Apartheid

By Rebecca Ruth Gould

“We don’t serve Arabs,”
says the man behind the counter.
He fixes his eyes on me &
awaits my consent.

My Arab taxi driver is unfazed.
Racism is an old story
in the land of David.
Politeness took over.

We head for the car.
The road is a silent witness to atrocity.
Barren valleys cascade,
one after another.

God is a strange creature,
I think to myself.
What idiot would choose this sterile land
for launching his career?

We reach Bethlehem: checkpoint 300.
I disembark.
Arabs are not allowed
to cross like white women

with American passports.
I journey by foot to the two-storied
white limestone home where
I’ve taken up abode.

I pass tourists in t-shirts,
Banksy portraits,
& soldiers armed with kalashnikovs.
Like the racist at the counter—

like every well-heeled politician—
like every international law—
armed soldiers avert their gaze,
revealing glare of the sun.

Rebecca Ruth Gould’s poems and translations have appeared in Nimrod, Kenyon Review, Tin House, The Hudson Review, Salt Hill, and The Atlantic Review. She translates from Persian, Russian, and Georgian, and has translated books such as After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and Other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019). Her literary translations have earned comparison with the world’s greatest poets, with a reviewer in The Calvert Journal recently noting, “With her new translation, Rebecca Ruth Gould follows in the footsteps of Russian literature luminaries like Osip Mandelshtam and Marina Tsvetaeva.” Her poem “Grocery Shopping” was a finalist for the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry in 2017, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

West Bank mural photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash, 2014.

Dan’s note: This was done by Banksy, which I didn’t learn until a couple years later. I paid a Palestinian cab driver to take me to their side of the wall and took a few photos of the “graffiti”/art with my iPhone. The West Bank is walled off like a prison and heavily guarded by the Israelis. For those reasons, of all the “graffiti” I saw, this one resonated the most with me. I hope this pic introduces others to this amazing piece of art or gives some context to those who have seen it before.