The Real Behind the Wall Pt2

...Its always the same, after a while you learn to play their little game. Whether it's TSA messing with you in Charlotte as you're flying to L.A. or Miami, or Cleveland or Chicago,it's always the damn power trip. The mind games.

They ask the stupid questions. They do just enough to show you who is REALLY in charge. They talk loud, they act bossy, they act like at any given moment they could arrest you for whatever they want.

They can't.

They want to make you feel like they can, and yet it does'nt work that way in the USA. They might go as far as detaining you, but if they are going to arrest you, they had better have something on you because here in the U.S. there is an entire industry of lawyers who make a living on the power trips of people like that.

See? the problem is, they are counting on the fact that 70% of people at the airport fly an average of once every year at MOST. They are counting on that nervous awkwardness that happens when you're not familiar with a place like the airport, the procedures of the TSA, and the barking of a guy who was a crakhead 24 months ago but now makes $20 an hour to intimidate the average law abiding citizen... But fly long enough, fly 10 or 20 or 50 times a year and pretty soon you realize that these big mouth idiots really have VERY little reason to yell at you (unless you're carrying a gun or doing something stupid).

I've gotten used to barking back when the abuse goes overboard. If I just flew overnight and I'm tired, hungry, sleepy...I talk back, I cop an attitude and I go full on obnoxious and ask for their supervisor.

Thank God for America

Then there are the places that are not America.

Back in the early 2000s I was working in the West Bank "behind the wall", with a high profile executive producer that my network was doing a joint venture with. On that shoot I was the network supervising producer and when the time came to go into the West Bank I decided that that I would leave the crew back in West Jerusalem and run the dang camera myself due to the fact that I was not in the mood to bring a dead cameraman back to the U.S. I figured, everything will be fine, but God forbid... I can't have that one my conscience.



Behind the wall we went. Back then, on the heels of the 2nd Intifada, everyone was always on edge and the threat of violence was ever present. In the West Bank most anything is attainable for the righ price. The reality is that the Executive producer dropped the ball and failed to procure a filming permit for one of the biggest Holy Sites in Bethelehem and because did did'nt have it, he tried to pull a fast one on an Armenian priest so that we could film there...

Bad Idea.

The priests caught on immediately given that the producer gave the priest a location permit for a holy site in Jerusalem. They made a huge stink and called the Palestinian Authority police.

As soon as the police showed up, I tried to be slick and swap the tape in the camera for a blank one. Not slick enought, one of the officeers saw me and came after my tape. I guess we'll just say, I got a little lippy when ORDERED to surrender my video tape to them. I came very very close to getting arrested but at the end of the day, they probably didnt want the hassle of the Israelies from the other side of the fence getting involved and making them release an American...therfore after harrasssing us for about an hour they went ahead and released us. As I walked out of the police station I just had to be an idiot and had to have a staredown contest with the main police big shot that was having a great time trying to scare us.

We left and made our way back to the checkpoint and across the wall and back to the paradise that Jerusalem is compared to the filth and squallor West Bank...

We, of course, left and joined the rest of the crew and for the duration of the trip we were mockingly and lovingly called "the Jailbirds". We came back and we had a fun story to tell. That was September of 2000.

Lesson learned, a funny story to tell, chalk it up to immaturity and a bit of American arrogance that is best left back in the safety of any place that's a borderline theocracy.

The shoot ended successfully, we returned to the U.S. my daughter was born, my sons grew...life happened, my priorities were mismanaged, my marriage failed.

The 2000s were not good to me...

Most of my friends and family know my story and know of the demise of my marriage. The things that led up to it, the mess that or became. It was to this backdrop that my career existed in on the back half of that decade.

Ironically, however, the biggest damage of that season, for me, wasn't even to me personally. When it comes to me, I've always been the type of person who fights with his entire being to save his dignity above all, in spite of what it might be doing to me internally, I don't like to give the adversary (person or circumstance) the satisfaction of seeing me sweat, let alone cry. Nope, I've always tried to deal with it first, then do your mourning, cussing, punching or crying alone and out of anyone's sight if at all possible.

No, the damage and the hurt came in a different manner for me.

The emotional well-being of my children.

My kids grew up without a mother, and in as much as I tried to give them a good life and all the happiness that a single father can drum up for them, the reality is, you're flying on a broken wing. Their entire upbringing happened flying with a broken wing.

You do what you can, you do things that are not ideal, you do the best that you can and you pray that at the end of the day the good times outweigh the bad and that your kids grow to understand that you were doing the best you could with what you had to work with.

You hope that somehow, in some way and by God's grace, they cherish the lemonade that you made them with the lemmons life gave you.

I put up a strong and brave face for my family, for my friends, for the oppossite sex, for my clients....but at the end of the day, I did it for my kids most of all. Children want....need....stability, not only in their lives, but they need at very least the illusion that their parents (especialy a single one), is himself emotionally stable. The world around them can fall apart, if the parents/parent is strong, the world around them keeps turning.

In all reality, the years that followed my divorce I was anything but stable.

My sister came to my rescue during those early days and took my kids to live with her in Alabama while I tried to untangle my existence in the best way that I knew to do back in the seclusion and aloneness of my home in Charlotte, NC.

Work, eat, breathe, sleep....work.

For reasons that are too lengthy to explain in this post (and frankly, inconsequential), I became the default "Israel guy" for (not only) my company, but also for some high profile freelance clients.

From 2006 through 2009 it wasnt unusual for me to fly to Israel with a "to-do" list for 3 and 4 different clients who would give me their lists of interviews and footage to film, and upon returning to the US, they would purchase it from me or pay me for the work. I had a decent thing going.

Soon it became, not just Israel, but other places in the middle east. These were the years of the height of the insurgency in Iraq, the years where Journalists all over the Middle East were at danger of getting used as propaganda beheadings in the style of Daniel Pearl. My friend Mike Cavell was embedded with the 82nd Airborne for NBC, the day he finished his contract and was coming home, his replacement, a 26 year old audio guy, practically still a child, caught himself a bullet with his head and died on his first day in Baghdad. Yeah, the reality of those days.

It was with that backdrop that each time I left for the middle east, I quietly and secretly found myself asking, is it my turn?
Morbid, maybe a bit paranoid, but more than anything?... numb.

The truth is, after a lot of thinking and analyzing, maybe deep down inside I felt like too much of a coward to do it myself, you know, check out...so maybe I felt that if I looked hard enought, someone else would do it for me.

