jenin

i watched a documentary about the center that i will be visiting on tuesday, its called arna´s children. its one of the most powerful movies i have ever seen about palestine and the conflict. here is a link to the trailer. i highly recommend watching this, with friends, as it is pretty depressing, but very insightful. http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/projects-trailor.php

on the other side of the wall

i have been here since wednesday, and its been strange. since i got to tel aviv i met my old friend harry, the chiropractor who works all over the place treating people for 12 hours a day, just about every day, for next to nothing. with him are a team of people doing the same, with different skills. one young guy named mikey is his apprentice and he has studied shiatsu for 3 years. another man is an acupuncturist. the last man with them is the most interesting of them all - an autistic man who has incredible powers of healing and intuition. i arrived to meet harry and there this man was, looking like a child at my bags, and harry explained to him that i study acupuncture, and he laughed and said, oh you use the needles, but all i need is this and he lifted his index figer slowly. i was a little surprised, not what i expected to hear from this man. and then harry explained to me that he had just cured this man of pain for thirteen years by touching him with his thumb on his body somewhere, and the pain was gone. then he told me more stories, and aviad looked out the window or made jokes. a very simple and pure man. he told me he doesnt have a diploma, except for the one from above. and if there is someone who can see energy he would happily show them his diploma. so together they are quite a team of people who do a lot of amazing work in the west bank, and all over, for next to nothing. all harry asks for is to be able to put food on the table.

which is where we go next, to his kibbutz. so clean, so quiet, so calm. the house is wonderful, and they treat me like i am family, with so much affection. we sit and talk the night through.

i go back and forth about how i feel being in the kibbutz. part of me of course feels like i must go immediately back to the west bank and work more, that if i am resting then i am not doing all i can. but i am also so tired, and it seems like a good place to rest.

oh yeah, i just remembered an fascinating man i met in ramallah. as i was waiting on the corner for abed so we could have coffee a man bumped into me and asked where i was from. i told him, and he told me that he has been living in georgia for the past 15 years. this palestinian man had a full-on southern drawl with is slight palestinian accent. he had phrases like "wull if thars anuthan yoo need, y' just lemme know, olright?" i remark that his accent is very strong, the southern accent that is, and he just says, "well yer dayamn right ubout thayat". incredible, i cant dream up a more hospitable mix in the world, the southern hospitality of the US, with its welcoming and soft tones and phrases, together with the most generous culture i know, the palestinian. and this man had it all. it was something so rare i am not sure if i will ever see it again. i felt as if in the presence of some sort of cosmic phenomenon! it was weird, and he just kept talking and i just kept looking at him in suspended disbelief at the fact that a very strong souther accent was leaving this palestinian man's mouth. he immediately gave me his phone number and said i should never feel alone when in ramallah, i should call if i needed "anuthang".

israel culture is quite different, especially in the cities, and part of that is simply because it is a city. when i get to the kibbutz people move slower, greet one another on the street, and dont lock their doors. i met an israeli activist who worked for five years living in the west bank, and she had a vrey difficult time there. she had been shot twice in the stomach by the israeli army in a demonstration, and she hasnt been back since. the family she lived with, a man and woman with 15 children and relatives living with them in a small house, have also suffered very much, and she wants me to go see them, and perhaps help the mother, who has been shot three times and is still suffering from the physical wounds, as well as psychological. i spent most of the day today with a youn woman, just 21, who was raped last year. when i met her she appeared so sweet, so fragile, the type of person you that anyone in the world when they see her wants to put down whatever they are doing and offer her something, and just to be in her delicate presence to feel her sweetness. later i find out that last year she was raped by a stranger. david, harry and chana's son, returned last night for the weekend from the army. he has been there for 7 months. it was a difficult choice for him, growing up on a peace-loving kibbutz with two non-violent parents. he struggled for such a long time about how to decide, and it seems that the pressure from other boys in his environment and in this culture dont allow him to listen to his heart. so he chose the army and when i see him when he gets home, i ask how he has been. he says, i am more machine, less man. this is what the army does to me. i am taken aback. quickly he shifts to showing me photos of his army experience - 18 year old boys like they are at camp, but with huge guns, being robbed of their innocence and childhood. just kids pretending to be hardened and tough, showing off their guns. then their is child-like laughter, games,punching each other. its a coming of age, a rite of passage for them. its so awful that they have this stolen from them, being turned into machines. david says that he will be trained in how to detonate and disarm mines. he has a picture on his desktop of his computer where i type this email looking at a dusty scene with his feet up on a chair. he has taken the photograph, so all you see is the landscape and his feet, so you know he is there. occupying.

