BUILDING BRIDGES FOR PEACE

Lama Tarayra

It was on a day in February 2003 that my classmate Dana gave me a piece of paper.

It was from an organisation called ‘Building Bridges for Peace’–a peace project that brings young Palestinian and Israeli women together in the United States for two weeks. I thought about it all night, how strange it would be sitting with the enemy in the same room, seeing them every hour of the day. More important: getting to know them, listening to them and sharing my life with them. I was shocked by the fear that filled me; I was shocked by the hatred I always felt towards the people who occupy my homeland and are responsible for all the misery that has come over us.

In spite of everything I made the decision to take the risk and to apply for participation.

I passed the interview and became part of the Palestinian delegation, which included seven participants. There was a delegation of Israelis, consisting of seven people, too, and a delegation of seven Palestinian-Israelis. I learnt that we would all live together in a beautiful house in New Jersey.

As the day of departure was drawing closer, the more horrible I felt. I felt I wasn’t ready for it yet. The idea of meeting Jews, talking to them and living with them, made me more anxious!

I met the two delegations for the first time at the airport. I didn’t want to talk to the Israeli delegation. I watched them and thought how lucky they were not having to take off their shoes, unpack their clothes and repack them into their suitcases for security reasons. I envied them for being citizens in their land, while I was regarded as a potential terrorist. I couldn’t stand the security check as I felt discriminated against. ‘Why?’ was my only question and I knew nobody had an answer.

When we reached New Jersey, I was too tired to think of anything, I learnt that the three delegations had to sleep in the same room. The idea bothered me a lot. But slowly things worked out.

The next morning we were given the program. I was a member of a group called ‘The Micro Lab’. This group consisted of seven girls from the three delegations. We worked together to discuss sensitive issues, worked on hard subjects that were too painful to be discussed among the whole group. The work in the Micro Lab depended on silence after every comment made, after any crying and every tear, to make us think deeply about what had been said, and those silent moments were the hardest moments at camp.

The second group was ‘The Bridge Group’. The main goal of this group was to join hands–one Israeli, one Palestinian, and one Palestinian-Israeli–and help build a bridge, a bridge of their fears and dreams, of their hopes and tears.

We didn’t have much free time the first week; the days were filled with activities. Some days were interesting, but some were hard, hard enough to make me want to leave, to go back home. As time went by, I realised that Israelis’ pains were very close to ours, that their fears were very much the same as ours, and that the meaning of humanity was as important to them as to us.

I wanted to hear Jews, to listen to their stories and dry their tears. I shared my food with them, I had pillow-fights with them, and I cried on their shoulders when they cried on mine. They were there when I needed them. I never felt lonely, I never felt I was without hope–except one specific night when we came back from Washington after visiting the Holocaust Museum.

The bus trip to Washington was different that day, the atmosphere was burdened. I tried to avoid them, avoid eye contact. That museum was horrible. I didn’t want to share my feelings with the Jewish girls, I was afraid they wouldn’t understand what I felt. Did I really understand my own feelings?

That night I heard shouts from the first floor. The girls there had started to argue, to fight with one another. Their eyes burnt with anger; no one wanted to cry; no one wanted to lose that difficult battle. They screamed at each other. Finally I was given the chance to talk. I shivered with cold and excitement. ‘You’ve been talking about morals, you’ve been talking about sensitivity and understanding and about the great wound in the heart of the Jews, about the dark days they experienced half a century ago, and the painful feeling of inferiority they had wherever they went.

‘I am ready to share with you this grief. But at the same time I ask myself: why did I have to have that feeling of inferiority one week ago at the airport? You talked about the bloodshed 50 years ago, but what about the bloodshed today? Please tell me why such a horrible past should lead to such a dark future. Why can’t it just remain in the past we look back to, cry about, and thank God that humans have woken up and stopped this suffering?’ It was then that I lifted my face and looked at them. No one said a word. All of them were crying.

That night caused a big change. Something had become different, and I knew that I started loving them because they were as vulnerable as we are. I regarded them as friends, they who were enemies just one week ago.

I came back from America having filled many pages of the book of my life. I can’t say I changed into a new person, but things have become different. The main change I noticed was that whenever I asked Why, I put myself in their place and very easily found an answer. The new ability of looking at people by being them, feeling with them, makes me happy. At the camp I learnt that an enemy is someone whose story we have not yet heard, whose pain we haven’t yet felt.

Before joining ‘Building Bridges’, I had almost lost hope in everything. ‘Bridges’ made me believe again that darkness is always followed by daylight, that the conflict will end one day, and that both sides will be convinced that the only way to live is to live together. I dream of having a life where I find my Palestinian and Israeli friends beside me and not buried under the rubble of a demolished home or a bombed restaurant.

Lama Tarayra is 17 and last year completed the Jordanian university entrance qualification. She will again participate in a ‘Building Bridges for Peace’ camp in New Jersey, USA, this time serving as a minder for one of the groups involved. Reproduced courtesy of the Kulturjournal of the Goethe-Institut, 2/04.