At that point, pretty much anything that I had dreamed of had fallen short, Nashville? that had come and gone. A marriage? Yeah, that ended up dead and rotten, and by now buried. The woman I ran looking for after my divorce... she might as well have been on a different planet, and yet I slept 2 miles from her every night at my parents home when I was in Miami. My children… It was the only dream I still had. It was the only redemption that I could hope for in my future, I am even then given my track record, I just knew that I would mess that up too.

The days moved fast and slow ar the same time...2007, I was missing my children, missing my home in Charlotte, I have no idea why? it wasnt a home anymore, it was a place I went to when I had to work in Charlotte, it was empty, it was desolate, we'd had a broken pipe that flooded the house and made it necessary to gut most of it down to the 2x4s.

I was still better than renting a hotel when in town...so I kept one good usable room during those days. I hated going there. Every where I looked I saw a memory of a different time. It felt like the scene from Braveheart, where the women are out looking for their dead husbands among the after-battle carnage... the aftermath of something that had life once, something that died. It was haunted.

It was in that season that I kept running (and running away)...I used to volunteer to drive instead of fly between Miami, Nashville, and Charlotte.

Being on the road, being in rental cars, being in airports became more of a home than my parents' home (which had become my defacto home)...the little efficiency where I battled my depression...where I used to spend entire days without seeing the light of day, just barely enough time for my kids to see me and keep up the charade that I was in there working, when what I was really doing was battling my demons and counting the seconds to get on the road again...to run again. To run from the reality that i had failed...I had failed at being a husband and a father who could keep his home together for his kids. Had failed and ended up back home at 34 years old having failed at Nashville, at music, at my dreams and now I was a shell of a human being, and whats worse...I had this damned pride which would FORBID me to let anyone see me weak, see me cry, see me angry. No Rudeman...you will drink this cup alone.

So that day came, and I went to Israel...

I had the shopping list. A half a dozen interviews from INSP, John Ankerberg wanted some CDs of Arab music from the shops at the Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem, Jay Sekulow wanted had a list of shots that I was to get while in Tel Aviv...all in all enough time to be there a week... So why did I look up and find myself there 3 weeks later? Because I had run into Hanani (not his real name), and after telling stories and catching up, he told me that if I wanted to extend my stay beyond what the company was paying for, I was welcome to take his guest room south of Jerusalem. Much to my surprise, United Airlines only charged me a minimal charge to reschedule and already obscenely expensive ticket and I ended up staying almost a month.

So that day I crossed the wall...

"Hey Rudy....been nice to know you".... laughed Romi...

"Ha ha....very funny Romi.." I yelled back through the chain link fence of the check point...sometimes I don't gel with Israeli humor like that...the butterflies did a little fly-by in my stomach as I kept walking......"Ana shafium"....I kept rehearsing.

Its astounding the difference that 50 yards makes, no matter how many times I cross to the other side of the wall, I feel like I'm entering a dimensional portal and no sooner am I on the other side of the security fence it feels like I'm in a different country, a different continent, a different century. Israelis (especially in west Jerusalem) appreciate the details that make us and them the same such as landscaping, manicured gardens, clean sidewalks... but 50 yards on the other side? not so much.

The first thing you notice is the disaray, the noise, the street vendors, the cab drivers who are either fighting over you, we're looking every bit as uninterested as the dismal condition of life in the West Bank.

and why exactly was I here today? I had already done my interviews for this trip, the tapes, all safe and sound at Hanani's house... no the truth is, I had heard through the grapevine that in this part of Beit Jala I could get an apartment for literally $150 a month. Really? That was my solution? My end goal was going to be to run to the West Bank and hide away from my life amongst the Palestinians? We think some crazy things when we're not quite ourselves.

could I have pulled it off? Maybe, for a few months anyways. Until Israeli immigration would have flagged me for not leaving Israel and overstaying my visa. I would've had to resort to being an undocumented alien and resorting to the life that Ethiopians in Israel do, that's assuming that the Palestinians didn't find out there was an American, and decided to cash in on me whether it be for ransom, out of spite, or simply for their fun. Regardless, none of those scenarios ended well for me... and yet here I was, delusional.

A sweet, elderly Arab man, probably in his late 60s early 70s, approached me, "you need taxi, sir? Where do you wish to go? I can take you to many beautiful places, Jericho, Neblus, Jenin..."

You know? Somehow they can tell… I don't look that much different than they but they know, they can see an American coming a mile away, and no sooner do they see you the hustle for your dollars begins.

Smiling..."lo lo Shukran Katir, I just need to go to Beit Jala"

"Ah yes, ok, no problem." I'm sure he was disappointed that he wasn't going to make nearly as much money off me but he had a great demeanor anyways and off we went.

it was about this time a little bit of reason started to enter my head, a little bit of the fog started to lift, and I started thinking, and just exactly what am I supposed to tell them in terms of a lease or something of the sort? What am I going to tell my clients back home? What am I going to tell my family? My kids? "I'm sorry family, I've moved to the West Bank".

I was deep in my head when I realized that the cabbie had been talking to me this whole time in his very broken English. I also realized that the entire time I had been on autopilot responding to him like a man does to a woman after 20 years of marriage..."yeah?... reallY?....wow....how about that?" yet i had not heard a single word he was saying.

"...but you are American, yes?"....the question snapped me out of it because I had to somewhat get into character with him..." problem is, by now he knew I was, even if not "white", he knew i was an American for sure...

"I am Bolivian, working in America" trying oh so subtly to switch gears and make my "hispanic accent" a little more evident...

I work for a TV Network in America but i am from Bolivia"

"Oh I see...you do films about the fightting?"...

"oh sometimes....but not usually, usually I do films about the beautiful arab culture, music, way of life"...

I was bordering on overdoing it! scale it back Landa, make it believable... "Oh I see..." said the driver again, this time slightly distracted and looking at his rearview mirror... I thought nothing of it..."so...not your first time in West Bank?"

"oh...no...not even close" I said, trying to sublty convice him that I was not THAT much of a stranger here...

I was about to go into a story about how many times I'd been here, and how I love the Palestinian people and some other BS to keep him from asking more questions, but around this time, his interest in the rearview mirror took over.... "I am sorry, I have to stop car for one minute please"...

What's wrong?"

