The Time Change

I live in the third story apartment that sits atop Zoughbi Zoughbi’s home in the Zoughbi family complex. From my balcony, I could watch the sun set each night between supper and prayers. In the morning, it just barely peaked through my East window as I began my morning devotions, six hours after my friends in the Pacific y siete horas antes de mis amigos en Americana Latina. All of that changed Friday morning, when I descended to breakfast with the Zoughbis at eight and discovered that it was actually seven.

“They changed the time, I think—“said my boss, phoning other people from the office to get a consensus on whether the Palestinian territories had just abandoned daylight savings’ time. “Well, I didn’t like that time anyway. It was too early...” Zoughbi used the extra hour to prepare us a grand breakfast and then run away on an errand. The other volunteer and I found “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphey and Dan Akroyd on Lebanese TV (“...in Philadelphia, that watch is worth 50 dollars...”—from the pawn shop scene). Zoughbi came back to pick us up, as promised, but he hadn’t had any breakfast yet, himself, so we stopped at his favorite place on Manger Street (this is Bethlehem, by the way...) to get fresh homus and falafel. I think that we must have stepped into a time-warp. This place was so packed, so busy, and so Palestinian that it seemed as if we all became petrified in place waiting for his order.

Janet warned me that I would become frustrated with ‘Palestinian time’. She warned it takes them a week to do what “we could do in a day”. Now, with an extra hour in our schedule, we were destined to be late anyway. Last night, I got my second bad-taste of Palestinian time when Zoughbi insisted that we go visit some of his friends after the concert we attended. I sat for some shred of infinity listening to old men carry-on in Arabic, only catching something about a man with no pants on. Zoughbi finally gave me leave to walk home...

Up until that point, I was trying to stick to him like I would to my grandfather. I remember the time we spent over an hour at Bonnie & Clydes’s restaurant with some friends of his. I fidgeted and mumbled something about getting back to work and Buck just laughed and said “don’t worry, you’re still getting paid...” It was a similar vibe when we arrived late to Wi’am Friday. I set my computer up in the conference room, as usual, to show everyone how productive I could be for the center and (through it) the causes of Palestinian Liberation, World Peace, Proper English Grammar, etc.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” said Imad, “come have some breakfast outside...”

“Zoughbi already fed us a big breakfast...”

“Come have some tea...” –he had me suckered, right there.

I made an appearance at the picnic table and started drinking the ‘nana’. Virtually all the other staff were there, plus a calligraphy artist, a pregnant woman from Mennonite World Service, and the guy who paints buildings.

“I’d better do something productive for the Center today, huh?”

“Sit down—you build the relationships; ...you want falafel?”

After all these years of berating myself, my ‘discipline’ was slain by the scent of falafel. A moment later, a revelation seized me: the homus we waited so long for was the best DAMN homus I’d ever tasted. As second breakfast drew to a close, everyone started to rise and make their way back to the building. As I did, Zoughbi said “no, don’t rush—finish your eating.”

This was not the first or last time I had heard something like that...

“You slept-in? Good—it is good you sleep away your jet-lag. No need to get-up at seven.”

“Are you done with supper? No no... don’t get up. We’ll wait. You’d like to have more?”

“You want ice-cream?” “You want fruit?” “Have some more coffee...” (well, okay...) “You want to go to the dead-sea? It’s fine—you should go.”—and that’s how my late day at the office ended. We had lunch with a group who was headed to the Dead-sea and I went with them. Since I hadn’t had time to get involved with a project, it really didn’t interrupt the flow of my day. Things have a way of working out: Zoughbi had no staff who spoke French but a visitor from Kairos Canada came unexpectedly and we were able to ply him into translating with copious hospitality. “Kairos,” I said, “that means ‘right timing’. Americans maximize the minute for quantity and miss the hour of quality. My last boss, Andy Page, was a great boss by American standards. He was so efficient that he could be the executive director of four Boys & Girls Clubs. He was also a ghost. He asked me to do a grant and then never offered guidance or feedback. “You gotta keep moving, John...” he commented weeks later, “Your writing is great but you need to learn to be less detail oriented.”

What? That was a grant to help underprivileged children! Imad and I sat down together, my third day at work, and started working on the language of a grant to fund young peoples’ mediator training. We read passages back and forth to each other, chiseling at this grant between cups of coffee. We really strained over every phrase—until about four o’clock. “That’s enough for today,” he said, “tomorrow, we do it together—like twins.” We did. We finished it, without killing ourselves. There was no need to rush and destroy the chance to form a good relationship. Now, he’s going to give me Arabic lessons.

For every time that I have sat and chilled for a moment, there has been a time when someone on the street has yelled “Abu-Tarek! Keiv hala?” ~Abu-Tarek means “Tarek’s Dad”: it’s Zoughbi’s nickname. Everyone knows Zoughbi Zoughbi (everyone knew John K. Gore...). Efficiency is not equal to effectuality—people can get a lot of garbage done quickly. Sometimes, having a positive impact means letting plans go: one day, some staff left at the drop of a hat to mediate a traffic accident. On the other hand, everyone might be outside having coffee when the guy who paints houses shows up, this time needing advice. I am seeing the phrase “time is money” in a whole new light, now. For people who value money or time more than the things that can be done with them, sparing a minute or a shekel is costly. For people who value people, time is measured in cups of coffee. They get important work done year after year not by trying to maximize productivity but by being steadfast in their commitments. So far, it seems as if everyone at Wi’am is internally motivated to play their role and do it right.My discipline is not slain at all but finally coming to maturity. My own internal motivation increases daily. Schedules are only scaffolds.

Palestinian time, at its best, is extremely rich. My co-workers have the strength to wrestle with uncertainty on a daily basis, sometimes working on conflicts late into the night or taking surprise guests on tours of the refugee camp. All of that still does not account for why the Palestinian Authority was so insistent that the West Bank change its clocks on Friday. After all, Israel was just about to turn their own clocks back an hour the following Sunday.

“It used to be that an Israeli soldier could ask for the time and, if the Palestinian told him anything other than his own time, the soldier would take his watch and smash it right there...”

That’s why Palestine falls back on Friday—the Muslim Holy Day—and is deliberately an hour late for the entire weekend.

The sun sets at the same time, in the grander scheme, but now my prayer time comes earlier in my day. I can often see fireworks going off in the city, weeks past Ramadan and now the bid for statehood. In the morning, I get to feel like I am sleeping-in as I draw the curtains at six and go back to bed until the new seven o’clock comes.