everyone is affected by this conflict, so many lives are touched, wounded, destroyed. now i find myself part of it, and you all who read this too. i cant decide if the seemingly random acts of violence and trauma and suffering confirm or deny the existence of some sort of higher force.

today i go back to the west bank, and i must admit i am ready. i will deliver some things to the center in ramallah, then probably spend the night there, and in the morning go again to abed's house and see their clinic, the one they were building last year when i was there. its complete now, but it was closed when i went on the last visit. from there i hope to go to either nablus, if they let me in, or to jenin, with the same qualification. the checkpoint to nablus is by far the ugliest in all the west bank. well friends, thats all for now. sorry about not writing as much, there hasnt been as much going round in my head. but perhaps soon enough. after all, i have nearly two more weeks to be here. so more to come, stay tuned!

one man snaps in jerusalem

this morning i awoke in jerusalem and took my time, walking from the hostel to the bus station, all through jerusalem for about one hour. i had to be careful asking for direction, and saying thank you, trying not to speak the arabic that i have learned and begun to be more comfortable with. how would people react? what would they say? not knowing is enough for me to feel afraid to slip.

i walk through the nice streets of jerusalem, all nice with nice shops, not crazy like the west bank. i take the 40 minute bus ride to tel aviv and when i arrive i hear on the radio that there has been some sort of "terror attack" in jerusalem. when i arrive to sigal's house i realize that twenty minutes ago, in other words twenty minutes after i left jerusalem, on the very street that i had spent most of my morning walking on, a palestinian man had driven his tractor into a bus and down the street crashing into cars everywhere, until he was finally killed by a policeman who jumped on top of the tractor and shot him dead.

when i watch the tv at sigal's house, every channel has coverage of the incident, all immediately talking about the tenuous truce between israel and hamas. what will happen, will israel invade, there are speculations everywhere. i see the interviews with people, holding their faces in shock. crying. the children were on their first day of vacation from school. they are terrified. news headlines say that "terror strikes jerusalem again". indeed, it must be a terrifying and confusing scene, one i cant fully imagine despite the fact that i was there just twenty minutes earlier. i probably passed the construction site where the man worked. i passed people getting on and off buses who this man hit with his tractor. i walked passed stores where later shop owners would look out their doors in horror and fear as they see the events unfold. so much fear.

as i watch tv i cant imagine that the news stations covered the deaths of the two palestinian workers murdered last week outside their factory in cold blood. i cant imagine that every news station is covering the daily beatings, torture and murders committed by the israeli army against palestinians. and here again we begin this violent propaganda, one that perpetuates violence and is not concerned with halting it. the disproportionate coverage determined to, through repetition of words, symbols and images, convince the world that palestinians are less than human. that what led this man to commit this terrifying act is different than that of every other human. we all have limits, and this man reached his.

this man, who knows who he was. i doubt he was a hamas guy, or an islamic jihad guy. who knows his story? i can only begin to imagine. and who knows the woman who he killed? who knows her relatives, her family. the person sitting next to her on the bus?

when this incident happens here in israel, the mighty force of the israeli army, with the full unwavering support of the united states and the ENTIRE fucking world, begin to plan their retribution. it is a way to validate and justify all their attacks on the palestinians, past and future. and when a man dies at a checkpoint, when a woman loses her child in an ambulance held by soldiers, what is their recourse? who do the palestinians call so that they too can have a sense of justice. no, for them justice is always denied. no one is held accountable. and in these violent cycles of violence, it is usually the innocent who are held accountable, on all sides.

