I traveled to Palestine in spring 1990 and again in fall 2003. I self-published a novel, Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine in 2015. Magan Wiles (SLU A & S, 2004) read a draft and sent me the following.
Professor Friend, First the nice polite happy part about reading your wonderful book, Dear Layla: This pasticcio covered a breadth of my own experience. I remembered things I haven’t thought about in a long time: How I originally went to Palestine because of “the dread of being a bystander.” How I quit ISM because there were too many Americans “run[ing] after a tragedy…elated to see what [they] were seeing.” What it’s like to watch someone lament the loss of trees. How the Palestinians said over and over “the American people are good, it is the American government who is bad.” The “labyrinthine, incredible Nonsensical, painintheass ways/Of the Israel occupier’s permit system.” How at checkpoints, we would avert our eyes from the “naked torsos” of middle-aged Palestinian men, to try and give them back a little of the dignity being stolen from them, these men who are more dignified somehow than middle-aged American men. It is worse to see the torso of a Palestinian man than an American one; something bigger is lost. How awful and awesome to be a nobody visiting other nobodies in hopes of righting the wrongs of the somebodies How I swore not to use drugs or do any romantic canoodling, then after three weeks going with Ellie to a park in Jerusalem to buy hashish, and after two months making out with the handsome American Jew from Chicago who could talk Arabic like he grew up in Balata camp. Bil’in. Bil’in. Bil’in. The indomitable hope and spirit of the people of Bil’in. “That legendary Arab hospitality’’ – choking down warm goat’s milk that had just been cheerfully milked for me, gulping cup after cup of tea with spoon after spoon of sugar, staying one, two, three hours past the time I intended, eating meat bought by people who could only afford to buy meat for themselves once a week. The first time Fayrouz played for me “the soft, tender voice of Fairuz.” We sat on her bed on our backs and looked at the ceiling as she translated the song for me – “Shadi”, about a woman and her long lost love. How beautiful Arabic-translated-to-English is….I can’t remember where I was when I heard this or what it’s from: “I’ve waited to speak with you because you are expensive to our hearts.”
And now for the second, uglier part of reading your blasted book: as someone who has avoided the suffering of strangers for three years - partly because the last time I chose to stand with those who are suffering it almost swallowed me up and partly because i needed time to understand and care for the little girl inside me who suffered who still suffers - Dear Layla was a difficult pasticcio to read. I was not cynical before I went to Palestine. Now I am, and those scars run deep. It has made me meaner and colder. I hate this about myself. It’s not fitting at all, really, so many Palestinians I met, they honestly believe in spite of EVERYTHING in spite of the through-and-through SHITTYNESS of the situation in Palestine, they have hope that one day things will get better. Palestinian people are some of the least cynical people you will ever meet. They smile as they sit in hell. And it makes me SO FUCKING MAD (So fucking mad that as I type this my anger swells up and catches in my throat and a little leaks through my eyes). That I lived there for three very tiny months and it was enough to make my weak-ass heart go cold, made my faith in EVERYTHING dry up, filled me with a sadness so fucking deep that it’s difficult to bear optimism or sentimentality anywhere – It’s cowardly, and selfish, and I have no right to it. But I digress. Henry from your book came back empty, too, Nothing to write for a year, he said, and Oh god, I know how that feels. Six years I know how that feels. I spent the last three years learning how to have compassion for myself. I ignored the Palestinians to do this. So I better fucking do it. Oh god Oh god “It isn’t my duty to end the Israeli occupation But neither am I free to desist from trying to end it.” Fayrouz, forgive me. Forgive me, I was broken for a while.
Professor Friend – you have always been my Emerson, whether you like it or not. I simmer and simmer and simmer and then I read a book you wrote and I start to boil. The signs have been coming for awhile: I have heard from two friends from Palestine in the last two days that I haven’t spoken with in six years. Palestine is in the news again. Speaking Spanish to the bussers and cooks at work is bringing the Arab word for things back into my mind. Fayrouz wrote me to ask for my address for a job recommendation. Palestine, she is calling me to help again, and I have ignored her for long enough.
Damn you! It fucking hurt to read this book. And thank you. It was the final push I needed to get off my ass.
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