The wall has notes coming out of the cracks like dirty white birds singing as they fall. The paper is stained with ink and pencil, tangles of English and forests of Hebrew, dark lashings of Spanish or light Arabic dancing across the folds. They call it the Western Wall but I've only ever been able to connect it to its second name: the Wailing Wall. Being close to it is like being imbued with ghosts, shivering oceans breathing out from the stone, tapestries of air sewn from the frantic tears and gliding prayers, righteous joys and tender wishes that have fallen at it's feet over thousands of years. It's unnerving. Just as prayers coo fervent calls from the paper spills, it feels as though my own cells twist in the presence of the stone, allowing space for wails to emerge from wherever they have slept under my skin.
It is a different time zone, a quality of air tinted with naked dreams and hollow pain, a place where words emerge coated in the dust of the most secret and heartfelt chambers of the self. The women who are around me clasp their hands and pray, swaying back and forth as if counting the beats of the wind that wails around their hair, their eyes closed in communion, foreheads pressed against the stone. Our feet below us make tangled crowds, ankles bumping ankles and toes brushing the sides of feet as we all struggle to fit into the small space, to be immersed in the air and breathe each other’s tears.
The women's portion of the Wailing Wall is tiny compared to the men's side. The men for the most part don't overlap, they have many feet in which to pray in solitude. For the women it a tangle of bodies, of hands, of prayers.
Before going to the Bedouin village we were forewarned.
"It will be really different from what you are used to" our various group leaders said. "It may be shocking." We had indeed seen a Bedouin village perched in a hill during one of our long drives. It had looked like a few planks of wood and a tin roof. We had indeed been shocked. "You need to bring really warm clothes" we were told, "it'll be very cold at night and you may be sleeping outside. I'm sure they will offer you a pillow but the blankets might be very thin, so you should bring all your sweaters." We nodded. "We don't know what they will eat. They might have very little food but they are generous people so they will offer you a lot. They might build a fire and roast a goat. Just be prepared to eat whatever they offer you." Alright, we said visualizing the goat being slowly cooked over a meager fire. "I don't know what they do with bathrooms. It could be a hole in the ground. Just go with it." Slightly reluctantly we nod. "And last but not least, do not take a shower. They will offer. Say no. Whatever you do, do not take a shower."
We arrive at the Bedouin village prepared for a long night ahead of us, bags full of sweaters in preparation for our cold and showerless night.
When we first step into our host sister's house the first thing I see is glitter. The windows are coated in drapes that are a deep purple and overflowing with sparkles. The floor is covered in purple cushions sewn with sequins that glimmer and fade in contrast to the flowers that overflow from vases beside the TV. "This is your house?" We said. "Yes, this is my house" our sister says, staring at us curiously, "what did you expect?"
We are indeed shocked. Later in the night when visiting one of our sister's many aunts, totally entranced by the elaborate color coordinated rooms which look like a combination of a Middle Eastern Ikea magazine and a glittery coloring book, our sister would struggle to translate her aunts words for me. "The women in this village they…ah..they like things that…sparkle."
They feed us many feasts, the first on the floor of our sister's house. We devour plate after plate of chicken and rice and sauces and Bedouin bread while being thoroughly entertained by our sister. She calls herself "crazy" because she breaks down into laughter so frequently, leaning over to hug her ribs as she giggles. She is the only person in the village who speaks English because she taught herself from English sitcoms and movies. Later in the night when falling asleep to an obscure Quentin Tarentino movie she would exclaim, "You've never seen this! I've seen this at least ten times!"
