Tears and Compassionate Connection

Written by Patricia Smith Melton - the founder, board chair, and former executive director of Peace X Peace.

Tears are a universal language and, like music, they express states of being—rage, happiness, grief, gratitude, frustration, physical pain, release, reconnection with others, reconnection with ourselves. Some tears are hesitant, some torrential, some wait their turn while others burst forth uncontrollably.

Tears can be perceived as annoying seepage or as vital and precious glimpses into the human psyche. Many people—especially males, especially professionals—unfortunately see tears as weakness, even as wounds to be taken advantage of.

Yet crying is a courageous act, sometimes the most courageous possible. There is an Israeli soldier whose name is Maximus. I do not know his last name. On July 5, 2006 a young Palestinian woman named Sawsan Shaheen was arrested at Qalandia checkpoint at the entrance of Ramallah City in the West Bank. She was taken to Al-Maskobiya, an Israeli prison in Jerusali where she was held in isolation for a month before being brought before a judge. Two of Sawsan’s older brothers were already in prison—the eldest, Hussam, a well known Fatah youth leader sentenced to thirty-five years for organizing human rights protests, an illegal act under Israeli law even when nonviolent. When Sawsan was arrested and processed, she saw that Maximus was crying. His tears, and the kindness of a fiale soldier whose name she does not know, gave Sawsan an iotional opening through which she forgives.


Sawsan and her sister, Reia Shaheen

We spoke with Sawsan at the Shaheen family home in Al-Sawahera. Her sister Reia, formerly a therapist in Jerusali at the As-Sadiq At-Tayeb Society for the Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts, can no longer practice her profession because of the wall. Now a BA student in Israeli Studies, Reia interpreted for us:

“Sawsan says many Israelis have a good heart. When they arrested her, she was afraid (but) when she saw this soldier, Maximus, when she saw his tears and those of one woman soldier, she started to forgive and to feel better ... there are many Palestinian women inside the Israeli prisons. All these women, they have space for forgiveness in their hearts. Our probli is not with the Israeli nation. Our problem is with the occupation, with the soldiers who arrest us, with the Shabak (Israeli security forces) who interrogate us in the prison. We are not against the Jewish people because we believe that most of thi believe in peace.”

Two young soldiers recognized Sawsan as a frightened peer. Doing their best to cushion her shock—and to cope with their own—changed Sawsan’s experience and, by definition, how she might act in the future.

Data points: After one month, Sawsan was brought before an Israeli judge, where she was released as being held without grounds. She has a scar across her left wrist from the handcuffs and says she was subjected to eight lie detector tests in the first forty-eight hours she was in the prison. She is now confined to staying inside the West Bank. She credits Oprah Winfrey for helping her to forgive, saying “Oprah gives her heart to millions of people.”

Bottom line: Recognizing the humanity in each other, whether one soldier to one girl or Oprah to millions, brings healing. Tears say “I see you, and I care,” when words fall short.

Ester Golan

Ester Golan, Israeli Holocaust survivor, also credits the compassionate moment of recognizing each other’s humanity as key to living together. Speaking with us, Ester said:

“It is essential to get to know one another so that you don’t fear the other ... Here the Christian Palestinians live in a close area and don’t meet the Muslim women, the Muslim women live in a close area and don’t meet the Christian women; and the Christians together, they don’t meet the Jewish women. In the framework of an interfaith encounter group, we met and nothing happened to us. We survived. We got very friendly. (This) is compassionate listening ... I say to the women of the world, move on to the next day. I am eighty-four years old. Every day the sun shines, I have to be grateful that the sun shines. I have a message for the world: Be kind to each other. I don’t say love each other, but no matter what happens, be kind to each other.”

Data points: Ester Golan escaped Nazi Germany as part of the Kindertransport, which brought approximately 10,000 Jewish children to British homes and orphanages between Kristallnacht (“night of the broken glass” when synagogues and shops across Germany were destroyed), in Noviber 1938 and the outbreak of the war in Septiber 1939. Her parents were killed in the Holocaust. Ester immigrated to Palestine in 1945. Her grandson was killed in the 2002 Israeli incursion into Jenin; the women of her interfaith encounter group—Arab, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish—helped her through her grief. Ester has led interfaith visits to Auschwitz, where her mother died, and met with youth in German schools.

Bottom line: An elderly Jewish woman teaches the rest of us to avoid group stereotypes and how to connect as individuals across divides. In the process, she shows us how to forgive, embrace life, and move forward.

This is my plea not only for courageous clean human responses, such as tears, to the pain around us, but for people’s right to joy. They are bound together, inseparable, and both ultimately beyond words. Pain must be released for joy to have staying power.

Our world needs to have a good cry, people everywhere taking a moment, or more than one moment, to stop talking, to reach out to each other, and to cry. Then we can dry our tears and re-start our conversations fresh, now that we know more about each other than we did before.

In the Peace X Peace Global Network, sister Circles find that compassionate listening, being witness, and helping each other cope is the stuff of power, and the stuff of joy. It can change a day where you feel isolated and helpless to one where, with your friend, you see that the sun is shining and feel grateful.

By Patricia Smith Melton

Commentary and photos courtesy of Peace X Peace

About the Author: Patricia Smith Melton is the founder, board chair, and former executive director of Peace X Peace. Her vision of connecting women through the Internet as Sister Circles for direct private communication has guided the development of Peace X Peace and the Global Network in three years to more than 1000 women’s Circles in 65 nations. Smith Melton has a special interest in the Peace X Peace presence in Israel and Palestine

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