October 4, 2001

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!

Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Elizabeth, happy birthday to you! Today was Elizabeth's birthday, and she got what she had always wanted - a lovely vacuum cleaner (who says gender roles don't take hold here?). Who'da thought that our first very own vacuum cleaner would be bought in Palestine?

Celebrating Elizabeth’s birthday with a few of the ex-pats.

We also had a chance to have a small party with ten or so fellow ex-pats, friends from the Arab-American University of Jenin. Certainly topped last year's birthday, where we knew hardly anyone and were simply trying to figure out how to survive in the midst of a new culture, new language, and an Intifada and siege. Definitely a better birthday.

One bummer, though, was that a friend of ours was supposed to visit from Jerusalem. He's from Australia and studying at the Hebrew University as a post-doc. He met the back-up Zababdeh taxi at Qalandiya (between Ramallah and Jerusalem) - the first one couldn't get through. They began the journey back here. The whole time we were communicating by cellphone to make sure things went as smoothly as possible. When he got to the Hamra checkpoint, the Israeli soldiers refused to let him pass - no foreigners or Israelis allowed into the Jenin area. Too dangerous, he was told. He argued, pleaded, begged, said he had important meetings at the University, etc., but all to no avail. Too dangerous. (Oddly, in our experience, it's usually the exact opposite. Foreigners are allowed through, but no Palestinians.) So he got out of the taxi and began walking along the road towards the Jordan Valley road (a good hour away) where he could hitch a ride up north to visit friends or back south towards home. Yeah, that's far safer that heading into Jenin. Fortunately, he made it no problem, we later heard, but he and we were tremendously disappointed and left feeling completely helpless. It's hard to express how such little things add to the daily emotional toll of this place, but when friends can't visit for a weekend (even when they really want to), we begin to understand the isolation that many Palestinians feel a lot of the time. Just makes you mad.

Glad to have a party to balance it out.