A week in the Middle East: Day Six

Today, I'm set to embark on a trip to Qalqilya, a Palestinian town in the West Bank. It has been reported that due to the rapid construction of a security wall that will hug the city like a noose, Qalqilya itself is in danger of becoming a casualty of Israeli security policy.

I set out with a driver, and with Samir, a friend, translator and assistant to Cameron Barr and Nicole Gauoette, the Monitor's Middle East correspondents. Fluent in Arabic and Spanish, Samir also speaks clear, nuanced English, and his buoyant confidence quickly puts me at ease.

Which is good. Because I'm heading to an interesting bit of turf.

On my way, informed by a stack of BBC and Monitor articles, some sage advice from Nicole, and my own nagging sense of insecurity, I try to get a mental jump on the people I'll be interviewing.

They include:

1) The governor of the Qalqilya district.

2) A farmer whose land is in jeopardy of being destroyed by the Israeli wall.

3) The brother of a suicide bomber.

During the ride, I chat with Samir about his experiences as a Palestinian from Bethlehem, and he echoes many of the news stories I've read and edited about the region. But it's the little details that stick. Travel is hard, so his son regards the rare trip out of Bethlehem as a voyage to another world, he tells me. "Small horizons," he says, shaking his head. And he says he would love to take his family overseas on vacation, but the hassle of getting the proper paperwork and clearance means that the trip would be more agonizing than therapeutic.

As an American, I can drive east or west for thousands of miles before hitting a barrier, and when I finally do, it's an ocean. My passport is good for travel nearly anywhere in the world. The roads I drive on everyday are safely in American hands. The anxiety and regret that Samir and his friends deal with daily are things I've never had to grapple with; growing up, my biggest challenge to free movement was probably the highly irritating series of tollbooths between Madison, Wisc., and Chicago.

Of course, it's easy to consider the constriction of Palestinians and overlook the way Israelis feel in an East Jerusalem restaurant. Or walking through a crowded pedestrian mall. Or even thinking about traveling to most Arab nations. There are places they can't or won't tread, and the conflict has left them with smaller horizons as well. The thought makes me sad, an emotion I'll become deeply reacquainted with as Samir and I traverse Qalqilya.

As we disembark from the cab, two competing porters and a crowd of young hangers-on swarm the car, hoping for a crack at a few shekels. Much to their disappointment, the only bag is my small backpack. Our trip from the checkpoint to a Qalqilya taxi takes only a couple of minutes, but it requires a stroll through a narrow concrete and barbed wire tunnel meant to control the movements of pedestrians.

It's an unpleasant tunnel.

In town, the streets are grungy, but shops are open, and people move freely through the city. Tattered political posters plaster the storefronts and metal shutters. As an American, my eyes are drawn to an illustration of Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein standing side-by-side and saluting - copies of it cover many of the buildings in downtown Qalqilya.

We head first to the offices of Gov. Mustafa Malki, an official of the Palestinian Authority and a Yasser Arafat appointee. The building, coming apart at the seams, is bracketed by barred windows. Except for the massive framed photograph of Arafat that smiles over the reception room, the building feels more like a rundown insurance office than a citadel of political power.

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