Although the insides of houses were vibrantly decorated the streets were filthy. This particular village was recognized by the government, but still had infrequent garbage pickup. The streets are coated in coca- cola bottles and dirty cardboard, moldy socks and candy wrappers. Little children run through the trash in barefoot, their faces coated in dust. We literally run from house to house with our sister holding our arms and giggling in excitement. Everyone we meet is her aunt. Entering a house we are told that it is her aunt and uncles, walking through the street we constantly pass her aunt and her uncle. Eventually we are able to point into the fading light at twisting shadows and say, "Hey, is that your aunt and uncle?" at which she claps excitedly and says, "of course!" We are surrounded by villagers no matter where we go. They chase after us on the streets and swarm the houses we enter, flowing through the doorways and peeping through windowpanes. We even sit on chairs in the front of a room for about twenty minutes while villagers sit and stare at us in silence since we suffer a language barrier. Eventually they open up and start shouting questions at our overworked sister who is forced to translate quickly. However, most of the time they just ask us if we are married and then why aren't we. Our sister eventually stops translating.
Each house we get to overloads us with more food. It got to the point where the sight of food is alarming. As our new hostess would emerge from the kitchen we would shrink back from the tray of freshly cut apples, the bowls of candy, the endless cups of sugary Bedouin tea. We would try to hide them in our sleeves, or create sudden distracting events so that we could leave them behind. I tried offering them to my sister who would shake her head and say,
"No. That's yours. You have to eat that. I'm full." followed by the next very frightening sentence, "besides we're eating again when we get home."
The concept of eating scraps of a roasted goat was laughable as we walked home through the dark with swollen bellies, hardly able to walk straight under the loose glow of stars. Our night was equally swollen with uncompromising kindness, graciousness that overflowed from every kitchen in the village.
The next morning after gorging ourselves on Bedouin bread at breakfast we are eating a coconut cake. Our sister emerges from the bathroom clouded in steam, having clearly just taken a shower.
"Okay, your turn" she tells us. Alarm bells go off. We look at each other and then put our forks down.
"No no no!" we exclaim in a tidal wave, "we don't need to shower."
"Come on, I insist, take a shower" Our sister says persuasively.
We are confused. It's hard to tell if the rules have shifted now that we are in a sparkly house with Quentin Tarentino movies and coconut cake. We haven't even seen a goat. I can still hear Rebecca's voice foreboding in my mind, "They WILL offer. Say no!"
"No thank you" we say, "we really don't want to shower. We're fine."
Later before leaving the house our sister would tell me, "you girls are very weird. The sink is over there if you would like to wash your hands."
Although I experienced much kindness in the village, there was a deep and disturbing shadow. The Bedouins are polygamous, so the houses are separated in such a way that each wife has her own stomping ground. There are children everywhere running barefoot through the trash, their faces coated in dust. Our sister's mother had nine children and I could feel her tiredness coming off her skin. Her shoulders look like they were sketched in fading pencil, her eyes weary. In this particular village it was not uncommon for girls to get engaged and start having babies at age fourteen, hence the continuous questioning we received about our marital status. The boys and girls in the village were unable to touch each other although they were all carrying to a strong degree the same blood. The tension that existed between them was fuzzy static that charged the air like comatose bees. There were whispers about a girl in a different village who kissed a boy she was not engaged too. Her father went to her school and killed her. It was startling for me to realize that to my sister this was not some foreign boogeyman invading her perspective, it was simply a sad story built of components already present within her life. A Jewish volunteer at the Bedouin school would tell me two things she had heard a teacher say about women, the first is that women are like food and no one wants it once it's already been touched. The second is that women are like diamonds, meant to be locked up.
Just as Israeli soldiers brandish thick black guns as a symbolic threat against Palestine, is there a not a threat embedded in the psychic infrastructure of the lives of these women? No machine gun could be more threatening then the idea that holiness is a portal that you do not naturally fit through.
My cells shifted once again as they did at the wall, and there is a ghostly wail calling underneath my skin. They are so strong they echo the rumble of the low flying planes that frequently soar over the village, causing all of us American to jump as if feeling a gunshot in our pulse. The persistent aches within me are streadily increasing as I understand that I as a person, as a girl, would not have enough room in this village. There is not enough psychic space for the expansion of anyone, for the questioning or growth of anyone, but especially not of a girl. If the whole village is held in the inhalation of the desert, I feel like an exhalation existing as a crossing breeze creating turbulence.
