Generous spirits

Recently, I got to relaying this story to Sara. And she encouraged me to retell it.

So, on my most recent trip to the Middle East, I stayed with a Palestinian host family for two nights. It was meant to be a way of seeing life in Palestine, basically just vacationing a bit between my full-time internship in Atlanta and the hectic Ultimate Peace camp schedule the following week. I met my host family through the Siraj Center and stayed with them in Beit Sahour, outside Bethlehem.

A main part of this home stay was, not surprisingly, actually staying at home. I sat on the back deck and watched the sun go down over an Israeli settlement in the distance. I read some, and skyped using the family's wifi, in the bed and bedroom they loaned to me. Most importantly, I sat at the family's dining room table and t.v. room couch.

While sitting with the host father my last night there, he told me his story of visiting the U.S. He worked in construction in Palestine and had planned a visit to see his brother, who lived in Kentucky. Upon landing at the Atlanta airport, he was pulled aside for further questioning. And instead of being searched and released, this man hosting me in his home in Palestine was detained in my home of Georgia - for a week without cause.

He never got to see his brother in Kentucky, or any worthwhile locale in the U.S. His family hardly knew his whereabouts that whole week he was detained. On the day the U.S. government decided to deport him, he rode handcuffed in a car the couple hours back to Atlanta's airport. At a lunch stop at a Subway restaurant, his captor/driver (presumably a federal employee), allowed my friend to walk without handcuffs into the restaurant to order and eat.

And the amazing thing is that my friend and host in Beit Sahour highlighted the generosity of his escort in rural Georgia... simply for allowing him the decency of a meal in public without handcuffs. During our talk, he didn't scorn the driver, or the U.S. government; quite the opposite. This man opened up his home to me, an American - from Georgia!

I feel lucky that I had the gentle experience that I had in Beit Sahour, and that my host was a generous person - of his spirit and more. Below is a shameless plug for the current UP indiegogo campaign, certainly a thing of great spirit :-)