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.