Thoughts from the Palestinian Teritorries

18 April 2008 – Sometimes, I’m speechless in front of people’s suffering here. Words just don’t come out. I’m just listening, just trying to give space and time for people to say what they have inside, their complaint, their sadness, their frustration. How many people have shared that only with us they feel comfortable and safe to say what happened to them, where their sons are, how angry they feel and how they are coping…

Tomorrow I will visit a family of 5. They were just thrown out of their house within a few hours, not allowed to take anything with them. No clothes, no food, no precious things, no toys, not even the meds for the child’s pneumonia – nothing at all. The house was sealed, just like that. The family was suddenly out on the street. A relative gave them a room, someone else 3 mattresses to put on the floor, an organization some clothes, another some cans, a neighbor bread, a hospital meds for the boy. Suddenly, they need to depend on others to survive, just to eat. The house where they used to live, just some meters far from the “new” one, seems so comfortable. The children sometimes go outside to play and they show me where their rooms used to be. The mother is pregnant, no money for tests in the hospital, she seems so tired and so weak. She is getting easily angry nowadays – the children are getting naughty, as she says, and she spanks them. She is angry but not with the children. “With all the world”, as she says.

I’m also angry with all the world nowadays. With all this selective blindness and deafness around, with the easiness we speak about human rights and take them for granted though never had to fight for them, with the fact that we don’t understand that who we are is just the result of mere luck, just a game of fortune. I’m born Greek, in a middle class family with more than the basic needs covered. I could easily have been one of the children thrown out of their house, waiting for a neighbor or relative to bring me food, because otherwise I would starve. But I’m not one of these children just out of luck, but since I was lucky, the least I can do is speak out for their rights.

15 March 2008 – The last period was tense. What was happening in Gaza (125 dead people), what happened in Jerusalem (8 people died) affect obviously all the Palestinian Territories and all Israel. West Bank had its share in the violence offered and received. This circle of violence, this ongoing danger “smells” in the atmosphere. You are thinking: what next now. Cause you seem sure something is going to happen. I’m getting myself adapted to this atmosphere, I’m not impressed anymore by the number of Palestinians – Israelis having died, I’m not impressed by the number and the age of Palestinians being arrested every day. Not impressed by the things I’m hearing from those being released, for the “techniques” used on them. I don’t feel much worried when crossing checkpoints, when speaking to soldiers with the guns ready, when hearing shooting and bombs. I feel sad, I feel disappointed, I feel angry, I feel hopeless, but I don’t feel impressed. And this is a strangely dangerous thing.

If it took 3 months for me to get adapted, what does it mean for people experiencing this situation for years? For the people that have been born here and have seen nothing but this reality? When the only stable, ongoing thing you have ever experienced is violence – daytime, nighttime. What does the phrase “peace talks” means, when simultaneously people from both sides are dying and more people feel the need to retaliate? Where is the hope in all this?

02 March 2008 – There are some patients that you just cannot leave after the concluding of the sessions. That you feel you are going to miss them, that you would like to see them again and usually the feelings are mutual.

They are the patients with whom both we grew up through these sessions. They grew up calmer, enjoying life without the symptoms which disturbed them at the beginning, smiled again after long time, setting goals, living each day.

And me, grew up more human and more professional through them, watching them working hard with themselves under difficult circumstances, supporting them at these steps, adapting ways, respecting culture and beliefs.

So, I really don’t know who gives more to the other, it is a two way transaction leaving us both happy and satisfied but also with a bitter feeling of at the end saying goodbye.

Especially with children this ending becomes harder, they do not understand why you have to leave, why you have to go see other children also, now that they feel better and we can have more fun together.

I don’t know for whom this goodbye is more difficult, for me or the patients. What I know is what I feel after the ending of the sessions: happy for been there sad for leaving.