Jack is not his real name

There was this boy who meant the world to me. His name was Jack, and I met him on a 10 week venture of guts and bravado, the single most defiant period of my life thus far. It was a summer program for international students at a renowned university in Palestine. No one—not my friends, not my professors, not my college’s study abroad office, and certainly not my mother—supported me in this endeavor whatsoever. But I didn’t care: I wanted to see what Palestine was like. I wanted to experience Truth for myself. When they forced me to sign a waiver saying I was undertaking things without any affiliation with the University, I just shrugged and signed. When my mother offered monetary incentive for me to stay home or go anywhere else instead, my inwardly mortified heart tried its best to appreciate the level of concern that was behind her actions. When my professors quietly suggested that I consider another state in the Middle East, I nodded and thanked her for the advice. And then I packed and left.

 

I met Jack almost a week after I landed in Tel Aviv. From there I had made my way to Jerusalem and Palestine, scared—lets not mince words—shitless of the moment when I would cross to the other side of The Wall and into the hands of the terrorizing Palestinians. I had never been in the Middle East before.

 

Jack came in to the International Student Office at Bahrik University, and I was immediately surprised by his every move. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he WAS particularly tall (2 meters!). And, as I soon learned was his normal stance, particularly gentle for a man of his size. At first I thought he was Palestinian, because he looks Arab. When he insisted that he was actually Danish, I admit I was a bit less interested (and confused; aren’t they all supposed to be…well, white at least?) I don’t remember how we initially started talking, or how we initially became each others primary conversation partners; before I knew it we had a regular routine down: every morning at the start of our three hour class, Jack would bring me a piece of fruit from the vendor next to his house. At the 10am break, we would go together to the vending machine for a small cup of instant coffee. After class, we would walk with all of our friends to the cafeteria, indulge in cheese bread or a soda, and head straight to the library to review the day’s lessons. He would then walk me home, since my house was closer to the University than most places in the little Bahrik village. Every night we would meet—either at his house for studying and noodles or at someone else’s for drinking and politics. One day I woke up to the reality that this boy was mine, that the conversations about how to say “girlfriend” in Danish and all the fake hand-holding at the checkpoints (because Israeli soldiers scrutinized him far less if he was in the company of a white American chick) weren’t just those.

 

I remember the first time he kissed me. He was so shy, which is very much like him but surprised me at the time.

 

I remember the first time I stayed at his place overnight. Towns in Palestine are nothing if not deft gossip machines.

 

I remember the time I walked into his house and he came running over to pick me up and twirl me around.

 

I remember our pet chicks, Chickulese (like Herculese) and Olav (like the Viking).

 

I don’t remember when I decided that I was in love with him, or when I realized that I wanted this to be more than a summer in Palestine. I remember telling mom that he probably was going to be around for a while, so she better get used to hearing his name.

 

After our program was over, Jack and I left the rest of the group for a 2 week adventure in Egypt. We figured we were close and both of us wanted desperately to see the pyramids, so why not? Every moment together was an adventure: we were in Palestine, for crying out loud! We were western kids with noses for adventure and a love of Middle Eastern politics. We were indignant about the Israeli occupation, romantic about the Palestinian quest for liberation, naïve about the realities of cross-national (and continental) travel, and crazy about each other.

 

The first time I had to say goodbye to Jack, I thought my entire body was going to melt with grief. Such pure and unexpected sadness had never occurred to me before (lucky life, I guess); my heart convulsed with tears long after they dried on my face.

 

I have seen him countless times since then: back that winter for another adventure through Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey; again the next summer hiking in Norway; the following January for a 10 day trot through England; and several rendezvous back where we both belong, here in the Middle East. The adventures were all different, but all exactly the same. There were days fraught with ugly, bitter battles that cost tears and spite. There were moments of pure love, tenderness, private intimacy, and hope. And then there were moments where I thought my sides would break from laughing so hard. Because whatever else Jack and I did, we knew how to play. He would pick me up and put me on his shoulders (or the furniture in a hotel), he would insist on standing on his hands in front of the Sphinx or the Hagia Sophia or the Crusader Castles in Syria, and he would always find a way to make me crinkle my nose, just because he absolutely loved the wrinkles and freckles on my face when I laughed.

 

Every time I had to say goodbye to that boy, I completely and utterly fell to pieces—in ways I myself was surprised by time and time again. I loved him: more than I understood, more than I cared to consider carefully, and much more than I think either of us wanted to admit. It was an incomplete sort of love, though: the kind that misses regularity, a schedule, the routine of living in the same city—hell, country—for longer than two months. I thought it was the kind of love that just held on until one day one of us could take the plunge and make the move and be where the other was. Nothing, to me, could have been more reasonable.

 

Our Palestine was three years ago. I have never stopped loving Jack, and the love I felt for him has continued in a dramatic crescendo. The rest hurts too much to write about, except to say that the last time I saw him—in Dubai—started out all the same and went oddly and quietly askew. The post-trip communication was horrifically ugly and then completely nonexistent (which is actually normal for Jack when he is distracted by something else in his life; but still feels somehow different this time). I tried to contact him several times over the past month and have heard nothing. The scariest part is that I can’t measure how sad that makes me, because the last time I saw Jack it really didn’t feel like I was seeing Jack at all.

 

I think the change happened sometime when I was living in Beirut. I expected him to come to Lebanon for the internship that he wanted to do between his undergrad and graduate school. He needed a 6 month internship anywhere in the Middle East—those were the only parameters—and I assumed that he would come to Beirut to be with me. When I realized that he had only applied to ONE position here, I think a part of my confidence that Things would Work Out died. When I started dating a lot--around the same time that he was offered an internship in Qatar and told me he wasnt coming to Beirut--, I think a part of his confidence that I was the One For Him died. And so our individual misconceptions and different expectations from the other started corroding our relationship and mutilating our happy carefree infinity. I only wish now that I had known, because of course I would have waited. I didn’t need to date all those guys; I don’t need to find someone perfect when I have someone better than perfect.

 

But its too late, and I cant even stop to consider how sad that makes me for fear that things inside will break if I do. Perhaps the saving grace is that the last time I saw him I didn’t really see Jack as he was before. All I know is that this time, this time when he doesn’t respond to my emails and texts, this time, I’m not as forgiving—and that’s a natural response that comes from our most recent adventure more than any kind of spite or anger. I miss him terribly, but I cant help wondering if he is still around to miss.