As I write this from the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, it is 1:47 AM. It is an airport like any other, with people astoundingly asleep on the bare floor whilst their travel company looks on at the other customers also awaiting an early flight. Only a few hours ago I was riding in my best friend’s car to the airport with the window down and the warm wind blowing for the last time. A few hours before that, I was in the restaurant of the National Hotel of East Jerusalem with another dear friend and her sister. As I looked out into the view of distant mountains and the mellow blend of the creamy afternoon colors of the sky, I smiled and felt a drop of pure happiness expand in graceful sweeping.
With bright eyes that have seen the truth, I breathed to my friends in front of me, “I feel like I’m just beginning my life.” In a trance-like haze I felt the surreality of returning home after half a year spent away reconfiguring and challenging myself, challenging others, fighting with others, laughing with others, meeting tremendous people and ignorant ones; a snapshot moment recorded in the eternal wells of my memory. The sharp tones of how the lighting fell on all of us and the sounds of our voices touching in the magic between us transported me into a dream world where I swam through every measured frame of time, gliding from one lovely moment to the next in glistening effervescence– every minute detail designed for our peaceful parting. I’m not being melodramatic when I say it was a nirvana of sorts.
“In less than 24 hours I will be home” I said as if it were a ridiculous line God had written for me. It’s always momentous moments of promised change and grand goodbyes that fill me with the feeling of being one with the world and participating in its exact pace, which no one ever does. For some reason, six months was meant to feel like a difference of mere seconds. The time today flew by like regular last days do and days no one notices, but the difference is that it melted towards me the way I wanted it to. It didn’t even matter anymore the days I spent at home lazy or unsocial because everything repaired itself. Every base I ever felt I missed was covered and every time I was annoyed with myself for wasting a day was forgiven. I didn’t need to see Jordan, Nablus, Jenin, or Gaza, and other scattered oases of Israel yet, because I know I’m coming back and I know that when I do, I won’t be the same; nothing will.
“It doesn’t feel like I’m going home. It feels like I’ll be back next week.”
I believe that every time God blinks, we feel it in the form of time “ flying.” When something feels “just like yesterday,” maybe it was. Undeniably, time is in many ways a restriction or boundary that keeps us in line and governs us by a scheduled mindset because we make it so. But what if we broke it more often? What if we were more spontaneous? What if we thought and lived outside the 24 hour system sometime?
I am not overcome with the sadness of leaving nor with the excitement of homecoming. I am not necessarily less afraid of what’s to come, but wiser about the reality that we shall meet again. And when we do, I promise you my dears that I will know Arabic and better my Hebrew and we will converse in your mother tongue all the complexities of the universe, ones we always pondered but could only vocalize in my English. The infinities of space shall remain the same while the distance between us will only ever be a few hours of a day. But then again, what is a day when we experience temporal eternity in the blessed unions of each other?
Bisou, bisou, Israel and Palestine.
Nikko Espina