Omar

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Omar is dark skinned, a little portly, early fifties, with trim black hair and salt and pepper stubble a few days older than my own. He smiles easily, despite the fact that he is missing most of the teeth on the left side of his mouth. The teeth he still owns look to be in good shape. As far as half-smiles go, Omar has a good one.

We met outside a tiny Arab coffee shop within the cobbled maze of stone streets, bazaars, religions, languages, nationalities, attitudes, suspicions, fraternities, polarities, and animosities which make up Jerusalem's Old City.


I had spent the better part of Saturday morning milling around the Western Wall watching devout Jewish men shrouded in prayer shawls (tallit) pray and sing. After a spell of Should I?/Shouldn't I? I placed my hand on the Western Wall hoping to feel a jolt. I didn't. 


When the Sabbath morning prayer service broke and its congregants scattered, I wandered around Old Jerusalem's truly ancienct streets about an hour before spotting the little cafe/oasis, which stoked in me a craving for coffee and a seat. That the building cast a shadow under which I could hide from the blazing sun was also inviting. 


I stepped up to the counter and ordered my coffee unaware of Omar. But from wherever he was he noticed my cafe Americano, and, as having ordered it was a dead giveaway that I wasn't from around those parts, Omar sat with his espresso at a table across from mine and set about discovering just what parts I was from.

The ease with which he pulled up a chair and spoke put me on guard. But he sounded and looked genial enough that I soon tossed out the idea that he was after something. Omar was just being friendly. 


Omar, it turns out, is pals with the cafe's owner, and he likes hanging around the cafe to chew the fat with his Arabic friends and to chat up foreigners, or at stand-out foreigners who order cafe Americanos. Though Arabic was clearly his mother tongue, he spoke English well enough that we were able, with give and take, to communicate -- for the most part.

Out of the merciless Jerusalem sun, within the cafe's not a whole-lot-cooler shade, he began by asking me about the shuttle, and if there was any new news. I didn't know what he was talking about, and so he informed me that the U.S. had launched a shuttle, but that it had lost communication. Hadn't I heard?

I hadn't. I told him I hadn't picked up a newspaper recently. He chided me mildly for not knowing about my own country's shuttle, and then told me he has been saying prayers for it.

After my scolding, we exchanged background info. I told him I was a professor at UMass Dartmouth, that I had been in Hungary on a Fulbright since the end of January, and that soon I would be returning back to the States.

When I mentioned that I was a teacher, Omar reached across to shake my hand. "You have my very great respect." Apparently teaching means something in these parts that it doesn't mean in mine.

He told me he grew up in a small village not far from Jerusalem, that he had lived in England for 17 years, where he had met and fallen in love with an English woman. Though never married, they had lived together and had a child, a girl, Tahirah, who was born severely brain-damaged and disabled. I didn't push for details, but I gathered that her mother -- still in England -- who took care of Tahirah, did so pretty much around the clock. 


Tahirah is now 18, and Omar said he loves her very much, even though he hardly sees her anymore, in part because he has diabetes and can't do the long flight. It was three years ago that he last visited her. But he speaks with her everyday, and he is thankful for that.

He told me he is very religious, tries very hard to be a good man. He said that he hasn't always prayed as he should, that he let many, many prayers lapse, and that he is trying to make up for them now. "But Jerry:" -- every time he said my name it came with a colon -- "But Jerry: Isn't it a great thing that god can be so forgiving? That I could have ignored my prayers for so long, but just like that, god is ready to forgive me and take me back? Isn't that a great gift, Jerry:?" He smiled.

I smiled back, aware of having all my teeth (if crowns can be included as teeth). "You sound like you believe you're a fortunate man. Are you?"

"Jerry: Yes, fortunate. Very fortunate. God has given me my beautiful daughter, and now my faith. I could wish for things, of course, but what I have is very good. I put my trust god."

I didn't have to be a genius to infer that one of the things Omar wished for was that Tahirah's mother would love him. He told me that she just didn't find him appealing, sexually, and so their relationship went flat not long after Tahirah was born. In time, he drifted back to his home outside of Jerusalem. 


Though it still pains him to worship the woman he finds so very beautiful, he is thankful that, owing to Tahirah, they are still very close, very good friends. She is such a wonderful mother to Tahirah, he told me. 


Eventually the door slammed shut. The woman he loved married another man. A good man, Omar said. He helps Tahira's mother very much in the care of their daughter, and Omar is grateful for that.

Because Omar is an Arab, and because I am trying to get a handle on this taut knot called Israel, I asked if he supported Hamas. Instantly, it was clear he had anticipated that the question would come up sooner or later. No doubt I was not the first to ask it.

He lit a cigarette and stared down between his spread knees, for what to say. Then he looked up. 


