Haifa - the city of co-existence

Haifa is considered to be a city of peaceful co-existence by many. But is it indeed?
(1) I've lived most of my life in Jewish neighborhoods, and still I am annoyed when people give me a second look when I speak Arabic on the phone.
(2) Spending time with my daughter at the neighborhood public parks when she was little, the other kids would either play with her or ignore her. She would be treated like any other kid. Nothing about her would betray the fact that she is part Arab, her being blond with blue eyes, with a non-Arabic name. Until she'd call me "mama" and ask me something in Arabic. Then all the heads - those of children, parents and grandparents would shoot all in perfect harmony and accusation towards me. How dare I (dirty up their neat little lives)?
(3) Teenagers sitting in the back of the bus usually play songs on their mobile phones. Back when I didn't have a car I'd ride the bus everyday and just listen to people's conversations. I've noticed that whenever a song in English or Hebrew would play from the back seats, the passengers would be content. However, every time, and I mean every single time, that a song in Arabic would come from those back seats, there would always be one passenger who'd ask them to turn the music off, as it was annoying. And when the kids would ignore the passenger, she/he would then ask the bus driver to make them turn it off. A verbal argument would follow.
(4) My partner was once asked by a bus driver NOT to speak in Arabic on his phone.

This is only a tiny fragment of the co-existence of Haifa.
Think again!

unfastening, unlacing an identity

a detached procession of vieled figures in black.
all marching in silence, to drop their identities into one great box.
the box of lost people.
swallowing the fabrics - scintillating yellows and oranges, deep reds and greens, shimmering blues, and all the rest of them.
leaving them naked.
leaving them all dressed in black.

In the Name of.

Leaving Part of my Identity Behind

I love winter.
I love it for private reasons, but I also love it because I like to wear my scarves. I have scarves of every color imaginable.
But the scarves I love most are forbidden to me.
If I wear the red-and-white Kafiyya I get suspicious looks. I feel like people stare at me like I'm a strange kind of cheese and they try to figure me out. But it's not that bad - I can manage with that.
The problem arises when I walk out of the house with the black-and-white Kafiyya. It has long lost its meaning.
It has been politicized and then de-politicized.
Politicized when the west has turned it into a symbol of terrorism.
De-politicized when it started being mass-manufactured by brand labels in all colors of the rainbow and become a fashion statement.
So before I leave the house in the winter, I put on my black-and-white Kafiyya, wrap it around my neck, and contemplate the woman with the olive skin in the mirror for a few moments.
Then, with a thread of sadness unspooling from a corner of my heart, I take it off and hang it back, leaving a part of my very identity at home.

I've shared some fragments of my new novel in progress here with you lately, and I'd like to thank you for the invaluable comments you made. They've helped me reflect on the writing and to see things I've been blind to.
But for now I think I will stop posting fragments of the novel, as the novel has taken a life of its own, and it would be difficult to figure out the meaning from decapitated fragments.
So far, I've got almost 8,000 words, and lately I've been writing at the pace of 300-500 words a night, which is really good.
A tip for writers: many times I find myself thinking of a phrase, making up a metaphor, and I make a mental note to write it down later. But often "later" means that I forget the phrase, idea, metaphor. So I got in the habit of carrying with me AT ALL TIMES AND EVERYWHERE I GO a "Writer's Notebook."
It's an artist's sketchbook - if you like. Into it I drop all those unusual word pairs I think up, metaphors, ideas, fragments of overheard conversations in the street, and what not. Mine is a sturdy one - one that withstands just about anything, as I tend to play rough. Many ideas that I write there never make it into any of my writing, but rereading old notebooks, I sometimes come across an idea that at the time seemed not to fit in anywhere, but now fits neatly into something I'm working on now. A writer's notebook is a writer's toolbox - a treasure box.

Anyway, I was saying that I will not share anymore of my novel here for now. Maybe at a later stage I will come back to sharing, or if there is a specific part I need feedback on.

For now, I am going back to my "political comments of the day" - that's how I call them for now. Those incidents that enrage me. Or make me smile. Although I am completely immersed in Maisoon and Ziyad's story at the moment, I do hope to find the time to write - at least once a week - a new insight into the life of Palestinians in Israel. I have ideas for at least five posts already - but just can't find the time to write them down. But I promise myself to dedicate at least one hour a week (sounds manageable) to these insights, as I feel they are important and there is need to share them.

The Darkest Night

I have a knot in my throat, a knot in my stomach, and something really heavy pressing against my heart. My strength is put to the test in impossible ways. Things I cannot cope with are hurled at me with no mercy. Life can be cruel at times, and right now what I see is a long and dark night ahead of me, praying to my Goddess to light the way - in vain...

Fresh resolutions & fresh perspectives lead to change

Image taken from the Kong Kong Institute of Technology website

Ok. I don't know what it is, maybe the fact that winter has been cancelled here in Haifa this year, or the fact that my house is inhabited by women only lately, or just my constant need for change. Anyway, the reason doesn't really matter. What matters is that I am making changes - again. And not just changes - but commitments and personal resolutions. Significant ones.

The first one you're already familiar with: my commitment to finish the first draft of my novel by March 8th 2011 (my 36th birthday).

The second one came while I was doing some inventory of my closet and realized that I have everything (even too much of everything). Though I don't shop much for myself, I buy 1-2 items every 2-3 months, but still, the amount of material things tend to accumulate. Thus my second resolution: limit my consummerism. By this I mean NO SHOPPING for clothes, shoes, bags, or any othr accessories until March 8th 2011. So far, I'm doing good. This of course excludes books - my very expensive love. But 90% of the books I buy are second-hand, most bought from the Better World Books, where part of my money goes to fund literacy around the world. So this is OK.

Now, to my third commitment: my best friend just quit smoking - cold turkey. I've had numerous attempts at quitting smoking, all of which failed. I think now I'm ready to stop - for good. Today (January 16th, 2010) will be my last day to smoke. I will wake up tomorrow, January 17th, 2010, to a brand new, smoke-free day. I know it will be difficult, but I am concentrating on all the good, positive things I will gain from quitting smoking. I'm going now to prepare a motivation list to reproduce and hang in different places throughout the house to remind me of all what I will be gaining. I'll of course keep you updated, and if any of you want to join me on this journey, feel free to write to me, either in a comment or to my personal email.

Hugs,
khulud

Sitting on the Fence

so you've left - again.
the house is heavy with silence. emptiness.
I walk around - picking up the remains.
so what's left of five years?
not much.
some dictionaries (useless to me, German, Italian)
some documents (not too important, I guess, otherwise you'd have taken them with you)
and one pair of yellow shorts (can't wear them)
and that's it.
all of five years - in one box.
not too heavy, either.






In a frenzy of need, I cut my hair.
for a new beginning.
and I climbed a fence.
with a thermos of tea, a sweater and a pillow
and a ladder from a friend to help me climb (thank you Yali).

I'm new on this fence... waiting, rethinking my... [fill in the blanks].
on the other side of the fence, a completely new universe.
something I've thought of before,
but never dared.

I will need my thermos of tea, and the sweater,
and the pillow.
I have a feeling I'll be sitting here for a while.
thinking about the possibilities.

and maybe...
just maybe...

[to be continued when I figure out on which side of the fence the wind will land me]

thoughts

Three kinds of thoughts enter my mind.
My mind is the water – ready to accept in all its fluidity.
Some thoughts are like salt; they enter the mind and they melt in it.
Some thoughts feel like the earth; they enter the mind, yet refuse to melt. Together with the waters of the mind, they create mud, mingling with the mind. Some are like the thirsty earth of dry summer days of khamseeny weather of Haifa, drinking in the water with insatiable thirst.

