No refuge.

• Position: Worldview - Abdullah, the Palestinian prisoner

Streams of Arabic flowed from the speaker's mouth. He raised his hand from the podium from time to time, ejaculating strong words while provoking loud clapping or yelling from the crowd. I cringed.

This Kafkaesque moment seemed so unreal--as just nine hours ago, I had been on a hill in Jerusalem rolling up my sleeping bag, surrounded by Jewish peaceniks as a cool breeze gently stirred the leaves littering the ground. Everything suddenly shifted into slow motion as I watched the girls talking to each other, silting next to two men. The older man contemplated the date between his thumb and forefinger before sliding it into his mouth, a cavern of yellow teeth. The line of men off to the left seemed to stream onto the stage from oblivion, walking through the bold lights of a black tower, which were illuminating us. The speaker, who stood nearby, turned his arms around as if they were the blades of a windmill, moved by the waves of energy emanating from the audience.

Then somehow breaking through the barrier, one of the girls came over and introduced me to the older man who had been sitting next to me all this time: 'This is Abdullah; he is the oldest Palestinian prisoner of the Israelis who was liberated a couple of years ago. He was in prison for 28 years."

Overcome by fear, my body began to tremble involuntarily. "What had he done to be condemned for 28 years?" I muttered under my breath and nervously looked around, hoping no one had heard me.

Abdullah's smile faded into his wizened body. He was clothed in a drab gray prison uniform. Twenty-eight years in prison ... 28 years in prison echoed repeatedly in my ear. The apparition now standing in front of me asked why he had been in prison all those years. He didn't know, but he kept smiling, smiling as his gray body receded from view.

My spirit soared in some weird dimension as it followed his strange, crooked smile, the tawny teeth reflecting a blurred image. On the left, next to the man still speaking at the podium, a group of about 15 men of all shapes and sizes sat in a row facing a crowd of about 300 people. Some were wearing green bands over their heads with white Arabic words inscribed on them--"There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger"; it is the Muslim profession of faith--while others wore red and white or black and white keffiyehs. A few men proudly displayed long, flowing beards hanging from their drawn, ashen faces. Their eyes moved rapidly from side to side like...