"Not sure, but I pay for plate yesterday"

Instictively I turned around to see what he was troubled by in his rearview mirror...

The cabbie was getting pulled over,

"Oh great, I can't catch not getting tickets even on the other side of the world" I thought

Two men got out of the vehicle...some kind of a paramilitary vehicle that must have belonged to some military unit at some point in the late 80s or early 90s, retrofitted with a little blue "cop light" that was supposed to separate them from paramilitary to "police"....didn't matter, paramilitary, tanzib, Palestinian Authority...all the same thing. Arafat had been their leader.

I looked out the window and saw the cabbie speaking very spiritdely to the two men, one of the cops looked like an older man, prbably in his late 50s or early 60s, definitely a career cop or military, he didnt look like he wasnt being serious...then...something happened that gave me a pit in my stomach...they all turned and looked right at me...

The older cop pushed past the cab driver and headed for the back door of the cab...the cab driver froze, "Great!" I thought..."...this guy is about to get his car confiscated, and i'm stuck here wherever the hell I am".

Door gets pulled open... "Get out of the car!!" yelled the cop..

"What's the proble...." I said as I began to comply and step out of the car, but the words never fully came out.

It felt like a punch to my chest but it was more done to grab my shirt...I'm not a small guy and yet he pulled me SO hard out of the car that I ended up on the floor. Its the smallest details that stay in your mind...that your mind has cued up for "autoplay" ...as my chest hit the ground I saw my i-Pod Shuffle fly out of my pocket."I probably wont see that again..." was all I thought.

Before I could even muster other than "what the f...?" he was already yelling at me to stand up...more talkng in Arabic, my driver protesting, the second cop yelling at him. "You give security checkpoint bad information!! you are a liar! Give me passport!". Quickly I obliged. "give me REAL passport!!" he yelled. "Here it is!" I yelled back. Give me "American passport NOW!" he yelled again. "You are American!". "I am not! I am Bolivian!" He looked at my passport. More Arabic talking. "We go!" he said and motioned me toward the vehicle...the back of the vehicle. Before I stepped up into this old war SUV, he ordered me to place my hands in front and he went ahead and slapped cuffs on me. TIGHT.

"Why are you arresting me?!!" I demanded, "IN THE JEEP!" he yelled and steadied me by the arm as I climbed in. In the process of doing this, he had dismissed the cabbie, and now the other cop was getting in the driver side, leaving me and the other cop alone.

"You make big mistake" he said, "next time you are prepared to lie, you bring correct passport. With American passport I cannot arrest you, NOBODY cares about Bolivian in West Bank!", he said laughing, "No one will come to look for you, no one will even notice you are gone!". My stomach sank. "I know you are American because I meet you before with the TV people. You were Mr Big Mouth with your American company, now you are Bolivian and by yourself!"

The realization of it all hit me like a punch to the stomach.

What are the chances that I would run into THAT GUY! the cop that I had the staredown with?! The realization hit me so hard that apparently it showed on my face because he interrupted my thoughts with "Oh...now you remember me, don't worry Mr Big Mouth, we will become friends very soon.

These were the 2000s. There was a LOT of fighting going on around the world. There were a lot of cameramen all over the middle east. Just 5 years before we had lost a colleague in a very grizly way. Daniel Pear was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and he was in Pakistan on his way to do an interview with a Muslim Cleric when a splinter cell of a militia captured him and made ludicrous demands from the USA about freeing Pakistani prisoners of war. When the US obviousy did not comply, they made Daniel film a video stating that he was Jewish and then they proceeded to behead him in front of the camera for the world to see.

This was all I could think of, as I was oftenr reminded of this each time I went overseas. I sat in the back of the darke SUV with a green tarp cover made of miitary cloth, and upon arriving at our destination about 10 minutes later I was being yelled out again to get up and come out. "Im cuffed ASSHOLE" is what I wanted to say, but I politely pointed this out to him. He reached around and under the tarp and uncuffed me. Once out of the jeep I was led by the arm into what I SINCERELY thought must have been a school once. The outside of the building spanned about a city block, the windows (and what once must have been classrooms) all had bars on them. Upon walkin in into what once must have been a vestibule of sorts there was a bench that ran about 5 yards along a cement wall. "Sit down", said the cop. I obliged. He left and walked into the adjacent office within eye sight. The door to the facility was WIDE open, and every bit of my reasoning talked me out of making a run for it.

"Save it for life or death" I told myself, play the game, he can't keep you here forever, and sooner or later he'll have to deal with me in SOME manner. Worst case scenario I'll end up in some form of kangaroo court where I will at least be able to make a phone call to the US and as for some kind of help."

The problem with that mindset, is that in the middle east that assumming the rule of law is respected is a hell of an assumption to make.

One small now-disturbing detail that started to settle in was that as much as I sat in there, the fear started to leave me and anger started to swell. Then a rush of emotions..."Well, maybe I'll get what I wanted and did'nt have the balls to do. End it all. Maybe the Daniel Pearl route is the most honorable one for someone like me. Maybe this is the ultimate FUCK YOU to Alicha, to the people who took her side, to..." my kids. No, the didnt deserve for me to go like Daniel Pearl. That would haunt the forever. So grizzly. I wonder how long the pain lasts until you lose enough blood to pass out...I wonder" ...."UP!!" my thoughts were suddenly interrupted...

"come with me!"...I followed.

We walked further into the building and past a hallway (I half expected to see lockers along the walls), but no, "lockers are an American thing." I thought. We continued through to the next door which led us to a courtyard. In the middle of the courtyard was a makeshift mini-soccer court about the size of a basketball court, soccer goals on either side, painted white with rust poking through the ancient white paint. We were standing under an overhead roof that must have once made it possible for kids to be out of the elements unless they were playin soccer. In the modern version of it, however, one could not just step off from under the overhang and onto the field as the entire covered area was separted from the field with what looked like insanely thick chicken wire.

"You are detained until investigation with border police is finished."

"what investigation?? for what?" I said

"presenting false documentation to enter West Bank!" He replied matter-of-factly and eerily calmly.

"Bullshit!, you know that's not true! I need to call someone!"

"hahahahahah, where do you think you are? in California?...oh forgive me! In Bolivia?" he mocked me with such a passion that I could totally tell that he was absolutely loving this.

I sincerely think he wanted me to beg or cry or something to that extent. My anger swelled up.

"Investigate all you want asshole!" he didnt even look back he kept walking.

