Tag: politics

Don’t Look Away

vivaespanamovingtospain

Once upon a time... No. I won’t write it like that because this is no fairytale. It’s a true story and it starts more than 85 years ago on the eastern Mediterranean.

In 1939 a little girl named Claire Serhan was born in East Jerusalem. Born to a Catholic family, the day she came into the world Claire landed in a country known as Palestine, even though it had been occupied by the British Army since the end of WWI – two decades before. The League of Nations had carved up the colonies of the former Ottoman Empire and had ā€˜givenā€™ Palestine to the British. Palestine has been the crossroads of many occupiers but they are a people and a country nonetheless. Claire’s ancestors called Palestine home for thousands of years. That has never been in dispute.

Even amidst the British occupation, Claire and her sisters lived in East Jerusalem with their parents and relatives in peace. All the religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, lived and worked side by side. Each religion had a history in the country dating back millennia. There was room for all. The family worked and attended school. They raised children and enjoyed the same life their grandparents and great grandparents had before them. And then, it all changed.

Between WWI and WWII, the British allowed nearly a million Jewish refugees to enter Palestine. And after WWII, the British withdrew from Palestine and TransJordan (modern-day Jordan). In 1948, with the withdrawal of the British, war broke out in Palestine and the modern state of Israel was born. This resulted in nearly a million Palestinians being ejected from their own country. Little Claire and her family were among them, taking what they could carry on their trek north to Lebanon.

Not Welcome Home

Now, Claire and her family were lucky. They had some relatives living in Beirut. Instead of landing in one of the Palestinian refugee camps set up on the outskirts of the most cosmopolitan city in the Middle East, the family was taken into homes to live in the city. Lebanon, like it’s neighbor, Palestine, had been turned into a European colony after WWI. And they had just won their freedom from France in 1943 – now under self governance – when Claire and her family, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians arrived on their doorstep.

At first, the Palestinians assumed that they would be allowed to return to their ancestral homes and land in Palestine. But, as the years ticked by more and more of their property was taken by the Israeli government. Palestinian ancestral homes and farms were stolen from them and given to the new settlers arriving from Europe. The rights of Palestinians in Israel were stripped from them and they lived under military occupation. The Palestinian refugees would not be allowed to return. Claire’s family never saw their homes again, still they yearned for their life in East Jerusalem. But they were not allowed back and were forced to assimilate as much as possible in Lebanon. Of course, we all know obtaining citizenship and a passport in another country doesn’t mean that its people view you as a native. And Claire’s family was no different. Discrimination against Palestinians was rampant. While the Serhan’s were incredibly lucky, most Palestinian refugees remained state-less – some even until today – and without a passport or ability to travel they were stripped of their humanity as if they donā€™t exist. Claire and her sisters would always be Palestinian in the eyes of their neighbors in Beirut and the entire world.

Growing up, Claire attended Catholic school and was fluent in Arabic, French, and English. She could speak some Italian, as well. And she grew up, eventually meeting Sami Khouri, another Palestinian refugee from Haifa, Palestine – now part of Israel. They married and soon had two boys, Joseph and Hani. Their life in Beirut was good. While not their home, they were safe and so were their boys. Claire worked for a French company and her husband ran a spare parts business. But that would all end when their children were still in elementary school.

War seemed to follow Claire and her family, and the Palestinians wherever they went. In 1975 a civil war broke out in Lebanon that would go on for nearly two decades. The Christian falangists were tired of power sharing the Lebanese government with Muslims. And, they were tired of the Palestinian refugees who were living in their country. They had a scapegoat in the Palestinians to rally the falangist troops. Lebanon was soon torn apart, and so was Claire and Sami’s family. Beirut, the jewel of the Middle East, became a war zone, and the once thriving Lebanese economy was bombed into oblivion along with the rest of the country. Horrible, heartbreaking decisions had to be made to keep the family with a roof over their heads. Sami would take a job in the then backwater of Dubai, where visa-less Claire and their children were unable to join him. He would send money home to war-torn Beirut so they could eat.

