Ok, Mel, admit it: you’ve barely updated this blog since Egypt. I think it’s because as unprepared as I was for what happened in Egypt, I was totally clueless for what would happen afterwards. I definitely wasn’t expecting this, but it’s taken months for me to come to grips with that rollercoaster of a week, pride at my accomplishments and deep-seated fear towards the end.
Egypt was a much more difficult recovery than I expected. I was exhausted – physically, emotionally, exhausted to such a whole-body extent that it seemed I would never be well-rested again.
Hearing about Lara Logan’s attack was devastating – it brought home for me some small incidences that could have been so, so much worse. I think only after I heard about Lara Logan did I realize how much danger I had placed myself in. Wandering around Cairo at midnight, while vigilantes patrolled with machetes and golf clubs?! What the hell was I thinking?!
Training for the Jerusalem marathon kept me focused as I dealt with the surprising after-effects of Egypt, and helped me be strong as the father of my best friends died just a few weeks later. Their family has become like an adoptive family to me, and their father’s death shook me, especially when I was feeling so vulnerable.
I was totally burned out by the time I left to go back to the States for Passover. The trip home was wonderful, as always, and it was even better when my parents came to visit for a week right after I came back, for my birthday, which happened to fall on Yom Haatzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day).
It was so much fun showing my parents the city I’ve called home for the past year and a half. Until the last weekend, when things started heating up before Nakba Day, May 15, the day Arabs mark as “The Catastrophe” when the state of Israel was establish.
That Friday there was a lot of violence after prayers, and 16-year-old Milad Ayash was shot. He died from his wounds the next morning, leading to widespread rioting in Silwan and Ras al Amud. I was terrified my family would find out about Nakba Day, and the violence, not because I didn’t want them to know about it, but because it was clear that I’d have to be there on Sunday when they left and I didn’t want them worrying all the way back on the plane when they couldn’t check in with me or see the news. I thought I was so sneaky, writing up my article on Saturday night, not mentioning anything to them, keeping my beeper on silence.
“You thought you were pretty sneaky with this Nakba Day stuff, didn’t you?” my mom said to me after they landed in Boston. “Well, yes…” I answered. “Guess you forgot that they give out copies of the Jerusalem Post on the plane, and your article about ‘violence expected in east Jerusalem for Nakba Day’ was on Page 1.”
So much for being sneaky. When will I ever learn, I can’t get anything by my mom?
I spent Nakba Day in Isawiyya, dodging flying rocks and tear gas canisters. And mom, I know you’re reading this, so I guess you can see the pictures from that day also.
Me in Issawiyya during Nakba Day (photo by Marc Israel Sellem)
I always told myself that I would leave this job before I lost my humanity, my caring. One of my greatest fears is that I will turn into a robot, that my feelings will be numbed, and that in order to deal with some of the difficult issues I face throughout work, I will lose the very thing that makes me human.
Which is why I’ve been pensive this whole past week, after Nakba Day. All of my news photographer buddies were in Issawiyya from all of the outlets.
Three solid hours of heavy violence, tear gas, rock-throwing, ducking in and out of corrugated steel awnings, trying to judge where the next flying projectile would come from. Nine months ago, being witness to this level of violence would have destroyed me, would have broken me down, would have made me sob at night after I sent in my article. But I felt… nothing. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t upset, during or after. When my friends called later that night to see how I was doing (it’s taken a while, but now my friends are starting to check in on me during violent days in Jerusalem), I didn’t want to talk about it, but I didn’t cry, either. I was just… nothing. Not scared, not happy, this empty, well-I-did-it-and-now-it’s-done feeling.
The next day, I went by myself to Ras Al Amud, to the mourner’s tent, to talk with the family of Milad Ayyash, who was shot on Friday during clashes and died of his wounds Saturday morning. Normally, I would refuse to talk with the immediate family of someone who just died, so soon after the funeral. Nine months ago, I cried while interviewing the neighbors of the parents who were killed in a terrorist attack south of Hebron. And again, here, I felt… nothing. They were suspicious of me at first, chanting “rightist, rightist” when I said I worked for the Jerusalem Post. But I quietly and politely explained I was there to hear their side of the story, that if I was so rightist, I wouldn’t be there at all.
So I sat with the father, and asked him questions about the son he had buried 48 hours earlier. I asked the right questions, I know I did, because I had all of the information I needed. It took a while to get him to open up and trust me, but I succeeded, and soon he was sharing stories about fishing together at the Jaffa port and how his son would challenge all the old-timers to competitions.
I got back into the taxi and I sighed. “I hate doing this,” I told the driver, who was also from Ras Al-Amud. But I didn’t cry, I didn’t feel, really, anything.
So now I’m left wondering: have I lost my humanity? Where is the line to decide where I am losing my humanity and where I’m just becoming better at my job? And are these strong, emotional feelings something I will be able to turn off and on? I am worried that by turning them off so much, I will forget how to turn them on again.
In Egypt I saw those people, and the other female journalists warned me about them as well: the people that had turned into robots, that only really came alive in war situations, when the adrenaline surges and every sense is heightened. By maintaining such a high level of alert for a sustained period of time, they had destroyed themselves from feeling the subtle drama of day-to-day life, which isn’t as strong, but is no less beautiful.
So now I’m at a crossroads: where do I go from here? My original goal was to do this job for a year, not shorter, and not longer. A year to prove to myself that I could do it, but to leave before I got too hardened. Recently I’ve realized that I will make it through this year, that what seemed so impossible at first is now within my reach, and I certainly want to stay on through the fall if there’s a chance that a Palestinian state might be declared. This is the kind of political drama that every reporter dreams of. But will the price be too high? Am I chasing this excitement at the expense of friendships, of relationships, of a normal life that’s not governed by the news cycle?
Investigation into death of e. J’lem teen continues
By MELANIE LIDMAN
05/17/2011 04:33
Milad Ayyash, 17, shot during pre-Nakba day clashes; family claims shots originated in Beit Yehonatan despite denial by its residents.
Talkbacks (2)
Residents of Beit Yehonatan, which houses seven Jewish families in the heart of the Arab neighborhood – and is heavily secured by private guards from the Modi’in Ezrahi company – called the claims “total lies and incitement.”
E. J’lem ‘Nakba Day’ protests ‘quieter’ than expected
By MELANIE LIDMAN
05/16/2011 03:00
Violence spreads to Isawiya; 400 try to block road in Walaja; police save woman and her two children from fire started by errant Molotov cocktail.
The streets of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Isawiya were strewn with rubble and smoldering trash on “Nakba Day” on Sunday.
Dozens of youth darted between the buildings and used dumpsters for shields as they threw rocks at police forces moving up and down the steep main street of the neighborhood.
Notes in the Cracks 