Some of my final thoughts

It’s taken me a while to get to writing up some final thoughts on our trip to Jerusalem.  I don’t know why, because I have mostly just been sitting around in Amman not doing anything. But sometimes it is when you have the least to do that it is hardest to make yourself think.

I will echo Helen’s assessment of living abroad.  Our time in Jerusalem made me feel like not only could I continue living there, but I could maybe live somewhere else, too.  If it’s that easy to feel at home (maybe “at home” is an exaggeration) in Jerusalem, the weirdest city I have ever been to, then maybe it would be similarly easy to live in Tblisi or Nairobi or Istanbul.  (It may be slightly less easy in Karachi.)

It was interesting to see how my feelings about Jerusalem changed over the month that we were there.  Six months ago, when I first visited the city, I couldn’t stand it.  It felt to me like a place dominated by divisions, cut in half into the Arab East and the Israeli West, with its heart, the Old City, quartered and divided.  This impression wasn’t exactly wrong.  Jerusalem is a divided city.  But it is far more complex than I realized. Jerusalem is at its essence a multicultural place, a city rich in history and mythology and religion that attracts people from around the world. It took me a while to come to appreciate the layering of cultures that makes Jerusalem what it is, but in the end I figured that out.

Spending time in Israel-Palestine did not make me feel more confident in my ability to conceive of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation.  If anything, hearing the pessimistic views of all the Israelis I met, views that so tragically reflected the fatalism and pessimism that I’ve heard time and again from Arabs. That said, it did increase my understanding of the situation. I have a better grasp on where the borders stand, what the distances are, what the cities look like, how people live and move and think.

I really enjoyed my job, but I’m not going to bother talking about it.  Suffice to say that it reinforced my desire to be a foreign correspondent, an aspiration I have held since I was in elementary school. I have no complaints at all, except that the trip was far too short.  I hope to be able to return to that bizarre, magical city before too long and experience more of it, though I doubt that I will ever be able to understand Jerusalem.