding antique walls dividing the old stone roads from the new asphalt ones and desert cliffs fading into the horizon.
Jerusalem has two bus systems, the Israeli one and the Arab one. I live in a neighborhood bordering East Jerusalem, so white-and-green buses with Arabic I can’t read drive by regularly. As Trisha speaks Arabic, her visit seemed like the best opportunity to board the bus to Ramallah, the economic and political hub of the West Bank 15-minutes north of Jerusalem. Israelis are not allowed or wanted in Ramallah and my program does its best to forbid our travel into the cities under Palestinian control. However, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to travel to the “Tel Aviv of the West Bank.”
Ramallah had a bustling downtown area of traffic jams, Arabic billboards and tall commercial buildings. It appeared like an urban version of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem — more people in the streets, rows of shops selling 1980s fashions, kids running around without their parents and merchants expecting that the obvious westerners had money dripping out of their pockets. We explored the marketplace (a much dirtier version of Jerusalem’s), visited the government complex of the Palestinian Authority and saw late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s tomb. One of the only signs of westernization was “Stars and Bucks Café;” we saw no other obvious non-Arabs and met no English speakers.
More memorable than the visit to Ramallah was the Israeli security checkpoint on the trip back to Jerusalem. We traveled with a friend of mine who’d been before and reported not waiting at the checkpoint his first visit. On the contrary, we were shocked to approach a mob of aggressive travelers pushing through metal barriers at the checkpoint. I assumed the crowd was for the Muslim holiday the day before. Mechanical doors allowed gradual entry through progressive gates. Getting through the line reminded me of getting onto buses in Israel, although the desperate shoving lasted forty minutes. Our group stuck out from the majority of travelers and I was repulsed to realize that men kept reaching out to grab my legs, hands and butt. Trisha was not entirely surprised by the gesture, but as more of a stranger to the Arab world I instinctively slapped every hand that came near me. I was relieved when we reached the front of the line and our trusty blue passports brought an end to the checkpoint.
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