The war raged on. Their children were shot at by snipers on the way to and from school. Some of their school friends – just small children – were killed in the street while playing. Survival was a random roll of the dice. Bombs rained down on them from all sides. One day, Claire gathered her children under the kitchen table during a particularly brutal bombing campaign that shook their apartment in East Beirut. The trauma was such that afterward Claire couldn’t speak for days. Her family helped with the boys as her husband pulled every string he had in Dubai to get she and the children visas to join him in relative safety.

Yet Another Country

Now they were Palestinians living in Dubai. Still, not their country – neither Palestine nor Lebanon. Often, they were looked down upon or discriminated against. Yes, they had Lebanese passports, but Lebanon was at war, too. Palestinians were war refugees, but now, so were the Lebanese. Employers in other countries exploited the labor. They took advantage of the desperate.

Nearly a decade passed and soon Claire and Sami sent their boys to University in the US. Visiting them when they could for holidays and brief school breaks. It was difficult, and then one of her son’s informed them he married an American girl, and Claire’s heart was broken, yet again. She came to check out that girl, barely acknowledging when the silly American uttered a word, baffled at her 1980s fashion choices. Their relationship remained an icy detente until Claire insisted her son’s wife learn to cook real food. Healthy food to feed him when Claire was back in Dubai. Over bread baking, meat grinding, and copious amounts of Turkish coffee and cigarettes, Claire’s story came tumbling out, unfolding like a piece of khubiz (pita bread) as the American girl sat quietly in rapt attention, and tears fell down Claire’s cheeks. What Claire had lived through and the internalized trauma she continued to carry wasn’t anything the girl could related to, but she could feel the weight of the pain and grief inside her mother-in-law. The repeated loss. The feeling that she would never belong anywhere. And the survivors guilt Claire carried when she watched Palestine and Lebanon in the news, and the plight of her people at the hands of the Israelis. There were times Claire would have to lay down in the dark quiet bedroom after watching a story on CNN, knowing the world had abandoned her and all of the Palestinian people.

Years passed. Her American daughter-in-law was no longer her American daughter-in-law. But the families remained close. Her youngest son remarried and opened a couple of restaurants. He bought apartment buildings and constructed his own American Dream. By then, Claire and Sami were living in a house he purchased for them in the US. And the family was together again. Safe, or so they thought. But, in 2001 9/11 happened, and suddenly, the nightmare was at their door, once again.

Americans began looking for people to blame for 9/11, and they found anyone who had a ‘Middle Eastern’ sounding name to be the enemy. And Claire’s youngest son’s business had ‘Middle Eastern Cuisine’ right in the title. The death threats started first. Then, the rocks through the windows, even though they were all passport carrying Americans by then. It was just like when they went from Palestine to Lebanon. And from Lebanon to Dubai. No one had to tell them that a passport doesn’t make you a real citizen according to the natives. The citizens of the American Melting Pot wanted to close the door behind them. Claire’s suffering continued as she watched her son sleep in the restaurant, ready to put out any fires if someone tried to burn it to the ground in the middle of the night. Fearing someone might shoot him.

A Never Ending Nightmare

Still that silly American ex-daughter-in-law, I think of Claire and her story a lot these days. Of her and her sister, Haifa – one of the kindest, gentlest people I have ever met – and her generous husband, Lutfi. Of Sami, Hani and Joseph. And my Palestinian college friends. I see their faces as I watch the news from Spain. Those desperately trying to survive in Gaza. The descendants of those who remained after the creation of the State of Israel, and have tried to survive and fight back against their oppressors. I see more Claire-s and Sami-s struggling to protect their children. And the faces of their boys scavenging for food. I know Hani would have risked his life for his parents. Sacrificing everything to see them safe and fed – even as the bombs fell.

