Stories of Conflict and Love

Two portions exactly

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Sun, 27 May 2012 16:31:00 +0000

All that is left in the living room is the sunlight and our memories.

"Let's make a list," he said on the way to the Mahane Yehuda shuq, our local market. "First: quinoa."
"Quinoa? Why quinoa?!" At the time, I was unsure of how to spell the word in my head. That is how you know we missed out on the required post-graduate years of American yuppiness.
"Because I want to feel hip."

Alright, then.

When we arrived in Jerusalem, it was pomegranate season. The first sound I associate with our Jerusalem home is the crackling of seeds separating from the pomegranate. We came with the pomegranates; we are leaving with the cherries. We pass by the apricots, since the seller will not let us buy anything under a full box of them. There is no time left for a full box of apricots.

The shopkeeper asks how much quinoa we want. "Enough for two portions," Elijah responds. This is the smallest quantity in which anyone has ever gone food shopping in Jerusalem's market. "We only have enough time left for two portions exactly."

Two portions is the loneliest number.

Later that night, I watch him prepare a quinoa tabbouleh salad because, if you are going to feel like culinary hipsters, it might as well be regionally-inspired hipsters. Diced tomatoes, chopped cucumbers, cilantro, cheese, a dash of lemon. A side of guacamole, for those of us with stretchy hearts that are always missing other foods and other places. We eat our quinoa tabbouleh on the bed, since most of the other furniture is already gone. Moving house is the sound of your voices echoing on the walls.

Jerusalem swan song

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:07:00 +0000

If I were writing this in an hour, I would be sitting on the floor. This is a floor both Elijah and I have scrubbed to no avail. The old Arab tiles that form its jigsaw pattern are too beautiful to be replaced and too historic to ever be fully clean. In an hour, our landlady is stopping by to pick up her furniture. The orange chair whose fluorescent monstrosity I had bemoaned is leaving, and so are we.

With 15 days left in this chapter of life, I am inhabiting the Jerusalem version of "Goodnight Moon." I am eating as though I am seeking to satiate a constant craving for everything I will miss. I am shoving falafel and lemon cheesecake milkshakes and fruit crumbles down in the hope that they will ease the pain of departure, as though I am nursing a bad break-up.

And yet, the break-up could not be more amicable. I am still in love with you, Jerusalem, and part of me probably always will be. You are that lingering former lover who has changed a girl's life in ways so profound that even when she has found love elsewhere, even when other places make her smile, even when there are other caverns she calls home, she looks back to you wistfully and with gratitude for stretching her heart.

We have invested millions of steps onto these streets. We have seen the tulips on King David street be replaced by roses and those, in turn, replaced by snapdragons. We promised to always kiss under that one tree that always smells nice, and we kept the promise. Now we are nearing the point at which we talk about the making of memories in the past: "Remember that one time when I found a paper flower in the street for you and you told me not to pick it up because you thought it was a bomb?"

For years, my brother has joked that I have an MPA, a Masters in Packing Administration (being a Dorkosaurus runs in the family, I know). I have mastered how to condense life into two suitcases. I am an expert in sorting and sieving, in selling space heaters and voltage converters. I have learned to relish the lightness. I increasingly distrust the people who tell you "oh, it's not goodbye, it's see-you-later" because I know to cherish the closure. I should, intellectually, know that these are the times that call for mindful presence and for breathing in every moment we have here. I should, intellectually, continue to make memories until the second the plane takes off with two suitcases of my life in its belly.

And yet, this time, I am drawing on that process with which I am perhaps more familiar than transcontinental moves: mourning. I feel myself gliding like a ghost through the stages of grief: denial, anger, remembrance, nostalgia. I am mourning the end of the Jerusalem chapter. As my teacher in grief and in love, Joan Didion, has put it:

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image."

We are spending our last 15 days here loving radically. Like a band on its farewell tour, we have loaded the car with wafers and pretzels and have driven nearly 2,000 kilometers to live out every item on our wish list. We felt the spray of a waterfall on our faces and rafted down the Jordan river. We saw the sunset over the sand dunes of Caesarea and drank cardamom-flavored coffee in Akko. We caught a glimpse of Syria from one border and swam in the Mediterranean the next day. We even had a drink at Messi bar, in an homage to the hundreds of hours of Barcelona games we have watched in bars across this country. Neither of us has unpacked from this last trip, the Farewell Tour, because we know that will mark the beginning of the sorting and sieving and donating. It will mark the beginning of the moving on.

Friday afternoon, near Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem

Affection on the beach in Akko in the north of Israel

Coffee in Akko tasted like cardamom and clove.

Father and son on the rocks of Caesarea

A horse in the sand dunes of Caesarea

The hike to the Banias waterfall

A tree grows over the rushing waters near the Banias waterfall

Banias springs, near the ancient temple for the God Pan

And then we made it to the waterfall...

E found some wet cement and E hearts R will stay in Banias for a little while longer...

The city of Zefat wakes up with Yemenite breakfast.

Collecting good luck charms: A doorway with a hamsa and an evil eye in Zefat

Trust us to take a photo in front of a Danger sign...

Resisting cynicism

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Rose petals in the Old City of Jerusalem, just because.

Last night's Greek elections have given me little from which to draw buoyancy and lots with which to be disillusioned. Because the universe has a way, I have come face to face with my own words. The ceaselessly kind Christine Mason Miller, whose book Ordinary Sparkling Moments changed my conception of what constitutes a book well-loved, asked me to discuss some of what is close to my heart in her Global Inspirations series. At the time, I said:

Resist cynicism. Silence the voices that tell us we are not creative. Believe in the power and magic of storytelling. Learn about the most effective ways to serve; not all manners of service feel true to everyone, and not all make the impact we think they do. “Slacktivism” is easy and meaningful impact is hard. Be skeptical of narratives that portray individuals in conflict or post-conflict areas in ways that minimize their agency over their lives or their integrity. Take leaps of faith, and reward those around you who do. Acknowledge those who have inspired you, and write to tell them that. Mentor someone. [...] Smile when the universe winks at you (I firmly believe it does), and draw strength and inspiration from each wink.

The rest of the interview is available at Global Inspirations today. Thank you, Christine, for reminding me to resist cynicism on the days when cynicism seems like the easiest path and for giving me a forum to discuss that which makes my heart fill with gratitude.

The involved places

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:45:00 +0000

I did not come to the Middle East to maintain an attachment to privacy. I have worked in five countries in this region and each of them has stripped me bare. The invisible bubble between you and the world dissolves and you sit there, practically naked in all your layers of clothes, with your collarbones covered but your life exposed. Questions feel like pokes initially, like none-of-your-business jabs. This is the story of my making peace with the questions. It is a story of my love for "the involved places", the places that do not stop at "nice to meet you" and "check, please", the places that transcend what is appropriate or their business to form a human, intrusive life connection.

***

Living above Burgers Bar means I have woken up on more than one occasion wondering if there is, indeed, a portion of the population that craves a lamb burger at 8 AM. Some people wake up to the gurgling of the coffee machine or to a whiff of hazelnut coffee; Elijah and I wake up to the sizzling of ground meat.

I do not feel like I have truly unpacked my life at a place until I find a place to watch Champions League soccer games. My devoted following of the Barcelona soccer club is intertwined with my sense of home. Burgers Bar has housed my soccer fandom this year and, in the process, taught me a thing or two about the traits that recur in places I love.

Burgers Bar, Jerusalem, 9.46 PM on a Tuesday
We are one minute into the game and the guy sitting next to us is clearly rooting for the other team. Elijah and I stay mostly quiet, as though the world cannot handle our being foreigners, immigrants and Barcelona fans. I share a statistic with Elijah and the guy next to us pipes up "Oh, that just can't be true."

Having watched two years' worth of soccer games in the Middle East, I know not to be surprised by the intrusion or the indignation. A few months ago, I was the only woman in a restaurant of 48 men watching the Real Madrid-Barcelona game. (Yes, I counted, between successive bites of hummus consumed in the hope that eating would mitigate the awkwardness.) I have encountered the sheer shock that washes over people when they discover I can tell the difference between soccer and synchronized swimming.

The man sitting next to us asks me to look up the soccer statistic again and I oblige. I was right the first time. The conversation window is wide open now, even though I am staring at the screen hard enough to burn holes through the soccer players' jerseys.

"Are you two together?" he asks.
Elijah nods.
"Oh, for how long?"
Elijah answers him.
"Are you married?," the man follows up.
"No, we are not," I volunteer with some irritation.
"Wow, after so much time together, my mother would have some questions about that!"
"My mother has questions about that too," Elijah says humorously to diffuse the tension and to stop me from shoving feminist theory and a speech on making assumptions about strangers down this stranger's throat.

A conversation about Elijah's alma mater leads to the stranger making a bet with Elijah that the university's founder was not a Supreme Court Justice. More iPhone Googling ensues.

Our team scores.

"Did you know that all the streets in this neighborhood are named after non-Jews?"
I look at Elijah and he knows I'm practically telepathically beaming "What is this? Fun Fact Hour during the soccer game?"
We then, naturally, proceed to name the side streets of the neighborhood and Google the religious beliefs of the people who bequeathed their name to them.

80 more minutes of soccer, coupled with 80 minutes of questions. By the end of the game, we knew that Barcelona was the superior team, the stranger "hated Italians -- oof, Italians!", the stranger thought I looked Italian (draw your own conclusions). He was also convinced I must have had at least one Jewish grandparent given the name of my hometown. Though himself unmarried, he nonetheless offered marriage advice ("it is best to take care of these sorts of matters early in life") and inquired as to "how you got such a cheap apartment in this neighborhood!"

If you are reading this, dear stranger, you should come take a look at our kitchen and all your questions will be answered.

***

Same Burgers Bar, same Barcelona squad, different Tuesday night

I have returned from the Dead Sea with exactly one sunburned shoulder. The bartender and I are laughing about this and are exchanging information on the other aspects of my life she has become privy to after successive Barcelona-watching nights, ranging from the progress of my graduate school applications to our strategy for mold removal after the heavy rain.

"Oh, my wife LOVED the Dead Sea!" - from a stool next to ours.