So many emotions at that moment... anger, a bit of newfound fear, and an unlikely desire to pray. I was not living right with God during those days. After my divorce, I resented Him. After my ex-wife left us I hated the day I was born, not for my sake, the love had been gone from our relationship for a long time, I was miserable for my children who had absolutely no fault in the actions of their parents and who now suffered from the absence of a derelict mother who conscientiously said to my face "I choose my drugs and friends over my family! there are you happy!?". Suddenly I missed them maddeningly. I wanted to hold them in my arms. The boys were 8 and 7 and my daughter was 5, they would light up every time that I would come to town from the raod to see them. I would try to stay in good spirits around them and no sooner were they in school I would get high and go to bed or start planning my next trip out of town again. Thank God for the refuge of my parents' home. During those days I felt the safety that a gruond animal feels when daylight comes and they retreat into the dark. My music got darker, my mind craved experimentation of things I had never thougth of trying before. Drugs, music, and even illicit work. I wandered away from my values for 5 minutes, and since the devil never sleep, I quickly found out that in Miami, trouble is not hard to find...as if I didnt know.

This was the start of a season for me that as much as I'd like to forget, will never leave me. Most of which I would never leave on paper mostly to not break the hearts of those who love me most.

So here I was, In what once must have been the innercourt of a school next to a soccer field. A place where you could easily have envisioned children running out to play when the recess bell rang, but now there were no recess bells and there was no access to the courtyard as there was now chicken wire between me and the soccer field.

"so what am I suppossed to do now?" I thought. I don't speak Arabic, I am not in a position to demand a phone call, "I guess I'm waiting". Friday afternoon 3:30ish PM by my calculations (my cell phone was back in the hotel in Jerusalem) and worse, no one knew I was in the West Bank. I thought to myself, "well, the weekend officially starts in about an hour, so they'll HAVE to deal with me because they will close and leave for the weeke..." I stopped in mid-thought. "Is this bastard planning on leaving me here over the weekend?!" surely not, I mean, for what? What's the charge?, Lying about my passport? it's not like they didn't run the passport!

My next thought was so sobering... "Oh Rudy, you are naive man. You're not being investigated. You had the absolute misfortune of running into this guy who remembered you and your big mouth. You're here until he decides dude. If you're lucky you'll get out of this alive"

"Alive, live, ive, ve, e..." it's like the thought echoed in my head as the reality of it all sank in. All of a sudden the place looked different in my mind. Much in the way that when your car breaks down in a pretty park, the pretty park all of a sudden becomes part of the unpleasantness of it all...and this place was no park to begin with.

The first thing you smelled as you walked in to this area of overhang was the stench of urine. The bathroom had no door and again, much in the fashion of a school bathroom. I needed to use it so I went in and as much as I have smelled the stench of things you come across in the middle east, this one was enough to turn your stomach. I walked back out, I found the cleanest air that I could find and took the deepest breath I could to go back inside and use the bathroom (if at all possible without looking down and into the toilet). This horrid smell would stay in my head for the remainder of the night that followed and for months to come, bringing all this back any time that I smelled something remotely like this anywhere.

"And to thing that at some point (likely in the 60s) this was once a new facility that someone was proud of." I thought. By the time that I came out of the bathroom, it felt like the sun had started dimming, likely in my head, but it did none the less. There must have been another 6 or 7 men scattered about in the same area. All middle eastern and looked like locals. By and large, shorter than me, smaller in build than me, and generally not looking too interested in getting to know me, nor each other, it seemed. One of them was on the far side of the area laying on the ground sleeping.

"...probably drunk", I thought.

There was a very odd cement bench, the type you'd find in a public square, I sat down, and after a while, I realized that it was better to sit on the floor as I could lean on the bench and try to sleep.

I dozed off, I must have falled asleep with my mouth open because I woke up to my mouth being completely dry and the sun being almost completely gone. "How long have I been slepping?!". I dont know for the life of me almost 20 years later, how it was possible that I fell asleep so soundly that I missed the fact that every other man in that holding area was GONE. By the looks of it, the office and personnel inside the building had left for the day as everything was closed. A few lights left on, and one streetlight over one of the soccer goal posts was all the light that was available.

"What the hell is going on here? I thought. "These idiots let everyone out and did'nt notice me?. No, not a chance. No I'm here because this moron is in fact going to put me in front of some kangaroo judge and accuse me of a border crossing crime...so what am I suppossed to do in the mean time?" I thought.

"I need to get a hold of someone in Jerusalem, maybe I can bribe a guard for a phone call or maybe to even make a call for me." I knew that I had about $100 in my wallet. I knew that would be effective. Unfortunately for me, there were no guards either. The thought of the rapture ran through my mind and then the silliness of a thought like that given my current condition amused and aggravated me even more.

"HELLOO!!!" I yelled...I yelled again...I yelled a few times, the final times with some colorful language.

The little voice again, "you're alone. You are ALL alone. Don't panic, think"

For the first time in my life I understood the concept of the little angel on your shoulder and the little devil on your shoulder. Sometimes your mind and consciousness does in fact split into warring factions. I heard the OTHER-voice for the first time.

"Who says I was going to panic? Who says I don't know EXACLTY what's going on here? Sometimes God gives us what we asked for, sometimes He litens to us when we say we want the world to go away..or 'I just wanna disappear from here', isnt that way you wanted?"

...and in fact it was. I had been saying that to myself for about 3 years now. Ever since the first betrayal...the big one...the day I found out while I was in Denver, Colorado. The day her best friend told me and confirmd what I was suspicious of but could not confirm. The day I lost my faith. My closest friend at the time? my business partner? REALLY? Then the season that followed, the attempts to forgive and forget. For the sake of the kids. Then to see her spiral down a pit of addiction, the wasted and abused things that continued to happen behind my back until painfully I had to say..."No more. It ends today, you rehab and learn to respect your family and yourself or it ends today"

I had hoped that my stance would trigger something left in her mind, that the love of her kids would make her choose therapy, I was willing to move heaven and earth for it, but she declined and walked out the door.