i just thought i needed to write about this in the moment, because i am sure that the news in the US will be flooded with this new attack. the man will be called a terrorist. what we will hear about are the political strategies and negotiations between the top dogs. but what is going to happen for palestinians with work permits in israel is that they are all going to be looked upon with even more suspicion and racism than they already suffer. it will be even harder to move around. each person will have to explain themselves to everyone they encounter that they are peace-loving and just want to go to work so they can provide for their family. but they wont be able to tell everyone, there are too many. and everywhere in the west bank, in every city and at every checkpoint, things are going to get even nastier for a while. soldiers will take their vengeance on each palestinian arriving to their checkpoint. lines will be longer, people will wait more, in the hottest sun of the year. not that every soldier has this evil in his heart, he will be ordered to hold people longer, search EVERYONE more thoroughly. these policies are not the doing of the idealistic 18year old soldier or reluctant reservist, but they follow orders. they will keep people longer because of this policy of collective punishment. innocent people who had nothing to do with the man who lost his mind in jerusalem. a man who probably he himself sat in the long lines in the sun after an attack, or just because a soldier felt like it. because the soldier had the power of a gun in his face and he did not. we wont hear about the thousands of individual cases of increased abuse delivered by the israelis now in the occupied territories. this is a common phenomenon. people all over the west bank are shaking their heads, knowing that what is to come is more suffering for them. the majority of the people condemn these events, and they know that they will be punished for it. the feeling of injustice is unbearable, but it is the life that they must live.

i am certain that some will criticize me for highlighting "only one side of this story", and i do not mean to dishonor the feelings of the victims of today's events, but i am simply trying to offer my opinions to help create a more complex understanding of what happened today than you might recieve in the mainstream news or media. my sympathies are with all of those hurt by what happened today, and i am just trying to point out that there are many more that will be hurt as a result and will never, ever be mentioned.

many lessons for me today. patience

the occupation hits so many so hard, and affects peoples' lives in every way. and there are struggles within that are compounded by the occupation. class struggle in this place cant really be talked about. the palestinians are oppressed. period. every one of them. but there are layers of oppression that go deeper. these layers seem very difficult to address in US society and culture, impossible to imagine here. i had a taste of different worlds here so far, between doctors and labor organizers and international NGO folks. the doctors all had their sweet taste of privilege in their mouths, which i have a natural aversion to. but its more complicated that that. they feel like they deserve more because of their fantastic status. they have wealth, and they have power. but of course, this is a relative power, and wealth, because it is limited by the apartheid wall that the israelis have built. but a power nonetheless and it is perhaps the occupation and oppression upon them that make them cling to their status even more dearly. so its a strange mix of feelings for me. they dont wait in lines, they get frustrated when someone is in the way of their car, they expect their secretaries and assistants to wait on their every beck and call. they dont experience the daily hazards and implications of the occupation in the same way as do 90% of their "countrymen". and at the end of the day it seems so sad because they cant go 9 miles from ramallah to jerusalem just like every other palestinian with a west bank card.

so i got a little tired of being introduced to doctors as "this is mateo, he has come to talk about chinese medicine, and he himself was a detainee by the israeli army and was psychologically tortured." this sentence ends with a hearty chuckle in the room by the doctors, and i am not sure how to respond. what he says is true. and in saying so i remember standing naked in front of 5 soldiers and being told that i would be killed before i left. this was not funny to me. so maybe there is humor in that it seems so bizarre that i fall into the same category that their patients fall into, an uncommon situation. these men have never been arrested or experienced the torture that their patients have. and granted my experience in prison pales in comparison to that of so many thousands of palestinians, but it doesnt change the fact. i doubt that these men laugh when their patients tell them of their torture. so what is it that makes them laugh? in a moment i resent them for their laughter, their superior doctorly laughter, and then i remember that they have lived under occupation their entire lives. and of course they cling to the little grace, respect, and privilege they can get in their lives.