"What will you do with your life?" I ask my sister.
"I want to travel, to go everywhere. I want to go to America where people speak English. I want to see everything."
The prospect excites me. "That's wonderful" I say, "how do you plan to do this?"
"Well I can't leave until I get married. I'm not allowed to go anywhere without a husband. Then we will travel."
This prospect excites me a bit less. "What if you found a way to make money on your own and you didn't need someone to pay?"
"I still couldn't go" she says, "I do not leave without a husband. The money does not matter." When she sees my face she rushes in encouragingly,
"I will get married someday. I will have babies. Then I will be allowed to leave, do not worry."
I understand in that moment that she will probably never leave. If I was to return in ten years I would most likely see my sister and all the little girls at the school still held within this deep inhalation, having grown around the cultural distortions to the point that they are now twisted versions of their own potential, tamed by a fear that is hard to place, that whispers in the edges of the dry desert wind and cuts through the bottom of conversations.
I can only hope for these girls that if they fold themselves up in order to fit into the tightness of the system, their internal origami will be loose enough to allow epiphanies and miracles. While dipping their fingers in Vaseline in the morning and staring into the mirror, it would take only one moment, one jarring arrow from across both their village borders and their own internal lines to strike them softly in order to cut loose the dreams they have buried. To the little girls I see studying in the school house, who will grow up believing that their worth is a complicated comparison to both food and diamonds, I can only hope that one day they recognize that the glitter that sparkles on their walls is just a cheap mimicry of what sparkles in the rivers of their own blood, in the voices that call to them deep inside. However within even this wish, there is fear. Having stepped into the village myself and felt the tightness of the circle close around me I am aware that if these women were able to unwind themselves from the strictness of the culture they would be at odds with everything. They would be a mighty exhalation creating turbulence that has been held back for centuries. They would be in danger. I leave the village entirely confused.
Being in Israel was being immersed in tension. The tension between Israelis and Palestinians, between religions, between men and women. Most importantly I think, it was to be standing at a point where perception and misperception directly cross.
It was shattering to observe the endless projections of people throughout history; to witness them misplacing their attention from their own existential fear to seeing it reflected in the faces of people who are foreign to them. The crudeness of this misplaced attention has created so much violence, so much suffering. It is clear that until man has sufficiently looked towards the darkness within and made peace with the mysteries that churn under his skin he will look outwards and fear the unknown so ferociously that he will have to kill, to oppress, to control. Afraid of his own death, his own life, his own pulse, he must conquer another to avoid facing his own. Even the face of God has been colored for so many people with the intricacies of their own angst, painting pictures of a ruler who judges them as harshly as they judge themselves, who controls them to the extent that they try to control their own mysteries, whom they fear just as much as they fear their own selves.
It seems to me that the greatest revolution that could occur would be one where each person was able to fearlessly encounter their internal terrain, to accept both the darkness and light that sleep in the infinite fields beneath the skin, to experience themselves in their wholeness, resistant of nothing.
If such a thing would occur it would allow the veils of projection to drop, to expose truth in it's completeness. It would alter the face of God.
What to do with so much pain, with so many questions tugging at every corner of my mind? I face a mighty wall, an ancient one. Built of the psychic stone of hundreds of years of repression and oppression, heavily sunk into the ground. I left Israel but the wall is still in front of me. I suppose the only thing that can be done to melt it's defense is to allow the wails that sleep under my skin and within our culture to emerge, to allow the naked dreams and bleeding wishes and strangled cries to fall at the feet of this wall until it is permeated with my own truth. Perhaps in doing so the air around it will shift and a new time zone will emerge, a sacred one imbued with ghosts. I can then stand before it with my forehead pressed against it's stone in communion with the truth that wails within me, swaying in rhythm to this mighty prayer.
