Culture of Peace Campaign :: International Day of Peace 2011

Today, for the International Day of Peace I want to share a personal selfish thought with you. If you’re not Israeli you can either sympathize with me or hate me for it (and if it really touches you, it should be able to feel a little bit of both).

Pumpkin spiced latte

It’s a Starbuck’s original. I’m having it almost every day for the past two weeks. It became part of my routine here and drinking it feels so foreign, exotic. It’s nice to get used to something that you won’t be able to have when you’re back home. In a globalized world where you get the same things everywhere; in the Internet era when you can be on facebook, twitter and skype with your friends and family, and experience the events back home – I hold on to those little differences that weave the sense of actually being in another place.

I’m in Hawaii, carrying out a routine of paradise on earth, and yet I miss home so much. I get to be in a fantasy setting and I find myself longing to just hang out with my dog again in that ugly square near my house in Tel Aviv. The Americans I meet feel lucky to be Americans. They always assume all of us Middle Eastern would rather be Americans too and be away from all of this war crap. I don’t blame them, they got long immigration queues that give them that idea, but I find it hard to explain to them why I can’t really make myself at home anywhere but in my home. Why I love visiting their country and all other countries, but no matter how many years I’ll drink it, that tasty pumpkin spiced latte will never “taste like home” for me.

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