I don’t believe this is, or ever has been, a conflict based on religion. Palestinians are Catholics, Muslims and more. Religion is often the tool of the politician or despot, the colonizer, to muddy the waters. To divide. This situation in Gaza is deadly power and politics, plain and simple. A geopolitical chess game, and the Palestinians have been used as pawns, never viewed as human beings for the last 100 years, no matter the occupier. I know this to be true because I know Palestinian people who were there. They lived it from the beginning. They are good people – no matter which god they worship. This is a horrific situation in Gaza and The West Bank, and it must stop. I pray that for once the world will not blink or look away.

And Then They Came For Me

vivaespanamovingtospain

Back in the summer of 2016 the world was going a little nuts. We all remember it. One sunny morning I was sat in my office in the US, when one of the smartest people I have ever worked with entered knocking on the door frame.

‘You saw it, didn’t you?’ she asked, leaning into the doorway as I was behind my desk.

I knew instantly what she was talking about. But we were likely the only two people in the entire building who took note of it.

‘Yes. I saw it.’ I told her, disgusted.

‘Can you believe it? Are they crazy?’ she asked me.

I just shook my head. ‘Lunacy. The world is losing its mind.’

And it was in 2016. Well, it still is. But now we all see it, right? Hmmm. Anyway. Back on that summer morning it was all about how Great Britain had voted to leave the EU. Somehow, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson had wormed their way into the brains of otherwise relatively sane citizens in the UK, convincing them that they needed to leave the EU so they could go back to measuring things in Imperial gallons, pounds, cups and teaspoons, instead of metric litres and milliliters and grams like the rest of the world – except the US <she rolls her eyes>. WHAT!? This referendum was never supposed to pass! We all thought this was impossible, but then it happened. What now? What happens with the Good Friday Agreement with Ireland? Was anyone thinking of that? Breathe, Kelli. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.

Other than the obvious geopolitical implications of this seismic diplomatic earthquake, did it really matter to me? The two passports I held wouldn’t be impacted by this in the slightest. The UK wasn’t fully in the EU anyway. Yes, they led the bloc on many matters, big and small, but they had never adopted the currency or the immigration flow. They were not in the Schengen zone. So the 90 day rule for me traveling there would still reign. Whatever. I had bigger fish to fry in my country who was about to elect a monster of its own. It would take years before I might care even a little bit about Brexit.

Inching Closer

In 2018 we moved to Spain. The British expats we knew in Spain were still debating the referendum to leave the EU two years after. And it was heated. This vote had torn families apart. It had destroyed long standing friendships. In other words, it was a nightmare. But I understood nightmares because we had the same with the MAGA thing in the US. My own family hosts a MAGA supporter who laughed at us all back then, scoffing at our fears and outrage of what could happen. And then he learned that the not-so-funny joke was on him.

My British friends had families who had to sell their houses here because of Brexit. The consequences were getting closer to us. It was sad. Of course, I mostly stayed out of these debates about Brexit. Yes, I thought anyone who voted for it should have an immediate MRI or CT scan of their brain, but I also understood how disinformation can worm it’s way into people’s subconscious. And how FB contributed to this outcome – in Britain and the US.

Living in Europe, we followed the news on the negotiated exit and the chaos of the UK government and ‘hard Brexit’. Burning it all down seemed to be a feature, not a bug. It was like watching a slow motion train crash. You could see it coming from a long way off, but no amount of shouting from the EU warning the Brits of impending disaster could stop their eventual self-inflicted wounds. <she shakes her head, yet again>

But, what did I care? Even after ‘Brexit’ finally happened in 2021, it didn’t really impact me. Except for things we ordered on Amazon. We stopped buying anything from the UK. It always took longer and sometimes it never arrived. There is a whole world to purchase from. Why the UK thought they were the only show in town was beyond me.

Wait What?!

