Surprises

When I first arrived, I was startled each night around 9 or 10 pm by load bangs. I didn't want to ask what they were, since they didn't seem to bother anyone else, but finally, I decided I had to know what they were.
“Insha'allah they are fireworks,” Majd said. “Though I heard there was violence last night at the checkpoint.” 

I don't notice the fireworks anymore, and had settled comfortably into the routine of daily life in Ramallah. I have begun to really feel at home climbing in and out of the taxi-buses, weaving though the traffic and the fruit vendors who sit at the side of the road, and listening to the resonance of the flow of traffic, the radio broadcasts and music blasting from store doorways, the calls of vendors and the greetings of people who meet each other on the street.  But now and then things sneak up on me and remind me that well, I'm not in Kansas anymore.

The Palestinian countryside is lovely, especially in the glow of the late afternoon. Out the window of the bus, I could see hills rising out of the valley where villagers worked in the fields and tended small herds of goats. Suddenly, I saw a wall rising in front of us. Ramallah is close to the green line, so at first I though it was the separation wall, but as we got closer, I could see an underpass, and it didn't seem to be blocked or patrolled. Then I noticed that there was not one wall, but two, and that there was a road between them—it must be one of the settler bypass roads.

I knew that things like this existed—I had been through the Qalandia checkpoint, and may well have driven on the bypass highway that cuts through the West Bank to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—but for some reason, my stomach dropped. I was not prepared for the shock I experienced at seeing the countryside blocked, and the hills torn up, especially by a road that the people who's land was confiscated in order to build it and its fortifications were not allowed to use it, or even to approach it.

My reactions have been dramatically fluctuating. Often, my focus remains on the mundane activities of simply living daily life, partaking in completely normal activities like taking the bus to work, sitting at my desk and going to cafes with friends. But other times, I become completely preoccupied and shocked by the past and present horrors of occupation and violence. I wonder how people here manage to balance it all.