As for supporting Hamas, he told me that he had to. Hamas was elected by his people, and whether he liked Hamas or not, his people have spoken, democratically, and he must respect their decision. It is my duty, he told me. It is the will of my people.

He may have heard that question before, but I had never asked it before, or any like it, so I was a bit tentative about the next one. What about violence? I asked. What about terrorism?

He was not surprised by this question, either. His answer was immediate. He told me that no, he couldn't support that. That his faith in god wouldn't permit it. That he thought about all the times that he and Tahirah had been out in England, in public places, and how vulnerable he now realized they were. It was because of Tahirah that he couldn't support terrorism.

But doesn't Hamas support terrorism? I asked. Haven't they called for Jihad against Israel? How can you support Hamas when you don't support terrorism?

"Jerry: Hamas is my government. The government of my people, my country. I must support them." In Omar's boxed reply I heard echoes of the "My country, right or wrong" mantra from the Vietnam era.
 
Feeling a bit awkward, we switched topics. He asked me about teaching, what I taught, and was it hard work.

I answered that it was hard work, but gratifying hard work. I asked about his own education, for it seemed to me that he had some. He said he reads a lot at home, on his own.

"And formal schooling?"

He chuckeld. "Jerry: I have been educated in three places. On the streets here; in England; and in prison."
 
I paused for a split second at the sudden fork in the road: "Prison? Can I ask: what did you do?"

Omar then told me that during the 80s he became fed up with the way he was being treated, humiliated and abused by Israeli security forces. Tired of being kicked. Tired of having his hair pulled. He wanted to fight back, to strike back. He wanted to become active in the PLO. So he went into Syria, to some kind of PLO headquarters, knocked on the door, and told whoever he met there that he wanted to join. At first they were suspicious, but then they weren't, and they sent him into the forest to a PLO training camp, to learn about explosives.

His story about what happened from there isn't clear to me, except for the fact that upon his return, or perhaps once back inside Israel, he was interrogated and arrested by the Israeli intelligence. He spent three and half years in jail. He told this all matter of factly, without bitterness or outrage. Perhaps he accepted his punishment as fitting. Perhaps it was simply long ago.

I did not have the chutzpah to ask if he had ever triggered his new-found knowledge in explosives. My sense was that he hadn't. It sounded as though the Israelis arrested him before he had the chance to, otherwise, I imagine, his sentence would have been much longer. But if he had had the chance, would he have followed through?

I believed Omar when he renounced terror. Yet, I didn't hear him renounce violence. And I wouldn't.


He told me that three years ago he had gone to England to visit his daughter. Upon his return to Israel, he was stopped by Israeli security and refused re-entry into the country. He was forced back to England. 


I don't know how he managed to get back inside Israel, but he did, and since that time, he has been bitter, bitter not toward Jews -- he had no change in disposition once he learned I was a Jew --, but toward Israelis. I then wondered if his diabetes was the only reason he hadn't returned to England in three years to visit Tahirah. 


"Jerry: I must be truthful, even if it hurts our friendship. I must say what is in my heart. I hope you will forgive me. But I cannot respect Israelis," he said, "the way they treat us." He shook his head and sneered, "I hate Israelis. I hate the government and those who act on their behalf."  


And I knew then that even if he might not carry out acts of violence himself against Israelis, he would not condemn those acts if carried out by others. 


What then of his renunciation of terror? Would he draw the line for violence somewhere short of civilians, fathers and their daughters, Israeli Omars and Tahirahs? 


I didn't ask.


"Jerry:" he said, "I apologize but I must leave you now. I must go pray. I have enjoyed our discussion. If you will be here when I return, perhaps we can resume our conversation."


"I've got to get going too, Omar."


We rose, wished each other well, and shook hands.

***

In the course of an hour I shook hands with Omar twice. Once before I knew that he had been a member of the PLO, and once after.


It is not lost on me that some could find that second handshake offensive, even traitorous, and condemn me for it.


But: Seated at the cafe with his espresso and willingness to talk, Omar was, to me, less a PLO fighter of the 80s than a man today who, on top of the hardships and even cruelties life itself has handed him, has suffered systematic indignity and humiliation at the hands of his overlords. For their part, I am sure that Israelis have stories of their own to tell about Palestinian transgressions. Palestinians, Israelis. Israelis, Palestinians. Tit for tat, and sometimes rat-tat-tat.


I must say what is in my heart; I must be truthful.

When I shook hands with Omar, the second time, I shook hands as one man to another, as one who has lived with pain and loss acknowledging the pain and loss of another. He was neither Arab nor Palestinian nor PLO. He was just a man, like me, struggling to come to terms with his world. It was as such a man that I took his hand.