A few days ago I was sitting in the manager's office at the company working on the Al Aqaba website. He makes websites for a lot of other villages, especially the vulnerable ones. He himself is from Yanoun, which is next to Itamar, a particularly violent Israeli settlement. His land was confiscated and made into "state land" for the settlement, so he's fighting a legal battle with the Israeli courts. He served me coffee and we talked about my situation with my work and the visa. He told me he went to New York one time for a conference, with some people who had never been out of Nablus. I looked down at the traffic below and imagined never leaving Nablus.
He told me they got into New York at night and went immediately to Times Square. He described the experience, I just remember his hands motioning all the screens and buildings and the look on his face. Pure wonder.
"But so crowdy," he said as he turned around and poured another cup of coffee.
