May 28, 2003

Our home village, Zababdeh, Palestine.

After exams today, teachers went to the assistant principal's home again to pay respects. There were many fewer people, and the women teachers sat in the same room, on plastic chairs brought for our big group - the men sat outside. We sat in silence for a while, and after the distribution of bitter coffee and dried dates, we all left.

Elizabeth returned to the Latin Church and joined Marthame and Fr. Aktham and Deacon Homam, who were enjoying conversation with two visitors, including one of Marthame's former seminary professors from the University of Chicago. An Anglican-turned-Roman Catholic, Dr. Paul Griffiths now works at the University of Illinois at Chicago, designing an undergraduate program in Catholic Studies. He decided it was important to come to see the situation for himself here, after some campus hostility over the past few years between the school's sizable Jewish and Muslim student populations. As their car drove away back to Jerusalem, Marthame realized he had forgotten to snap a picture. Rats.