Being There is Being No Longer Able to Explain

By Parker L. Payson

In history class we were given a pop quiz. The assignment was to draw the and mountains. I was the only one in the class who made no mistakes. I prided myself in my understanding of geography; I also knew all the European countries and their capitals.

Yet if I had been tested on the Middle East, I would have failed miserably. What would Egypt, an Arab country, be doing in Africa? Was Palestine the same as Israel or part of Lebanon? My geographical ignorance made me incapable of understanding any of the news generated from the region.

As I got older and more interested in current affairs, I developed a simplistic understanding of the Middle East: Israel was a country settled by Jewish immigrants who were reclaiming the land that they were driven from in Biblical times. All Arabs were modern-day Philistines, anarchists aiming to overthrow Israel. Arab belligerence toward Jews stemmed from the days of Abraham, when his illegitimate son, Ishmael, was ousted from the family in favor of his half-brother, Isaac.

Because I understood the Middle East in this framework, it was not important to draw distinctions between George Habash and Anwar el-Sadat, Muammar el-Qaddaffi and King Fahd. They were all terrorists who blew up buses, hijacked airplanes, and killed hostages. They were a menace to the "civilized" world, bringing bloodshed to the Olympics and forcing a worldwide recession by raising oil prices. If any Muslim was pro-American it was not evident during the Iran hostage crises in 1979.

I carried these views with me to college. During the spring of my freshman year, I signed up for a class in Middle Eastern studies, primarily because I did not want to take any early morning classes.

Imagine my shock when I learned that other Arab nations were not supportive of the Iranian anti-American protests, and that Palestinians fought other Arabs in a Jordanian civil war. These events were inexplicable. My ignorance led me to pursue more Middle Eastern studies, and I graduated with a degree in Middle Eastern history.

In the summer of 1986, I went to Jordan to study with a group of 15 other American students. My experience there put a human face on the suffering caused by the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

In Jordan, we toured refugee camps and met with families who had been living in camps since 1948. Old mothers showed us pictures of their children who died fighting in the occupied territories. We heard stories of grandfathers, on their deathbeds, who encouraged their children to remain in the refugee camps until their people were allowed to return to their homes. At a camp meeting, elders showed their resolve by protesting a Jordanian decision to upgrade camp sewage facilities. They argued that any increase in comfort might promote complacency in the Palestinian struggle to return home.

As I grew more aware of the mediating role that America needed to play in the region, I began to understand Arab frustration toward American policy. The Reagan administration was reluctant to pursue any diplomatic efforts to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict after the failure of a US-backed peace plan in 1983; Congress had just denied arm sales to both Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and we had recently bombed Tripoli.

It was a very scary time for Americans to be in the Middle East. Palestinian sentiment toward the US was nearing an all time low. Out of caution, I often disguised my nationality, and when traveling alone, I limited my meetings with Palestinians to exchanging pleasantries.

One day, I made an exception and accepted an invitation from a Palestinian man to come to his house for tea. I met his family, stayed for dinner, and ended up talking late into the night. He was very interested in my life in America, and so I showed him pictures of my family and friends. He asked me if I was looking forward to returning home; I told him that I was. "That is all I want too," he said. Then he handed me an old photograph of his family farm which has now been developed into an Israeli housing project. When he admitted that he would probably die before he could return to the land where he was raised, his eyes swelled with tears. I swallowed hard. He then grasped my arm and asked, "Why is America against us?" Unfortunately, I could not begin to explain.

Parker L. Payson is a 23-year-old free-lance Journalist based in Washington, DC