The Road to Ramallah and a Long-Lost Cousin

After six hours, three cars, two buses, two border crossings, and the discovery of a long-lost cousin, I’m in Ramallah at my grandparents’ house overlooking a stunning view of the road that travels through the gentle hills from Ramallah to the university town of Birzeit.

My trip was long (it used to take 2 hours to drive from Amman to Ramallah before the borders were created by Western powers in 1948), but smooth in that I encountered no problems with my documents. It was the first in my lifetime’s worth of Israeli border crossings that I wasn’t asked a single question. Not why I am here, what I am doing, who I plan to see. No opening of suitcases or requests to have a seat and then three hours later receive some unpleasant news about my “status” in the occupied territories. Just a long, multi-step journey from one part to another of what was formerly one undivided land.

The day started at 10am when my aunt and uncle drove me to the bus station in Amman and I boarded a shared “service” taxi for the 30 minute ride to the western Jordanian border.

The Tabarbour bus and taxi station in Amman

I was squished between two aunties of standard chubbiness. We had the first of my many conversations of the day about the following day’s US elections and Obama (which I will collect as snippets in another post).

The road west from Amman was much more scenic than the drive south to Petra the previous day. Our taxi flew up and down the hills, grand mountains dotted with greenery and simple stone houses surrounding us as far as the eye could see. I glimpsed the Dead Sea from the top of one of our hills. As we approached the border, the lower altitude brought banana plantations and a temperature increase of several degrees.

Our taxi arrived at the border crossing. Our bags were taken to be x-rayed, we paid various fees, had papers inspected, and went to wait in a DMV-like area for numbers to be called. I was number 675 and they were on 650. The numbers moved quickly but I had time to observe about 30 or so people waiting to cross. Since there’s another border crossing for foreigners (I’ve used it; it’s cleaner and faster and takes fewer steps) we were all Arabs: men in suits and designer glasses, men in fake leather jackets and gelled back hair, women in hijab and wild animal print long cardigans and one woman in a full burka.
At 12:20 we were on another JETT bus (like the one I took to Petra) leaving Jordan and crossing into Israel. We drove for about 15 minutes through arid desert terrain and crossed the King Hussein Bridge, the official border. At the first Israeli checkpoint, the bus was stopped and its Palestinian steerage emptied into a metal holding pen. A soldier inspected the inside of the bus while half the people who got out lit cigarettes. Back on, it was 10 minutes to the Allenby border crossing, where our bus stopped behind two others.

For an hour.

After 10 minutes of sitting in silence, the driver flipped through static on the radio and settled on a station playing traditional Arabic music with Oud and violins. It was followed by my amusement at the radio host announcing the next song in Arabic: “Now we have for you the latest from the group Pussycat Dolls with some help from Missy Elliot, Whatchu Think Bout Dat.” I sat in the middle of the desert in no-man’s land on the bus, with covered women all around me, wondering whether anyone else noticed that it and the next song included provocative lyrics such as a repetitive “touch my body.”

In the lane next to us, we watched tourist buses go through the gate while we waited. Five of those passed as our load of steerage stood still. After an hour had elapsed, the strangers on the bus started to mutter to each other insults about the Israelis who were delaying us. Standard Arabic stuff any family members would say throw at each other on a daily basis: “Allah damn your face,” “May Allah show them!”

All that was left was to get to the other side of this building. Our bus made it through the gate and the insults were forgotten. Bags were unloaded and sent off to another x-ray, and we queued to go through metal detectors. I hadn’t eaten all day, so I bought a labneh and bologna sandwich and sat on a seat to eat it while I watched the others line up at 8 passport control windows like at the airport.

One thing I like better about the Arab world than America (though it can get tiresome) is the way everyone talks to the people around them, unlike Westerners who just stand silently staring ahead in taxis, elevators, or waiting in line. And in a testament to the Palestinian spirit, the harder the circumstances, the more people joke. When I joined the line, I got into some friendly funny banter with a middle-aged engineer man and two young women who looked about my age. We were exchanging stories about our past border crossing troubles when an older man walked up to us – skin dark and wrinkly as if from the sun, wearing a casual suit, smoking a cigarette.

To my surprise, “are you Takruri?” he asked me?

“Um, yes”

“Are you Sharief’s daughter?” he asked.

I looked from him to the group I had been joking with, all of us puzzled and amused.

“Yes,” I said, not recognizing this person as any relative I’d ever met. “But who are you?”

“Do you know that you’re my cousin? Sharief is my maternal uncle. I’m Jamal, Um Immyassar’s son!” My father’s sister’s offspring.

Amazed and sort of freaked out, I asked how he knew me. We in fact had not ever met in my lifetime. He said he thought I might be a relative when he heard my voice and had a look at me. He knew it was me when he overheard me telling the others that I was a journalist.

“I’d HEARD that Sharief’s daughter, the journalist from Washington, was coming to be a journalist in Ramallah!” he happily explained.

We talked a bit more about family, and I couldn’t wait to tell my dad about the discovery of a long-lost cousin.

My turn at the window with the Israeli border woman lasted no more than three minutes. Documents stamped, I went to retrieve my bags, and we were on yet another bus from the border to the city of Jericho. The bus driver nodded and waved to three Palestinian officers at a checkpoint on the side of the road, and they stopped smoking arghileh and horsing around for a moment to wave us across, and we were officially in the Palestinian territories. Passengers and bags unloaded once more, and we dispersed into taxis toward Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron (my cousin) and Ramallah.

Finally at almost 5pm, in a rickety shared Mercedes taxi with two of the people I befriended at the passport window, loudly arguing with all seven of the other passengers about Obama and McCain while zooming through the hills toward Ramallah, I felt more at home than I’d felt in the week since I left Washington.