That haunted me. I ended it. My kids had no mother because I put my foot down on her addictions and her cheating and now my kids went to bed every night wondering where mommy was. This tortured me...ate me alive EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It was maddening. It was the constant second guessing. Did I do the right thing? isn't part of "true love" enduring the hard times? Did I take an unfair and unrealistic hard line? Could this "I'm sorry" have been the time when she FINALLY changed? Did I betray my best friend by drawing a line in the sand that she was not capable of respecting? and at what cost? Within 2 years' time, their worlds had been rocked to the core. Throught their eyes, two years before, dad would work long hours to provide for their little starter home, a 5, 10, 20 year career plan... a momma that was well provided for, who tucked them into bed every night, whose drinking and depression led to addiction of all kinds. Most importantly, a father SO unhealthily out of balance, that now it would seem, was more focused on "making a future for his family" than seeing the blatant signs of how disfunctional his marriage was becoming.

Was I being hypocritical and sanctimonious by letting my outrage lead me to drawing that line in the sand? after all, wasn't I equally if not more to blame for a life that now was reduced to ashes? every cobweb in our locked up little house in Charlotte, which I only got to see when I'd come in to town for business every few weeks, each cobweb told the tale of a life that once was and no longer existed. The toys still in the kids rooms' floors left there the final time they played in that room before we...left. Before they went as refugees to my family's homes, first in Alabama and eventually to my parent's home in South Florida. The plan was for it to be temporary, while "daddy was able to get it together and sort out the chaoticness of being a "man down"... akin to the sudden death of one parent in a household. A few weeks, however, had turned to months and upon "visiting them" at my parents house I saw it in their eyes...I was becoming a stranger to them. I made an oath to never abandom them and from that day forward, my plan was to be physically with them, and so locked up the house in Charlotte and moved intot the efficiency apartment of my parent's home. At very least they could physically say good night and good morning to me every day, even if emotionally and spychologically I was completely non-existent. In my darkest moments shortly after they had left, while I was "getting it together", I had come awfully close to doing the unimanginable. OH SO close. I'd come close to making the hurt go away permanently at the business end of a .38 revolver. The thought of the cowardice of my would-have-been "checkout",however, did me in. I coudlnt bear the shame of my kids thiking that I 'ran away' from it all because I was too self absorbed in my pain to realize that life WOULD eventually go on and the actions I took would go on for the rest of their lives.

Of course it was one thing to know it and another one to live it. After that day when I came SO close to the unthinkable, I woke up and told myself that if I did'nt do someting radical to get through this, I feared that it would be only a matter of time before I found myelf here again, and maybe the next time, I might not be strong enough to pull myself up from my boot straps hard enough to outweigh the pull of the trigger.

SHE was my first real love. SHE was the one who got away long before the internet, before social media, before I left home to start a life... to "make it" in Nashville...you know, the dark ages, where people usually disappeared for ever after graduations or after you left your hometown.

SHE was a woman now, SHE was married and had kids. I knew because news would make their way to me once every few years ever so faintly and every so meagerly. I knew she had been married, In fact I was on a flight to the far east on the day that she got married the first time. It was an oxymoron of an occassion to be on a faith based initiative overseas and also to manage to sneak away from everyone long enough to go and dull what I felt by drinking with strangers in a foreign land where the only way to ask for your poison was to simply point and say..."that! give me that" while waving Chinese currency and not giving a damn if I got the correct change back.

SHE got married that day in 1995 and I mourned her so hard that I started to wonder if it was normal to mourn for a high school girlfriend that way. Surely I wasn't the only one.

...and then one cold winter night a few years later, while cleaning my kitchen and having a night cap, I received a random call from her mama. I never really knew how she tracked me down, and at the time I didn't bother asking. Perhaps the bigger question should have been, "why?". As a father of a daughter, I now deduce that it was a way of keeping hope alive.

HER and I had a very short lived romance, no more than 6 or so months really, but her parents and I had bonded, perhaps more than SHE cared for. I can't blame her, maybe her parents were thiking forever, she was thinking "high school". The next year I went to college, then our collective worlds were absolutely rocked by Hurricane Andrew, and before I knew it, life had taken me to Tennessee.

It was this evening that I realized that her parents loved me and apparently had hoped that so much more would have become of HER and I. Who knows why they tracked me down? but they did and it was this night that I found out that she had not only divorced, but married again.

There is so much that could be said about it all after that, but all that is relevant is that, for the next 10 years, I would carry her in a permanent comparment of my heart. When I married, I boarded up that room and stayed away from it...until the betrayal. The truth is that even before getting married, every time there was a romantic dissappointment, I somehow ran back to her memory. She was the familiar pain I knew, and always managed to dull the current pain by immersing myself in the old familiar one.

All that needs to be said for the sake of this story is...SHE was always there with me. In winter or summer, in fall or in spring, in every season, in each song that I'd sing. Broken hearted or standing tall...I never understood why, now a man, I could never let go of her memory.


The night had completely fallen now, having dealt with the reality that I was in fact alone here and that I would remain here at least overnight, I apparently had fallen asleep again. The heat and pungent air of this holding tank, prison, jail, haunted middle school had subsided and given way to cool of the night. Sitting on the floor of what once was a tacky decorative tile in the gaudy fashion of that distinctive middle eastern motiff, I actually felt cold. I was leaning on the cement bench up against the wall where watching a soccer game might have one served its purpose, but judging by the decaying goal posts, no soccer games had been played there in a long, long time.

Anytime I found myself on a work trip overseas, I would always carry the jetlag with me everywhere I went, and especially as I was heading towards my 40s, each time I found myself with a little bit of time to kill, I always had to compete with the desire to nap. Apparently, all it took was quiet and opportunity, neither of which came to me in large quantities these days.

Suddenly I was startled by the sound of the metal door to the facility screeching open and then the sound of men talkign in Arabic. In walked in 3 guys and where left there as the door behind them shut. The came in and while acknowledging me with a nod, they all migrated to the other side of the area and away from the foreigner. I almost immediately stood up to see if there was someone who had ushered them in that I might be able to plead my case with...no such luck. The door had already been shut.

As I looked back inside, I noticed that I was easily 6 inches taller than the tallest of these guys. They all seemed in their late 40s and 50s, not particularly menacing and I thought I might have smelled a faint smell of liquor.

"I wonder why they're in here?" I thought. "Probably public drunkedness? bar fight? disturbing the Palestinian peace" I thought to myself as I held back a chuckle.


"We'll, I officially have cell mates", I thought. I sat back down and leaned on the bench again. Almost immediately I was approched... "My friend...you have cigarette?" said the Palestinian, miming she smoking motion with his hands.

