EcoME at Last

It’s been a while since I’ve written the last blog, so here is a bit of a synopsis of my adventure thus far, as written for a reading by Don LaFontaine: (We left young Rachel on a blustery Christmas Eve. Christmas offered a beautiful exploration of the Old City and Rachel’s spiritual identity, with a bit of existential confusion thrown in on the side. She met a stranger who invited her to an eco-village near the Dead Sea for a work-party weekend. In the final moments of their spontaneous plans, the stranger switched the agenda, finding young Rachel at an overnight peace party on the outskirts of Jerusalem dancing with the forest fairies and desperately seeking a place to sleep. Waking unrested yet ambitious, Rachel came to find her new stranger friend in the arms of a long-lost love, with whom he decided to stay rather than proceed on to the village. Rachel received directions from the reincarnation of Michael Jackson, and decided to proceed alone. We last left Rachel as she was disembarking from the bus and pushing open the gate of the village…) Thanks, Don. You’re out of this world.

I walked across the courtyard to a massive open-air complex, encased in palm frond fences and capped by a tin roof. Any doors to the rooms were tapestries and nets, complementing the airy, Middle Eastern peace vibe that was already emanating from the wafting incense and the soft swagger of the residents roaming around the facility. I walked around to the left and found three compost toilets with brightly painted doors made from desert flotsam. I poked my head into a lounge room lined with pillows and floor mats. To the left was a stand-alone kitchen closed in by mesh netting, which is where I found Arni – a nomad biking to different eco-villages around Israel with a bunch of environmentally conscious adventurers.  

I’d arrived just in time to help Arni heat up the Arabian coffee and cut up kanafeh (Gesundheit!). Arabian coffee is a super strong espresso-esque powder stirred with sugar into a tiny heating pitcher on the stove. It’s served in tiny shot glasses throughout the day. And kanafeh is a gummy goat cheese dessert coated in sweet orange goo and what I believe might be pistachios. It’s delicious. We carried both to the rest of the group sitting in a circle in the orange sand.

Arriving during the mid-morning break proved the perfect time to get introductions to the two German guys – one on break from university and the other an incredibly mature 17-year-old doing some soul searching, the Italian and Israeli ladies accompanying Arni on the bike tour, three Palestinian guys, Igo from Jerusalem, and EcoME staff members Rotem and Shlomi. Shlomi was toting his four-year-old son whose favorite game was to gain a running start and launch himself onto anyone in the vulnerable position of a post-meal catnap.

After the snack, we divided into teams and I was partnered with a young Palestinian named Yosef to build a fence. Yosef and I silently wrapped wire between posts and wove giant palm fronds through the wires. Our lack of a common language gave me plenty of time to daydream…and to overanalyze our work dynamic. He worked faster than I did and hardly looked at me. My head spun with concerns about my low-cut T-shirt and how to communicate with him and what he was thinking about working alongside a woman. These questions were not totally groundless fixations. The unique space of EcoME has strict rules on attire, alcohol, weapons (duh), and sexual conduct, so that everyone from all religions and cultural norms can feel welcome and safe here. If word gets out that EcoME is a place where visitors hook up, women from some of the Palestinian villages might get a bad reputation for coming here. If alcohol is served on the premises, Muslims might feel less comfortable participating; so the rules are clearly defined and adhered to by all who share the space.

Despite my compulsive ruminations and our complete lack of verbal exchange, Yosef and I worked well together. We created a system of wrapping the wire and passing the fronds to each other. Sweating silently in the desert heat, we managed to reach a stopping point just before lunch, which he indicated to me by dropping his tools and walking away.

I want to provide a bit of background: In 1993, the Oslo Accords divided areas of Palestine into three zones: A, B, and C, agreeing that Israel would return certain zones after certain amounts of time. Zones A are major cities like Jericho and Ramallah that are fully Palestinian and super off limits to Israelis. B zones are under Palestinian authority at a civil level, and joint Palestinian and Israeli security control. Israelis are not supposed to have access to Zone B, either, but regulation is less strict here. Zone C is under full Israeli control and was supposed to be handed over to Palestine in 1999. The terms of the Oslo Accords were never actually fulfilled. So even though Zone C is still under Israeli authority, it is densely populated by both Palestinians and Israeli settlers without any checkpoints. Since the agreement was never completed, the zones simply succeeded in creating physical barriers between communities. Woohoo. EcoME is in a Zone C – a safe space for all created in a no-man’s land.