Here we go again.

"It is a very unique experience," Elijah agrees kindly. I point to the screen to suggest, unkindly, that the game is about to start and I am not about to discuss my views on marriage again.

"Are you two married?"

Too late.

"No, but let me guess -- you guys are!"

"We are, we are, and we are just loving this trip to Israel, you know?"

"That is so good to hear," goes Elijah. The Champions League anthem plays in the background, I casually glare.

Pass, pass, Messi, pass, Iniesta, foul, corner, pass, offsides, pass, shot on goal. Next time I tune in, I hear this:

"There just aren't enough organic, fair trade places in California, you know?"

No, actually, I did not. As compared to... Portland?

"No, really. It is just so hard to find that kind of thing there. I cannot imagine how you guys do it here!"

Elijah resists the urge to tell this man that, in this country, when he is reassured that something is organic-fair trade-grown by loving angels who sprinkle pixie dust on it, the salesperson often has no clue if that is true.

Messi scores.

"You know, the conflict stuff.... that just seems so silly to me. You know what I think the solution to it all is?"

Now I tune back in. This is common and I relish it every time: A foreigner, usually a newcomer, arrives in Jerusalem, bears witness and it all makes sense. He has it - the elusive solution to The Conflict. Never mind that Juanita Leon was right two years ago in her assessment of Colombia and every conflicted place: "You live there for a week, it all makes sense. You know everything. You live there for a month, and suddenly you know nothing at all."

Elijah and I lean in, as the Dead Sea-loving wife and organic-loving husband are about to share the peace plan. The man utters "... well, I'd just build casinos!"

That was earnestly one we had not heard before.

Barcelona won that night too. So did curiosity: from casinos to kosher Mexican food, and from organic certifications to wedding ceremonies by the Dead Sea.

***

There is a finite number of answers to "you're not married?!", but an infinite range of shocked, indignant reactions when people hear we are unwed. What is also finite is my irritation at the questions. There was a point in life when I measured home by where the anchors were - a point at which the anchors were physical: Home was where I lived long enough to own wine glasses, passable sheets, and specialized floor cleaner. Home was where I lived long enough to not worry about how to carry all the books to the next place. To some extent, it is still that point in life, the point that Thought Catalog describes in a piece titled How To Be Young:

Think you’re old and never realize how young you actually are. Fixate on the fact that you love The Container Store and Bed, Bath & Beyond and drinking tea and eating organic. This means something to you. It means you’re figuring out how to be an adult and you won’t be left behind. Show your receipt from Crate and Barrel to a 30-year-old and say, “See? I’m getting there. Let me through!”

Slowly, though, home has evolved into the place I have lived long enough for people to ask questions. In Israel, that is often not very long at all, but the more you put down roots, the more bottles of floor cleaner and mold removing spray that you buy, the more detailed, intricate and personal the questions get. I was initially frustrated at how difficult it is to 'belong' here if you were not naturally born into the two axes that can define the narrative: religion and the conflict. I am neither Jewish nor Muslim, neither Israeli nor Palestinian. It has been surprisingly difficult to carve out a place for myself given those parameters.

That place, the involved, question-asking place, was born out of ceasing to resist intrusion. The owner of the laundromat is curious as to why we keep a couple's dirty laundry in a shared laundry bag. I clumsily attempt to answer, he laughs, waves around to suggest it's strange and inappropriate, laughs some more. Next time, he calls me "hamuda" - cutie. I do my laundry at a place where someone calls me cutie. On a regular basis.

I buy my muffins at a place where the women repeatedly tell me that "this food will make you fat." The man at the corner store knows exactly how much nargileh is smoked in this house and does not hide his feelings about it.

On my walk home today, I noticed there was not a patch of grass in the park without a grill on top of it. It is Israeli Independence Day and it comes complete with F-16 fly-overs, fireworks, and all the grilled meat you can eat. In a clear 4th-of-July shout-out, I even saw a couple making smores. I waded through the park, careful not to step on toys or knock over the double strollers that look like tanks and exude more confidence on the streets of Jerusalem than I do. My walk was interrupted to: receive a kebab, explain that I neither have a barbecue nor - gasp - an oven at home, to receive another kebab, to hold a child while his brother's diaper was tended to, to pat a dog, to eat yet another kebab.

There is a network of people whose knowledge of the rhythms of my life here, my tastes, my preferences when it comes to laundry, Barcelona or application essays creates a sense of home. These relationships may range from the superficial to the intimate, but they are bound by questions and by a sense of involvement. It is the involved places that I love, the places that are not afraid to ask, that do not care to mask their indignation at an answer, that shove kebabs and babies in your arms, even when you have no particular affection for either.

Lessons from Measuring Life in Photographs

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:08:00 +0000

In an interview last August, Beth Nicholls asked me: "How differently do you see the world through the lens of a camera?" I responded:

In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton discusses the process of drawing while traveling. He remarks that drawing enables the traveler to see: to squint, to scrutinize, to look in a way that transcends the fleeting glimpse. Photography plays a similarly enabling role in my own life, even though it is more instantaneous than the process of drawing. I look through the viewfinder searching for beauty… or for surprise, incongruence, contradiction, conflict. The camera reminds me to look — to really look.

I embarked on a project to photograph life every day in 2012 as an attempt to do exactly that: to look closer, to squint, to be surprised. To find wonder. Inspired by T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock,who "measured out his life with coffee spoons", Measuring Life in Photographs was born.

I was hoping that the practice of taking a photograph every day would make me a better photographer. Or that it would infuse some mindful presence into every day, no matter how unremarkable or bleak it may have looked outside the camera lens. And while this has been true, these have not been the most surprising lessons of the project so far.

Measuring Life in Photographs has made me acutely aware of the passage of time. One photograph per day, at a total of 365+1 for 2012. By January 11, 2012, I had already taken 366 photographs, but flooding the universe with images was not my idea of curation. So I cropped and frowned at angles that were not quite sharp enough and squirmed at not-quite-there composition and selected one photo per day because, if there needs to be a point, this would be part of it: to sieve through the flood, to choose how to remember.

Initially, I captioned each photo with the day to which it corresponded. Day 25: fizzling Coca Cola on a flight. Day 49: "Whatever you do, I will love you". Day 68. And then an insightful commenter asked: "Why the numbered days?" and I decided that measuring life in photographs did not require a sequential naming of time. So on this day, do-not-ask-me-which-number-it-was, I stopped counting.

In another sense, though, the acute awareness does not fade. Because of this project, I now know things like "today is the 111th day of the year." I start thinking of the year in sections and portions, and measuring my life against them. I look back on the photographs and think: Is this what I wanted the year to look like? Are these the hues I expected?

I find a lot of hearts when I look back on these 111 days: 10 of them, to be exact. I see ballet flats on three continents: 6 instances of them. Mail, letters, envelopes: 7 photographs. Self-portraits, mostly foggy and obscured: 10. My collarbones make a surprising number of appearances too, particularly given how much time they spend concealed under pashminas in my neck of the woods.

I notice a lot of what 111 days of Measuring Life in Photographs has not captured: the dark corners and muted hues. The more shadows that walk through my life, the brighter the photographs become. I have not deciphered which way the causation flows: Am I still trying to (self) select for the colorful, even when life is grey? Or am I using the high saturation to lift myself out of the shadowy pit?

On some days, I cheat. I may have taken 250 photographs on that given day and not a single one resonates with me enough to become part of the collection. And then the day before that, I happened to have taken just three photographs and I love all three... enough to include one of them in the photoessay the following day too. If you walked through the latest week of photographs with me, you'd think I wandered through Botanical Gardens all day every day, looking at swans. In reality, the swans and teardrop flowers and dream-inducing trees were all part of the same day, but I stretched them out. Sometimes, I want the magic to ignore the boundaries of the single image and flow through the whole week. And other times, I want to erase a day completely. The latter are the days void of images. The photographs that would have been.

As I told Beth Nicholls in August, looking through the viewfinder makes me slow down. For a whole month, I did not pick up the digital camera. Instagram does not come with a viewfinder. The iPhone may humor us with a shutter sound, but "it's not quite the same." I ran away from the mindful presence. I measured life in filtered photographs, in snapshots and split seconds. For weeks on end, Jerusalem looked like this: dreamy, rosy, romantic, movie-esque. As I navigated turmoil and heartbreak and anxiety, I had no patience for high resolution or the sharp clarity of real yellows. Just this week, I decided it's time to put the filters down for a bit and put myself back in the picture.

The camera feels heavier than I remembered and the bright colors and high resolutions are almost causing me light sensitivity. I would like to say that the project has taught me to be less of a perfectionist. I would like to say that I'm making my peace with the not-quite-magical days and the not-quite-photographs and more-like-snapshots and I'm letting those see the light of day too. And while this was the case, say, on this visually imperfect day, it is not the whole truth. I am still hunting for the images that shake me to the core. I still marvel at the days that cause Elijah to mock me for saying "ohmygoshwouldyoulookatthislight!" in one breath, over and over again. I am still hoping that the hues and brightness and shadows will line up and make magic. And if there needs to have been a point for the past 111 days of Measuring Life in Photographs, it is to let the story tell itself sometimes. To go back and look at the patterns that emerged when I was not the puppet master pulling the strings. To keep showing up.

Today. Showing up. Embracing the yellow yellows and vivid blues. Attaching the heavy camera to my wrist again. Celebrating the clarity, cherishing the reflection.

Peace

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:22:00 +0000

When a city is built entirely out of white stone, it is meant to be loved at night, in the glow of orange street lamps.

Passover and the Sabbath coincided, thus taking cars, humans and bread crumbs off the streets. We wandered for two hours with no purpose other than to make memories in an empty city, to claim the playground for ourselves, to interrupt the silence and cast shadows on the orange-hued streets of Jerusalem.

Overnight, Jerusalem had blossomed, if only to signal to me that spring had not forgotten after all. I sneezed under the petals and took deep breaths regardless. Outside his favorite building in Jerusalem, he spotted it. This was the one flower that would not make me sniffle. Made of blue tissue paper and tied to a street barrier, it was waiting for someone like him to notice.