and in the afternoon i go to the office of the palestine general federation of trade unions with abdelrahim, and sit and listen and talk politics with the secretary. a different experience, very much so, but also so similar. oppression everywhere. except the analysis of broader struggle to end oppression doesnt end with the occupation for the labor guy, it ends with the end of capitalism. but he says the palestinian society cant begin to think about these things until the occupation is over. he says they need to take responsibility - clean up their streets, stop throwing trash on the ground, stop putting chemicals on their foods, take responsibility. but its so difficult when the occupation pits one against the other. he said to me "i like life, the israeli likes life. but he makes it dark above. when its dark skies, above ground below ground, whats the difference?" he tells me about his village, 1200 years old, now has a settlement from 15 years ago that takes the local water for their fountains, swimming pools, gardens, grass and his village only has drinking water one day a week. 2 men from his village were killed by a settler recently when they were going home from work in a factory. they were waiting in the car after work to pick up their friend, a settler came out and asked what they were doing, he told the guy, and the settler left and came back 2 minutes later with a machine gun and murdered the two at point blank range. no punishment for the settler, he was never "found".

i leave the trade union office, and on the way out they show me the new door that was put in six months ago from after the soldiers came in and destroyed their computers and shot up the place, for the second time in a year.

having lunch with abed he tells me about a visit to the US, on a speaker's tour. his phone goes off every 22 seconds, and someone always needs something from him. he admits that the only real way for him to rest is to leave, and this is a privilege that few get and abed himself feels a little guilty about having. but the speakers tours are not all good for him, they are exhausting, and the organizers often pack the events so closely and so full that he is even more tired than in the west bank, just because they need to save money on a day of transportation or lodging for him. and then a man in ohio whom he was staying with was supposed to be responsible for a piece of luggage he left in the airport. the suitcase was full of gifts for people, t-shirts, doves of peace embroidered, many things. and the man never returned him the suitcase. he never mentioned it to anyone, he is so humble and gentle. he didnt want to make anyone feel stressed. he let it go, and told me if that man wants to steal t-shirts, let him. i am not sure what i would do if i saw this man on the street, but many unpleasant things cross my mind. i cant imagine someone treating my friend abed, one of the best people i have met in my life, such a dear man, in such a disrespectful way.

i walk back to joe's house, a man who works as a policy advisor for an ngo in ramallah. he makes more money than the average palestinian and lives in a nice house in the old city of ramallah. a really nice guy, wonderfully hospitable. yet another layer in this world.

i meet back with doctor sehwail, the general director of the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture, and he has me wait for two hours in his office to speak to me for fifteen minutes. then i get lost looking for the bus station becaus it is now dark and i am alone with my bags, speak no arabic, in a culture that is still very unfamiliar to me, and alone. yes, these are the moments that i wonder why i come back. holding my bags, walking in circles, lost, not understanding a fraction of what goes on around me. but then it feels so good to see people smile when they get acupuncture, and that the training was a huge success. programs are to initiate in 4 cities within the month, and one of the trainees said to me when i left "you might be surprised, i think that the next time you come back everyone in the center will be walking around with seeds in their ears!" i like that daydream. anyway, because of this i miss a bus and end up waiting for two hours to go to jerusalem, where i wait 4 hours in line at a checkpoint to go 9 miles. i remember the story that the secretary told me at the pgftu who said every day he waits in line at a checkpoint, sometimes with 20, 30, 40 cars long, for hours, and then a settler car pulls past everybody, and in 12 seconds he is through and on his way. doctor sehwail doesnt notice that i had to wait two hours for him, he is used to it. he doesnt know where the buses are that take me to jerusalem, because he has a big fat SUV. and also because he hasnt been allowed to go to jerusalem for 10 years. its so complex that my mind begins to spin. i dont know where to begin. and i am not even getting into the israeli side of things.

all these lessons to me have to do with patience and perspective. its always good to try to step one more step back. there is good all around as well, and i apologize that tonight i am writing about my frustrations and not sharing explicitly the beauty in this. but its there, and i am feeling this simultaneously, which makes things feel even more strange.

so at the end of another long day i sit and type in a hostel in jerusalem, with my friend hisham. tomorrow i will finish the journey that i started today to tel aviv to retrieve the package that i sent three weeks ago filled with supplies and materials to support the training that i just finished participating in. such is life, here, i suppose. so this is a long ramble, and for someone who isnt a writer i seem to be doing a lot of it. this is pretty much everything that i have thought about today, welcome to the inside of my head.

