First and foremost, an apology! My original idea for a project did not work out, so I have a new and improved proposal to share!
In the past five years or so, my family has gotten to know a man named Fareed, originally a Palestinian lawyer. When we first met him, he was beginning to attend the same church that my family attended at the time, having just found asylum in America. We learned that his family was still overseas, and would not be able to join him here for at least two years.
Knowing this, we invited Fareed to out house for Thanksgiving that year. Even with extremely limited English, we were able to learn a lot about his life and why he had been forced to flee his home country. In Palestine, he had become a political activist, speaking out against militant groups using child soldiers.
Fareed is a fascinating person who would be very interesting to interview and ask what Jerusalem, and the area surrounding it, means to him. At the time I met him, he was a Christian whose Muslim family, for their own safety, could not know that he had converted a year after he came to America. It would be eye-opening to see if/how this impacts his view of the holy city, and why inter-cultural and religious "sharing" is so important.
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