Susan Lloyd McG

So when and how did I realize that we are all fully human behind all these lines that separate us? I was born in Jerusalem, and raised mostly in Peru and in Mexico. When I was 15, my family moved back to Israel, and at 18 I was drafted into the Israeli army for three years of compulsory service. A year later, my unit was stationed on the Syrian border, and my job was to spend several hours each day alone on a watchtower, looking through a telescope across the barbed wire and the minefields, trying to spot any strange movements on the other side. One afternoon—I remember it was a cool, beautiful winter day—I suddenly had a thought that made me laugh out loud. I laughed because the idea was childish but also true, in that way that children have of recognizing the truth. A few months earlier, getting to know the guys in my unit, I’d realized gratefully that some of them would give me their last pair of dry socks if I ever needed them. But there were also a few who might steal mine if I wasn’t careful. That image was on my mind that afternoon, when through the telescope I saw a group of Syrian soldiers playing a game of soccer across the valley that separated us. And instantly, something about the situation—that moment of play, their running around like kids—humanized them in my eyes in a way that was entirely new and fresh and different. When you grow up in a conflict zone, or in any fragmented or polarized society, it’s natural for each side to dehumanize the other. But if that filter shatters, you can never go back. And the moment their full humanity struck me, I had that crazy thought that changed my life. "Wait a minute, wait a minute," I thought. If in my unit, and in every other unit I know, there are some guys I’d trust with my life, and others I’d rather stay away from, then in *that* unit this must also be the case. And if that’s true, then this whole border fence is running the wrong way. Instead of Syrians on one side and Israelis on the other, wouldn’t it make more sense for the sock-sharers on both sides to get together? And that’s when I laughed. I laughed, yet this idea stayed with me, and still haunts me now. Since then I’ve learned that life is more complicated, and that the line between good and bad runs within each of us. And yet… I can't undo what I felt that day, and it's shaped my life ever since.