famous last words

Party Line: 'Israeli military officials have been quoted as saying Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had backed a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure".' -bbcnews.com.

Yes. Of course, the terrorist infrastructure is at least nearly all of the population of Palestine, if not the Arab world. I mean, the people feeding the terrorists, housing the terrorists, voting for the terrorists, cheering on the terrorists, the people giving the terrorists every confidence in the world that they are freedom fighters. And if we're to talk of brainwashing, then the entire population is brainwashed. So, very well, we have a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure" in Gaza--but the Palestinians already knew that. What is limited, Mr. Olmert?

Edit: '"We still hope to return safely our kidnapped soldier," Daniel Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States, told CNN Tuesday night from Washington. Israel will call its operation off if Shalit is released safely, he added.' Yes, that's right, an innocent, I mean, almost unarmed, not-at-the-time-intending-to-engage-in-combat Israeli soldier has been brutally kidnapped by fanatical barbaric scum! How could we not take out a power plant essential to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? (I always thought we captured soldiers, who were then regularly exchanged with the enemy for one's own prisoners, and it was civilians who were held hostage, usually by criminals for money, but I guess the good old days are over. Ah, the elusive perks of nationhood...)

Famous Last Words (Small Gifts): I went to Egypt without a camera, which I think puzzled some of my friends who saw how zealous I got with one in my hand. I had some fuzzy romantic ideas about writing everything down instead of taking pictures, developing my memory or something. I don't think that worked out, I didn't write much most of the year.

When my parents visited, though, they left the camera with me and I tried to make up for a year's worth of not taking any pictures in a few weeks. I never took my camera to my friend Omar's house, though. I'd remembered from refugee studies class tales of rich boys who went places and did things for the sake of their own sparkling moral resume. For fear of becoming one of those, I never brought my camera to Omar's house or asked for pictures of his friends or apartment.

About a week before I left, though, Omar took a one-week course at AUC on woman-related refugee issues. A couple days into the course, he asked if I could borrow my camera for the last day to take pictures of his friends and teachers there. I gladly obliged and showed him how to work the camera. He snuck out of the room and stole a couple shots of his roommates. Any unplanned picture he took was invariably hilarious to everyone. I was stunned and warmed when I realized I had gotten what I had wanted, and didn't even have to ask.

We sat down for a little dinner, and then started talking about money. I told him how the amount of money I had made me nervous in Egypt; I didn't quite say that I felt guilty as I saw myself spending half a month's rent on a phone bill or dinner and a sheesha. He told me about an American he'd known before me, who sounded a lot like the gregarious and carefree Christian who I'd seen championed at my new communities in San Diego. I didn't know if he was a Christian or not; I'd always assumed he wasn't, but I thought I could see the way he talked, and the way his luxury extended deep into the lives of those he was around. i was touched and regretted not being bolder with my offering.

Omar seemed to think money was for spending, and it was as simple as that. It was odd to have Egypt-raised Sudanese telling the individualist American, "What you do with your money is your business, why should I care?" And to think I'd imagined him jealous. I'd even created a divide in my social world, in what business I could do with Omar and what I'd better do alone. I lived in his neighborhood, and that was where we always hung out. I would have never invited him to the internet cafe with me. Was that my hood?

I think we both felt the warmth of the conversation, and he suggested we go to the ahwa (coffeshop) where I would meet him when I didn't go to his apartment. We sat down for sheesha and tea and found a couple of his roommates there, and the attendent began to give me the enthusiastic foreigner's ribbing he always gave me, every time like it was my first time there. Omar must have still had the camera, because he took it out and started showing his roommates. They began running around, taking pictures of the attendent, themselves, the street, giddy at 4 AM. I was stunned. A remote ecstasy slipped its finger in my pocket and whispered in my ear, this is the way things work.

Reverse Culture Notice: I'd been surprised to here rumblings of the reality of 'reverse culture shock' from some of my friends that had been home for a few weeks. I'd expected that reverse culture shock was another entitling Western invention. Perhaps 'shock' is just a bit to strong of a term, but you certainly notice a thing or two.

My dad was at the airport to pick me up, and when we got to the car, I asked to drive the new car. He was surprised I was in a state to drive but allowed it. As soon as I started backing out I began to chuckle. After taking trains and cabs the whole year, the idea that I was driving a car, for two people, and then parking it was amazingly absurd. I kept pushing away that I was feeling any sort of 'reverse culture' systems only to begin chuckling again.

As I rolled the car over the hills on the way to my house, I noticed the green splashing out of the medians and sidewalks of Pleasanton's wide, manicured roads--it was like Reagan said, how Pleasanton is beautiful. I remembered the brown piles of buildings and people I had inhabited just a day before, and I began wondering how these two places existed on the same planet. I futzed around with a couple Communist thoughts-- you know, about world systems and how my Nikes are destroying the world--but those weren't really enough anymore. Oh, sure, there's money behind every picture in the place, but it couldn't be just that. The extraterrestriality of Cairo wasn't just a matter of class, but style, of culture and religion and expectations. Is that why we call them aliens? Is it that we just don't know how other people live, or what?