I, ever the wary one, could not retire my conflict training, not even for an empty Jerusalem, not even in the orange glow. "Are you sure you should be picking up something you found in the street here?"

"I knew you'd say that. I knew it! My paranoid love... What, you think this is a bomb?"

I laugh at myself to stop him from doing the same and he fastens the flower to my wrist like a corsage. On its wire stem, we find a note. It reads: Peace.

We walk home like prom dates who left the dance before everyone else, breathing in blossoms, exhaling peace.

Peace, at home on our windowsill

The poetry of silence

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:38:00 +0000

In a feature titled Poets I Didn't Study in School, PeacexPeace sheds light on the unsung poetry of conflict. And in a confluence of literary minds this National Poetry Month, Akhila Kolisetty prompted a reflection on the poets of our lives. In a notebook with a yellow straw chair on the cover, I capture the stanzas that caused a small gasp when I first read them. They range from words out of a newspaper article, to half a line from Mary Oliver, to dozens of verses out of Elytis' The Monogram.

My childhood was a collage of setting out on the road to Ithaca and "να εύχεσαi να 'ναι μακρύς ο δρόμος..." and "nobody, not even the rain has such small hands." Tucked onto a fridge in Washington D.C., I found Mary Oliver: "let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." In the remainders basement of the Harvard Bookstore, Neruda came into my life. And at an outdoor bookstore in the Plaza de Armas of Havana, I met Benedetti: "te quiero porque tus manos trabajan por la justicia."

Without Elytis, I wouldn't know to look for the kind of love that poems are made of. "Tο γερτό παντζούρι εσύ, ο αέρας που το ανοίγει εγώ" -- "you the curved shutter, I the air that opens it." No man I have ever loved can read these words in their original and no translation I have ever found can carry their potent affection. And so, in dark rooms in Cairo and Boston and Jerusalem after midnight, I have often found myself mumbling about shutters and winds and "the waves have heard of you... how you caress, how you kiss, how you whisper the 'what' and the 'eh'". Sometimes I imagine a world in which I do not speak Greek and, instead, can merely imagine the kinds of words that define my companion's literary ideal of a life well-shared.

It is appropriate that the first glimpse into my Jerusalem neighborhood last fall revealed that Yehuda Amichai park marks its border. I look for the poetic winks of the universe. I look for the poetry in life. I hunt for the days that rhyme and the extra syllable out of place that creates the spark.

J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons. I measure mine in photographs. I count the leaves in fields of shamrocks, the ballet flats that go two-by-two from dust to flowers.

I find poetry in trailing smoke, in the kebab smell in his hair. In the first bite, in the crumbs wedged in my chest.
In the empty nest by the window seat our books call home, and the egg that later fills it.

There is poetry to the mud that stings my face, the open palm of it on my back, the pruned toes after the first swim. The feet that slide out from under me to poke the Dead Sea surface. The red shoulder that protrudes out of a shirt sleeve.

I find poetry in the spring that has forgotten us and the tree that defies its absence.
In the turning of the pages, the sharpening of pencils, the dreaming of classrooms ahead and books to be read and - dare I? - to be written.

There is poetry - tragic poetry - to a dream crushed and the hope of restoration rising out of its ashes. There is poetry to silent dreaming; the stanza today cannot handle the whispering of wish outloud.

I find poetry to stringing words together and letting them carry you. Letting them float you when little else will.

Choosing compassion: Kony 2012 edition

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:07:00 +0000

Jason Russell, the co-founder of Invisible Children, was detained for public masturbation a few days ago. He and his organization had been in the spotlight because of Kony 2012, the Invisible Children advocacy campaign that yielded the fastest viral video we have known. Critical reaction to the campaign raised some poignant questions about storytelling and advocacy: How do we balance a compelling call for advocacy among those far away with respecting the wishes and priorities of those on the ground? How do we preserve Ugandans' dignity, integrity and agency over their lives in the process of telling their story? How do we transform a complex history into a call to action without oversimplifying, dramatizing or falling into the very stereotypes we seek to combat?

Many have argued that Invisible Children has failed in striking this balance, thus potentially creating a video that is inaccurate, disrespectful or out of sync with the wishes of Ugandans for their country and with their perceptions of the conflict. I have read these opinions with respect and am proud to be part of a community that analyzes the meaning of responsible charity, dissects advocacy strategies, and does not shy away from the difficult questions.

People often ask if working in conflict and post-conflict areas disillusions me and, at times, it does. What I find most disillusioning, however, is cynicism. Snark is not a companion I wish to welcome in a journey of service. I was, therefore, greatly disillusioned by the tone of the conversation about #kony2012. Among some, there was a sense of rejoice in the backlash of the Kony 2012 campaign. There is a sense of celebration of a take-down here and it feels thoroughly out of place. Since news of Jason Russell's breakdown circulated, the hashtag #horny2012 appeared on Twitter, along with other distasteful jokes and mockery about Kony 2012 and Jason Russell's public indecency. Organizations are run by humans: fallible humans whose errors will (rightfully) come at a high cost to them. I cannot help but want to meet these humans' leaps of faith - and even their missteps - with compassion. I refuse to put compassion in the "bucket of feelings" many colleagues of mine will automatically render irrelevant to the conversation. I refuse to treat extending compassion as blindness to critique.

I also refuse to point fingers at mistakes and missteps without necessarily providing counterpoints of models that get it right, of individuals and organizations who do it better. In that vein, I greatly appreciate Akhila Kolisetty's Feature Friday, in which she profiles projects that inspire, and the Pulitzer Center's storytelling initiatives, most recently in the theme of reproductive choice in Africa. This is not an exhausting list, or even a sufficient one, but it is a start of my own commitment to sharing stories and projects that give me hope. Constant critique causes action paralysis, as though the service-based part of me is petrified of moving for fear of causing more harm than good. This awareness that good intentions are not enough, that skills matter, that storytelling impacts those the story is about as much as those who hear it or tell it is necessary in these environments is necessary -- but I would never board the plane without drawing courage from role models and having faith that the combination of intentions, skills and compassion can make impact.

I refuse to dismiss storytelling at large. The story of a conflict, a people, and a place cannot only be told through hard data and expert opinion. I agree with many that relying on locals for the telling of these stories ensures accurate, honest storytelling that represents the voice of those portrayed. Yet, I find the notion that we can extract ourselves - the foreigners, the non-locals - from the stories misguided. By being there, asking questions, bearing witness, we weave ourselves into the story. We form a perspective. Our own voice comes through every now and then; instead of lamenting that, I welcome another layer to the story, as long as we can remain aware of our own biases and can commit ourselves to making that layer honest and respectful.

And finally, accounting for emotions in a conversation need not be less credible than rational critique. Extending compassion to Jason Russell and Invisible Children does not make one an "Invisible Children apologist" or a mushy, feely person whose judgment is clouded by unicorns. I am thoroughly exhausted by hearing that "you will only survive as a conflict specialists if you maintain distance, block out feelings and develop thick skin." I would much rather serve guided by vulnerability: by discovering and embracing my own, by seeing it and welcoming it in others, rather than denying it, chasing it away or treating it as a sign of weakness. I am not choosing to extend compassion because I am naturally good; I am not picking vulnerability because I am naive or because it is a comfortable option. Rather, they are practices I am shyly, clumsily and slowly welcoming, in an attempt to recognize shared humanity.

The end of missing someone

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:59:00 +0000

A story of then and now, of farewells and reunions: Then -- a walk through Athens, the first almond blossoms, dashing subways, Melina Merkouri watching over us, Vespas in the sunshine, wine and seafood in the sun under the Parthenon.

Four days ago

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! Did you eat....... garlic?"

I did, but I did not expect my brother to smell it on me the second I walked into his apartment. Garlic was a fundamental part of the last ode to Athens: a walk with Niki, wine, octopus and melitzanosalata with a generous portion of garlic for lunch in the shadow of the Acropolis.

"Well, let me email Elijah and tell him to bring a nose clip to the airport!," he joked. And proceeded to actually email him. I laughed and Moira the dog backed away from me. [My brother will still tell you it was because of the stench.]

71 days away from my love and on the day of the reunion I had melitzanosalata. There comes a point of solitude when it is simply you: your breath, your garlicky exhales, your certainty that nobody will be bothered by them. There also comes a point in beautiful companionship, a point of certainty that nobody will be bothered by garlic.

***

Four nights ago

Nobody prepared me for the foreignness of it. I had spent 71 days in impatient anticipation, ranging from ecstatic jumping-out-of-my-skin to absent. The latter is the defining characteristic of long-distance love: Some of you is always somewhere else, daydreaming, wishing, missing, longing. You live for what Jonathan Safran Foer describes in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as "the end of missing someone":

I like the impatience ,the stories that the mouth cannot tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.

Nobody tells you that the end of missing someone will come with a foreign beginning. Those first kisses are like picking lips out of a line-up with your eyes closed: You know you recognize them, but they do not have that comforting familiarity of meeting your own lips every day. So, you kiss again, and again, and again. First in relief, then in disbelief, then in determination to kiss until it is no longer remarkable. To kiss with the knowledge that nobody is getting on a plane for a while again, that those lips will be there in the morning.

***

A story of then and now, of farewells and reunions: Now -- the first strawberries of spring and a walk through the Jerusalem open-air market. A return to beloved bread and the pita stand. Fingers intertwined, distance extinguished, love rekindled.

Between four nights ago and now

I am not easily silenced. I have agonized over developing a voice, over keeping it strong and letting it crack too. Rarely do words not fall out of me. But, perhaps, my poetry is one of distance and of solitude, of liminal states and of longing. Because, you see, I have no words to describe the time between that kiss at airport arrivals and now. I cannot even keep a diary of the And Then We Brushed Our Teeth variety.

I know we ate until there was food coming out of our noses. We ate not out of hunger, but out of a desire to revisit every place we have loved here, every place we have made a memory. And we have not even had the fruit crumble yet.

I know we inaugurated the Jerusalem Picnic Society. Members: me and him. And labneh, pita, hummus, and strawberries.