And then there are thoughts of oil. These are the strange thoughts that the mind just cannot accept, for they are made of a foreign material. Foreign to the mind. These thoughts remain separate from the mind, refusing to intermingle with anything of familiarity. Like the dark, homemade olive oil we bring from the village by the gallons every year. It tastes thick and it's the best olive oil on earth, but it feels foreign in the city; it just does not belong there. People are always amazed at its dark, rich color. And like this olive oil, the thoughts that are most foreign to the mind are the purest ones – the ones that are the most natural...

dissonant writing

She said my language needs more variety. That my writing is lacking. That it's flat. It lacks volume. It needs innovative use of words.
But the words are right here, beside me… stacked all neatly. According to parts of speech: unused adjectives, effective and uncommon adverbs, difficult verbs. Others are classified according to the alphabet. All I have to do is dip into them and take my pick. Choose from among the words the most powerful and momentous, the least expected word.

But what she doesn't get is that sometimes—most times—it feels more like me just to be softly gliding along the page, listening to the whisper of the pencil as it draws the letters and adds the dots. It fills me up with energy. I no longer feel empty when I see the page being colored in black on a white landscape. It is a sketch of words. And it doesn't have to be perfect. Like when an artist makes a sketch of a face—the face has its wrinkles and creases. Life lines… and so does my writing. I want to keep my writing imperfect, maybe even un-perfect. Let it be true to me and true to itself. I don't want to be a commander of metaphors. I don't want to be in total control of my paragraphs. My sentences may be awkward, but I faithfully surrender to the offbeat, syncopated rhythm of my own words… and let them dance their own dance across the page. I let my metaphors be a bit slippery and unpolished. Let them be lacking in precision. Let them be somewhat dissonant. After all, my writing is not about accuracy. It's about fluidity, my words fall onto the page like soft drops of rain on a dry summer ground. There is no order to the rain drops… they just fall…

(c) All rights reserved to Khulud Khamis (2008)

Struggling with Words

Struggling with words... I got the characters, they walk inside my mind, struggling to get out. Yearning to have their lives - histories, experiences, fears, loves, hopes, frustrations - molded into something solid. Something real.

While they struggle inside my mind, I am struggling to let them free. Struggling with the words. Failing, deleting, starting again.

Who said writing was easy? Well - it's difficult. Very!
At the same time - it gives so much pleasure. Electrifying.

I get high just from writing a good sentence.

I am no longer me. I am becoming my writing.

My life has expanded to make room for Maisoon, Ziyad, Tayseer, Nisreen, Sima, Um Muhammad, and others. They are all here with me - at my dinner table, with me drinking coffee and smoking a late-night cigarette, they even go with me to bed. We talk into the small hours of the night, sometimes we even hear the first song of the birds in the morning. We go shopping together. Maisoon likes za'atar and home-made olive oil. Ziyad likes Arabic coffee, which is always too bitter for me. Sima whispers in my ear something about a checkpoint. Um Muhammad waves from her balcony while hanging laundry.

So you see - I have to stick to it. Not for me, but for them. Because I created them, and now I owe it to them to give them a full life.

I have no idea if any of you, my blog readers, are interested in my writing hallucinations or the progress of my novel, so forgive me please. I will now go back to writing. So far, got 3,297 words neatly typed up. 6 single-spaced pages. Dozen pages scribbled at odd moments with ideas for various incidents. I think I've made good progress so far.

And I have a deadline. March 8th, 2011. My 36th birthday. My birthday present to myself. The first draft will be finished by March 8th 2011. This is my promise to myself.

Ok, I'm gone back to writing my "Life in Fragments."

On Nuclear Weapons: A Feminist Perspective

Ok, so I finally finished translating Isha L'Isha's position paper On Nuclear Weapons: A Feminist Perspective (the link is to a pdf document, so it might take a few seconds to open) into English. It's a fascinating document and highly recommended to get a fresh perspective on what it means for a country to possess nuclear power.

Sometimes You Just Love Her So

Sometimes you just love her so
at times it terrifies your soul
she has created the solid centre
you never knew you lacked
or needed.