"I don't man, I'm sorry". I replied. He nodded and walked away.

I kept my eyes open and watched the darkness get darker and watched as blueish light became slightly less blue. It reminded me of the streetlight at my grandfather's house in Bolivia. All of the feelings it evoked in me to think of those places and times that felt like they were lived by someone else. Then, thoughts of my parents migration to America, thoughts of our lives lived all over the world as kids, my sisters and I dragged around by my dad's career as an oil driller. Tampa, Stillwater, Nairobi, Oklahoma City, Quito, Santa Cruz, Miami...never being allowed to be attached to one place, never making life long friendships until Middle School when we finally ended up settling down in Miami...and then only a few years later (9 or so) uprooting again and going to Tennessee....at some point, my eyes mustve closed and I was asleep again.

The past approaching footsteps woke me up. Running toward me, like a soccer player approaching the penalty kick.

The kick landed on my exposed side as I leaned on the bench. I felt my rib crack. The pain shot through my groin and to the bottom of my feet while also lodging itself in my armpits. No sooner did I instinctively roll myself into the fetal position, the punchest to my head and my ears begin. In the chaos of the first seconds, I tried to remember if there was anything in my vicinity that I could fashion some kind of weapon to defend myself until I tried to lift my arms to protect my face from the punching. The cracked rib quickly made me reazile that tonight, there would be no finding a weapon, there would be no fighting back, there would be no heroics...no, tonight the only theme would be, survive the moment.

the beatdown lasted about 2 minutes. The men got winded. I could hear them breathing pretty heavily and even coughing. Maybe if I had not gotten caught literally sleeping and on my feet, I might have had a fighting chance of at least....something, but no. Now I was laying in a fetal position with a cracked rib, and by the taste in my mouth, at very least a busted lip that I quite possibly gave my self on the cement bench. I tried to sit up and a stomp came down on the upper part of my back along with what I will just assume was a "STAY DOWN!" in Arabic. Then some animated exchange amonst them which until this day, I am convinced was something to the effect of "no! no! don't injure him, just work him over"... "la! la!.....something something".

I just lay there as they laughed and walked away...at this point, I stayed down but managed to curl myself up with the cracked rib to the floor and my back to the wall. Just about the time that I caught my breath, the beatings began, one by one, the kicks, trying to get to my stomach it seemed. Had they been aiming for my head they would have killed me. It was obvious they wanted to simply beat me and not kill me. My wrists, my forearms and my legs took the brunt of it and would remain bruised for weeks to come.

"Just survive this..." I kept telling myself, it will end soon. For about 20 minutes that felt like 20 hours one by one they came at me to punch me, spit on me and yell at me. I'm pretty sure that they were somewhat drunk. They became more and more erratic as the beat down session wore on.

A few years before I had almost drowned in Mexico while on a shoot. A rip current pulled me out and then a very strong surf pounded me and I had survived that by God's grace as well as a random memorty that waves came in sets of 3, that I would have a brief break to catch my breath. That had in fact saved me that day, and now I was thinking, "God, I just need that break...make these imbeciles take a break from this please"

The break came. Unfortunately it came with a punctuation mark of landing a kick solidly in my groin. It ended with me literally fading to black from the overbearing pain of a "solid kick to the balls".

When I came to, I was alone again, face to the ground and a little bit further away from the bench than I remmebered before passing out. Suddenly every single pain was introducing itself by name. "Hi, I'm your ribs and I hate you for falling asleep. Hi, I'm your back and I will be known as 'stomping grounds'. Hi, I'm your wrists and don't you ever put a watch on me again. I'm you nuts, good thing you don't want any more kids because I think we're damaged now." The ground was so cold on my face and as much as I knew that I was alone, I dared not move in case they were nearby, and more importantly, because every nerve in my body was in pain.

I lay there for about 20 or so minutes and then proceeded to slowy drag myself back to the bench.

No sooner was I there did the sound of the metal door anounced the start of the next session. The realization quicky came, I had been dragged to where I woke up, and apparently moving away was a mistake because this told them that I was awake and ready for more. No sooner did I hear them, there was a grip on the back of my shirt and 2 men pulling me back to where they left me so their next set of kicks and punches could be delivered. "Do these guys not get tired??" I thought. I felt every kick land. Somehow at one point I was weighing my options of whether to cover my face or groin (ridiculous thoughts of needing more arms like an octopus running through my mind with a sick little urge to laugh in the middle of the beating). More blood from my busted mouth on my tongue. The smell of this horrible floor and then the sad and horrible realization that at some point I had lost bladder control and I was wet.

I don't know that they had even noticed...they went about their work and left me there again. The pain was bad, they pain from my ribs was on a whole different level. At this point I did not move from that place again. As far as I can remember there were 2 more beatings that night and each time preceeded by the sound of the metal door. These guys were not cellmates, they were likey neighborhood goons paid to simply kick my ass all night...and that they did.

Its amazing the hatred that can bubble up from the depths of an evil soul. One of the men grabbed me by my hair, put his face right up to mine and chanted America, America, America to me as he shook my head. I turned my head just in time to catch his spit on the back of my ear. In the dark I don't think he noticed. I quietly and with as little clarity as I had left remember thinking that to survive the moment I could not say or utter anything to instigate them or give them a reason to give me "extra". "Shut your mouth and lay there!" I told myself. The sun will rise ...it has to...eventually even these assholes will have to sleep."

In the dark, one thought came to mind, get at least ONE good look at their faces. BURN IT into your memory. In the dark and cold of that floor, as story came through my mind. My uncle Manuel,("Manuco") in Bolivia, had been a cop many years before I was born. My father had told me the story of how he had come accross a group of corrupt cops and instead of joining them he had ratted them...to a rat. They killed my uncle Manuco in a very cowardly act of treachery. During these years in the very wild west world that Latin America was, a famiy friend named Minina Ardaya, took a machine gun and hunted down every single one of those crooked cops. Killed them like dogs. No one ever lifted a finger against him for it. He eventually died of old age having been a reknown killer all of his life. Maybe it was my subconscious desire to protect my ego and dignity that brought this story to my mind. The thought that perhaps one day I might be able to do like Ardaya and come back and deal with them one on one...just one look...I wanted to burn their faces into my brain.

Instead I just lay there. My cracked rib now felt like it was on fire. From what I've been told later on, my body was on the verge of going into shock.

