Ripples

My mother requested recently that I keep writing on here, even though my adventures are less worldly these days. I have hesitated, wondering what I have to share. I left with the intent of being able to come home and tell people, show them, that the Middle East is not this scary place of car bombs and terrorists. I wanted to be that person that my friends know so they can say "this friend of mine was actually there and she said ____." I wanted to change some opinions, even if I was only a ripple. Ripples spread you know.

Now that I'm back, I find myself often wary of talking about my travels. I was warned by a friend in Syria who's daughter faced a similar situation when she came to the US originally. She found she became defensive and frustrated with American views of the region, to the point of anger and arguments. I headed his warning, but it is hard. I find myself defensive, passionate, and frustrated but I am trying my best to reign in the anger and deflate the arguments. I want to be that ripple, but I am afraid of the responses that will incite my passions and manifest arguments.

I watched the news with Iman and her mother, and though I little understood the dialog, I understood the videos of dead children in Gaza, killed by bullets, not shrapnel or rocket fire. I watched Syrian men and women weep openly as they watched the death toll rise while the violence continued with no sign of ebbing. One night, about a month after I returned home, I looked up those videos online. I watched one of them over and over, tears on my cheeks, feeling helpless and frustrated. So yes, I'm passionate and probably a little biased. I know, logically, that had I been in Israel and seen images of children killed by a Qassam rocket I'd probably have opposite passions and biases. Perhaps I'd see events differently. But "we see things not as they are, but as we are." I can not change what I see.

I saw an acquaintance a couple of weeks ago for the first time since I returned. She asked where I'd been and I told her. She cracked a smile and said "Cool, did you get bombed?" I was at a loss for how that statement was funny. I hate to admit, but I did a poor job of checking my anger on that one. I'll have to try better in the future. It's tiring sometimes, answering questions that imply such unfounded biases, but I realize that this is exactly what I need to do. Those biases only seem so unfounded to me because I have spent the last couple of years learning about the culture, the history, and the peoples of the Middle East, not even including the months I spent there. I have to try harder, if I want to be that ripple.

So here's to that. I've been planning this whole time to do something with my pictures, not for financial reasons, I'm not looking to become a famous photographer or any such thing but simply to get them seen, to expand the ripple. A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say. I hope to say some with mine. Its time I take this project off the back burner and start dedicating some serious time to it, so here goes. I'll update this site with photo projects as I finish them, or perhaps even as works-in-progress, and updates on my luck/tenacity in getting them shown publicly somehow. Until then, thanks to those who have followed my posts during my trip; it helped, immensely, knowing other people were traveling with me.