I know nothing is more important to me now than love. I want to live a life with that as the governing force: works of love, relationships of love, words of love. Love is how I respond to the conflict, the strife, the loneliness, the states of liminality. "They" say that love distracts, that it is not quantifiable, that it does not feed a tummy, win a prize or create a legacy. In my heart, love cannot be a distraction in a life in which it is the central theme... in a life in which love is how we live and what we live for. Love is it when you love the person who wants to be remembered for "having loved well and a lot in life."

I still cannot write the story of these days. I simply want to live it. Love is robbing me of words and it is the most welcome thief. Let us have love. The words can wait.

Staring at the hearts of lilies

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Written to the sound of this.

For the first few days, I slept at the very edge of the bed, making room for you.

If you were here, you would inevitably joke that this is more room than I make for you in the bed when you are in it.

Last night, I had shrimp and bacon (bacon!) and wine in a shirt that exposed my collarbones to a world that was unshocked by them. I am ready for falafel and fruit crumble by your side. I am ready to go back to dreaming about bacon.

I sleep in the middle of the bed now, claiming one whole mattress for the little person it houses.

You sleep on overnight trains across India, in the kinds of beds that only leave you with only one option as to how to lie. Since you went there, the world keeps shoving India down my throat. Even the Sunday newspaper I bought to see if Greece would default "tomorrow" came with a complimentary copy of "Sensuous India: The Kama Sutra (unabridged)." What is the less subtle, less welcome version of the universe winking at you?

When your flowers arrived, the man who brought them to me looked weary. His face said "yeah, yeah, yeah, *yawn* more Valentine's Day flowers." He must have arranged countless lilies, which sit in bedrooms across this city, listening to other lovers' Brandi Carlile's, eavesdropping on other lovers' negotiations of mattress space.

Right now you are on your 26th consecutive hour on a train. 26! I told you to take a photo of a different scene every hour to mark the journey, knowing that this is what I would do, with you over my shoulder muttering "my little dork" every time the shutter closed.

You complain of suffocating heat. I am looking at snow. Colombia-Uganda-Egypt. Guatemala-Cuba-Sudan. Desert-Equator-Tropics. One foot in this hemisphere, another foot in the other. A smile at the lowest point on earth, a grin at the peak of an active volcano. Between them, I had erased the snow, exchanging it for sand and monsoon. Now I stare at it till my pupils shrink, till all I see is whiteness.

The lilies are not changing as fast as the landscapes outside your train window, but I photograph them every few hours regardless. I hear "my little dork" whispered every time; I picture you feigning impatience at the constant clicking. Through their life cycle of these flowers, I measure time. Every wilting of the lily brings us a day closer to falafel, to the orange chair I hate in the living room, to the reunion of the little dorks.

I stare at the lily till all I see is a blushing world.

Recession in graffiti: Walking in Greece

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:03:00 +0000

We were staring at a wall and its many eyes were staring right back. It was his last night visiting me in Colombia and we were sitting across my favorite graffiti in Bogota. It was neither the most intricate, nor the most innovative, but the simplicity of its gaze resonated with me. There were eyes floating on walls all across Colombia, bearing witness, reminding us that we were watched in all the ways that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and seen in the ways that make a heart sing.

Two years later, in Thessaloniki, Greece, the walls display no eyes. They have become receptacles of public anger at the financial crisis sweeping through the nation. The walls of my hometown are covered in messages of hope, revolution, indignation, and judgment. Some of them are bohemian, others misspelled. Most of them denounce the decisions of the Greek government and the austerity measures the IMF bailout package brings with it. As I was watching the news this week, I was dismayed by the fact that violence -- even by the usual agent provocateurs -- overshadowed nonviolent protests. I know there are people in my homeland who want to effect change without breaking marbles and burning movie theaters. I am always on the hunt for positive images, for photographs of hope. Even though my walk through Thessaloniki yielded many more photographs of anger than of love, the humor that some Greeks have maintained and their attempt to preserve their sensitivities is fueling my own optimism.

Indignados, a reference to the Spanish protest movement, are welcome in Thessaloniki -- as are peace and love.

A message to tourists

A reaction to the Neo-Nazi messages spreading through the city.

An allusion to the messaging of the Obama campaign: "Together we can." Incongruous next to it: a swastika. I find Neo-Nazi messages appalling and alarming, especially in a city that suffered heavily during the Holocaust. The White Tower, an emblematic icon of Thessaloniki, is visible in the background.

Unsurprisingly, one of my favorites.

Calls for an emotional awakening, amidst the now common sentiments towards the police.

Men in chains, with the White Tower in the background.

One part misspelled, one part emo, one part true: When the dream dies, it becomes a tear and it falls.

Your wealth -- your riches -- are our blood! Scribbled on an apartment building on Nikis Avenue.

A logo of the "I'm not paying" movement is superimposed on a Greek flag. This movement efuses to accept the additional taxation the austerity measures dictate. A different group crossed the logo out.

Another favorite.

This was Day 11 of my Measuring Life in Photographs project.

Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Rest -- on Nikis Avenue

"Nobody is free when others are oppressed." - Near Athonos Square, one of Thessaloniki's 'tavern districts'

Unbelievably, this rhymes in Greek: "I will poop in my espresso" -- commentary on Thessaloniki's cafe culture

Kindling

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:49:00 +0000

"They" say there are certain things a Greek woman "should" be able to do. You know, "before she gets married." Make good Greek coffee [or, as it is more commonly known, Turkish coffee, but do not say that if your grandmother is listening]. Cook the perfect pastitsio.

My father had a slightly different idea about the capabilities his daughter should develop. He deemed it essential that I know how to roast lamb on a spit, lest I ever go without a Greek Easter in any corner of the world. He also thought his girl should know how to get the fireplace running, starting at age 10. I watched him roll up newspapers for kindling, strategically placing them between the bigger pieces of wood. I giggled as he blew air into the fireplace. I heard it howl.

Towards the end of his life, my father lost his vision to complications arising from glaucoma. He had only a foggy impression of the woman I was slowly becoming. We could no longer start the fire together, as the doctor counseled that he shelter his eye from the heat and the glare. So he sat at the table where three generations of us did our homework and rolled up newspapers. It was his makeshift kindling. My father was a firestarter, even as he slipped away.

This morning, I blew into the fireplace. Silence. I blew harder, only for smoke to come out and fill my eyes with tears. There was nobody sitting at the table and nobody doing homework. I am now the one feeling around this land with closed eyes and hands outstretched, seeking familiarity. I got up and took a sooty walk around the living room, acknowledging that somewhere between Sudan and the Middle East, between distance and loneliness, between endless miles logged and premature departures, starting fires has stopped coming easily to me.

I resorted to the dwindling stack of his rolled-up newspapers. The paper still smells like cigarettes and his hands. If I were to unroll the kindling, it would be a glimpse into the news in Greece circa 2000. Before the recession, before the Olympics, before we won the Euro, before we joined the other Euro, before I ever fell in love, before.....

Another deep breath and an exhale into the fireplace. And finally, a spark.

Zadie Smith, you speak straight to my heart.

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:29:00 +0000

One of my least favorite conversation starters is "I have to tell you something, but I can't right now, so it has to wait." Or: "We need to talk. Come by at 5." I will spend the time between now and 5 worrying about the something, the talk.

I have lots of somethings to tell you, but they have to wait and it breaks my heart.

While my own stories are brewing quietly, please read the words of Zadie Smith. They travel with me, stirring me every once in a while, reminding me of why it is that I love the craft of storytelling. In the January 2012 issue of Guernica, she discusses her desire for a different type of storytelling in international development. In her words:

This is no special flaw in the world of development—every large organization has its technocratic lingo and unreadable reports. But it seemed to me a shame that between the highly technical, acronym-heavy documents written within the world of development and the often saccharine self-descriptions of the church workers, there were so few people writing development stories from a human perspective. Stories that were not especially concerned with a man’s eternal soul or his statistical representation, but with his life.

The words jumped out of the page because those are the stories I aspire to tell.

She goes on to discuss "Writers Bloc", an Open Society-funded initiative that endeavored to send fiction and non-fiction writers to find such stories. Smith argues: "A writer hopes to make connections where the lazy eye sees only a chasm of difference." The task of these writers was to do just that, to return from the four corners of the world with "reporting without the wonk."

And so Aleksandar Hemon took to Bosnia, Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie to Nigeria, Rachel Holmes to Palestine. Start with Zadie Smith's reflections on the need for this kind of storytelling and click on to the bottom of the piece for the writers' accounts from Pakistan to Haiti and Bangladesh to South Africa.

I have been thinking about the place for feelings in my work, both as a storyteller and as a conflict specialist. I seem to have gathered a lot of feelings along the journey and to have even made my peace with having them. A friend likened this internal peace-making process to "melting icebergs." My melted-in-a-puddle self is particularly exhilarated to read the following in Zadie Smith's piece:

But it is also natural, upon entering the gap between first world and the third, to feel something, to be moved, and to have opinions, to express anger.

Some of you will take issue with the terminology "first and third world" and you will be right. But I will also join you in taking issue with the absence of feelings... with the type of storytelling, work and personal investment in highly vulnerable communities that makes no room for being moved.

Transition smells like roses.

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Day 7 of my 365 photo project: Three generations of my family did their homework at the big table. This children's tea set for two still sits at the edge of it, waiting for my childhood self to come to tea.

Conveniently, Donald Miller expresses the following thoughts (emphasis mine) about writing in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:

A lot of people think a writer has to live in order to write, has to meet people and have a rich series of experiences or his work will become dull. But that is drivel. It's an excuse a writer uses to take the day off, or the week or the month off for that matter. The thinking is, if we go play Frisbee in the park, we're going to have a thousand words busting out of us when we get back to the house. We're going to write all kinds of beautiful prose about playing Frisbee. It's never worked for me. Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer while still in her mother's womb, wrote one of her books in a concrete cell. She says most of what a writer needs to really live they can find in a book. People who live good stories are too busy to write about them. Nobody ever strapped a typewriter to the back of an elephant and wrote a novel while hunting wild game. Nobody except for Hemmingway. But let's not talk about Hemmingway.

