3/27/2007

Last night I was laying down in my bed, the lights were off and I was happily under my covers. I had just brushed my teeth and the light had been off only for a few minutes. As I was falling asleep I heard a giggle, which at first startled me. It was my roommate Rabeh. He continued to giggle and my natural reaction was to join in. After a few seconds of collective giggling I asked him why he was laughing. He told me that he remembered something from the day that made him laugh. "Every day I replay the tape", he told me, going through the good parts and the bad parts of his day, where he'd made mistakes and where he'd done well. Every night he would give himself a grade. "What grade did you give yourself today?", I asked him. "Maybe…seventy five", he told me. I told him if he'd only won one more game of Turnip he'd have gotten an eighty.

Earlier in the evening a few of my roommates and I went out to a bar in Rafeedia, which is the posh section of Nablus, relative of course. We settled in at an all male café to play Turnip and smoke Argilah. Turnip is a Palestinian game that my roommates had taught me when I first arrived. It's very similar to a game I play back home called forty fives, so I've had no trouble learning how to play. I always enjoyed the company of my roommates. They were always having a good time, always laughing and joking. It was an escape for them, an escape from this "big prison" as they commonly referred to Nablus. "All we can do is joke", Rabeh once told me.

The public relations department here at the university organized which opened today. The exhibition was set up in the university library and was established to put on display many political cartoons, most of which appeared in American newspapers around the time of the last war in Lebanon. The exhibition aims to put on display the extreme bias in the representation of Hezbollah throughout the American media. It was a powerful display. May of the cartoons were objective, but others were amazingly opinionated and not even close to portraying reality. One of the cartoons read, "What is our response to the latest peace proposal?", with a picture of two Arab men looking over a valley and missiles flying behind them. Hezbollah was scribbled on their shirts. Their response was, "We're launching it now". I can't begin to describe how this cartoon distorts the reality. Everyone is entitled to their own opinon however. I hope to find some of these cartoons and post them here in the future.

Just one of the many disturbing cartoons. This one brings to mind the recent use of Palestinians as human shields by the Israelis during operation "hot winter"

The exhibition reminded me of Rabeh and his replaying of the tape each night. Our perception of Islam is completely distorted in the west. Rabeh grades himself everyday so as to become a better person, to make his life more pure and closer to the examples of his prophet. Islam is not a religion, but a way of life. It guides muslims to live their lives by a set of ideals and principles which are based not on violence and terrorism, as westerners tend to believe, but on peace, tolerance, and understanding. I hope that everyone who may be reading this will attempt to educate themselves to a greated degree about this misunderstood religion.

My right eye is slightly infected. I'm not sure why, but I think it's just irritation caused by my contact lense. I'll just have to wear my glasses for a few days and hope the redness goes away, it's really quite bad. One of my Palestinian friends, a girl who works at one of the local refugee camps, was begging me to go and see a doctor, which I don't think is necessary. She told me that I better get it fixed before I go home, because if I don't, she said, "I'll see reports on CNN saying that the terrorists have stolen Jed's eye!".

On a separate note, the United Kingdom is in the process of an enormous human right's violation. I'll let you have a look for yourself, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6498099.stm.