A 22 Year Old Spanish-Speaking Nun

The sister hadn’t really responded to me when I arrived in the elderly home on the edge of Taybeh. To almost everyone else my arrival was quite the stir; I had lived and worked there for 4 1/2 weeks in 2008, cleaning, visiting, talking, sleeping, praying.

The young male kitchen staff remembered me and reminded me of the times I worked in the garden. “Remember when you were there? You like to work there...” Lu’ay said smiling openly and pointing to the dirt in front of the entrance, laughing.

“Yes, yes. That was fun for me, gardening and pulling weeds” I said, crouching down to demonstrate what I meant.

When the elderly women saw me, the smiles in their eyes brightened their tired faces so that even now when I think of them tears of appreciation from my heart half fill my throat.

I took a walk with Adlene. We shuffled down the path as she told me in her broken, awkwardly pronoun-ed English about how she fell when she was walking alone a few months ago, “You want to walk, walk, walk up the hill” (there’s a rhythm, childish and lovely in her voice) “but the he gets this far and—” she smacks her hands together, indicating the moment she fell. “Where is my present? From America?”

“What present?” I ask her, a little embarrassed because I don’t actually have a present for her.

“Oh! You my present.” She says smiling and patting my arm wrapped around her own.

I had her stand alone while I gathered flowers, the beautiful little gems scattered about the Palestinian countryside this time of the year. I picked a long, strong strip of grass and tied the colored things together. “Here’s your present!” I said, smiling. We walked back together.

The young nun was new. She had recently been assigned to work with the elderly in Beit Efraim. I saw her silently pushing the wheelchairs from from room to room, but she did not really even acknowledge me beyond a quick smile.

When I returned the next day to visit again, I tried introducing myself in Arabic: “Marhaba. Ismii Rifqa bil arabii, Rebecca bil...”

But she shook her head from behind the man in the wheelchair. “No...”

“Oh, you don’t speak Arabic?”

She looked at me blankly and stuttered something in Spanish. Turns out she only speaks Spanish. I fumbled about in Spanish mixed accidentally with Arabic for the next few minutes, surprising her immensely with my ability to speak at all. Her young face and dark features framed in white habit softened into a smile; I think it had been awhile since she’d spoken with someone in Spanish.

“Cuantos años tienes?” She asked me after a minute of introduction.

“Veinte dos. 22.” The recognition in her face immediately told me she, too, is 22 years old. At 22 she has submitted the entirety of her life to an order that sent her from South America to Palestine for an undetermined amount of time. She has surrendered to Jesus. “Why did you come here?” She asks in Spanish and we try to speak for a few more minutes but not only is my Spanish horrible when I have been speaking Arabic, but the man in the wheelchair wanted water.

“Mucho gusto.”

“Yes, so nice to meet you.”

She amazed me.

Bony-hand knuckles

The sound of bony-hand knuckle flinging awkwardly into bony skull side is not the crisp “bampt” as in the movies. Watching the causes of these awkward sounds of violence has never pleased me.

The first time I heard a punch was in seventh grade. I was practically alone in the lifeless, tile and cinderblock space. I walked out of the bathroom just as Abed, a short dark haired boy, swung up toward his giant friend Clint’s face—his feet actually leaving the ground to make up for the middle school height difference. There was a brief shuffle after that, a small thud when Clint shoved Abed against a wall, and a couple moans.

Windows drowned my high school commons in sunlight. Over the balcony railing I could see a ring of people five thick around a white WWF female teacher and the curly haired little principal struggling between two large black students who yelled back and forth. In the scuffle one student hit the teacher. I could hear only the barn-like ruckus of a crowd. I gawked not at the fight, but at the gathered students. “Why are you watching this in support?”

My first year in Chicago. Three against one in an alley exposed to all of us standing on the El platform. They threw the man on the ground and shoved him, gravel sticking in his knee, I am sure. The train roared behind me. All I did was stare. My train approached and the beating became a stop motion silent movie through the train windows.

