I’ve always loved the desert. Any desert. The endless panoramas, the relentless breathy wind that swoops through mountains, cresting over plateaus, carrying the sands and sounds from miles away. The desert is harsh, unforgiving.  Her stark beauty is not for the faint of heart, and to dwell here is to live against the threshold of human resilience. Water, food, shelter, the things we need to survive, they are a scarcity here. It is no surprise that the Judean desert, south of Jerusalem, is the birthplace of holy thought – where Jesus and Abraham supposedly dwelt, where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. The isolation, heat, and inescapable sublimity create an alien environment; the sheer overwhelming power of nature is a constant presence.
 
The Bedouins find a way to scratch out a life among these rocks and hills and sand. In Jordan, my guide through Petra was a Bedouin man who had taken to a life of the mind, studying American Lit at the University of Amman.  It was through his polished English that I finally learned some of what sets the Bedouins apart from other desert dwellers. Unlike the religious groups that call the Middle East home, the Bedouins are a utilitarian people, etching out a living based on what is useful – a trait that is not merely respectable, but necessary when it comes to life in the desert.
Which is how I’ve come to reconsider my dress. I’ve always been one to shun hats, head coverings, anything that stood between my scalp and a fresh breeze. Abdullah revealed my shortsightedness. Since then, I have taken to wearing a head covering, a white cloth folded and wrapped around my head.  It keeps the sun off of my face, neck and black hair. No more drowsy, sun drunk two hour naps. The only thing is – I’m essentially wearing a turban. Picture Peter O’Toole inLawrence of Arabia, and you’ll have a pretty accurate picture of what I’m getting at.
That look worked fine in Jordan, where I was merely one of hundreds walking the streets in a turban at any given time. But here in Israel, things are a little different. And this is where my social experiment starts – at the border between the two countries. Can I cross the border looking like this without getting harassed? It will be the closest I can come to feeling the outsider status of an Israeli Arab
To be completely honest, I don’t look like an Arab. A simple head covering cannot change your bone structure. But from afar, wearing sunglasses, my appearance warrants a double take. A month in the Middle Eastern sun has left my skin dark, the deepest tone I’ve ever worn. While I have the nose, mouth and eyes of an American, my dark hair and beard bring out the desert dweller in me. When I wear this white cloth on my head, I feel the stares.
 
I also get the questions – endless questions by the border patrol. What am I doing in Israel? What was I doing in Jordan? Who am I staying with?

Every answer brings on a further barrage of questions urging more specificity, exact examples.
What do you do for a living? 
I’m a writer.

Who do you write for?
A magazine called the Mercury.
Who is your boss?
A woman named Janine,
What are you working on now?
I’m not. I’m traveling. (Obviously)
Well then what was the last article you wrote?
About an artist in Rhode Island.
What do your friends do?
I don’t know I just met them a couple weeks ago, when I got here.
That was the wrong answer. After half an hour of further interrogation about every possible facet of my life and every article of clothing and piece of electronic equipment in my backpack, I am finally allowed to cross the border.
I was beginning to question my “experiment” before I ever got to Tel Aviv.  As a Jew, even an American Jew, I am more sewn into the fabric of Israeli society than a native Muslim ever could be. The constant mistrust of the “other” is a perpetual aspect of this world. To purposefully dive head first into this realm of discrimination is both stupid and exhilarating.
In Tel Aviv, the questions recede, but the looks intensify. When I do have to interact with people I try to use hand gestures and grunts so as not to betray my American-ness. In Jerusalem, I may have gone unnoticed, with my silence and my anonymous white headscarf. But here, where the Arab population is few and fringed, I stand out glaringly.
I get scowls when I walk onto the city bus. The customary Israeli gruffness seems to be tripled, with a dose of anger, when I buy a bottle of water or coffee. The only place where I can avoid suspicious movements and slanted eyes is the open-air market of Jaffa, where everyone is equal in the grand scheme of bargain and argue.
Eventually, as I half expected all along, I get myself into trouble. The day I leave Tel Aviv is hot. Gross hot. Sticky and smelly. Cat sick and piss is the flavor of the day on the sidewalk, and I have a long way to walk, with two huge backpacks.
The head covering, as I discovered over the past week, also functions beautifully as a face mask, so I don my now familiar accoutrements and set off to the train station, which will take me to the airport and off to America.
Now, as I explained in a previous post, there are a lot of security checkpoints in Israel, and this train station was no exception. A veteran at the process by now, I empty my pockets into one of my bags, throw them both on the X-Ray machine’s belt, and walk through the metal detector without thinking at all about what’s on my head.

No beeps. Good, because I am a little late for the train.
I go to grab my bags but just as I am about to touch the straps they machine goes in reverse and the operator squints at the screen. She shows her co-worker (a man armed to the teeth) something on the screen, and then they both look at me with a sense of dawning realization.
The guard says something in Hebrew to me. I have no clue what the words mean but the intention could not have been clearer. Something was wrong. And he was looking at me with a very unhealthy look.
“B-Englit?” I ask, quickly removing the scarf, realizing how absolutely foolish and conceited I must look and seem as an American sporting Arab dress at an Israeli security checkpoint.
“Do you have a knife in your bag, sir?”
Oh…shit.
I packed a 7-inch hunting knife in my bag when I left home. There were a number of reasons I brought it. I’d been planning for some solitary dessert camping and the knife served a tool more than a weapon. And you never know when you’re going to need either. It turns out I only needed it once – to open a can of beans. But I am something of an over packer, habitually over-preparing.
But I don’t have time to explain my travel philosophy to this MP with his finger on the trigger and a small crowd of armed men surrounding me, watching closely.

“Yes, I was camping,” is all I manage to choke out.
“I’m so sorry. I totally forgot it was in there. I am going back home to America today.” Words start tumbling out of my mouth unbidden when he asks me to take the knife out.

I hand it to him and he pulls it out of my makeshift scabbard (a rolled up kitchen towel). I think a quick look of respect flashes across his eyes when he sees the quality of the knife in his hand. He wraps it back up and asks me to come with him.
I follow through a set of unmarked doors, dragging my bags with my heart in my throat. He is talking on the radio the whole time. When we get to the end of the hall he opens another door and gestures for me to come inside and take a seat.

There are two chairs on one side of the table and one chair on the opposite side. There is nothing else in the room.
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. Is all my brain is capable of thinking.They think I’m a terrorist.
Another man comes in and they begin to ask me questions. They don’t stop for twenty minutes.

What am I doing in Israel? Why did I have a knife? Where am I going today? Who was I staying with? Why did I have a knife? Do I have plane tickets I can show them? Why did I have a knife?

They clearly aren’t satisfied with my answers. I have nothing to prove that I was on a Birthright program. No plane ticket to vouch for my actual travel plans. All I have is dirty clothes, a headscarf and a knife that could slit a man’s throat from ear to ear.
Eventually, they let me go. They keep the knife. Before I run to my train they explain that today one of the highest-profile politicians of the Knesset was scheduled to make a tour of that station in a few hours. They were on alert for any high-risk looking individuals.
High risk. 
I was just part of a category.
A label inseparable from a look.
I’m just lucky I can take that head covering off. Others don’t have that option.