Wailing Wall: Middle East

[America]

Israel, a place of great turmoil. However within the city of Jerusalem, there is an old wall filled with paper and testimonies. This is the original Wailing Wall.

Write your fears, regrets, sadness, worries, etc. on a piece of paper and place it in the wall or just write your testimonies on the brick.

[moribby]

Ruyah was sighing softly as looked at the piece of paper. She refused to enter Israel but she called for a civilian and asked that they deliver this note to the Wailing Wall.
When did I let things go out of hand? I regret everything I've done to him, the fighting, the fact that my family despises him. This cannot become something or even get out to the open. What if he found out we were friends, that I his younger cousin am best friends with his number one enemy that he hates with a passion. I can't even get into the country without fear of my superiors getting involved. I only wish I could tell him I'm sorry.

Ruyah signed the letter with a fake name, Angel.

[The Gaza Strip]

A kind guard was how she got her note to the wall. The one who danced with the children when they crowded around the fence to look at the land outside of her home. The one who grinned at her whenever she came to watch him. The one who made her blush and avert her eyes whenever his dark brown met her green. It had been a few months ago:

"Miss?" he asked in a soft voice, pushing his helmet up, "What are you carrying?" She looked up in shock. Aani had never heard his voice before. It was soft and gentle; one she'd never expect from an Israeli soldier. "Miss?"

"J-Just a note....." She looked down timidly at the note in her hands, scrawled hastily on a crumpled sheet of lined paper. She wanted to put it on the wall she'd heard people talk about, the one where they laid their problems, thoughts, and hopes down like heavy burdens. She wanted to try this. The soldier craned his neck, as if trying to read it. She hoped he couldn't read Arabic.

"For whom?" He seemed genuinely interested, leaning against the fence now, gripping with on hand, gun gripped lazily in the other, leaning against his shoulder and facing skyward. He grinned at her shocked expression and she fumbled to fold it.

"N-No one.... J-Just a note...." He cocked his head, as if confused, and the expression on his face made him less of a man, and more of a boy. He was maybe twenty, she thought, no older than twenty. He finally smiled again.

"Is it for that wall? In Jerusalem?" She immediately nodded, and his grin widened, "You can't leave, but I live there. I can take it for you, if you want...." She gave a small smile, folding up the paper and pushing it through the fence to his waiting fingers. He immediately stuffed it into his pocket.

"YOSSI!" The soldier turned away, expression darkening, and Aani backed away from the fence. Another man was poking his head out of the window in the guard tower, shouting angrily in some language she didn't understand -probably Hebrew- and pointing just as angrily at her. Yossi -She had never knew his name- turned and replied in the same language, then dipped his gun to point it at her.

"Miss, I must ask you to move away from the fence," his dark brown eyes were flat, emotionless. She put her hands up and backed away slowly, watching as the other man closed the door and went back to... she didn't know what he'd been doing in there. As she turned around to walk back to her house, she was certain she'd seen Yossi wink at her, but dared not turn around until she was turning the corner into the street. Yossi had pulled out her note and was reading it -or at least trying to- intently. She flushed, scurrying towards her house.

---

A month later, Aani finally found the courage to go near the fence again. She'd watched from afar, scared to go near Yossi again and see if he'd read her note. Or if the man in the tower actually made someone shoot her. Aani advanced slowly, watching the figure tense up the second she got too close, pointing his gun at her and say something she didn't understand. This man was older, with a scruffy, unshaved beard growing in. She scurried away.

A great ball of sadness had settled in the pit of Aani's stomach. Yossi was gone? Forever? Would she ever see him again? She pulled her shawl over her mouth and nose, wanting to hide from the world, and remembered her note. How far away that seemed, now. She wished it had worked. How dearly she wished it had worked. She could see the soft smile on Yossi's face as he read it.

---

I don't know exactly how this will work, but I hope it does. I would someday like to be free. I know people 'care' about me and want to see me 'unharmed', but it does not work. I'd like to be free of Israel, and his embargoes and blockades and walls and soldiers. I want to see the people who live here able to go out and see the world, rather than be stuck here like chickens in a coop. I want to see Hamas go away. I want them to stop attacking people. I want Palestine to stop sending soldiers into my house to search for members of Hamas. They scare me. I want the boy who guards us, the one who dances with the neighborhood children, to be kept safe, and to stay away from killing. I don't want to see him use that gun. And most of all, I hope Allah smiles upon the world and ends all the suffering. I have not left my home very much, but the suffering here is mirrored elsewhere, and I want to see it end. So, please, magic Wall. Please. Please help me.
Aani

[Israel]

With a composed face, a tight frown, and a huge sigh, Gabriyel took a deep breath and walked to the famous wall, right there in his land. All he could see were small papers slipped between cracks, little gifts and mementos left by anonymous people he's probably seen and will never see again. Passersby. Fragile humans. All of them with a wish, a problem, a regret, something that was bothering them that they probably couldn't tell anyone.

So much grief and longing was emanating from this single slab of rock. It wasn't even a wall anymore, just a remnant, a reminder of a kingdom that was once great, a kingdom that was once close with God, a kingdom that was once powerful because of his guidance and protection. Yet now… his kingdom is reduced to nothing more than a small country, experiencing continuous animosity and turmoil with its neighbors, with a small group of people persecuted and oppressed for centuries without even any hope for peace.

He ran his hand down the crevices of the wall, feeling its rough material on his palms. Times like these were rare; he was usually loudmouthed, cocky, untrusting, yet inside he knew he is broken. He wants someone to trust, to love, someone to care for him… but he never knew how to find such a person. Or if such a person even exists. He's spent so long hiding behind his strong mask, that he's forgotten that it's only a mask. He kept pushing people away, and as a result, ended up alone.

Alone. That's a word synonymous to his name, really.

There has never really been anyone who has been on the side of the Jews since their existence, not even their own God. He has always been up against the world, alone, with occasional political allies. But that's all they were, and are- political allies. He's never had a friend, a true friend, not even one.

Gazing at this wall, though, reminded him of just how much hurt and regret there is in everyone in this world. How all that regret and sadness and pain and longing are gathered, concentrated in one place. It seemed fitting and ironic at the same time that it was in his own land… but then again, he isn't really complaining about it.

He leaned his forehead against the wall and planted a soft kiss on it, a single tear falling from his eye as he did so. He had so many regrets of his own, wishes that could never be fulfilled, but he didn't want to write any of them down. It was enough that the wall was in his land, and that he could go to it anytime. The thought of it is enough. Thinking about everything while sitting beside this wall is enough. Talking to a god that doesn't exist while leaning against this wall is enough.

He ran his palm through the wall once again, his fingers feeling the little papers and trinkets in the crevices. He laid his right cheek on the wall, feeling its roughness, its sadness, with his cheek. His hand then clenched, and he sunk to his knees, crying softly.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry for not being strong enough to save enough of you… I'm sorry that we are stuck in the middle of the Arab world, who all hate us… I'm sorry for not being able to give us the peace we have so craved for centuries, millennia… I'm sorry for relying on stronger nations to help us… I'm sorry, my brothers and sisters, I'm sorry for not being able to believe in our God anymore… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…

This was all said, in his native Hebrew, though more addressed to the wall than to anyone else. And it wasn't loud enough for anyone else to understand anyway.

He then composed himself after a few minutes, stood up, dusted himself off, and assuming the usual face once again disappeared into the night. That wall is a symbol of his and everyone's regrets and pain, and he had always learned to take it all out on the wall when he could no longer keep it in.