That spring I heard how Daley Plaza, with it’s concrete everything, does not forgive. Holding my cell phone to my ear, “Um, yes, please, there’s a fight. There are like 15 people out here.” Less than a foot away from me boney kuckle on jaw or shoulder or chest: Thud. Ahg! Thud. Umf. Thud. Drop. Shuffle. Uuuuggh! Cry. Isak and Ben ran into the fray bravely. Later Isak: “I don’t know why I jumped in there. Any one of those guys could’ve had a knife.” And some of them did.

The noisy Irish crowd ebbed back and forth as the drunken boys swung and flailed about. Jeers and puns hid the thud of knees meeting concrete and tearing jeans. Distraught and weak and tipsy I situated myself on the railing. A new confrontation was about to begin but small firey boned Melissa stood right between the two lads, “Back off! Let him alone.” Wee Rachel spoke with an agitator and told me: “He asked me ‘What was I supposed to do?’” I thought, Northern Ireland will tell you and I’ll pray.

I could only understand that one word, in Arabic: “Maksuraa-AAh!!!” Broken. The pained voice cracked and cries of struggle interrupted his speech as it spilled over the barrier of the police station wall next to the synagogue. The rest of the words were too mingled and distressed to catch, confused by the shouts between approaching Israeli Defense Force soldiers and the young, hidden Palestinian man. I watched alongside the other international observers. And then I wrote about it.

Sunflowers in Palestine

Welcome

I stood outside the tiny chapel watching the priest with a grey streaked beard in gold-embroidered robes lead the faithful, dark, serious women in prayers to God and words of adoration of Mary, Theotokos, God-bearer. Lent is an especially important time in the Greek Orthodox church. Not only is the lenten fast real and great, there are numerous additional services and devotions during the 46 days. Candles were the only light in the little space; they created small orbs of light on the frayed and dirty prayer books and the faces of the worshippers.

Young men of 8, 10, 15 years old gathered outside wearing their jackets, peering through the windows smudged with smoke from the years of lit incense in side the chapel. The youth were only partly distracted by me, careful to keep their attention on the prayers. Beautiful devotion. No one has to come to this service, but even though they don’t fit inside on this chilly night, they listen and watch from the other side of the windows propped open with sticks.

Who is this random young woman arriving in our little church courtyard at dusk?

I thought I recognized Maria Khoury's dark hair and her thin frame standing in the open doorway to the chapel. She had a scarf wrapped around her shoulders over her coat.

“Hiyye Maria Khoury?” I whispered to the boys nearest the door, pointing to my host, Maria. The young man I thought I might recognize from my last visit nodded his head.

I touched her back, causing her to turn. The moment she saw me she scrunched her eyebrows together, raising them in the middle with a look of sincere, deeply felt welcome and sympathy: “Rebecca. You made it all the way here. Did you just arrive? Where are your things?" The smile on her face, tired but peaceful, quickly reminded me of her life’s work of advocating for the possibility of Palestinian entrepreneurship and leadership in the context of her little Christian village, Taybeh.

“Is that all you brought?” She asked.

"Oh, it is easier to bring less. Is it okay to leave it there for now?” I indicated my bag sitting on the stone bench connected to the outside construction of the old church.

“It’ll be safe. Come inside, come inside. You must be freezing.”

I was a little cold, but the excitement of fumbling through Arabic vocabulary and driving through the town that, to me, barely existed outside of my memory warmed my heart. As I stepped into the dark room the melodies (and unintentional, off-key harmonies) of the chanted prayers and sung blessings soaked the space around me. The fog of deep, mystic and sweet incense lay in the air as if the very atmospheric composition of a church included the scent. The candles lit the faces of the older women with shadows in their wrinkles and they the smooth faces of the young with the radiance of devotion.

“Welcome to Palestine!” Maria whispered to me from behind, her prayer book in hand. I looked up and met the darks eyes of a Palestinian woman standing across the chapel from me. Welcome.