Palestinian Peeps (Who knew?!)

For about two weeks I had been recieving through my school email invitations from a guy named "TareQ" to join an online community called Hi5. I belong to MySpace, Facebook, and Blogger so I was reluctant to join another. The third invitation came 3 days ago, and I finally thought to myself, "Who the hell is this dude wanting to be my 'friend'"? So I joined Hi5. In joining, I accepted the friend invitiation from "TareQ" and was able to look at his profile. He is 25, from Jerusalem, and was looking to make friends. No picture. But with looking at his profile I was also able to look at his friends. All of the friends had Muslim names: Abdullah, Mohammed, Mahmoud, Iyad, etc. I know Muslim people, but I sure as hell don't know any Muslims in Jerusalem. So I went back into my journals from my Israel trips last July and December of 2004 looking for a guy I might have met (consciously, and not drunk, I should add) in Jerusalem who happened to be Muslim, Palestinian, and/or Arab.

On July 12, 2004 on a weekend in Jerusalem, a fellow girl from the Sar-El program and I were walking in the Jerusalem shuk when she decided to chit-chat with a store owner for 3 hours. In my eminent boredom and not wanting to get separated from her, I began chatting up the guy in the store right across. The young guy running the store was a worker for Doctor's Without Borders, was raised in Jerusalem, and was Palestinian like most of the other shopkeepers. He sounded quite educated, listened to Bob Marley, but smelled decent. His name was Tareq (hence the "TareQ"). Long story short, our shopping trip in the shuk was halted, so Tareq and I proceeded to shoot the shit. As the market was shutting down for the night, he asked me for my cell number (which I normally wouldn't give out, but since I had an Israeli rental phone, I didn't care), and my email address to keep in touch with me when I get back to the States. He called me once before I left asking if I wanted to meet him in Ramallah (I still to this day hope he was joking) and wished me well on my trip back home. He never emailed me, but did add me to his Yahoo! pager (which I never turn on).

Now, just to make this clear, I don't normally make it a habit of giving out personal information to Palestinian dudes, but I thought this one warranted some attention. And it wasn't until I began recieving the Hi5 invites that I remembered the dude from the shuk. Anyways, I did email him asking if he remembered who I was, considering I might have just been on his buddy list and he never removed me. But whether or not he does remember me, I find the situation, in the most optimistic light, an interesting show of friendship.

***The photo above was from the Jerusalem shuk earlier that same day and prior to meeting Tareq.