Tasareeh

As you know, Palestinians need Israeli permission to travel outside the West Bank and Gaza. Last week I went for my first time with a few locals to the office that issues the tasareeh, as they're called in Arabic. And after a couple hours, and a little frustration, the tasareeh were ours. And despite today being more frustrating - in my second attempt to secure tasareeh - my buddy and I had a laugh at the end.

I didn't even know until 15 minutes before picking him up that Hanna would be the guy joining me. But we got connected through one of the guys who came last week (they're both among the 20 or so people we were looking for tasareeh for today). And soon after we were in the car headed south of Bethlehem.

The tasareeh office is in the middle of Israeli settlements between Bethlehem and Hebron along road 60. The tasareeh office is decorated entirely in blue and white, the colors of Israel. And the tasareeh main office/waiting room has no human receptionist, only a computer to type in one's ID number. Later one gets called into the next waiting room, and to get there one has to pass through a superbly-intimidating turnstile. Some talking to a guy behind lots of layers of glass, and then the waiting game.

Today I was regretting that I wore a royal blue collared shirt, concerned that (in the eyes of others waiting for tasareeh) it would connect me to the Israeli government -- on the other side of this fraught relationship (and conflict). But what made me mad was being told at the tasareeh office to go to another office, about 20 minutes drive away. And then at that office told once more to return to the tasareeh office! How infuriating, and wasteful, and demoralizing. Learned we should ask for a particular person by name; it worked and we were out in maybe an hour.

This whole time I was wondering where I could direct my anger. But when Hannah finally got in the car with all the tasareeh in hand, we perused through pictures printed onto the documents. And we laughed heartily at everyone's old photos...from maybe five years ago. I guess (like Singer Cafe) this is another situation where I was saved from total meltdown instead of the one saving.

Unrelated picture of Noam and Nadeem at a recent CIT meeting: