10 - Stories
I don’t think I realized the impact people’s stories had on me until much later. Everyone had one, two, one hundred. Hard and heavy stories were everywhere. In the market, in our neighbors house, in my students house, on every TV, at church, at school - you couldn't escape the stories even if you wanted to. Sometimes, I would listen and try to hold back tears. Sometimes, I would try not to hear another story that would overwhelm me. Sometimes, I would be annoyed at the 100th story I had heard, and other times I would have my own story to share.
One night, our neighbor and some friends invited us over to drink tea. As me and my roommates sat and listened, they recounted story after story of the Intifadas (Uprisings). For hours they told us these stories. They were laughing so hard they cried as they recounted all the close calls and confrontations they had during that time. They told us about how they survived the curfews where they couldn’t even leave to buy food. Their sons snuck into Jerusalem to find food and returned with a live chicken. They told us about how confused the Israeli soldiers were when they helped the soldiers move the furniture out of their own homes because the city didn’t pay taxes.
They laughed and laughed, but when I asked what it was really like during those hard times they stopped laughing. It wasn’t funny while it was happening. During the Intifadas, it wasn’t funny that their kids snuck into Jerusalem, not knowing when or if they would return. It wasn’t funny when a sniper barely missed their son because he was standing outside their house after curfew. It wasn’t funny when everyone had to figure out which route to take or not take to work because of random Israeli checkpoints. It wasn’t funny when their car was shot at by Israeli soldiers because they were unknowingly driving on a “wrong road”. It wasn’t funny when Israeli military tanks were driving down tiny neighborhood roads crushing whatever was in the way. It wasn’t funny when a young soldier asked our friend to get out of his car and clean up the road where a riot had happened.
As he recounted this story he said, “I don’t mess with the young soldiers. The older ones are more level headed, but I don’t try to reason with the young ones. They have M16s and are 18 years old. They tell me what to do and I say, ‘Yes, Sir.”
The young 18 year old soldier asked him to get out of his car and pick up all of the rocks in the road where a riot had happened. Once he had picked them up, the soldier told him to put them in the trunk of his car. He did what he was told and drove away with a trunk full of rocks and rubble. I could feel the humiliation and frustration he must have felt as his wife sat in the car watching him clean up a riot he hadn’t been a part of with a young soldier pointing a gun at him.
Stories like these affected me more than I thought they did. As I heard story after story of injustice, war, death, and racism, I became angry. I took these stories on myself and wanted to stand up for justice in each situation. I wanted to be there when these things happened and make a scene. I thought they were just stories I was hearing, but they weren't. They were changing me. Each small story was shaping me. They were adding one more log to the fire. One log at a time and before I knew it, I had a raging wildfire. At the time, I thought, “let. it. burn.” (I hope that I have since learned to funnel this fire towards its purpose, but at the time, I didn’t care).
Gary Burge describes this feeling well: “Compassion is a Latin word that means ‘to suffer with.’ I had crossed an invisible yet tangible line somewhere. Deep within me fear and courage were at work. For a moment I was sure I wanted to be arrested - to confront the system, to dare them to do to an American citizen what they were doing to these people.” (WLWP, pg. 5).