The View From Here features the writing of Joanna Chen, based out of Israel’s Ella Valley.
By Joanna Chen
Stand with your legs apart. The earth here demands a different way of walking, a more mindful one. Wear what your mother would call “sensible shoes,” and make sure the laces are tied tightly. It is crucial they do not dangle; tuck them in at the ends. Now put on the crampons — spiky, metal contraptions that should fit your shoes snugly. Now you’re two inches higher above the surface of the earth. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
It’s hard to miss the American and Israeli flags flying on the main highway that connects Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Too bad President Trump missed those flags, fluttering bravely in the summer breeze. He went by helicopter up to Jerusalem, but the highway was closed anyway, just in case. Trump touched down in Israel yesterday, and tension was high, more in anticipation for the razzle-dazzle than anything else. “We will get it done,” Trump promised Palestinian President Abbas earlier this month, and I wonder today what exactly Trump thinks he might get done here. What kind of a haphazard, hocus-pocus plan does he have up his sleeve that might succeed where others have failed? Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
Nothing much happens in the quiet village where I live in the Ella Valley of Israel. In many ways, it’s like a modern shtetel — houses clustered together in a valley dotted with corn and melon fields in season, perched on the edge of a forest ripe with secrets waiting to be discovered. It’s named Sarigim, the Hebrew word for “tendrils,” in reference to the nearby vine groves that burst with purple sweetness in the summer, their wispy limbs curling around wooden trellises. There’s a single supermarket where people buy milk and eggs and stand around gossiping, and on Fridays they buy fresh-baked pastries and braided challah bread that fill the air with the scent of home. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
I don’t support rallies for peace and I don’t belong to any peace organizations. Working in the Jerusalem bureau of Newsweek for 15 years conditioned me to stand on the sidelines, and simply observe. I followed with intensity everything going on around me. From 1999 until 2011, I reported on rallies in Tel Aviv, Hebron, and Jerusalem. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
It’s raining on our first morning in Ireland but my daughter and I struggle into Dublin city for a little exploration. Armed with an umbrella, bundled in jackets, scarves, and boots, we wander through Grafton Street, Dublin’s main drag of high-end stores. People with rustling carrier bags bump up against us; I feel trapped, and long for an escape route. As a child I was fascinated by Lucy’s adventures in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, how she escaped the pressures of war-torn England by traversing the fur coats and entering the wardrobe through to the other side. Here’s the rain, the gloom of existence, and I am about to enter my own wardrobe of escape. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
The last time I drove up this hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem was just over five years ago. In front of me was an Israeli army truck with six beautiful olive trees strapped to it, their trucks thick and gnarled, the dull leaves trembling as the truck lurched up the hill in heavy traffic. I could not take my eyes off those trees, which must have been 60 years old at least. They were not chopped up, but whole and beautiful and vibrant. From where had they been ripped up so meticulously, and where they being taken to so carefully, I wondered. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
I’m sitting in my studio at The Virginia Center for The Creative Arts in Amherst, writing about Jaffa, Israel, where I recently took a course in Arabic. It’s part of a memoir set mostly in Israel, where I now live. A text message pops up on my cell phone from my daughter, Jasmine. I’m OK, don’t worry, the message says. I’m immediately worried. I check the wires and discover there have been three attacks in Israel today. One was in Jaffa, I learn. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
I land in Dulles Airport after a blizzard. A thick layer of snow covers the Lincoln Memorial; the Reflecting Pool glistens with ice. The driver of the shuttle bus notices me taking photos through the window with my iPhone and offers to stop for a minute so I can get a good shot. I start explaining that I’m not interested in the tourist sites; my best photos are the blurry ones in which trees, people, buildings, seem to move, when their outlines are smudged across the frame, when there is something suggestive, something left to the imagination, but the driver has already pulled up to the curb so I snap a couple of photos obediently and say thank you. He seems happy, nods and pulls out again into a road that is strangely empty. It’s President’s Day and the recent storm has kept people indoors. Everything is clean and bright. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
I’m waiting for my friend Nuha at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem. A favored haunt of foreign journalists, I clocked up many hours sitting in the leafy center courtyard over iced tea when I worked for Newsweek. Continue reading
By Joanna Chen
My cousin and his wife are visiting us. It’s been a long time since Steven and I played hide and seek together, growing up in London. When I moved to Israel as a teenager, the connection between us was severed, or so I thought. The few times I saw him over the years on trips to England, we hardly talked. He was a stranger, grown tall, with a gruff voice and a retiring manner. Neither of us could break through the barrier of years on those brief trips, and I don’t believe we really tried. Then last year I visited England on two occasions, and saw him both times. I laughingly told him I would put up curtains in the guest room if he came to Israel. A few days after returning home, his wife, Sue, sent me an email: We’re coming she said, the flights are booked. I was surprised that they would visit after so many years. Continue reading