Somewhere in the middle of the night the beatings ended. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the goons went home. In what sometimes feels like a part of a delirious dream, I felt the soft and yet gentle touch of a very warm set of hands on my shoulder. I winced and twitched in anticipation of a kick or a punch...but it never came. Instead with surprising strength, the hands rolled me over. The pain shot through me like electricity. Every cell of my body was hurting. I tried to speak but my mouth was so dry that my tongue was literally stuck to the roof of my mouth. In literal twilight as well as a twilight of painful consciousness, all I could mutter was a very weak "agghhh". In what seemed like a vision of a dream, the person behind the hands that turned me over had disappeared. I tried to process what was happening, but the pain...oh the pain. I closed my eyes, now fully laying on my back, and again the hands this time behind my neck...I mustered enough consciousness to prove to myself that I was not imagining this. I felt a glass of water part my lips and the water immediately freed my tongue. I started to choke as I tried to drink.

"Bibuten...bibuten" came a female voice...

"it's a woman..." I thought....I tried to look at her but all I could see was a silhouette...the light from the soccer field ... her silouhette.

I had managed to spill what felt like half of the glass of water on myself. I grabbed the glass as if to pour the rest into my mouth and when it was empty I must have sounded dissappointed because she gently lay my head as she went to get more. I groaned and begger her...."Wait! don't go". She turned around and physically put her hand on my mouth and Shhhh'ed me. At this point I realized, she likely wasnt' supposed to be doing this but felt sorry for me. I watcher her silhoute disappear into the dark of the hallway eaten up by the blue light of the soccer field and thought to myself that I might just need to be content for the half glass of water that heaven sent to me.

I lay my head back and felt an insane sleepiness fall on me. As I closed my eyes I vaguely remembered someone saying that when you're in shock or when you've sustained a head injury, you should not sleep.

"It's ok..." I thought..."I will sleep and the pain will stop...I will sleep and maybe never wake up...I will sleep and leave this all behind, and my kids wont hate me because it wasnt my doing, it happened at the hands of the goons. There is no dishonor in that. My side hurts so bad. Lord make my ribs numb PLEASE I can't take it...."

...then my right wrist said, "what about me? did you forget how many kicks from that work boot I took for you?" and all of a sudden the pain on my right wrist took over center stage of pain...then, my back started talking, them my arm, interrupted by my ribs...It was almost audible. All vying for my attention....and then my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth again.

Then the hands on the back of my neck again, I wanted to say thank you, I opened my eyes and it was one of goons...no..wait...it was not one of them, the hands were so soft and no...it wasnt, because now I could see her silhoutte and not his face. God what is happening to me? I started to panic. I'm losing my mind...I must be dying...God my side hurts SO BADLY GOD! make it stop..... "MAKE IT STOP!"

"ShhhhhhH!!!" hand on my mouth again... muttering/whispering in Arabic, more water...more "Bibuten"... "Bibuten habibi" (slowly my dear)...


"Habibi"..."my dear". This was the first sound of non-hostility that I'd heard in over 16 hours. I opened my eyes and I saw nothing...I felt a hand still on the back of my neck...I felt the water from the glass slowly going into my mouth and down my throat. It felt like I drank for 30 minutes...one long stream of water into my mouth and down my dehydrated throat...and I could not see anything...no silhoutte..."where is the water coming from?...it never ends, keep drinking while you can...

"who are you? habibi...who are you? I'm so thirsty, my side hurts so bad habibi...can you help me? I'm dying habibi...I'm dying and I dont know if they'll try to cover it up and just dispose of me in this god forsaken place...I'm dying and my kids will never know...you have to help me habibi... PLEASE just tell them that I love them...please tell them that I would have fought but they blindsided me... please tell them I did not die afraid...God my ribs...I'm dying arent I? I can't see you....I feel your hands but I can't see you...keep the water going...thank you so much. Why won't you let me see you?"

No answer...microseconds of clarity..."she wont answer because you're not speaking, you're thinking in English, she speaks Arabic...If you were speaking the water into your mouth would stop fowing...stop talking!!!! talking is what got you here in the first place....!!! You couldnt it just leave it alone...you just HAD to argue for that damn tape! you just HAD to challenge his authority! well...this time it bit you back didn't it moron? You had this coming... you just had to prove that you could have the last word. That's why she left! because you just HAD to have the last word! you just HAD to prove that she was the bad one and you were the good one! you poor poor victim! maybe if you had your priorities in order she would'nt have seen something in him that you were not giving her! maybe you'd be living the life you were suppossed to be living right now...maybe you'd be in your bed a few hours from mowing the lawn after waking up in your home with your wife and babies...but no! you're dying here and GOD THIS HURTS SO BAD!!!! it feel like there is a knife in my side GOD MAKE IT STOP! God let me die...please just let this night end... Habibi, how am I driking this much water all at once...?"

In the midst of the blindness a faint face behind an arab keffiyeh... "I can see you habibi... you...how?....you have green eyes...you look like....I am dying...and you have come to..."

In the middle of this nightmare of pain and total delirium brought about from 2 cracked ribs, it was HER. I mouthed her name "JENNY", and this time the "Shhh returned" with a hand to my mouth,as the water stopped flowing... the water started flowing again and I began to talk again..."I'm dying, how did you find me? how are you here!? you don't belong here? Am I dead?... you will tell them for me? PLEASE... PLEASE PROMISE ME!!! you will find them and tell them... please tell them that I love them and that I am SO SORRY!!! I made a mess of things!! Please ask them to forgive me! please tell them daddy loves them SO much! and Jenny...I love you! I have always loved you...I never stopped loving you! I'm sorry for not knowing how to fight for you back then! I'm dying and I never got to love you like I could have....life could have been..."

"Shsss habibi..sawf yasmaeun"...almost pleading...but it wasnt "HER"...it was...Habibi.

Then SHE spoke again... "now you see me now you don't, we went to see a movie... do you remember it?...Days of Thuder...that old movie theater...they tore it down. Nothing was ever the same after the storm. My house was leveled...you drove by there to see it but you were loking for me. You were looking for us...so long ago isn't it. Your house survived, but you left and went to college...I was a flag girl with the marching band...a 'Spartanette' and I looked really cute in my uniform. You saw me once remember? you made me so nervous that day, we were already broken up....Everyone left, and everything changed, you left..."