Well, then. If Miller is right about this, I should be a champion writer by now because I am embarrassed to tell you when the last time I left the house was.

When I wrote about "love, worry and everything in between" last week, I did not expect the "in between" to govern my 2012 so far. Yet, here I am, sitting, waiting, wishing for the visas, and paperwork and permits and boatloads of hope that will bring me to my next project. If you were a college student in the early 2000s, you know there is a Jack Johnson reference in the previous sentence. I have not left the house in long enough to allow Jack Johnson references to ferment. #pleasesendhelp

***

One of the open tabs on this browser contains an article that tells me how to apply face serum. I need instructions for that, yes. And I have apparently become the kind of restless that is motivated to examine her facial pores and commit herself to their clearing, in an attempt to clear anything, to make space. During the time I spent in northern Uganda, I learned about "boda glow", a different type of face and body treatment. A boda glow is what you acquired after a day of riding motorcycle taxis (boda-bodas) to the Internally Displaced Person camps. The heat, sweat and red dust clung to you, bathing you in an orange glow. My formerly boda-aglowing self is laughing at the face in the mirror that smells like serum and roses.

***

Rosy faces free of blackheads need to see the light of day sometimes. My blood has lost the tolerance to New England cold it once had. The transition from the Middle Eastern side of the Mediterranean to the Greek coast and its near-zero temperatures has meant I look like I am about to go caroling every time I endeavor to leave the house, in the hope that I can "strap a typewriter to the back of a wide elephant", find a story, write about it and prove Donald Miller wrong. I arm myself with the red mittens Katie knit for me and the hat that makes me look like a smurf and that blanket-like scarf Tais bought for Antarctica, but I had been wearing in the Middle East since November nonetheless.

The taxi driver asks where I'm going and I give him the address.

"Where are you going in life, I mean!", he protests. I could write a book about conversations with taxi drivers around the world.

I tell him about the conflict and post-conflict zones I shuttle between. I tell him about the bureaucracy of waiting for approval, for the stamp that will let you in somewhere and that same stamp that can get you barred from somewhere else. I tell him that tonight, I am going to park myself at a tavern, eat fried zucchini and creamed eggplant, listen to Greek favorites with my favorite Greek women, and wait out the "in-betweenness" with a glass of hmiglyko.

"They should not send women to war zones," he says when he exhales cigarette smoke into the taxi with the NO SMOKING sign. "The people there... They are brutes."

I am exhausted from arguing. I always argue, with the taxi driver, with the third great aunt twice removed, with People On The Internet Who Think Things Like That. Today, as we drive by the outdated Santas, I have no stamina. I have no fire for the struggle. I stay silent. He continues to smoke, and the guilt eats me up.

***

E's mother has always said that "everything happens for a reason." As someone who loved Immanuel Kant in college ("can anyone really love Kant, Roxanne?", Sahil had asked then), I initially found resignation to the decisions of the universe difficult to embrace. Over time, I have realized it is not resignation -- it is trust. Perhaps early January was meant to be the time I learned to apply serum to my face and cared enough (/was restless enough) to do it. Or the time I learned to pick my battles and live with those decisions. Or the time I let go of what I do not control, toss the worry in the letting go pile as well, and just wait, exhaling.

It is possible that if the visa and permits come through and I am delivered to my project, and to fulfillment, I will not remember early January. Between powerful experiences, serum that smells like roses and taxis that smell like smoke may not make the cut. But right now, I am still in between. I am still learning to trust, to sleep at night without tossing and turning, to wake up the next day with faith that I can still find life without leaving the house -- with the faith that I can maybe even write about it.

Love, worry and everything in between

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:09:00 +0000

Blush twinkling lights of my childhood
bedroom reflected in a mirror.

J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons.

In 2011, I measured out my life in plane tickets (32) ...
... in camera clicks (13,302)
... in words written (over 100,000)
... in worry, endless worry.
... in mornings I woke up next to him -- too few, but priceless (hello, Mastercard commercial).

In 2012, I will measure out my life in photographs. One for every day - some taken with Instagram, some with my favorite camera, some sloppy and some dear to the heart. Beth Nicholls once asked me why I photograph. I told her that photography makes me more mindful because it reminds me to really look... to search for beauty (or for surprise, incongruence, contradiction and conflict). That is the purpose of this new project, whose home is at Measuring Life in Photographs. I hope you will join me for the journey.

***

Some housekeeping notes: The back-end of this website is horribly broken at the moment. Thank you for your patience while I bring the Reading & Listening page back to life. Same goes for the social sharing links that have disappeared from the sidebar. In the meantime:

You can follow this website, Stories of Conflict and Love, via RSS here. Some of you are still subscribed to my old domain (Έτσι μιλώ για σένα και για μένα), so for better functionality, I'd suggest adding the updated feed to your Reader.
You can also subscribe via email by using the form in the sidebar, right beneath the archives if you wish to receive new posts in your inbox.
You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter too.
You can subscribe to my new photo project by adding http://measuringlifeinphotographs.tumblr.com/ to your Google Reader or feed aggregator. If you're embarking on your own 366-day photography project, please leave a link in the comments -- I'd love to follow along!

When I created this space early in 2011, I never could have imagined the love, inspiration and community that it invited into my life. I am looking forward to a 2012 of deep breaths and deep exhales, new flights, new heights, and old loves. I am most grateful to be sharing this journey with you.

The scent of memories

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:34:00 +0000

It was the day after Christmas and proof of my yellow fever vaccination was nowhere to be found.

I have never been a scrapbooker, but trinkets have always traveled with me. Boarding passes, receipts from excellent meals, pieces of paper that speak to me and tell me I should hold on to them. I pulled out the blue envelope that contained the mementos of that year. The paper inside still smells like Guatemala.

I found the first love note he wrote me. For "the girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair."

I found the luggage tags from the trip that brought me to Cairo on the day we met.

I found a first draft of the curriculum I designed for the post-conflict reintegration of ex-combatants into peacetime communities (complete with spelling errors in Spanish and not a single accent in the right place).

I found a farewell note Karen wrote me, complete with references to the musical Rent we were all listening to when we were frantically trying to pack my bags.

I found bank notes from places that have re-plunged themselves into conflict.

I found the side effects of malaria pills, right next to a to-do list with a quote at the top.

I found a poem my mother had sent me, in a moment of lucidity and affection. Ρω is short for Ρωξάνη, my name in Greek. The poem is called "τα Ρω του Έρωτα", the Ro's in eros. My mother's note read "I looked through Elytis' words for the lines he probably wrote about you."

More farewell cards. A photo signed by the ex-combatants who participated in my first workshop in Spanish. Another hospital check-out form, this time for dengue fever. A hotel room keycard from the first shared vacation. Another boarding pass that served as a bookmark.

I found 2009 and 2010. Clumsy beginnings, shy flutterings, recovery. I found the scent of hurricanes. I did not find the vaccination card. But, amidst the papers whose edges were curled by rain, I found the company of my younger self and the gift of beautiful life the road had given her.

Celebrating light

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:00:00 +0000

I arrived in Jerusalem like a doe-eyed lover in a budding relationship: I wanted to be swept off my feet. I wrote then:

"They" say that "of the 10 portions of beauty that came down to the world, 9 went to Jerusalem and one to the rest of the world." The next verse reads "of the 10 portions of suffering that came down to the world, 9 went to Jerusalem and one to the rest of the world."

I wished then: "For today, though, world -- please, let me just savor the beautiful light."

The world has been generous with me. In December, when natural light hides early, the holidays gift us with an extra glimmer. I have always been attached to holidays, all the holidays, regardless of whether I observe them. Ramadan, Yom Kippur, Christmas, Holi -- sign me up for all of them. This week, Jerusalem is aglow with the light of Hanukkah. In the candlelight, when I squint, I feel like I can see all portions of beauty that have made it into this world.

Hanukkah candles on the second day of the holiday in the Old City of Jerusalem

A hint of Christmas

Reflection of a candle and blue Hanukkah lights on a cafe table

A hip menorah in an art gallery of West Jerusalem

A little bit of bargaining later, these became our Hanukkah candle-holders.

Our lit candles and their reflection on the windows

Crumbs of home

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:00:00 +0000

It was about a year ago that he came home with that lamp. The bed was my domain at the time in the home that was never really home. I woke up every day, willing my ribs to heal from the accident, willing for some beautiful light to surprise me through the window. I spent most of my time in that home resisting permanence, fearing that if I exhaled, unpacked and owned anything, I would be tied to that life, the pain of recovery, and the desperate stagnation of immobility. I frowned when he brought the lamp, resenting it and its little blue hat for anchoring me.

A year later. The body is healed and longing for permanence. There is a home -- home home. Glorious light filters in through the gauze curtains every morning. "Oh my gosh, would you look at this light!" he says in his best imitation-of-Roxanne voice, but I know he is in awe of it too. We have bought plates - 18 of them. We barely have 18 friends here, or the ability to cook a three-course-meal for six people on two slow-as-molasses electric burners, so we use our 18 plates to egg each other on by seeing how many we can pile in the sink at any one time. We have bought a coffee-maker, a little moka pot whose purchase I did not resist because it was tiny enough to travel and home enough to long for. Clearly, that was before we came to own 18 plates.

My life still fits in two suitcases, with the most important components of it being too outsized and too unpackable. You cannot pack love; I have tried. I cannot pack couches either. He has never met anyone who loves sitting on the floor as much as I do. We each have our corner. He is in a chair that is so orange I am convinced it was born to offend my taste; I on the floor cushions, back against the wall, little blue lamp next to me. He likes the window seat too. It's where he does all his browsing. When I pull him away from his TED talks and vertical farming campaigns to go for a walk, he whines: "Fine, I won't learn today. It's OK. I can interrupt my learning time" -- but we both know he loves learning outside, holding hands.

We live in a home with a loud door. For someone with my harpaxophobia (that's a real thing, I swear), that is a blessing. I hear the steel whining against the Jerusalem stone, and that is the sound of home now. The steps that lead to the door are treacherous and I always look like a penguin descending them. He has an ease in floating in and out of this apartment. Right outside, there is always a man who sits at the bench. "Tell me a story," he prompts us sometimes and I feel the universe winking.

