photo courtesy of the bellingham herald
iman salam contacted me in the early months of 2008, having found the moth designs shop on etsy. her family had recently finished the filming of 'on a wing and a prayer' (which i have yet to see in entirety!), a UPF documentary following their daily lives as iman's husband monem pursues his dream of becoming a pilot. the story highlights the joys, challenges, humor and enduring faith of the salams as muslims living in suburban america, at a time in history when the words 'muslim' and 'pilot' trigger media-reactive responses. though we have never met, i feel a kinship with iman. she is down to earth and funny--and she is absolutely number one candidate for the muslim martha stewart. (smile). as nabil and i think of starting our own family, oh how i wish washington and maine were not on opposite sides of the country.
this summer, iman traveled with her children to palestine to visit her family there, and I have followed her photos and messages with interest. she has graciously agreed to share some of these thoughts and photos, and i hope to add more here with time. this first entry came from the early days of iman's trip, as she made her way into palestine. thanks, iman. and enjoy. more to come.
from iman's trip ::
Just wanted to share some pictures of the checkpoint that pulled us aside for 3 hours. I wanted to write it all out real quick, no real structure to it, just to put it down on "paper." They made us get out of the van, take all our bags out and cross the checkpoint, since they were not going to let us through. Before all that...I was taken out of the van and they asked to see my Hawiya (Palestinian I.D.card), which I do not have. I told them I don't have one, they kept asking to see it, I told them I don't have one (which I don't). We went back and forth like this for 10 minutes.
They brought me into the office and kept asking me about it as if I was lying to them. They asked about my parents, grandparents and I thought they might ask about my ancestors?! They asked where my parents lived in Palestine. They showed me my passport and pointed to a stamp from the Kuwait embassy and asked me to read the numbers I told them I don't know how ( the only lie I told). He kept asking me to read it and I told him I don't know Arabic. This went on for awhile and we had a staring contest at one point: he would ask me a question, I would answer and he would just keep staring at me as if that wasn't the answer he wanted. At this point a woman soldier came in, I had a feeling I knew was coming but didn't think they would go so far. They took everything out of my bags and went through everything, he looked in my wallet, took my money and asked me "what's this?" I told him "money" then he took out my pill box that I keep my vitamins in and again asked me what this was for? Stupid questions. Absolutely no point at all.
At this point he told me to go with the woman soldier and I knew exactly what was coming next. She led me to a small room and told me to take my clothes off, she then went through all my clothes and patted them all down (I'm guessing they thought I might have sewn it into my clothes). Once we went back to the office, | was put in another room with a guard that sat outside the open door, staring at me. For an hour and a half I stood there. From where I was standing I could see the van that held the kids along with my cousin and his kids. At one point Serene looked out the window, smiled at me and then gestured for me to come to the van. This was the first time during the whole experience that tears welled up in my eyes. From the moment I stepped out of the van until they told me I could go back was a total of 2 hours. When I got back to the van the kids told me that they thought the woman was going to shoot me, you know how they carry those huge guns. The reason they thought that I had an I.D. card was because the numbers written on my Kuwait visa from 8 years ago, were nine digits that is how many digits are on a Hawiya. So they assumed I was lying to them. I was never told sorry, nor did I expect it, just to go back to the van. The whole experience was unpleasant, but I was constantly reminding myself that others have it worse.
Sorry if this does not read well, I will talk to you all soon.
Take care,
Iman
The two pics are of us at the side of the road waiting for another cab to take us to another checkpoint, you can see all the bags we had to drag across the lanes, at this point it was me and my kids and my cousin's 4 kids. They would not let my cousin's wife through so he and his wife as well as their youngest went on to another part of the city where she is allowed to be (she is a card holder) Is that confusing enough :) The picture of the tower and the wall is of the infamous checkpoint just before we reached it.
