Finding Qalandiya

Let’s make this the week we start befriending ‘the other.’

There are so many different groups of people in our fractured world. Rich and poor; young and old; workers and unemployed people; political parties; Muslims; Christians; Jewish people; atheists. Even within religious traditions there are factions, and disagreements over how to interpret sacred texts. We tend, for our own sense of identity and security to regard those who do not think as we do as ‘the other’, or even ‘the enemy.’ 

Yet at the same time we despair when we hear news of war, and terrorism and cruelty. How can we make a difference, we wonder? Is there anything we can do?

‘It is important that we understand each other,’ wrote Daniela Norris a secular Jew living in Israel to her new Palestinian friend Shireen Anabtawi, a Muslim. The remarkable exchange of these letters between these women, written in search of understanding was later published as Crossing Qalandiya.

As we eavesdrop on the correspondence passing between Palestinian territory and Israel we watch the relationship between the two women, who first met in Geneva, growing in warmth, and friendship until it becomes a sisterly love. They share everyday things – news of potty training, and school, family events, details of religious festivals in each community.

But they also speak honestly and unapologetically about their own beliefs and experiences of the long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They tell it like it is, and in so doing each woman is forced to examine her own preconceptions. All this is done in a spirit not of anger, but of attentive listening and warmth.

As the friendship develops, Shireen writes that she had ‘always thought of all Israelis as enemies,’ but now ‘I see you as simply people.’ And Daniela admits ‘I am opening my eyes and facing reality, asking questions and admitting that you are perhaps a little bit right after all.’

One phrase in this correspondence particularly struck me. Shireen says ‘If we can understand each other there is a chance for mutual understanding between our peoples after all.’ Surely if enough of us commit to befriending ‘the other’, even befriending ‘the enemy’, in honesty, humility and love then we would see our society and our world changing?

So let’s commit to take every opportunity we have this week to start befriending the other. It may be as simple as stopping to talk to people you walk past every day, or having lunch with a colleague. We may decide to invest more time in getting to know a teenager or an older person. We may have an opportunity of interacting with someone who is a Muslim, a humanist, a Buddhist.

And I think it’s important for us to understand ‘the other’ within the Christian community, to learn through gentle conversations why people hold different views from us on interpreting the Bible, and thus radically opposed positions on, for example, gay sexuality.

The aim of this befriending is not to convert your new friend to your way of thinking or to iron out differences but simply to understand and to love, each seeing the other as a fellow human being with an identical longing for meaning.

And yes, sometimes we will find that ‘the other’ whom we seek to befriend simply doesn’t want, or is for the present unable to respond to our friendship. In such situations we will keep in touch, and keep the door open.

The Qalandiya of the book’s title is one of the checkpoints between Israeli and Palestinian territory, the place where Daniela and Shireen eventually meet. It symbolises all our meeting places between cultures, the risky ground where an enemy becomes a friend.

And don’t forget that all of us have to some extent an inner ‘other’ – the part of ourselves we don’t like, and can’t acknowledge because to do so would be too disturbing; an identity we can’t accept but which won’t stay completely submerged; fears of which we’re barely conscious.

This inner other awaits our befriending. Each of us if we are to become whole must get in touch with this shadow self, and find an inner Qalandiya where, in encountering what I’ve hidden, I become more fully myself.

The message of Christian faith is that the Other, in whom there is no shadow, who already knows and loves us as we are, seeks to befriend us. The Other invites us to be open to divine encounter, saying ‘It’s important that we understand each other.’

As Christians, we are utterly convinced that in Jesus, this Divine Friend came to us, that Jesus himself is our Qalandiya.

So let’s begin now. Let’s make today the day we start befriending the other. For ‘it is important that we understand each other.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 5th February 2015)