When the time came to buy a space heater, I balked again. Like love, it is unpackable. Two weeks of shivering in our hats and coats in the living room catapulted us to the Old City. In a tiny store cluttered with hair straighteners and blenders, we found a space heater that would have failed every security regulation in the United States. It looks more like a grill than a heater and the first two weeks of owning it left me interacting with it like a child with its first pet: shyly, from a distance, afraid it would bite. The heater was clearly meant to be the Ugly Chair's cousin, as it emits warm, orange light. When I squint at it, especially this season, it feels a little like Christmas.

A week after we succumbed to the space heater, we discovered The Fruit Crumble at the Jerusalem Cinematheque restaurant. We have succumbed to the cranberries and apples and crumble topped with vanilla ice cream week after week. We had the first one on the day of the first rain. The next one when I submitted my applications to graduate school. The next one when "I just want a fruit crumble!" was the only way to make his day better. The one after that when we watched the kind of traumatic and jarring documentary that makes me feel that my love for this place is irreconcilable with my helpless outrage at the injustices that unfold a mere 3 kilometers from the site of The Fruit Crumble. The crumble has become a no-special-occasion treat, one of the few ones we will allow ourselves, one of the ones that make us feel at home.

At the exact same time every day, a woman stands outside and bellows for Roni. The first time it happened, Elijah and I wondered if Roni is a wandering child or a husband who took too long to come home. The second time, I remembered the scene from La vita e bella in which Roberto Begnini notices a man yells "Maria! The key!" every day. "Roooooooni!" is the Maria-the-key of our lives here. By now, 67 days in, we have established Roni is a dog.

On Christmas Day, on the fifth day of Hanukkah, too few sleeps away from now, I am off again. The lamp and the space heater and the winter coats are deliberately staying behind, as though my return is accountable to them. He is staying here as well, and he has promised to mind The Fruit Crumble. For the next month, I will be in East Africa, doing what I love, getting bitten by the mosquitoes that love me, filling the harpaxophobia container that has been running delightfully empty. I will be back for the coats and the crumble and the love, the unpackable, outsized love, although part of me is terrified of what will happen if one of "those really bad things" that conflict professionals talk about vaguely and in a cavalier way stands in the way of my reunion with the blue lamp and noisy door.

When I think about packing life up again, my heart misses the Roni it has never seen.

The darker corners of storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:04:00 +0000

This post is part of the Books Well-Loved series, in which I share quotes, impressions and insights from the books that have touched me.

Book and author: The Lotus Eaters, Tatjana Soli
Where I read it: I wish I could tell you. On a terrace somewhere, accompanied by papas bravas; in bed, to chase away the nightmares.
Soundtrack: Both the book and my thoughts about it flow better to the sound of this.
Favorite phrase: "...but for her, the value of the picture was that it returned her purpose -- to find small glimmers of humanity."

"There is a very real chance we will spend the rest of our lives in prison," I said to her.
"Well, then we will have plenty of time for you to teach me Spanish," she joked with a nonchalance that made me hate her and promptly love her.

We were both out of our depth. Conflict, development, social change, photography, documentation, storytelling, journalism -- these words and their variants were fluently part of our professional lexicon. They were also on the 'dirty word' list, only to be uttered in whispers and among trusted ones in a community that lived under repression. Forced disappearances, detentions, interrogations, shadows on the wall walking in parallel to your own step... that was the governing lexicon. It was like learning how to swim again, as an uncoordinated twenty-something who knows she could drown with weights on her feet.

She had brought The Lotus Eaters with her. I am embarrassed to tell you with which book I had armed myself in preparation for this project [but I will say, I did load 17 other books into my Kindle because "should we indeed end up in political prison, we'll need something to read for the rest of our lives." Do not ask why in my imagination prison guards would indulge a Kindle and free speech.] In the afternoons, when both our heartbeats neared normal again, we would share a portion of spicy baked potatoes. She is one of those women who can unironically pull off a straw hat. She'd sit across from me in it, with Tatjana Soli's words, occasionally reading them outloud to me. One of her favorite passages:

In terms of the present moment, they were despicable to the soldiers, the victims, to even themselves. In the face of real tragedy, they were unreal, vultures; they were all about getting product. [...] The moment ended, about to be lost, but the one who captured it on film gave both subject and photographer a kind of disposable immortality.

The Lotus Eaters is a novel about the lives of photojournalists covering the Vietnam war, packed with insight on photography and the perils of documentation, life and work in conflict zones, and the tug of war between chauvinism and feminism in those settings. There is a pinch of love -- there has to be. These novels would be lodged in our esophagus without the love. We would never wash them down. When I put the tinsel of the love story aside, The Lotus Eaters became uncomfortable. I felt like I was reading about the darker corners of conflict work, storytelling, and photography. The novel lost the comfortable veneer of fiction and tangoed with my life.

The journalists were in a questionable fraternity while out in the field, squabbling and arguing among themselves, each sensing the unease of the situation. No getting around the ghoulishness of pouncing on tragedy with hungry eyes, snatching it away, glorying in its taking, even among the most sympathetic: "I got an incredible shot of a dead woman/soldier/child. A real tearjerker." Afterward, film shot, they sat on the returning plane with a kind of postcoital shame, turning away from each other.

How do we document cruelty? Are we still performing a service by capturing this moment in time and resharing it with those who were not there to bear witness or are we giving in to voyeurism and losing our own humanity? Why, why, why do we put ourselves in the line of fire like that? Do we still feel anything after some time? This is what Helen, the protagonist, had to offer in an early chapter:

She would continue till the end, though she had lost faith in the power of pictures, because that work had been an end in itself, untethered to results or outcomes.

Helen may as well have been articulating my nightmare. I am tied to my work and service in conflict and post-conflict zones by love and conviction. When either wears off, I would like to move on to a new type of service that grips my imagination. But do we ever know that it is time to go? Or do we slowly become jaded, cynical and detached, going through the motions of the old service that no longer feels right?

Where does the question of a calling come in? What feeds the conviction? In the novel, Helen returns to the US briefly between two stints of covering the Vietnam war. She experiences the reverse culture shock and disorientation that are so familiar by now that these sentiments themselves feel like home. Every time I leave a conflict zone, wrap myself in a blanket filled with memories, and guzzle a chai latte, I say "Mmm... I think I could do this for a while, you know." Elijah is usually there to ask: "Could you though? Really?" Sure enough, two weeks of chai lattes and blankets later, my heart is ready to return to the service that it calls home. For Helen in the Lotus Eaters, home meant a lot of baking. This is a conversation that was triggered by her return:

"So, why aren't you working at a newspaper? Or covering another war? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

"I just went there as a lark. It turned into something else. What do you do, if you have a hazardous talent, like riding over waterfalls in a barrel? A talent dangerous to your health?" After the question came out of her mouth, she felt embarrassed. He stopped and took a sip. "I don't know. If I was that good at something, I know it'd be hard to stop. Baking... shit."

The Lotus Eaters came into my life when it could enlighten and haunt, and the novel did both of those. It is Soli's debut book and reading about her painstakingly long process of research and immersion made me appreciate her approach to writing as a craft. This is another book well-loved by its author -- and loved by me, but not because it made me smile, swoon or nod; rather, because in that thoroughly unsubtle way that books have with these things, it made me gasp.

Hello, again.

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:29:00 +0000

A year ago, I participated in Reverb10, a community project to collectively reflect on 2010. Writers from around the world answered daily prompts on the highlights of the year about to come to an end and their hopes for the year to come. The project brought kindred spirits into my life and redefined the way I think about the digital world, community, writing and love. When I created Stories of Conflict and Love, I had a list of topics I was adamant I would never write about. Luckily for all of us, I have violated every condition on that list. Reverb10 came into my life at a critical juncture in my work in conflict and post-conflict zones, as it reminded me that in life and in work, in writing and in love, the world needs to see a little bit of your soul.

As part of Reverb11, Diana Prichard asked: "Who are you?" I answer in video form, with a compilation of photos, stories, and words from the year past, and with a heart exploding with gratitude for kinship, shared growth and the most benevolent 'invisible readers' I could have ever dreamed of.

* Note: If the embedded link does not work for you, click here. The instrumental cover of Bon Iver's Skinny Love is courtesy of Pedro Rovisco. All photos were taken by me in 2011, except the last three images, captured lovingly by Dani Trujillo and Noam Cochin. If you are curious about where a particular photo was taken, or would like to guess, leave a note in the comments!

Field of mines [or: Choked]

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:28:00 +0000

"I think we may be spending the night in a minefield."

I have slept at some strange places. There was the middle of the Black-and-White Desert in the Sahara, when I woke up to find that a fox had eaten my breakfast. Or the middle of a wheat field, where I woke up to find that I had accidentally pooped on the hiking trail. Let's not forget about the Amazon jungle during a monsoon. A minefield, however, would be a first.

***

Tuscany in Israel, indeed

A sign informed us that we were in the "Tuscany of Israel." The light was warm, the hills were rolling as they do, and I even got a mosquito bite on the eve of December. The rental car with the sunroof was a far cry from its cousin that broke down on the Damascus-Baghdad highway a few warm-lit falls ago. The souvenirs of that drive, though, soon converged with this journey. Radio Lebanon overpowered the newscast in Hebrew. The hills became rocky and populated with signs 'strongly discouraging' us from getting off the road. "Caution: Live fire zone!" "Caution: Military road only!"

"Warning: This road leads to a border."

It does, indeed. The border is hugged by the "Good Fence" (sic), barbed wire, electric barbed wire and a painted tank facing the other way. The homes in this part of the country are eerily colorful, in that way that places that have experienced conflict often are in order to offset the trauma.

Stories offset trauma for me. It is through human stories that I find hope and through the act of storytelling that I seek to kindle it in myself and others. On this journey, humans were missing from the Tuscan-emulating landscape. It is as though the town evacuated itself and the FedEx truck ahead of us simply had not heard yet.

