At the Bank

By: Lars

Dec 05 2009

Tags: border, Egypt, Eid, Israel, passport

Category: Uncategorized

4 Comments

I like Palestine. Not as in, “I ♥ Palestine”, but in all my modest Norwegianity, I like Palestine. I like Palestine better than Germany, better than Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and after all quite a lot better than Egypt. Honestly. I’m sick and tired of Egypt.

I also like Palestine more than I like the Norwegian Embassy in Cairo, who after a week of waiting in vain, failed to give me more than an emergency passport, when I really needed a real passport.

I like Palestine more than I like crossing borders in to Israel. The Israelis didn’t like my emergency passport, and kept me for 3,5 hours asking me about my stay in Egypt, asked me for my fathers and grandfathers name, asked me about the posters of Nasser in my luggage, and asked me to get undressed. Shalom!

I like Palestine more than I like Lotus Hotel in Cairo, which has a problem with their water pipes (but it’s OK, because they have a sufficient amount of buckets to hand out to their guests when pipes starts leaking).

I like Palestine more than I like Alexandria with the local shebab hyped up on sugar and life during Eid.

I like Palestine more than I like Mogamma, the biggest administrative building on the African continent, where I had to go to get a new visa in the trouble-bringing emergency passport. It takes half a day. Probably longer if you’re not from Europe or the US. Ahlen o sahlen!

I like Palestine more than I like the freezing night bus from Cairo to Taba.

I like Palestine more than I like gun loving Americans sitting in the seat behind me on the bus from Eilat to Jerusalem.

I like Palestine more than I like the Egyptian totalitarian regime, who after all, like Israel, isn’t too concerned with human rights issues, and focuses more on closing schools to keep people occupied with the swine flu, and making a big deal out of a lost football game, to avoid people questioning the legitimacy of the so called democracy and the republic.

I like Palestine more than I like the Tourist Police in Dahab who didn’t help me when I showed them my half thorn passport and asked them for permission to go to Cairo to fix it. They asked me to glue it and go back to wherever I came from (which I couldn’t, so I was basically stuck on Sinai until the end of days).

I like Palestine more than I liked myself when I got on the bus from Dahab to Sharm el-Sheikh just so i could lie to the Tourist Police in Sharm about  loosing my passport. That is a legitimit reason to be given a letter which allows you to go to Cairo.

I like Palestine about just as much as I liked celebrating my first thanksgiving with new found friends in Egypt.

I like Palestine more than I liked the slaughtering of almost every four-legged animal in Cairo on the first day of Eid.

I like Palestine more than I liked the elevator made of wood and held up by ropes as ancient as the pyramids, at the Select Hotel in Cairo.

I liked hanging out with good friends in Cairo, just as much as I like hanging out with good friends in Palestine, but my stay in Egypt was only temporary, and lasted too long, and really I wanted to get back to Palestine.

I like Palestine, and my presence here is more important to me, more valuable as a learning experience in how easy right is wrong and wrong is right in other peoples twisted minds, learning about blindness and selfishness, about hope, about plans for the future, about collective strength, about walls, about laughing, about every day life which theme always is to end an occupation. What a terrible occupation. It is more important for me to be here than acting like a Lonely Planet- junkey in Cairo.

It is more important for me to be here than with all my friends in Oslo (sorry guys!), at the moment I think I am where I want to be. I feel like I’m re-learning things about myself, I’m learning and changing, something I’d never thought that I would experience at an age of 23. I constantly discover new sides of my own humanity. I like learning in Palestine, in all my modest Norwegianity.