What if

I know what to do if a friend calls and needs a listening ear.

I know what to do if I run out of cooked food with friends that still need to eat.

I know what to do if a fuse blows at work.

I know what to do if the fire alarm starts blaring at 4 am.

I know what to do if I get stopped by police.

I have no idea what to do when tear gas is let loose. Luckily, a new friend of mine does.

While with two full time CPTers, several members of the delegation were visiting the home of a family who had experienced soldiers breaking into their home on a weekly basis for a month. We were within a refugee camp filled with Palestinians who lost their homes when Israel was created in 1948. The whole family came to meet CPT and other international organizations to help come up with a better solution. We had tea while the family explained the details of being locked in one room of their house while the soldiers had free reign in the house for 13 hours each day. We were taking a tour of the house when tear gas was released in the camp by the soldiers to “calm down” the children.

Pretty quickly after my first whiff in my nose and the first burning sensation in my throat, one of the women in the house had sprayed perfume on my arm and said, “Smell this.”

I was more surprised at how quickly this woman responded to the tear gas than the actual tear gas. What must it be like to know on a constant basis that you might need perfume to help cope with tear gas? What if I had to know how to deal with soldiers everyday? What if I had to know how to deal with being labeled a terrorist just for being born in a certain part of the world? What if I had to know…..