{"id":369,"date":"2023-05-18T09:26:32","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T08:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/?page_id=369"},"modified":"2023-05-21T20:06:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-21T19:06:56","slug":"no-country-text","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/?page_id=369","title":{"rendered":"No Country text"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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No-Country: Into the Arab\/Islamic world: An encounter\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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[Photos]<\/a><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Does it matter what led me there?\u00a0 Do I even know?<\/p>

Growing up among the indoctrinated who saw themselves as exemplars of freedom, I felt a narrowness, a constricting smugness, and a fear of how incomplete, how ordinary my life could become.\u00a0 My maternal grandfather’s stories of his youthful travels in Russia and Asia left an indelible mark.\u00a0 I would always be a restless kid.<\/p>

That call of the muezzin on my first day in Marrakech, stopping me in my tracks along a narrow passageway, the entreaty to prayer reverberating against the high walls, would stay with me.<\/p>

Back in the U.S., no-one was aware.\u00a0 No-one had heard of the Nakba; it was just the terrorists and Israel and us.\u00a0 That ignorance became, for me, another spur to return.<\/p>

And I did, in the traveler’s\/explorer’s various guises, curiosity-driven, sometimes on a search; at others, giving myself over to the drift of the crowd, toward chance outcomes.\u00a0 I walked byways, shared food and water, looked into fissures (both physical and emotional), across vistas, into eyes.<\/p>

The borders became increasingly permeable; the Other, more familiar: their insights, sensibilities and charms.\u00a0 I hesitate to call it an awakening, though that’s what it was.\u00a0 Whenever I left, I was different from when I went in.\u00a0 Whenever I returned, I saw things anew.<\/p>

All that in my childhood I had hoped hidden, so that in time I might discover, seemed hidden here.\u00a0 Alongside that element of make-believe, when seen from without; a participant in a situation whose meaning is withheld.<\/p>

Who knows where the wind will take us, where our dust will be spread?\u00a0 So little is known, and nothing is written.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No-Country: Into the Arab\/Islamic world: An encounter [Photos] Does it matter what led me there?\u00a0 Do I even know? Growing up among the indoctrinated who saw themselves as exemplars of freedom, I felt a narrowness, a constricting smugness, and a fear of how incomplete, how ordinary my life could become.\u00a0 My maternal grandfather’s stories of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-369","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/369\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rogergaessphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}