By Rachel Barcelona

I first heard your soft whispers on the steps outside your city. The wind blew sweetly across my cheeks and the trees waved to each other around me. Yours is a land torn and tattered from years of wear and tear and yet there are still so many that love you, that fight for you, and you remain resilient. I remember walking into your flowering market where people were preparing for sundown and I will never forget the fragrant scent of challah mixed in with the sweat of bodies shuffling together in the narrow, bustling street. There are vendors calling out to me but their voices are drowned out by the sound of footsteps in every direction and the faint singing of a guitar guides me through the crowd. I reach for someone’s hand. Close my eyes. 

When we step out onto the other side, I am struck by how similar your neighbors are. I had expected some alternate universe but there it was, the salty air of the desert wafting through the streets and the same buzzy chatter of a city booming with joy and spilling over with heat; everything was just so alive. We make a path for ourselves in the still narrow jungle of overflowing fruit and I catch some kids racing around the carts and empty cardboard boxes like they were caught in the best maze they’ve ever seen. I almost forgot to look for the barbed wire fences hiding in the distance.

So we walk deeper. Your holy soil is covered in broken glass and your streets are decorated in war paint and peace paint and the songs of everything else in between. Your soft tears sting my skin and I feel my heart crack a bit inside of me and I want to melt into the crevices alongside this dirt road. Your children toss used grenades around like a baseball and hang them as decorations, or trophies of survival along the street; I lift my hand to graze its rough exterior but pull it back too quickly. It seems like we should be crying but instead, all I hear is laughter lining concrete walls of this camp and a call to prayer in the distance, all incorporated into the dry mixture of dust particles dancing their way through the air, up, up, up. So high, they can see what’s on the other side. I wonder what they think of the other side. When all of a sudden our footsteps are halted because we see The Wall, we begin to understand. 

Your neighbors fear each other but they cannot see each other. Those who do not understand want to plant these fears in the ground, to water them, to love them, to watch them grow. They want to spread the roots of these fears so far out that they begin to strangle the ones that are just trying to hug you tighter. But do not hide, I know you. There are many others who do, too. We see your activists, your peacemakers, your friendships that are so strong they cut through the fear that intoxicates so many of us. We understand that when we celebrate the independence of one part of you that we simultaneously mourn the loss of another. I know -– I danced in your streets and shared a drink with a best friend and waved the flag of one of your people while choosing to forget, just for a moment, the misery that existed on the other side. 

You hold secrets that we can only dream to bury our heads inside, in hopes of coming out at the other end in one piece. For now, I remember your glowing, sun-kissed rivers and your chilly mornings dug deep in your thick undergrowth and the wine that stained my mouth and your salty ocean swelling and crashing and the nights where you held silly college students dancing carelessly underneath your stars and the signs that spelled out “Art Over War” that not enough people get to see. I ask myself again and again how you have not yet cracked under the pressure of the rockets and the guns and the blood that taints your soil but I remember you’ve held out this long already. 

Perspectives is a fully subsidized trip to Israel-Palestine which is offered to exceptional student leaders interested in exploring socio-political aspects of Israel and the Palestinian territories. This program is designed to break stereotypes and move away from polarizing soundbites and will give students the opportunity to learn about the people and diverse cultures existing in these areas first hand.