In one single moment –
the moon, stars and oceans of the world
came together.
amalgamated into chaos.

Only she knew it was beauty.
you took one step backwards
hesitated, and took a fire hot plunge
into amalgamated moon stars oceans.
it seemed not to matter
whether sinking down, or swimming towards
this whole thing is called beauty
you’re soaking into.
you’ve found yourself with her
a new self.

Soaked up, dripping wet,
it was too much for you.
you needed to breathe.
so you came up for air.
and just walked away
back into your neat world,
where the moon is separated by a world
from the stars, and the
oceans do not intermingle with
them.
Anymore.

The Art of Recycling

I learned the art of recycling out of necessity when I moved to my own apartment. With my limited financial resources, I couldn’t afford to buy new furniture, let alone any decorations. So I started recycling discarded items. Pieces of old, decaying furniture made their way into my workroom, where they underwent renovation: removing old paint, filing with sand paper, painting. The final result would always astonish me. But more so, it would amaze my partner who, with each “junk” as he called it, would get angry: “You’re not bringing that junk into the house!”
With time, I developed an eye for identifying the potential in different items: an old back of a chair turned to a unique picture-frame, an old wooden kitchen-cabinet, complete with a rack to hang plates to dry turned into a one-of-a-kind bookcase.

Every few months, a new piece makes its way from the streets to the workroom. It always thrills me to the bone to see the transformation of something old into something fresh and special. The apartment is forever changing, new pieces arriving, new color, furniture being rearranged, the once kitchen-cabinet turned bookcase now makes its way to the bedroom, the once-yellow picture-frame is now painted red, and so on.

This way, you can redecorate your house almost for free (the only costs are sandpaper and paint). The work itself gives me pleasure – it’s very relaxing, almost like meditation. I also recommend you try other kinds of recycling. My cousin Nina is a designer, and her specialty is in recycling old clothes and making new ones out of them in a very unconventional way. Check out her blog to get some really cool ideas.

So start having fun! And don’t forget to take before and after pictures! Let me know how it goes. Here are some pictures of my own recyclables, but I tend to forget to take a "before" picture, so there's only one. But the rest didn't look much better when I first brought them home.

p.s. This post was inspired by Rebecca's post The Art of the Ordinary.

Public Announcement

I am coming out tonight. I am making my secret yearning public. A yearning that's been burning in my bones for years now.
A few years back I won a poetry prize from the University of Haifa for some poems I'd written. The following day I decided I'm going to write a book. I took a year off my Master's studies and spent the whole year writing. But then life caught up with me - I went back to my studies and between raising a daughter, studying, and working I all but abandoned my dream.
My manuscript has been lying on the shelf for a number of years now. Every few months I go back to it, and with difficult emotions, I reread some parts. Sometimes I even take up a pencil and do some editing.
I have accepted the fact that the work is very virgin. Most of it needs to be reworked.
Today I feel I have matured as a writer, and I am ready to embark on the journey of writing a novel. A few nights ago, I opened a blank word document and spent a couple of hours writing. I turned off the computer at around 4:30 am [I suffer from insomnia, and anyway my creative writing is best at these small hours of the night], having written almost two pages.
The following day I reread these two pages - and I felt that this is it. It's a good start, and I even had a female character popping up all on her own.
I've been walking around with a small notebook in my bag, frantically writing some notes to elaborate on later on. I feel that this time, the novel has got a strong hold of me. It is struggling to breathe on its own, not letting me have too much control.

So I think these are all signs that the time has come. The time has come for me to make a real commitment.
I promise myself not to let go this time. I promise myself to write something - anything - each and every night.
Hopefully I will have some parts to share with you soon - that is, if you are interested.
This is my promise to myself. This is my promise to the story that is struggling to be read.

