forget. I believe we can live together, but we are not equal: we are under occupation. We are not both suffering in the same way.”
Raed then told me about his job as the recently-appointed management deputy for Jemima, a home in Beit Jala for physically and mentally disabled children, and that he is now pursuing his second degree, a Masters in Organization Management and Development. He was excited when he learned that I was also working with the Al-Basma Center, which serves developmentally disabled youth in Beit Sahour. He immediately invited me to come and see Jemima. We soon jumped into his little car and he sped through the serpentine roads of Beit Jala, haphazardly shifting the gears without completely pushing down the clutch. He honked as we rounded every turn so that anyone on the other side knew we were coming, or maybe because everyone honks here, and everyone honks here constantly: people drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand on the horn. Stoplights haven’t changed from red to green before someone pounds the horn fifteen cars back.
Raed originally grew up in Bethlehem, raised in a nominal Greek Orthodox family. His two sisters and one brother are all married now, so he’s the only one at home. He attended an all-Muslim government school, but he didn’t really take his studies very seriously.
“We went to play, not to learn. And church was to meet girls. I graduated and I wanted to keep studying but I wasn’t interested in anything.”
At first Raed wanted to be a tour guide, but soon bumped up against the rigorous stipulations and procedures involved in acquiring a license. He jokingly said he settled for theology at Bethlehem Bible College (BBC). But then his expression became more pensive and he realized that he ultimately chose theology because he felt like he knew nothing about Jesus. At first, the courses were extremely overwhelming as he felt like everyone wanted to tell him everything in different ways. But during his third year his life changed. He believed that he could have his own relationship with God without a mediator. But he still didn’t know how that relationship would be incarnated. He was still looking for the face of God.
And then Raed began working with Jemima while he was a student at the (BBC). He wanted to do something helpful even if he wouldn’t be paid, something good because he said “Not doing something bad is not the same as doing something for God.” Jemima needed volunteers and so the BBC put him to work there. A Dutch couple founded Jemima in 1982 and the place now consists of a small school and a living facility for the children. Jemima provides physical and speech therapy, and care-workers are on 24-hour shifts so that someone is always present. Mental disabilities in the Bethlehem area sometimes result from the close marriages common in Palestinian culture, and unfortunately a lack of awareness concerning disabilities devolves into stigmas and prejudices. A family abandoning their child because of disabilities is not unheard of. Some are left on the doorstep or in hospitals. Jemima welcomes the marginalized of the marginalized.
“I was always scared of handicapped people,” he said with a shamed smile. “I would go to the other side of the street because I was afraid to walk past them.”
“But my first job was a care-worker, so I was changing diapers, giving showers, and this, this changed me . . . it changed me a lot. I was touching them.”
The Jemima complex cuts into the side of a steep hill, and as we pulled in on a small driveway between a playground and rock face, Raed said that Jemima was the name of one of Job’s daughters. As we entered one of the living facilities, the children greeted Raed with enthusiastic shouts. He hugged them all and picked up a little boy with knobby knees and kissed his head. One of the little boys was three-years-old and still unable to talk. His head was almost as big as the rest of his body and very misshapen, like it had been squeezed in a vice. He couldn’t focus his eyes to look at us and they kept rolling around. But he smiled. Another boy sat in a wheelchair. His legs were severely underdeveloped and his head was like an over-inflated balloon. His face couldn’t fill up all the open space and so he tried to smile even wider.
Several weeks later, Raed poured the hot water into the mugs and stirred the seeping tea bags and brought one to me as I swiveled in the chair.
“Nice tea?” he asked expectantly. I scalded my tongue, but nodded and smiled through a bit lip.
“Really?” He was pleased, and hung his head sheepishly.
Raed sat down in his leather chair on the other side of the desk. He cautiously took a sip of his tea and strained the teabag before setting it on a napkin. He scratched his scruffy chin and leaned back in his chair, looking out of his office window beneath the top floor of Jemima. The tips of thin trees were visible over the window ledge.
“I had a story in my mind for a long time,” he began slowly, and his eyes almost glazed over like his mind was time-traveling through memories. “I was playing with my brother and sister in Beit Sahour and my brother was fixing his bike and his hands were . . . um . . . you know”—his hands churned the air like he was propelling the words out of his mouth—“black, greasy I guess. This was during the first intifada. Anyway, we were in Beit Sahour and we started walking to my aunt’s house, but before we got to the door an Israeli jeep stopped us.”
The three kids continued walking, but the soldiers jumped out of the jeep and one soldier grabbed his brother by the shirt and yelled at him: “Why are you throwing stones at us? Look at your dirty hands! You have been throwing stones!”
“And they dragged him to the jeep and we were crying,” Raed continued. “My sister got my family and my mother hurried to us and got on her knees and begged them not to take her son. But they pushed her down in the street. I hated a thing called Israeli soldiers, and this story was in my mind until I joined Musalaha in 2005.”
Raed heard about Musalaha while studying at BBC. Salim Munayer was one of his professors and encouraged him to consider the desert encounter to Wadi Rum. However, Raed wasn’t very interested in reconciliation, at least at first.
“I went more because my friends wanted to go on a trip. But this trip opened my mind because I realized I could be friends with Jewish people. In the desert we got to know people, sitting around fires and eating together, and I began to see that there are good people on the other side who are suffering.”
But the unity Raed discovered in the desert began to disintegrate once he returned within the caged borders of the West Bank. The story of the soldiers and his brother with greasy hands haunted him once again. And he hated the thing called Israeli soldiers.
“Three big things in one week in 2008 made me feel hallas, enough, with Israelis and Musalaha,” he said, shrugging them off with a flip of his hands. “My dignity was touched at these times, but I could do nothing.”
Raed and a group of friends, including his Dutch ex-girlfriend, were on their way to spend a day at the Dead Sea and passed through one of the many Israeli checkpoints throughout the occupied West Bank. Raed ate from a bag of mixed nuts and watched as a soldier slowly marched around the car. Finally, the soldier stopped in front of Raed’s door and ordered him to step outside. The soldier looked over Raed’s ID and Raed, attempting to diffuse the sweltering tension, offered the soldier some of the nuts from the plastic bag. The soldier knocked them from Raed’s hand, sending raisins and almonds flying to the dirt. And then he ordered Raed to take off his shirt and made him twist, holding his hands over his head. Raed was shaking with anger, boiling up inside until he almost exploded with the enraged humiliation in front of his girlfriend and his friends. Then the soldier tossed his shirt back at him and informed them that they must turn around because they could not pass through.
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