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.