She was talking and she was picking up speed with every word she said...it was like she was trying to "catch me up" in seconds, what had taken 15 years to live...faster and faster... talking about her 2 kids, about her failed marriage and how miserable this current one was...and then she stopped and all expression left her face...she was no longer my sweet sexy little memory...she was a grown woman with pain behind her eyes and a longing for life... "you're not dying...you can't let it end like this because then 'we' will die...fight NOW. Fight to stay alive...who cares about fighting the goons, you could not beat 3 against one. NOW is when you can fight a fight you can win..."

Now she had stopped talking, now she was crying and her face was covered...(a jolt of pain from my ribs made me close my already closed eyes) the distand sound of her crying... she had walked away as if to cover her face and not let me see her cry. "Are you crying?"

"Yes...I am." her tone so soft and so vulnerable... "Crying for what could have been... crying for what is... Crying for so much pain" she said as she reached down and touched my ribs and the pain made me erupt! Jenny!!!! it hurts!!! dont please dont!!...it hurts!"

"I know it does...you feel my pain..." and she sobbed.

"does it hurt you too?" I asked, feelng a form of sleep paralysis that kept me from trying to reach out to hold and console her.

"more than you know..." as she reached down and touched my ribs again.. "GOD DONT PLEASE JENNY! it hurts!!" now she was sobbing! "You can't let it end here...if it ends for you it ends for us...live" her final word more of a passive order than a request. One last look from those beautiful eyes that still haunt me til this day and I saw her no more.

The water stopped flowing into my mouth and she started to go...

"don't leave me please, Jenny!...I need you..." but it wasnt a need for the tangible world where I was laying there, beat up...it was a need for her to be in my reality. It was a clamouring for her to change the world that I was stuck living in...a world my screwups and bad choices had made. It was a clamouring for her to simply stay there and share her pain with me, feeling it made it my pain as well.

I felt the back of my head touch the ground and this time there was a small piece of cloth that had been put under my neck. As I opened my eyes, I saw her face...Habibi. She was an arab woman probably in her early 40s. A mother/grandmother type. She stealthily collected a jar of water and a small glass, said something in arabic and attempted "you ok" reassuringly. She looked at me as if to say... "wish I could do more for you"...but she disappeared into the dark of the hallway...my eyes followed her and in the distance on the far side of the soccer field I saw a door open and close and a faint light for a second.

I close my eyes hoping to still see Mary there. She was gone. I felt the warm tears run down my face as I faded off into the dark behind my eyes.

It must have been around 11AM and the need to use the bathroom woke me before I was reminded by my ribs that I had bigger fish to fry. I was still under the overhang, still laying on the floor and stil had the little cloth as a micro pillow behind my neck. I held my breath. It all came back to me. I started to have the thought that it was all a bad dream but the conseuences of my reality shot down that theory before I could even fully fomulate it.

No,I was beaten for a good part of the night, I'm injured and I have an entire day left to go here before anyone even comes to open this place. (assuming that this place is even staffed tonight. Palestinians close down EVERYTHING on their holy Fridays...tomorrow the jewish Sabbath will close everything, "dear God, will I spend anothere night here? I won't survive another night like last nigth"...

"yes, you punk ass...you will survive, unless they kill you, you WILL survive and its gonna suck"...."Then God, let them kill me...I don't want to do last night again..."

"you must fight...you cannot die here...or we die". I was not delirious anymore and in the middle of all the pain and soreness, this was the first spark of pulling it together. "we can't die...she said we can't die".

It must have taken me 10 minutes but I managed to sit up. To get on my knees and eventually to my feet. Each step of each accomplishment paid for in literal screams of pain, barrages of angry profanity, and pleads to God to let me make it to the bathroom without losing more of my dignity by losing control of my bladder again. If I could make it to the bathroom and successfully use it, this would be the beggining of my survival. I survived.

I stood there in bathroom in front of the most usable abomination of a mirror in that disgustin bathroom, and managed to clean my face up. Lifting my hands ever so slightly at a time, I washed the dirt of the floor off my face. Managed to straighten out my hair. To my surprise, I did not "look" like I felt. The daylight along with the resting laying down on that cement bench actually restored my strength enough to be able to stand a few hours later when THE cop came back. As much as I wanted to cry from the pain, I heard the metal door open and I met him on my feet. He walked in...completely alone. I have always wondered if he was daring me to jump him by showing up alone. In hidsight, my odds were good at going 10 rounds one on one with him...one-on one. Not so much with his goons having softened me up like they did.

He looked a me and chuckled ..."arrogant American". He declared.

"long night?" he said, "Fuck you" I muttered. I sincerely didn't care at this point. "Go fuck yourself, I'm not afraid of you".

Now he was laughing..."not a good idea to start a fight in Palestinian jail" he said.

"I did'nt start anything!!..." started to come out of my mouth and I stopped myself...why? why bother arguing about something that we both knew had been orchestrated by him.

"you are free to go", he said as he handed me my wallet and passport and motioned for the door.

He did'nt have to tell me twice, I walked out that door fully expecting to feel a police batton on my back, half expecting a bullet, half expecting for him to accuse me of trying to run away and shooting me...and much to my surprise and through my maddening pain of my ribs, I hobbled down the sidewalk to something like a town square where taxi cabs had started to congregate for the start of the end of the holy day.

I motioned to one who drove me to the check point. Along the way he must have offered 10 times to drive me to the emergency room. I declined and made my way back to Jerusalem where a cab did in fact take me to the emergency room. I was treated for 2 broken ribs and one bruised one and lectured me about why I had not filled a police report after "being mugged" in the West Bank.

Upon being released the next day, I made my way back to Romi's house who was treated to an insane story and who let me sleep on his couch for 3 weeks before I returned to the U.S.

2011... while on a shoot near the Gaza strip, a freelance camera operator friend of mine shared a similar story to him about somethign that happened to him in the late 80s. This made me open up during the long drive and I gave him the Cliff Notes version of my ordeal. Apparently, this officer who was a commissioner of the Palestinian Authority, had a reputation for pulling such things with people he did'nt care for. He was corrupt and the Israeli's did not like him very much in spite of the fact that they kept him in place for many years due to his ability to keep order in that touristy part of the West Bank.

One day, during a raid for an illegal shipment of weapons from Islamic Jihad to Hamas, the IDF enganged the IJ in Jenin and THE cop was killed by an Israeli bullet to the chest.

I'm just another story from Behind The Wall.