Introduction

The Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
(The 15 year old character inspired me with her courage to take on the role of a Queen of a foreign people.  She learnt their lifestyle and customs and earned their respect in return.  She is featured above in Qaarth, wearing the Quaartheen traditional dress with her three baby dragons. )

I was sitting in my grandparent’s sun room when I overhead my Taita claim ‘She was 18! She was no longer a child'.  Oblivious to the context, I grew suddenly very self-aware.  My grandmother was married at 18, what have I done?  She said 18 year olds weren't children, and it shocked me.  I'm so used to considering myself as a child.

  Similarly, when people ask me about my trip to the Middle East, I become self-conscious.  I feel like my shoes are far too big for my feet.  As though I’m deceiving them as they consider me brave or courageous.

  I am not brave and courageous.  Not like Hana Shalabi who is starving herself in order to free the Palestinians from Israeli imprisonment.  Not like the ISM members who, though strangers to the land, stand before the Palestinians and fight, in order to protect them. 

  We can each talk ourselves out of bed each morning.  Despite feeling ignorant or childish, we can conjure confidence.  Often, when I whip out this confidence and act courageously (say I dance at a party or tell someone how I feel) I do it nervously, afraid that one may catch me out and realize that I’m in fact not as confident as I act.  But, as I have talked myself into dancing at a party, I have also talked myself into going to the Middle East.

  Dancing in my too-large shoes, I feel as though everyone can see right through my act.  They think ‘what an ignorant child, going there.’ 

I don’t speak Arabic.  I don’t even look Arabic.  I don’t have many contacts.  I don’t have much money.  I tire from politics.  Unfamiliar with much of the history.  I was not ‘born to the beat of bombs in Beirut’ (as poet Rafeef Ziadah would say).  The Palestinian people are passionate and courageous after years of oppression.

 I’m losing my courage, and with this I must go over a vital question:

Why am I going to the Middle East?

   I once read that if you fear corruption you fear life.  Concerning politics and history in general, I’ve heard so many stories which each contradict each other.  My revolutions teacher (god bless him) frequently called me passive.  Fearing corruption, I avoid taking sides.  We’re stronger together, why can't we all just cooperate? Was my general census. 

  When I have tried to talk about the situation in Palestine, My heart has swollen up so that I cannot connect my feelings with reason.  In other words, I cannot begin to articulate how I feel.  When I speak of history or politics, it is usually my brothers or my father’s voice I hear myself using.  I am too unsure of how I feel to explain it from the heart.

  I need to see it for myself.  I need to smell it and hear it and touch it and scream it with all the blood in my heart. 

  There’s more, though.  The mystic spirit of the East runs in my veins.  It is the lebneh in my belly, the olive oil on my skin and equally the care in my heart.  It is what has taught me love, and for that I love it.  Every last word of Arabic, spoonful of rice, breath of shisha; I love.  Many people tell me that now is a bad time for tourists to travel to the Middle East.  It is a gesture of concern, I think.  I may be wrong, but despite all the war and Israeli efforts to crush Palestinian culture, I imagine that it can only ignite the strength of the people's passion and love, as Rafeef's spoken poem (above) suggests to me.

Mahmoud Darwish taught me that peace is the little quiet inside you where you can find your power.  If I were to forget this, I may dwindle into my boots, for it is this little quiet which strengthens me.  Which I rely on to fill my shoes and walk me through my journey.  

Prologue

A Self Portrait
 ft. my impetigo

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. – Princes Irulan (Dune Frank Herbert)

So even though I have not yet taken flight, I shall introduce you (though I know I will never feel satisfied now that I've started.)
  I am taking a gap year (it's the fashion now I think), in which I am currently saving to travel the Middle East.  This is the journey I want to share, although first I must place you in my reality, sharing an unnecessary Prologue.


  Fuelled by the currents of year 12, I flew through exams and into my gap year where I neglected the delicate care a new beginning needs.

When many people say ‘high school is the best’ and that they ‘wish they were still there’ they undermine those in the struggle.
  I think I say it with a difference.  School, even VCE, suited me for one particular reason: I could focus on short term goals which would, eventually, add up. Sacs, homework, exams; each would get done and put aside as I ignored the bigger, more daunting ideas and thus avoided stress. 
  Out of school, each project hovers on its own.    Like rudders, each hovering like the levels on icy towers.  Out of school, I must secure them all together, forming a ladder as I climb whilst also controlling my direction.  This, too, involves knowing your goal – a goal which needs meaning rather than a mere number.  I probably got a tad stressed in year twelve, but the last month of working and organising my rudders has had me running up bell street crying, becoming ‘underweight’ (doctors words – I distrust them though they help my cause), and now lying here with a juicy, blistering scab crawling up to my lips, garnished by a sprinkle of breeding babies, itching as they grow in respect to their father.
  I’m organising my gap year, you see, motivated by the numerous lectures given to me by my grandparents, doctors, and seniors about how it’s a waste of time.  Additionally, I’m rather sensitive to the disapproving looks people give as I explain why I wait people at their tables.  Tip number one: Don’t have a gap year unless you feel worthy of one, and self-assured enough to ignore such opinions.

1.(photographing myself so that Mum
 could show the nurses at work)

2.(sketching myself before work...)

Tip number two: Choose job carefully.  And once you have it, it’s harder than you think to ask for a holiday… though no one wants to hire you if you’re leaving for overseas soon.  This job must also offer frequent shifts of reasonable hours. 
Working at both a bar and a café offers little time to sleep.  Particularly when each job seems to offer the most shifts on weekends! The imbalance of hectic work and little work is not healthy even once you ‘get used to it’.  My dreams will forever be haunted with dirty tables, and I’ll tell you now (because it's the Internet and I'm convinced I'm talking to myself) that I no longer wish people a good morning, evening or day.  Caring for people around me has become a job. I dread it.  Thank god I can communicate without human beings in times like these.

There has to be a lucky old Tip number three and I’d like to make it: Keep in mind why you’re doing things.  Does it make you happy? Is it worth it? But this is far too easily said than done.  Perhaps, I’ll start saying it every day so I remember, and seeing if that helps me avoid stress.  I’ll report back.