Late this afternoon I came to the chilling realization that the account I was reading in my book had actually taken place exactly ten years earlier for a young teacher in the cradle of civilization. As I sat at a coffee shop, not worried at all about gunfire, it reminded me how drastically different my life could look had I been born into a different place. I'm thankful for the blessings of security and safety that I've known, but desperate to be repeatedly shaken from the comfortable ignorance it affords.
Samia had finished teaching a class. It was late afternoon on the Tuesday before Easter. As she stepped outside, she instinctively listened for any sounds of gunfire or fighting. "If I'd heard any shooting, I would have headed to the basement." The street was quiet, with only a single boy on the sidewalk. As she headed for her car, which was parked on the Jerusalem-Hebron road, she heard the distinctive whistle of a grenade, and an explosion knocked her to the ground.It took a moment for her ears to clear after the initial blast before she realized she was screaming. But no one seemed to hear. The street was deserted. She looked at her legs and saw they were covered with blood. Unable to stand up, she crawled to her car, climbed into the driver's side, and drove herself toward downtown Bethlehem to the hospital, which was only a mile away. That night a doctor removed ten pieces of shrapnel from her legs."Two pieces of shrapnel are still in my foot," Samia said. She slipped her left foot out of her sandal so we could see the ugly red scar on her big toe."Besides those injuries, how are you doing?" I asked."I still have nightmares," she said, fighting back tears. "The next day, while I was in the hospital, there was a terrible shelling of Beit Jala. They brought a boy into my room; he died from injuries."I asked about the boy she'd seen on the street just before the grenade blast. "Someone told me that he had only six pieces of shrapnel. But his injuries were much more serious than mine."We were quiet for a moment, reflecting on the terror this gentle woman had endured. Then she said, "Two days later I walked over to Rachel's Tomb, from where the soldiers had launched the grenade. I walked right up to them and showed them the wounds that they had inflicted. They just laughed at me and told me to go away."By the way she spoke, it was clear that the mocking laughter of the soldiers was more painful than the physical injuries she had endured.
Light Force: A Stirring Account of the Church Caught in the Middle East Crossfire, by Brother Andrew
If the subject interests you, I urge you to read this book. If you know of any other resources to help an inquisitive fool better understand the mysteries of Middle East conflict, please share!
