Anat Vovnoboy
Writing



Crossing the Borders

We all are bound by the borders of our countries. The borders define for us where our own land ends and where the foreign and unfamiliar begins. A mere line that determines the linguistic border of a community. The border signals until where people will speak our language but from there on we won’t be able to communicate with those living on the other side of the border. In big countries like the US you never really feel those boundaries, the borders are so far, you’ll have to drive for days before you hit the border and even then you will simply be asked to present your passport and drive safely on. But when you live in a country as small as Israel, where to drive from the west side of the country to the east take less then couple of hours (with traffic) and most of the boundaries can’t be crossed, borders become a great issue.  
More then physical boundaries they are mental ones.  Much more powerful then the line of the face of the land,  is that invisible line that defines for us that we belong here and not there, that we are in some way different from the people on the other side and that our lives should be run just within only one side of it.

The eastern border of Israel, where Israel is neighboring Jordan, was always a war ridden area and a harsh line in Israel’s landscape. And although that in 1994 the two countries signed a peace agreement and established diplomatic relations and so theoretically allowed people from both sides to travel across, that invisible separating line stayed in place. Very little people used to travel from one country to another and ever since the current fighting started this number has decreased. And so although Israel and Jordan are so close they remain two completely strange countries and this was the way that I always saw them, until this summer I suddenly thought what will happen if I will actually take the risk and go there.     

The situation in Israel was just starting to warm up. A soldier was taken hostage near Gaza causing the fighting to resume and a civilian was kidnapped and murdered in the west bank. But I was determined to go and so I went.

We were the first people to get to the crossing point of the border and the first ones to go threw the security check But when we got to the Jordanian side we discovered that maybe the lines were not as imaginary as we thought. The Jordanians were not eager to let us in and I guess they were trying to make us turn back. Border police instructed us to sit and wait and ignored us. Well we were not about to leave and because there was no official reason to deny us entry, eventually they permitted us to go through.  

When we finally started to make our way in this foreign land we were surprised at how similar the landscape was to the landscape of Israel, although one would expect us to realize that nature has done its job way before people have divided it between themselves. The mountains, the trees and the rocks were exactly as those on the other side of the border, but every thing that was made by man was so completely different. On one side was Israel, a western industrialize developed country whose main export is software,  and on the other was a poor, Muslim country where most of the population are Bedouins-a wondering tribe that lives in tents and moves across the desert with it’s cattle.
 In the end of our first day, when we started to look for a place to crash for the night our driver suggested to go to his Bedouin friend who “lived close by”. Two hours later we were still driving on a completely dark windy road in the mountains. There were no street lights and you could see every star in the sky, and after spending a year in NYC where stars are a rare commodity, I could not get my head back into the car. We drove between small villages and dark valleys and our driver kept reassuring us that this time he is certain and that we are almost there. When after another hour we were still driving around we began to rethink our trip. Suddenly the driver pulled over in the middle of no where and started to drive on a completely dark mountain slope and after a minute we saw in front of us a big tent. It was already close to midnight and the tent was completely dark and silent but it didn’t discourage our driver who started to honk as loud as he could. A couple of minutes passed and an elderly Bedouin came out and without any annoyance about the strange people which intruded his house in the middle of the night, woke up his wife and kids so they could make us tee and prepare the beds. One of the main principals of the Bedouin culture is hospitality, they may rob you or plot to kill you but once you step a foot in their tent you are their guest and they will immediately offer you some hot sweet tee and will do anything to make you feel conferrable.    
 We spent the night on mattresses in the tent with the kids and woke up at sunrise on the next day with the rest of the family. I just had to take out the camera and document this amazing way of life that is not rushed threw, that is not bound by walls and fences and not grounded by real-estate.
When we came back to Israel even before I developed my photographs the war in the north begun, and it was clear that there was no way of going to Jordan again. The borders close behind us and became as harsh and decisive as they always were. The only thing left are the photographs reminding of one sunny morning when a different reality seemed possible.