My head dipped and ducked to try and catch a glimpse of the rocky, dusty countryside through the oval portal window across the aisle from my seat on British Airlines flight 165 from London.

I nervously fingered my passport as I stood behind the line for the FOREIGN PASSPORTS immigration booth. I had dressed conservatively for this encounter with Israeli immigration. A long sleeve t-shirt, clean blue jeans and my tiny square rimmed glasses perched back on my nose. I deliberately walked up to the small box-like cubicle with a big smile while the immigration agent looked me up and down. What is the purpose of your visit? Where are you going? Why are you here for so long? Why don’t you want me to stamp your passport? Who do you know in Israel? Will you be traveling in the Palestinian territories? The verbal swordplay of questions rained down upon me and I tried to stick to the simple answers that I was just a tourist wanting to visit the holy land as well as travel around the Middle East. After round 1 of sparring the agent stamped a small white sheet of paper and stuck it in my passport. I walked around the booth with an audible sigh of relief and was immediately met by another waist high gate with a passport checker who saw the white slip of paper and immediately called a supervisor over to talk to me. The supervisor held up my passport, turned it back and forth and asked me the same slew of questions: Why was I here? What did I do for a living? Who was funding my trip? How long was I staying? I finally, with a bead of sweat running down my forehead, passed the second test and was on my way to pick up my bags, change money and step out of the Ben Gurion Airport and into the hustle and bustle of Tel Aviv.

I got into a taxi van piloted by Firas who I had arranged my travels with before arriving in Israel. He took me along the winding paved roads into the country side, the eerily similar sterile white brick Lego-like houses bunched in clusters on the sides of the road and off into the distance. The 90-degree pyramids were only curved here and there with arched windows and entryways. I watched it all sail by, the road signs in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Quickly through Jerusalem and we reached our first checkpoint, a 2-minute encounter where Firas chatted with the guard in Arabic. I didn’t realize that the next step was going through the wall. It loomed up in front of us where two heavily armored guards and a number of spiked tire strips slowed us down and made us inch through the crossing. I looked down the length of the wall as far as I could see as we rolled slowly through. Its grand concrete cold expanse rose up around us and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. In this way we passed into Bethlehem and the tone of the neighborhood changed visibly.

I thought that the Dheisheh refugee camp would be more set apart, that something would demarcate its boundaries but all of sudden Firas pointed to our left and said, “Here is Dheisheh”. We made a quick u-turn and pulled onto a street in front of one of the buildings for the Ibdaa Cultural Center, a four story brick structure.

I was sent up to the fourth floor to find Ziad, my classmate from graduate school and co-founder of the center. The fourth floor of the center is a comfortable restaurant with a beautiful stone fountain in the center and various artworks adorning the walls above the windows that look out over the camp. His eyes lit up as I lugged my bags into the room.

Conversations with Palestinians and others from a slew of different countries who seem to find their way to Ibdaa and up to the relaxed environs of the restaurant/meeting house, a walk with the men of Ibdaa down the street to pay respects to an Ibdaa family who had just lost their mother and dinner, the hours passed by. Finally I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and with the advice, “If you hear gun fire or an explosion at night don’t turn on the light in your room.” I was off to bed. The realities of living in a refugee camp, of being in a conflict zone emerged in that one sentence...