So Brexit seemed like someone else’s problem. Until it was my problem. The rolling shit show of Brexit just keeps on giving. From afar, it might seem like Brexit already happened. But there you’d be wrong. The Brexit negotiated by the UK was more of a slow-rolling dumpster fire or a really bad divorce. Or a combo of both. They wanted to get rid of anything having to do with the EU, but it was more complicated than they thought. As a result, they cut off their nose to spite their face – as grandma used to say. And they insisted that all trading with the EU would be under their rules. Creating unprecedented bureaucracy, and that is saying something. Brits were ‘taking back control’ after all. And this meant friction at every turn. British companies wanting to import goods from the continent would find it had become so costly and cumbersome that the EU didnā€™t want to trade with them. This was supposed to mean that British farmers would make more money as their produce would be first to market. Except, the cost of producing food in the UK has skyrocketed since leaving the EU.

It turns out that growing tomatoes in an English winter doesn’t really work. Growing anything in winter in the UK is rather a stretch. And they wouldn’t have the workers from Eastern Europe to pick their crops anyway because they ditched free movement. Hmmm, it sounds like the US’s problem, too. But I digress. The Brits need produce grown by southern EU countries. But with their new ‘taking back control’ policies, importing tomatoes, and anything else perishable, isn’t profitable for EU growers. So the UK can’t get cheap EU fruit and veg or French cheeses like before. And there are a hundred other examples of how this just keeps getting worse.

The new mounting paperwork checks needed expensive new shiny IT systems. But the UK government implemented these policies and left Britain and the EU without the ability to process this ridiculous paperwork electronically. They branded the EU bullies, but they did it to themselves as the EU leadership’s jaws dropped at how insane it all was. The EU gave the UK all kinds of extensions, even when the UK government didn’t want them. But this year, the EU has implemented the asked for Brexit importation agreement. And now I can finally hop into this Brexit debate because the Brits have royally screwed me!

Throw The Book At Me

As most of the readers of this blog know, seven months of the year I stamp pilgrim passports at my gate for Pilgrims walking past on their way to Santiago de Compostela. And, as I am doing this I sell copies – a lot of copies – of my book, as well. It’s great! But I have to order those books from the publisher in the UK. That is where they are printed. And now? Do. Not. Get. Me. Started.

This weekend I was notified that my latest shipment of 500 books are stuck in customs because, unlike last year, I have to jump through paperwork HELL due to Brexit customs rules. Wait, What?! I’m not British. I didn’t vote for this stupid thing. But no. I reached out to the printer in the UK and they told me I now have to supply a mountain of paperwork to get my books. What half of these forms are for, I have no idea. I must write them a letter to tell them the story of what I am doing with these books – what?!? – and why they are vital for me to receive them. I have to explain that people, wait for it, read books? Not kidding. In a letter. As in ‘Dear Customs Person’. Seriously. Is this 1824, instead of 2024? What is the publishing industry in the UK going to be reduced to?

It’s taken weeks to get this far. I kept trying to track my shipment but it’s stuck in the UK. I reached out to the publisher and asked for help. They are trying to find a different printer in Italy so I never have to go through this again. Apparently, my situation of selling an English language book in Spain is somewhat unique. But still. Hopefully, I will never have to order books from the UK, ever again. But it makes me think. As voters, we sometimes just fly through our ballots. Often, we don’t do the math and extrapolate the far-reaching consequences of our vote – just ‘going with our guts’ or voting based on anger at some shadowy group or policy weā€™ve been whipped up about. Or itā€™s a ā€˜protest voteā€™ against rather than for something. But this vote in the UK, nearly seven years ago, in a country far from me at the time, is now impacting my business. And I’m mad as hell about it.

The UK used to be one of the business and financial centers of the world. But from where I sit they look like diminished fools. I’ve said it before, you can mess with me all day long, but if you mess with my money we’re going to have a problem. And these Brexit court jesters and their antics in the UK aren’t so financially funny anymore. Because now they’ve come for me and my wallet. And Iā€™m just not having it.