only dark, nothing clear?

yesterday was a wonderful day, i arrived in the morning to the treatment center and everyone was waiting there excitedly for the trainers to arrive, and when they did people were smiling and hugging each other, big handshakes everywhere. buzzing in general. people were even more thirsty for information than the first day. the day began with a review and several question, but quickly moved into the practical application. everyone was having so much fun. all morning people were finding the points over and over on different peoples´ears and they were checking one another instead of the trainers. then they started needling each other, and i have to say their technique after only one day of handling needles was impressive. they were catching on so quickly. after lunch there was a small examination where people were nervous but then laughed because they realized there was no actual pressure from the trainers. after the test there was a group of volunteers that came from the center to be the first test, and they all did phenomenally. after that, the training ended a full day early, with a nice little ceremony with the passing out of certificates. each person thanked the trainers at length, and said it was the best workshop any of them had ever participated in. they said it was the first time they all felt like a group working together, with each other, having fun, and learning so much. quite a compliment, i think.

the workshop concludes four days of workshops at the center, facilitated by the center and sponsored by the United Nations, as June 26 was the International Day to support Torture Survivors. Many international people were at the center, with many workshops.

many of the participants, being senior psychiatrists, psychologists, or counselors, had a difficult time at first with the "evidence" behind the method, but they were soon assured by the results that they were feeling and seeing. also, about half a day was dedicated to the understanding of the rest of the ear as a way to treat other physical and mental diseases, and people left with tremendous enthusiasm. one month from now the group will unite again to review and debrief, with the help from the trainers. i will try to add photos of the workshop soon...

after the workshop was over i immediately left with my friend abed to go have coffee. we went to a nice little place of a friend of his, a man born in brazil to palestinian parents. in the shop i met an iraqi man who showed me bullet wounds in his stomach, and he threatend to kill me, but soon calmed down and was kissing my cheeks. it was a strange incident.

over coffee abed began to tell me about his latest work with the unions here in palestine. there are serious problems, and they are just getting worse and worse. all prices for everything have been going up, and peoples wages are staying very low. only 6-7% of people make enough to support their families. there is a 47% unemployment, and a 65-75% underemployment. the price of grains has increased from 48 shekels (about 13 dollars) to 200 shekels (about 65 dollars) in just the past two months, and things threaten to only get worse. as gas prices increase the taxi and bus drivers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. they cant afford to pay for gas and charge the same amount, but the people cant afford to ride the transportation if the prices go up, so abed said a strike might happen soon, but i am not exactly sure, and neither was abed, about how anything might change. the situation is dark, he told me, nothing is clear in the future. he repeated, "only dark, nothing clear". as for labor the situation is, as you might imagine, unimaginably bad. there are no labor laws, labor standards, no minimum wage, nothing. everybody is squeezed by the occupation. people arrive and demand higher wages, the store or factory owners explain that they are losing money at the borders with israel and in transportation costs for thier goods, so they cant pay more. at the same time you have a desperate population with no work and very little hope, this makes for a massive pool for very cheap labor. the race to the bottom, and its happening fast. it certainly seems dire.

i then went with abed to his village of arora, where i was last year as well. he has invited me to stay the night with his family. we pass through two checkpoints on the way from ramallah, and the occupation is still everywhere, all the time. getting to his house we sit down in his living room, and have coffee. abed then starts to tell me all sorts of stories about his life, about palestine, and about his experience with all types of people in this world. he has a perspective and compassion that are heart breaking. he tells me of so many instances when, before the second intifada, life was relatively good. he had a car, he had money saved in the bank. now he has nothing, no car, no savings, only losing money each month. and he is going to sell some of his land now. when he travelled to jerusalem years ago to have his son operated on, he tells me of the exchanges he had with israelis and international peoples. in the hospital he was assumed to be a jew, since he was in jerusalem. when a dutch man was watching tv and there was news about gaza, he yelled at the tv and said look at these fucking animals. and abed asked him politely what he meant by that. the dutch guy looked at him and asked, where are you from. he said the west bank, i am palestinian. the dutch man got up and left the room. the doctors would come in the room. abed shared a hospital room with a zionist settler and the settler´s son and had a long conversation with him, ending in the fact that the settler said that abed should be grateful for any little bit that the israeli government gave to the palestinians. he said that all palestinians are animals. abed said, dont you think this isnt about you or me, but about our sons, cant we find peace? the man said he didnt want it.

