Dear beautiful courageous amazing activists from the Women in Black 13th Conference in Jerusalem, in august 2005.
Sunday afternoon on the 21st of August 2005 I was on the Tel Aviv airport. I passed all the checkpoints without stress. A young white man asked where I had been, I told him I had visited my feminist friends Haya Shalom and Yvonne Deutsch.... Then he asked if I was traveling.... then I said I visited Feminist Center in Haifa Isha l’Isha. Yes that was all true, and this is not the first time I had to omit to name friends of the women from the Other side... Arabiya Mansour, Nabila Espanyoli, Amneh Badran...
I was sitting in the airport café thinking about passing borders during the war in my homeland. I remembered many, and then one of them was in December of 1999. It was after the NATO bombing of the Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, and expulsion of the Albanian citizens from Kosovo by Milosevic. So, by December Kosovo was autonomous from Milosevic, and 70% of citizens of Kosovo of Serb ethnic origin were expelled by Albanians. It is exactly then that my feminist friend Bobana Macanovic and me (courageous butches with Serb ethnic names!) decided to go to the Kosovo Human Rights Conference. It was cold, we did not have any buses nor any traveling mean to get to the new-made border, much less to the town we headed to - Pristina. So we walked the last half an hour to get to Milosevic border police. Then, they could not believe it! What are you two doing here!? A white Serb policeman said: Everyone is going out, and you are going in! It took me some time to understand that “everyone” meant Serbs only. Then we had to lie again. We could not say that we are going to the conference, nor that we are visiting our Albanian Kosovar friends, Igballe Rogova, Nazlie Bala, Vjollca Krasniqi, Vjolca Dobruna.... but we said we have some friends, which then meant Serbian friends. So it was. How many times we had to lie on the border in order to come and meet the women from the Other side? I was thinking in that plastic café, that once for all I have to decide not to feel guilty that I cannot mention the names of my friends.... Arabia Mansour, Iman Qasis, Igballe Rogova.... precisely because I want to see them. I don’t want to risk and be deported back. I want to embrace my sisters, to see their faces and be there. Since fascists are between us – I need to lie.
Here I was drinking cappuccino. The airport is new and modern. The lines do not carry any burden of the past, history of occupation of women and Others, no religious metaphors. And then, all of a sudden the music burst out from all the sides. Unknown and strong. Near me a woman and a man appeared on a small improvised stage in the center of the airport plain space. Both were dressed in a golden body suits. Just plain lines. No hair - both were shaved to 1 cm. No words, no language of any kind. No traces of cultures. They performed body movement between them. He was taking her gently all around their bodies, she was being in the air, moving in the space... two white middle aged, middle class woman and a man. I realized my eyes are in tears. They two have time for art. They come from the world of beauty and welfare. Their performance is free, short, nice. What contrast between the shining pavement, the figures of a simple dance, and dust villages in Palestina, never ending. My mind was full of the faces of women in the Check points, the ones who are strict, worrying, serious, somewhat fearful, also tired and exhausted. No traces of joy and free beauty on the checkpoint. The people there are those excluded from the airport I am sitting in. The wall of 8 meters is in their body. Killing is the ancient strategy of war, not used in this one. I can feel this inner impossibility to move over: fascist disguised methods for manufacturing nausea and helplessness. Three well known methods: threatening to death, isolating, exhausting. This is all well known in the theory of partnership violence, as much as of concentration camps.
Images in dust.... children waving at buses in the outskirts of Ramallah, before they start throwing stones. The words of a young Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship who told her mother she fell in love with a woman: My mother said, You will be dead - this was two years ago, and I am still alive! A woman of my age, but looking older, whose name I forgot, who said it took her 24 years to finish sociology, out of which she was seven years in prison! The words of Coordinator of the Palestinian SOS Hotline for battered women SAWA, Ohaila Shomar, who said to us: We had a dream, that we will make a Network of all SOS Hotlines, Israeli, Palestinian and religious ..... and then the Second Intifada started!
I remembered that seven years ago, with Marte Prekpalaj from Kosovo we two had a dream to bring one day all the kids from the school where she was a director in a small village in Albanian part of Kosovo, to the ZOO that is just around the corner of my address in Belgrade. Ah, we were dreaming! And now, seven years later the Albanian citizens from Kosova, most of them, do not have the passport to come to Belgrade, there is no direct bus nor any other public transport to Albanian towns in Kosova. Nothing. In Europe 2005. No trespassing! Apart from courageous few.
Still the images were coming back: Activists women in Nazareth are working together in the north of Israel! We know it is possible. Palestinian lesbians of the group ASWAT in Haifa have plans for the future. Ah, how strong they are! The day before, the feminist anarchist from Tel Aviv, Ivy Sichel, brought the artists to draw the wall of a Palestinian family whose house is just walled down. They cross over twice a week. Women in Black and Jerusalem Center for Women have worked hard to put us all together! Super!
Our conference was great! Nabila Espanyoli, Palestinian feminist reminded us about occupation in each of us. Hagar’s mother, Hagit Grootkerk arranged the grave of our Hagar Roublev, one of the wonderful founders of Women in Black, with love and care. Dalit Baum told us that we have to move from protest to resistance. Gila Svirsky reminded all of us of our bravery and hard work. Rela Mazali, Israeli anti-militarist said out loud BOYKOTT ME!
So, here I was on the airport - with modern lines, modern dance, no traces of slavery - full of tears, full of dreams, of my own and also of other women.