After a presentation and communal vegetarian meal later that evening, I was offered coffee by Monir – one of the founders of the establishment. We stood under the stars and he asked me what I was doing here. It came back to the question of my religion, and considering the environment, I figured it would be safe for me to divulge my complicated background and philosophy. Monir smiled and explained how a mutt such as myself can be a Muslim, too. The idea that an indescribable God is a part of all of us and every religion on earth is a significant tenet of Islam. I felt like I was sitting alongside Pi and his tiger in their lifeboat. The conversation brought me one step closer to understanding everything and nothing at all.

After we’d gotten through religion, cultural norms of the woman’s hijab, and the history of EcoME; after my shot of coffee was gone and I’d given up sucking at the grinds for the last drops of liquid, my fence buddy showed up with his brother. We proceeded to have an Arabic-English conversation among the four of us about our backgrounds and mostly about the mishaps and frustrations of language barriers. (Yet another barrier.) They showed me pictures from the restaurant where they work and of their little brother smoking a cigarette and of the winter storm. It was the first time I’d spoken to a Palestinian, let alone three.

We worked on another fence later in the weekend. It seemed ironic that in an attempt to create harmony and openness, we continued to work on fences, but I tried not to read too much into it. (And after ripping a giant hole in the crotch of my jeans on some barbed wire, suddenly worrying about my low-cut shirt seemed totally insignificant. It’s all about perspective, I guess.) Saturday afternoon was set aside for a hike in the desert. Thirteen of us walked along the stark terrain until the rusty dunes started to drop into canyons. We dodged hundreds of families and children all taking a Saturday stroll and gingerly climbed up and down huge rock faces using the metal ladder prongs imbedded in the boulders. After a few days’ rain in far off cities, these canyons burst to life in flash floods, scooping up the ignorant, the arrogant, and the inanimate alike and racing them for miles through the desert. But for us, the desert was dry and docile with occasional pools of deep, cold water being traversed by tourists and local families playing pass-the-baby.

We stopped for a lunch of sliced veggies, pita, and tahini and watched the pigeons fight over their own lunches in the caves overhead. Upon exiting the rocky maze, we passed an oasis of lush green plants and large, gorgeous homes. The area was surrounded by a fence with barbed and motion-sensing wires. Now, Shlomi said brazenly, you know what a settlement looks like. These compounds belong to Israeli citizens – typically Zionists who believe that the land belongs to the Jews. From what I understand, settlements are technically illegal. But the Israeli government is bound by law to protect its citizens, so it gives those who choose to create a settlement a slap on the wrist and then siphons its military and natural resources to the protect them in their new home.

We returned to EcoME and took some down time to nap, chat, and process. I wandered the perimeter, looking through our fence out at the desert hills and the Palestinian city of Jericho in the distance. I waited for dinner and darkness, when the buses would started running again after Shabbat, to figure out how to get back to Jerusalem. We peeled and sliced carrots and lounged in the main hall. Rotem tormented us with tales of snakes in his tent and the monstrous camel spider in the kitchen that made grown men scream (look it up. or don’t. bleah.)

As I packed my belongings from the open hall where I’d slept alongside the bike ladies and the late-arriving Scandinavian professors, I was mentally preparing myself for my next leg of the adventure - a long wait outside of Café Café for either a bus or a friendly passerby. Maybe the camel would be there to keep me company. Arni interrupted my thoughts to tell me that the three German kids who had joined us for dinner were headed back to Jerusalem, past my street, right now. Bidding farewell to the space and its eclectic inhabitants, I noted the full circle of serendipity that had brought me to EcoME and was leading me home.