to know abed, such a gentle man, so noble and kind. it gives me so much pain to imagine a situation where someone would treat him in this way. and this is the way that so many others are treated, with such disrespect.

more and more stories came from abed, talking for hours. i just sat and listened, trying to hold back tears and not be angry.

after talking abed asked if i could help him with his back pain, and numbness in both feet. of course, i said. i left him with needles and went to play with his children. i am happy that i was able to bring a small toy and some colored pencils for his children, and abed almost got mad at me for a moment. he said, gifts are for friends, i am your brother. give these presents to a friend somewhere, you dont have to give us anything. this is too much. his humility was almost unbearable to me. in the end he allowed me to give them, and his little ones were happy too. if for just a few hours or a few days they can have happiness, it makes me feel a little bit better. they were so pleased to get such a small thing. its very difficult to understand that moment.

when i returned to abed he opened his eyes and they were filled with tears. i asked if the needles were causing him pain, or if his body pain was too severe. he said, no i feel very good, just surprised at the things that were coming to his mind and heart. he felt good.

afterwards we walked in his garden. it was dusk, the sun going down, beautiful evening, warm breeze, olive trees and dusty hills in the distance, the quiet of the village. he took me around his garden, and picked me a fuzzy little baby cucumber straight from the ground, snapped it in half and gave me half and his little son the other half. then we walked around the village all night until midnight. abed said, you are my brother, you are home.

in the morning (tuesday) i recieved a call from tel aviv letting me know that my package has arrived. i think i will travel there today, stopping for a while in east jerusalem to see a friend, then on to tel aviv tonight. there i will meet with harry tomorrow (who works with the middleway organization and physicians for human rights, and i will travel with him to harduf to see his family for the next few days. saturday i will return to ramallah with the package and continue on to nablus and then jenin next week. at least this is the plan for today!

and thanks for the kind messages, friends, they are nice to see, and give me energy. salaam.

"i burn for this"

the frightening thing about ramallah is that it almost seems like the occupation isnt happening. you see no soldiers in the streets, people are shopping, there are fancy stores, ice cream, nice houses, new cars. people are more relaxed here than in the other cities like jenin or nablus. but then you see the tank tracks left from 2002, the destroyed sidewalks never repaired, the pictures of martyrs everywhere. and you cant leave. dr sahweil took me to his home to have tea and on the way he said look there, in the distance, just on the other side of that wall, you can see jerusalem. where his family lives, whom he hasnt been able to visit since the second intifada. nobody with a west bank id card can go there. its a cage.

over tea mahmoud tells me what he has been working on over the past year. 198 people have died at checkpoints while trying to cross for health reasons. a crime against humanity and international law. over the past ten years he has visited 322 prisons to see palestinian detainees as a psychologist, documenting the instances of torture and trying to bring some relief to his people there. as we walk home he points out that four out of every ten men i see have been in jail at least once. and that once in jail, 98% are suffer torture. dr sehwail wait for hours, often up to twelve, outside the prisons while awaiting approval. a gentle man in his 60s, with a sweet smile and soft hands of a doctor. and he says that the waiting is part of the torture. the israelis love to make you wait, and in the waiting you become afraid. this is psychological torture. the torture in prisons is compounded upon the daily trauma of the occupation - checkpoints, invasions, closure, random house searches, the list goes on. generational trauma, he explains, and i know what he means because earlier i was talking to farsoud who laughingly recalls a conversation she had last night with her mother. she asked her mother, do you ever think that we will have our own country? and her mother said, well i never have, and my father never had, and his father either. you dont, your children probably wont, who knows? then she laughed again. generational trauma. the accumulation of trauma passed from one generation to another, where children are born into a cage and will die there, their only concept of freedom a distant intellectual one.

