June 21, 2008 Amman, Jordan

Damn, Damn, Damn——this whole trip is about my friend Usama. What he wants, his restaurants, his family, Lebanon, his past. I am angered that I have come all this way, spent all this money, used up all this time to have a quite mediocre experience.
I am angry that so little has happened of importance to, for, or from me. I have not benefited anyone much, nor they me. I am . . . disappointed.

I wanted to go to Gaza. But no one put a hand out to help me. Instead, the experience was all about just getting by—sitting at a mall, hanging out at the St. Georges Beach Club, maneuvering street barricades in war-damaged Beirut, visiting Usama’s displaced Palestinian relatives. But not Gaza and the children, not the Alfaluna School for the Deaf. That’s what I wanted to visit, to experience, to know. “You can’t bring anything,” Geraldine Shawa, the head of the school had said. The children don’t have batteries for their hearing aids, or paper to write on. We can’t feed them because we don’t have oil to operate the stoves. The used cooking oil is all we have now for our cars, which sputter and smoke and make our eyes tear. “Our school had to close a month early due to the Israeli blockade.”

Why doesn’t someone help these people? One million or so stranded, justifiably angry people. A feeble rocket up against billions of dollars of armaments. Is this insane or what? Why do I sympathize? Am I, like them, this symbol of nothing, this zero, this helpless soul, so insignificant as not to be heard? How tiny are we all when overcome by the deepest of fears—insignificance. How can you be heard, O Palestine of my heart? Is not every iota of all of us important? Must the others have hatreds, Hitlers, horrendous events against which they push in order to rise and shine? Who watches out for us, O Cambodia, Laos?

“You probably won’t be able to cross the border, even if you get permission from the Israeli embassy and that will take two weeks. Then there is the sand. You will have to walk a great distance in soft sand. That’s why you’ll not want to carry anything.” Not even those behind-the-ear hearing aid batteries.

How would I make it? I can no longer walk without support, not even 50 paces. How do the weak help the weak? What do I do? Your people have been in my heart for so long. Silenced, quiet, sputtering, determined, never hopeless.

I want all of you, and the all that is me, to be valued, acknowledged, appreciated, though you occupy the least valued place on this earth, you are the most valued,for without you, there could not be a full earth. Know that, treasure that.
Always be who you are. We need you dearly, for without you, before long,
we would not exist.