"If FedEx comes here, so can we!" he said, with sunniness.

Maps reach the limit of their use near borders. The ones that come with rental cars do not tell you about the fences and minefields and the roads not meant for car wheels. It was the postmen who led the way. We followed the FedEx postman to the Lebanese border. The waterfall on the other side of the fence was accessible only by camera lens.

A painted tank, a border fence and Lebanon in the background

The camera went where I did not.

***

A different postman this time. "Excuse me, are we on the right road to Majdal Shams?" He seems bemused and instructs us to follow him. The village outside which we are stopped is a border of its own. An invisible line bisects it. The southern part is home to Israelis, the northern part to Lebanese and some combination of UN forces, armies and checkpoints attempts to keep it from imploding. The village has been the site of threatened kidnappings and rocket attacks. Today, for us, it is another place to look at the map and ask for help. The postman hurries us out and on to Majdal Shams.

Majdal Shams is a Druze village in the northern Golan Heights, a few breaths away from Syria. Druze people reside primarily in Syria, Lebanon and Israel, but they constitute an independent ethnicity and do not ethnically identify outside their own group. On Fridays, they gather on the Shouting Hill of Majdal Shams and use megaphones to shout their news to their families living on the Syrian side of the border. On a Tuesday, we are greeted by signs in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. "Eyebrow tweezing: A touch of beauty," suggested one. "Drive cleanly," instructed another. We wait as a shepherd and his goats cross the road. He sees us smiling, nods and waves.

The Druze town of Majdal Shams

***

We are stuck in the middle of a convoy of Humvees. "Let them pass us, please," I say and he mocks my nervousness. On the roof of the military vehicle in front of us, there is a gun swinging left and right. On the left, there are bunkers, many of them remnants of the 1967 and 1973 wars. On the right, tanks are performing an exercise. Straight ahead, the sunset. The Humvees pass us and we are soon driving behind a truck carrying a giant coffeemaker. In Greek, we call it a 'briki'; in Turkey, 'cezve'; in Egypt, 'kanaka.' By the time we have finished our roadside early dinner, the giant coffeemaker has been installed on the town square of another Druze village by the Syrian border. Children clad in Barcelona soccer jerseys are admiring it and, among them, I feel at home.

***

"This cannot be right", he mutters. We have taken the instructed turn and are sitting on a dirt road thoroughly encircled by demarcated minefields. The eight homes in this community appear abandoned. "I think we may be spending the night in a minefield", he says. Later we find that this was one of the first settlements built in the Golan and that it has now been largely abandoned for more hospitable land, where a playground does not have to be built next to the multi-lingual "caution: minefield!" signs. Our turn, the correct turn, was just a few meters down the road. The owner of the room does not ask for passports, names, identification, or even a credit card. He speaks in rapid Hebrew and all I get is "if you hear boom boom, it's just the army base next door." Boom boom, it seems, translates universally.

There is a jacuzzi in the room, and a wooden loft, and a microwave -- none of which are features to which I am accustomed. Grey's Anatomy is on TV. When we step outside a bit later, we are greeted by a vast night sky and the sound of a tank rolling in the distance.

Sunset reflected on the hood of the car

***

I am not a novice to walls, fences, barbed wire, boom boom or "no entry" signs, but the more of them I bump up against, the more they choke me. I tell him: "If I were a hippie, this is when I would wish we lived in a borderless world." I still wish that, but the scholar of conflict in me acknowledges the necessity of boundaries. I find myself in a country that can look like Tuscany and a conflict zone within 25 kilometers and am grateful every day for all the people and stories that it has crowded within its pinched borders. Yet, right up against the borders, I am suffocated. Drive too far north, east, or southwest and you will not be able to drive anymore. This country can be an island and it chokes me like Cuba did.

We never drank the wine, used the jacuzzi, or read on the wooden loft that night.

We drove 750 kilometers in two days, all within the airtight borders, like hamsters on a wheel. On the way back, as we circumnavigate the sea of Galilee, I remark on the vivacity of the fruit groves. "They are so much more comforting than minefields!", I mumble to fulfill my Captain Obvious requirement of the day. "Life over death," he says.

Violence backfires

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:41:00 +0000

This is Part II of a series of reflections on non-violent conflict, spurred by my participation at FSI 2011. For Part I, click here.

On February 2, 2011, thugs armed with clubs and machetes rode into Tahrir Square on camels and began to attack protesters. Until the arrival of the thugs, journalists cited Tahrir Square as having been peaceful and filled with acts of non-violent protest, even in the face of tear gas and police brutality. Discipline is critical for the success of a non-violent movement or any act of civil resistance: The movement needs to protect its own non-violent character, or risk alienating individuals who ideologically agree with the cause but would not engage in or support violent acts. Egyptians had taken it upon themselves to maintain the non-violent character of their protests; Anna Therese day reported that protesters discouraged fellow Egyptians from marring the peaceful nature of their collective struggle.

Following the thugs' attack on the peaceful protesters, something began to shift: Journalists used stronger language in calling for Mubarak's resignation and foreign leaders followed. Reflecting on the attacks in Tahrir Square, Nicholas Kristof wrote:

"It should be increasingly evident that Mr. Mubarak is not the remedy for the instability in Egypt; he is its cause. The road to stability in Egypt requires Mr. Mubarak's departure, immediately. But for me, when I remember this sickening and bloody day, I'll conjure not only the brutality that Mr. Mubarak seems to have sponsored but also the courage and grace of those Egyptians who risked their lives as they sought to reclaim their country. And incredibly, the democracy protesters held their ground all day at Tahrir Square despite this armed onslaught."

What happened that day in Tahrir square is an example of the backfire effect. Brian Martin defines it as follows:

An attack can be said to backfire when it creates more support for or attention to whatever is attacked. Any injustice or norm violation can backfire on the perpetrator.

Among the conditions for backfire, according to Martin, are the action "being perceived as unjust, unfair, excessive or disproportional" and "information about the action can be communicated to relevant audiences."

Another instance of backfire was the Libyan government's attempt to stop Eman al-Obeidy from telling journalists in Libya that she was assaulted and raped by pro-Qaddafi forces. Most recently, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces detained and assaulted journalist Mona Eltahawy, the conversation began once again about how regimes' attempts to violently repress peaceful protesters or those telling the protests' story only serves to expose the brutal means regimes will embrace to cling on to control.

Violence does not only backfire for the regime or leaders in power, but also for those engaged in acts of civil resistance. Cynthia Boaz, one of the leading voices in the conversation about effective and non-violent resistance, cautioned at FSI 2011 that protesters beware of agent provocateurs, who may instigate acts that are not in the spirit of the movement in order to discredit it. Movements are responsible for the individuals who participate in them and it may be harder to discern the lines of accountability within a fluid, ever-changing system, particularly when the hierarchy is fuzzy or non-existent. For that reason, a personal commitment to non-violence and protection of the non-violent nature of protest is essential for the success of a non-violent movement.

As a Greek, I have been put off by the burning of banks, destruction of property and violence that has sometimes defined the protests and riots in my home country. I often agree with the message and goals of the protesters, but I do not agree with espousing violence as a means to accomplishing them. Some will say "but people are angry!" or "we have no time for non-violence." To that, I respond - inspired by the instructors at FSI - that there are so many ways to wage non-violent action (198, in fact, according to Gene Sharp) that until all of those have been attempted and failed, protesters cannot truly claim that they have exhausted the non-violent means available to them. Change need not be quick to be effective and if a movement sacrifices non-violence for the sake of speed, it will lose me and the hearts and minds of many who would support it.

For more: Daryn Cambridge curated the main points of Lee Smithey and James Greene's presentation on the backfire effect at FSI 2011. Cynthia Boaz pointed us to Brian Martin's resources on the backfire effect. Follow Cynthia at @cynthiaboaz on Twitter. She will blow your mind.

Thankful for all I miss

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:08:00 +0000

Fifteen years ago this time of year, I could reliably be found reading Enid Blyton books by the fireplace while eating sunflower seeds. It was not unusual for one of my cheeks to turn bright red from the heat and my lips to taste salty for hours because of the sunflower seeds. Although the spirit of gratitude is universal, the rituals of Thanksgiving are thoroughly American, so they did not come into my life until college. As I sit in Jerusalem, virtually hugging the space heater whose orange glow and ability to make one cheek blush remind me of the Enid Blyton fireplace of my childhood, I look back on the Thanksgivings that have shaped my life.

The first one

The first 'adult' post-graduate Thanksgiving [photo by Allie, a brave guest]

There is a lot of posturing during the first year after college graduation. It felt like we were "playing adult", not much unlike the way we used to put on our mothers' shoes and jewelry when we were nine. Part of playing adult for me involved offering to host my very first Thanksgiving. A Swiss, an Israeli, a Hong Konger and a Greek gathered in my DC kitchen. That sounds like the beginning of a joke -- and it was. It is no secret that cooking is not my forte, but I was not about to serve cereal and popcorn to my guests. So we peeled garlic for two hours, then peeled potatoes, then chopped, marinaded, basted and roasted until I ran out of culinary verbs I knew how to use. We drowned everything in wine and candlelight, loaded the dishwasher, danced in the kitchen, clogged the toilet, YouTubed "how to plunge a toilet", plunged, and fell asleep knowing that we all ate some garlic peels and a few undercooked potatoes and we were all the happier for it.

Our first one

It was not as strange for us as it was for our Jewish friend who had celebrated Yom Kippur in Cairo earlier that year, but it was strange nonetheless. Dahab is a former Bedouin fishing village on the Sinai peninsula and current haven for hippies and divers. Most everyone I came to call family in Egypt descended on Dahab to celebrate Thanksgiving that year. It was my last day in the country and, having completed my very first placement with the UN, I was on my way to Uganda. Dahab became the unlikely site of firsts and lasts: After months of a modest romance in the streets of Cairo, Elijah and I kissed in public on the streets of Dahab. In the sea of women in bikinis, Bob Marley lovers and Indian food, our affection was not incongruent or taboo, and we welcomed the change.