the training today went exceptionally well. completely different than was planned by the organizers, but nevertheless an amazing experience for all those involved. it was a shy group at first, impressive in their professional and life experience. 14 people, 8 women and 6 men, representing community health centers from nablus, jenin, ramallah, jerusalem, and hebron. ages 27 to 69. all of them with eyes bursting with excitement about a new technique that could bring relief to their patients. all of them work with victims of torture and trauma. at first people were a bit slow getting into things, but very soon it picked up. the popular education stuff was a bit strange for people, but the trainers adjusted very quickly (after two minutes) and radically changed the approach but still managed to make it highly interactive. this is when people started asking questions left and right, a wonderful sign that people were intrigued. the training ranged from everywhere from the history of the five needle protocol to potential applications, to chinese medical theory including emotional and physical associations with the various organs. a wonderful day. after twenty minutes i asked one trainee how she was feeling about all the information and she turned quickly and looked me in the eye and said "i burn for this" as she clutched her heart. i will never forget that moment. she found something that she saw as incredibly useful. by the time people were first opening their packets of needles she was already threading a needle through all three headache points.

when the group first recieved the five needle protocol it was incredible, and i think that it really shaped the way that even the serious biomedical skeptics felt about the treatment. instant relaxation. of course there was discussion about why am i feeling so relaxed, is it working on my nerve pathways, or is it because of the proximity to the brain... the standard questions, but everyone was so pleased afterwards, all smiles, and the training continued into more specific point for various disorders that their patients have. headache, insomnia, sexual disfunction, pain everywhere, fatigue, etc. and no information was too much for them, they were just soaking everything up like sponges. incredible. and afterwards there was a little speech given by the trainers, saying how proud they were of everyone, because it was truly incredible the ground covered in one day. in fact, two days were effectively consolidated into one, and they still wanted more, but the trainers were tired.

after the training everybody went to dinner together. wonderful conversation around the table, about my history, about people,s lives, and great food. dr mahmoud was sitting next to me and kept scooping food of all kinds onto my plate without asking. just pushing more and more onto it, saying eat eat. i just couldnt stop smiling. the incredible kindness and generosity. we went to a restaurant, everyone together, and on the way home i was going to go a separate way than everyone else, and dr mahmoud said we will all walk with you to your house. which was completely out of the way of everyone else, but happily everyone insisted that they walk me home. you are in palestine, this is your family, of course we will walk you home. i have no words for that moment.

i have invitations to go to nablus and jenin and hebron, i am not sure if i will be able to go to all three on this trip. tomorrow i will see abed, my dear friend, and we will have coffee. i think on wednesday i will go to his village for a day and see his clinic that they are building, and then maybe thursday i will go to jenin. on the way back to ramallah (i actually just wrote "on the way home" and had to go back and erase it...strange) i might stop through nablus, even though that city scares me more than any other. rashad told me that things in jenin right now are very bad, there is such a severe military presence, so he wants me to go there to visit his center. it seems like a good idea. he is 27, just like me, recently married. such a nice guy. he invited me to stay at his house, so i think i have to accept. anyway, these plans are definitely changeable, and are likely to change. i still have to go to east jerusalem and then to the kibbutz to see friends there. its a tough balance between visiting friends and doing more work.

tomorrow the training will continue, and will likely be the last day, unless the trainers decide that its not enough. i think it probably will be, it seems like people are ready to go out there and start their own PTSD treatment programs in each of their cities. they are very excited, and so am i. well, here i am, typing again at midnight after another 19 hour day, and likely to continue on that pace, but somehow i dont feel tired. there is a peace here, for me, inside, that is different. its like my soul gets nourished even though everything around me seems so dry, like a cactus thriving in the desert. i wonder if thats why i have spikes? well friends, i am sure this is plenty to keep you busy for now, i will try to get photos tomorrow of the training. my phone number here is 0526265308 so call me if you want, its ten hours ahead west coast, i think. or maybe nine. anyway, i am thinking about you all, and i hope you are all also well. salaam