Chapter 62
My emails with Anwar seemed to flit above everything else in my life, unstained by the self-conscious cast of dating but complicated by the fact that we were talking with no destination.
There was also the strangeness of our growing attachment: If I didn’t hear from him, I’d get restless.
If he didn’t hear from me, he’d send ???
like my silence was perplexing. I wish I could get his advice on Tristan and Jay, on this threesome, but he’d probably block me if I told him.
I googled his university, which I weirdly hadn’t thought to do before.
On the school’s website, it said in big letters “OUR WILL IS UNbrEAKABLE.” I stumbled on an article about Israeli soldiers shooting a student a couple years back.
The incident was covered so differently by the Israeli newspapers and the Arab media.
from: [email protected]
Really? I didn’t know you’d been to Gaza.
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
I haven’t been inside. Years ago we tried to go as a family, but let me tell you, do you think the checkpoints here are bad?
This one to get into Gaza was a literal nightmare.
We had to walk through these tunnels and get taken into rooms and stripped down and wait hours standing and in the end, they denied our permits!
This after my father went through complete hell to get them.
We went home. I never got to go. Now I’ll probably never go or if I do there will be nothing left to see.
from: catherineelise202@
All that’s so you don’t try to come back
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
Exactly. You’re lucky you get to move between states no problem, right?
from: catherineelise202@
Yeah. I could still get stopped by the police… it’s different, I don’t know. It’s never happened to me. It’s happened to my father.
You’re in Ramallah right? How are you and your family? I’ve been hearing about more and more attacks
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
To be honest it isn’t great. There has always been violence here and the regular day-to-day settler shit.
But the violence is increasing, absolutely.
Nobody had really been talking about the West Bank because of Gaza, which I understand, I mean Gaza is destroyed.
I have distant cousins there and it’s hard to keep up with what’s happening to them, they keep moving around.
We’re losing our homes all over again. At least here we could leave if we really had to.
In Gaza they’re stuck. With the ceasefire broken it’s like Israel is turning its attention to us to make a bigger point.
I can’t go into too much detail over email actually.
It didn’t occur to me that our exchanges might be monitored. It struck me too late that this wasn’t just his reality, but mine too.
from: catherineelise202@
I’m sorry about your cousins and everything. Asking how you’re doing is probably a stupid question during wartime/occupation.
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
It is stupid! but still it feels nice to be asked :) How are YOU? America seems terrible maybe you should move here
I laughed loudly, snapping my mouth shut, remembering it was 2 a.m. I was exhausted but wanted to keep talking. I didn’t know how I was.
from: catherineelise202@
I don’t think I’m good, actually. But what choice do I have to be anything else?
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
I know what you mean
from: catherineelise202@
Can I be stupid again for a second?
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
Go ahead be stupid
from: catherineelise202@
Do you feel strange being in your position? Being safer than Gazans but not entirely safe? Like a kind of survivor’s guilt but from a place of not having fully survived?
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
That’s an interesting question and I hope that I am actually understanding you. Are you asking if I feel lucky in one way but unlucky in a different way to be who and where I am?
from: catherineelise202@
Maybe that’s part of it, yeah
from: [email protected]
to: catherineelise202@
My first reaction is maybe that it’s unfair that I should even be asked this?
I do not sit around all day thinking about being Palestinian.
At the same time there’s a part of me that perhaps does or is aware of it.
But I don’t want to be anything else or live anywhere else.
My other cousins live in London and it’s nice but I could never live there.
I feel most guilty about continuing to live my life while Gaza is obliterated.
But what does not going to classes help?
I can’t afford to not have a job someday and the job situation here is hard.
I went to a party for the first time a few months ago and felt bad about it but at the same time I needed to recall how it felt to dance.
I don’t think I have a good answer to your question.
He recounted a dream he had last night about his brother pushing him out of a building.
How he never hit the ground, just kept passing through it like a ghost. I couldn’t recall the last time someone told me about their dreams with such shameless intensity.
When he asked me about mine, I didn’t want to tell him I was mostly having nightmares now.