Terrorist at the Airport

Every Palestinian citizen of Israel who has traveled abroad has similar stories of the Israeli security at the airport. All stories share a common thread: feelings of humiliation as the number 5 or, in a worse case, the number 6 is stuck to the passport; receiving special treatment because we answer “no” when asked if we served the army; our bags being thoroughly searched through, our most private items being flaunted in front of everybody, and a security “express lane” especially for us, because we constitute a security “threat.”

I was accepted to the 2009/2010 Isis – Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange Program Institute on documentation of violations of human rights. How ironic. Participants were asked to bring with them their traditional dress and their country/national flags. I don’t own a traditional Palestinian dress, but I have two kufiyyas, which I couldn’t take with me, as the black-and-white Palestinian kufiyya has become a symbol of terrorism. That would have won me extra-special treatment at the airport, with my own escort and a seat at the very back of the plane – as far as possible from the pilot.

As for the Palestinian flag – that would be even worse, being caught with the flag of the “enemy.” I have a small pouch with the Palestinian flag hand-stitched on its front. I turned the pouch inside out, stuffed it with a couple of sanitary pads, and hoped it would escape being noticed.

I arrived at the airport four hours before my scheduled flight, as I wanted to spend some time in the duty free shops. If lucky, I’d only get the number 5. These numbers indicate the degree of security threat passengers pose. I stood in line and tried to guess the numbers each passenger would get. In front of me, an older couple with large red suitcases waited their turn. Their looks betrayed their Ashkenazi background. I made a mental note to myself: number 1. I then turned my attention to a young Thai man with long hair and a bulking backpack. He’d get a number 5 at least. Young tourists and volunteers usually get a number 5 or, at best a number 4.

A young woman in a uniform approaches me and, with a polite smile, asks me in English, “Do you speak Hebrew?” I smile back at her, “Of course,” keeping the is it that obvious I am an Arab to myself. She opens my passport and, squinting at my name, I can tell she’s struggling to get it right. “Kalud?”
“Khulud,” I correct her. They’re not allowed to ask straight if I’m an Arab or what my religion is. in the past, they’d ask questions such as which holidays do we celebrate at home and to which school one went. They’ve changed their tactics lately, “What’s the origin of your name?” I guess this question is much more straight-forward and it saves some time. And there is no way around it; with the holidays, I used to say that we don’t celebrate any. Here the only answer is “Arabic.” I search for an elusive answer, and within seconds come up with a good one, “It’s the name my family gave me.”

“Did you served in the army, the police, or anything similar?” And my “no” immediately earns me a number 5 – the “almost terrorist” status.

From then on, I received special treatment. The number 5 gave me a “handle with care” status at every stage. After my luggage was X-rayed, I was motioned to a stand where a very polite young lady searched through my belongings. My lap-top and camera were taken away to be processed in a special device. My luggage was meticulously searched for suspicious items. I stood there waiting, the security persons whispering some things to each other, checking their paperwork, while all the light-skinned passengers passed straight to the check-in without a second glance. All dark-skinned were sent to this special line to have their luggage searched.

When they were finished with me, I went to check in, and then proceeded to the next stage, where only passengers are allowed. I already know the drill, so I showed the woman my passport with my number 5 sticker and she immediately motioned me to my own special lane, which was empty of passengers. Five security persons were waiting for me. I didn’t wait for them to ask me if I had a laptop, and I took it out of my backpack and handed it to them. My backpack was put on the X-ray belt, and it entered the black box. Two men stood behind the computer screen, and for a whole minute they scrutinized the insides of my backpack. Meanwhile, I went through the metal-detecting machine, and it beeped. I took off my watch, and went back through. Again I beeped. “Do you have any coins in your pockets?” I said I didn’t, and then remembered, “I have metal bars in my bra.” Two of them looked at each other, a bit embarrassed. I was asked to take off my shoes and my body was searched by a woman. They then asked for my camera, chargers and cables. It took ten more minutes for me to get out of there. And with that, my humiliation ended. Now I braced myself for the return trip, which I knew would be much worse, since I was flying with EL-Al.

[My adventures with the security on my return trip will be posted next time]