Bethlehem, a place like Gladwin
There I was, standing in the middle of crowd late, late at night, just inside the Israeli military checkpoint that leads into Bethlehem. I was about to be hustled out of some money. Tired and worn out from the day, I wasn’t going to have it. As I continued to tell a bus driver that I wasn’t going with him and that I was getting my money back, our voices heightened into a wild argument, type of argument that seldom leads to good things. Then the wall of people around me parted, and a guy I had met once or twice before saw me in the middle of things, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and said, “Come with me, this isn’t how to fix things here.” That was when my buddy Ayoub Ali and I began to become good friends.
Long story short, Ayoub made some phone calls to the guy’s family, talked to his cousins and sorted it out and I got my money back. The point of it isn’t that I got my money back (while that is nice), it’s that things work here in altogether different ways and that unless you’re here for a long time, it’s hard to grasp the nuances of it. And after awhile, you come to realize that the way of life here in the small town of Bethlehem reflects the culture of time not so distant in our little town of Gladwin.
You can’t grasp life here through the news, nor can you grab a full understanding of the social dynamics from reading studies and reports and I’d argue that even if you live here as an international, that unless you fully immerse yourself in the life outside your bubble, you still don’t get it.
Ayoub’s perspective on things are subtle, yet powerful and they represent a refreshing, powerful break from the discussion of life on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ayoub, a Palestinian, but more importantly from the Tamari tribe, a Bedouin clan that had originated from the areas of what are Saudi Arabia and Yemen today, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The tribe today stretches all across the Holy Land and throughout areas of Jordan. The family that he belongs to are hundreds of thousands of people and the morality of life is centered around the family and maintaining this unit.
It was within this context that I started to understand and be reminded of a different way what is justice, what is reconciliation, and the various modes to reach those ends. For him, while he could reach out to the police, there were other ways and when unpacked, have a value of both utility and redemption that sometimes the rule of law in the United States is missing. Because by calling his family who had my money, he was reaching out to the people who knew the person best, who had the relationships to talk through the ways in which he was wrong rather than by using institutional force and navigating the labyrinth of bureaucracy that sometimes can do more harm than good.
And people back in Gladwin have these stories as well. I know, because I have these stories in my life and I heard many of them from my friends and family. The cop that finds the son too drunk to drive, rather than taking him to jail, they called his parents because everyone knew everyone. Within those stories, you can still see that justice was met. Or the stories from our town when the shop owner caught a young guy stealing and rather than calling the cops, they called his grandfather. There are hundreds and hundreds of examples like these because there was a time in Gladwin as well when family, friendships and navigating those relationships as a means to justice was a legitimate and respected way to handle problems. And while we can point to ways this way of administrating social justice has its flaws, we can also point to the merits of it as well.
But the familial and community components are not the only makeup of an informal, deinstitutionalized rule of law, it is always religious in nature. Bethlehem, like Gladwin, has with it an older, more religious and more conservative community, one who understands a morality rooted in religious texts, for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike. While their details may be different, at home as it is here, there is an understanding for some people that there should be room for God to implement justice and fairness.
Ayoub, a Muslim, unpacks how the community understands justice by arguing that there must be space for God to operate, that we only have limited perspectives as to what is right or wrong, and that it is always better to hope for the best in people with the idea that God is leading them into a new life, free some sin and wrong doing. While the language is packaged in a different way, the principles are the same within that religious framework that I was raised up with. I remember listening to the preacher talking about grace, my mother reminding me that God is working on the hearts of all people.
So when people ask me what this place is like when I am back home in Michigan, I tell them to think deeply about the way things are here, the way things work underneath and in between relationships with their friends, family, and neighbor and that is what Bethlehem is like.
