Vintage Sexual Harassment – Jerusalem, 2000
Cleaning out my office yesterday, I stumbled upon a decade-old stack of printed out emails and photographs. Ten years ago I was living and working in Jerusalem, my hair was long and black, and wearing a tank top was a subversive act. Here’s a little snapshot of a hot June morning, and for the record, my shoulders were bare.
From: Nancy Schwartzman, Jerusalem
To: Ex Boyfriend, Brooklyn
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2000 9:50 AM
Subject: Jerusalem Morning
We’re all jaded. Ears Accustomed. Eyes averted.
We’ve heard it all before:
Cat calls and whistles up and down Atlantic Avenue-
Little boys too young to call you beautiful, men too old to even look at you-
Spanish, Spanglish, Chinese, English, whispers, shouts, hisses…
Canal Street, Houston, Park Ave., 4th Ave., Douglass, Amsterdam, the A, B C and D.
But this one was different:
9:00 am. Blazing Sun. Pale, pale me. Stumbling along through the park to my office – no coffee, too vain to wear a hat, shielding my eyes from the desert sun searing over the Hinnom Valley. Dressed in New York black, red Kenneth Cole Slides. Feeling Fierce.
From between the cracks in my fingers, a vision of the tiniest, most wrinkled man, appears out of a cloud of desert dust, a scarf flapping carelessly over his shoulder. A brown grisled hand clutches his crotch as he hobbles toward me.
I avert my eyes.
He continues on his bowlegged path, crotch in hand, destination unclear.
No, not him. He needs to relieve himself. He’s a grandpa! Not him, not now. So old, so small, too early in the morning, and I can’t run on slippery Jerusalem stones in my sloping Slides.
The inevitable happens. Crotch grabbing, scarf flapping, legs bowling, teeth missing -leans in real close, reaches out to touch and asks:
“do you speak English? I love you.”
When I’m no longer living in the Middle East, am I gonna miss mornings like this?
love,
nancy
And to try and answer that question now, I can say that yes I miss hot, desert mornings and no, I don’t miss feeling intimidated by a wrinkled old man. Next time, I’ll have my camera with me… Anyone wanna start a HollabackJerusalem?
Tags: harassment, international, men, power, sex, women
I was on the DC metro once when a man approached me, and told me I “looked like a nice girl.” The metro was moving toward me, and people began crowding around us, my eyes consistently sinking to the floor as he started asking me where I lived, when I was free, how I liked the city, if I wanted to live with him.
That night, The Activista was born. Similarly, it is good to know that when you look at things like this, shreds of the past, you’re similarly thinking mostly about how to change what’s ahead.
(Cannot wait to see you tomo. Let’s make 2010 a wonder!)
xoxox
Carmen