Those were to be the last kisses for a while, as conflict zones would continue to swallow me over the next year. And so we kicked our flippers in the waters of the Red Sea, kicking extra hard to make memories, as though that would soothe the pain of missing one another that was to come. I saw my first coral reefs and lion fish. I saw the coast of Saudi Arabia across the water. And I became a sight to behold as well: On my way out of the water, my flipper got trapped in the wooden platform and I fell forward in my pale pink bikini with bows. Splat! Face down. Egyptian men and diving instructors were some combination of bemused and aghast as I, the human iteration of a beached whale, crawled out of the water and onto the dry land of mortification. By dinner, the power had gone out in Dahab, so we all found ourselves at an Indian restaurant by the sea, eating naan cooked in a wood stone oven. Thanksgiving that year tasted like curry and nostalgia.

Last night in Egypt - A low-light, no electricity, fishy, Thanksgiving in Dahab

The last one?

I seem to have returned to the Thanksgivings of cereal and popcorn. Our home in Jerusalem has no oven, toaster oven, gas stove, microwave or any cooking appliance other than two electric burners. Thanksgiving is likely to taste like falafel, like that Christmas in Bethlehem a couple of years ago. My gratitude is impatient this year -- impatient to return to the United States, to an academic study of conflict, to the communities for whch my heart longs. I have a stretchy heart these days; I miss everywhere. I miss Colombian Creole potatoes and think of how wonderful an addition they would be to any Thanksgiving dinner. I miss the beachy and fishy Thanksgiving. I miss the toilet-plunging Thanksgiving. I miss the fireplace in Greece and the best friends in America. Secretly, I hope that this is the last Thanksgiving I spend outside the US for some time, as I dream about wearing layer after layer of wool sweaters on a New England campus and debating my selection of holiday pie.

Thank you, world, for giving me so much to love and so much to miss. For giving me love and memories from sea to sea.

Reflections on non-violent conflict, Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:20:00 +0000

A lot of my life's work in gender-related development unfolds in conflict and post-conflict zones. Sometimes the conflict is cultural or religious; in other cases, the conflict refers to civil war, violent insurrection, or genocide. I lead a life saturated with conflict and I regularly think about the concepts and applications of dispute resolution and post-conflict reintegration of ex-combatants into peacetime communities.

Witnessing the effects of violence has made me abhor it as a means of social change, even for causes I support and struggles with which I identify. Learning more about non-violent conflict and civil resistance at Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Non-Violent Conflict has convinced me not only of the value, but also of the effectiveness of non-violent change. This week, many months after attending FSI and in light of developments from Cairo to Oakland, I will be writing about some of the key lessons I derived from my participation at FSI. I am sharing these kernels not as a transcript of the course, but as a record of what fascinated me and surprised me, with the hope that it can be relevant to the conversation on civil resistance movements gaining momentum worldwide today.

What is non-violent conflict?
According to the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC), the term refers to "a conflict in which at least one party uses nonviolent action as its means to wage the conflict." This is significant because peaceful protesters' actions can still classify as non-violent, even if they are met with a violent response from a government, the police, the army or another authority. And what is non-violent action, according to ICNC? "A general technique of conducting nonviolent protest, resistance and intervention without physical violence."

Relationships of power
Power and authority involve questions of consent. When people deprive a leader (or oppressor) of their consent, it reduces his or her legitimacy. Frederick Douglas expressed this dynamic as "power concedes nothing. [...] The limits of tyrants are prescribed the endurance of those whom they oppress." When discussing this concept, Jack DuVall, the co-author of A Force More Powerful and President of ICNC, clarified that once civil resistance takes the pretense of consent away, the truth about oppression surfaces, thus driving up the cost of oppression.

Room for persuasion
One cannot force participation in a non-violent resistance movement. Leaders and members of a movement need to reason with others and persuade them, rather than coerce them, to join. DuVall emphasized the point that civil resistance efforts are not efforts to stage a coup; they are attempts to change a society, not a regime. What movements seek to accomplish, said DuVall, is to change people in ways that make authoritarianism impossible later. It is not atypical for competition to exist in the early stage of movement formation. Different groups may want to engage in civil resistance towards the same cause, but they have competing visions and agendas. According to DuVall, while civil resistance is highly strategic and tactical, we cannot presume that "action requires protected space." Some movements started with little political, civic or social space for disagreement. The question to ask is: "Where is there opportunity for independent (inter)action?"

Notes on effectiveness
A 2005 study found that "nonviolent civic action was a key factor in driving 50 of the 67 transitions from authoritarianism between 1972 and 2005." A 2008 study by Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth compared 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns between 1900 and 2006. Among the findings was that "major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns." However, it is important to note that strategy is significant for nonviolent campaigns: Resistance efforts cannot succeed only on the ground that they are nonviolent and it is strategy that sets the more successful movements apart.

This is the most persuasive argument I find in favor of non-violent civil resistance: It works. If practiced correctly, it fulfills the goals of a movement without some of the horrifying consequences of violence. In the next installment of this series, I will summarize responses to common critiques of non-violent action and briefly look at the elements of successful non-violent campaigns.

Additional resources: Daryn Cambridge has thoroughly documented the proceedings of FSI 2011 here. The ICNC website has a phenomenal FAQ and Resource Library on non-violent conflict. Some of my favorite books on this topic are:

A Force More Powerful: A century of nonviolent conflict, Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall
Nonviolent social movements: A geographical perspective, Stephen Zunes, Lester R. Kurtz, Sarah Beth Asher
Why Civil Resistance Works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan

Guest post: Life's work

noreply@blogger.com (Roxanne) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Christine Mason Miller has been an inspiration in my journey through storytelling, creativity, and service. A few months ago, I wrote about books well-loved and the impact Christine and her writing have had on my life. Today, on the eve of her launching her new book Desire to Inspire: Using Creative Passion to Transform the World, it is my pleasure to host Christine on Stories of Conflict and Love.

***

That's me on the far left in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1976, during one of my extended visits with my grandparents. Remember Slip & Slide? Well, instead of buying one, my grandparents let me create one with a few of their vinyl table cloths and a hose. Can't find what we want? No problem -- let's just make it ourselves.

When I asked Roxanne if she would do me the honor of sharing a guest blog post on Stories of Conflict and Love as part of my virtual book tour for Desire to Inspire, she not only gave me an enthusiastic “Yes!”, she also asked if I could discuss a specific topic related to the subject of creating a meaningful life. This is what she shared with me:

There is a question I think you'd be best poised to answer: How did you know that being an artist was it? How did you know that the creative life was your life, your work, that it was YOU? A lot of the strength I have found in your book and writing has been in the way you OWN yourself, your art, your creativity, and your place in the world. I'd love to post your thoughts on how you came to claim this role, how you came to be comfortable in it. How did your 25-year-old self know? How did she choose this? What has the creative life come to mean to you?

I wish I had a neatly wrapped anecdote of an experience when the clouds parted and the knowledge of what I was supposed to do with my life came shimmering down into my soul, but there was never a “magic moment” when I discovered my true calling. Instead, it has revealed itself to me in large and small ways for as in alone-ness - to the notion of being a solitary warrior on the quest to make my life what I wanted. However one might judge its potency, it was a philosophy that came to me, stayed with me, and has played a role in my life ever since. And it has always been an empowering thought – if there is something I want, if there is a way I want to live my life, then I need to do the work to make it happen. That is nobody’s job but mine. It then follows that if it is up to me to create the life I want, then there isn’t much use in doubting my dreams, my passions, my self. (Not that I don’t have my moments of panic and fear and “Who do I think I am?”-ness, but for the most part, self-doubt is a fairly weak link in my DNA chain.)

The idea behind Desire to Inspire is that the world is best served, lifted, and – that helped that strong, adventurous side of me flourish. And somewhere in the midst of climbing trees, crossing creeks, digging up worms, and making mud pies a thought struck me: “Whatever it is that you want in life, you’re going to have to create it yourself.”

I realize that on the surface, this seems a bit intense for a girl whose age hadn’t yet hit the double digits. It speaks to a certa talking about creativity – which is a fundamental element of our very humanity - and about all the ways our innate creative passions, energies, and ideas shape our day-to-day lives and, in turn, impact the world around us.

I happen to be an artist, but this particular job title rests on a deeper foundation, which has to do with inspiration. It has to do with making those around me feel good about themselves; it has to do with recognizing the incredible light in someone’s eyes when they laugh, when they are treated kindly, when they are acknowledged, included, applauded, adored, and encouraged. My life’s work began when I started to recognize the impact of kindness, respect, and creative passion – towards others and ourselves - and the positive waves of inspiration that are manifested when we do transformed when we follow our creative passions and build a meaningful life for ourselves. I use the phrase “creative passion” because I believe we are all – every single one of us – creative beings, and we use our creative muscles every single day. I know there are plenty of you out there who would disagree with me, but these disagreements are usually thrust at me on the premise that creativity must = artistic talent. But I’m not talking about anything as specific as that. I amessons and examples that came to me from that day forward, which is what makes it, in a very literal way, my life’s work. In doing the work I’ve done to create a life I am passionate about, I understand on a visceral level the power of such an existence – power as in light, as in energy, as in a shiny example of all that is possible. My work is to be of service to the world, and that work starts within. This is what my younger self taught me. This is the work that she chose.

Christine Mason Miller is a Santaboth.

Perhaps the work I have been doing all these years has been in honor of my younger self, who discovered at a very young age a source of strength that was impossible to turn away from, deny, or doubt, and maybe my sense of alone-ness as a little girl is what sparked my desire to inspire in the first place. Once the spark was lit, it was simply a matter of learning how to do that, and being open to all the lessons and examples that came to me from that day forward, which is what makes it, in a very literal way, my life’s work. In doing the work I’ve done to create a life I am passionate about, I understand on a visceral level the power of such an existence – power as in light, as in energy, as in a shiny example of all that is possible. My work is to be of service to the world, and that work starts within. This is what my younger self taught me. This is the work that she chose.

Christine Mason Miller is a Santa Monica-based artist, writer, and explorer. Her next book – Desire to Inspire: Using Creative Passion to Transform the World – is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. Follow her adventures at www.christinemasonmiller.com.