641: The Walls
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I'm in Salahm's 33 and his parents want him to call his cousins on the phone. He doesn't want him, he doesn't like to. I have to say I'm with him, he's got a really good excuse. I just, I grew up never knowing them, for me I need to spend time with them, to start to be attached to them. No, I understand, they're like strangers to you. Yes, exactly. You never got to know any of those relatives because Morocco built a wall 1700 miles long across the desert, there's actually several walls of piled up sand, plus ditches in between the walls, plus barbed wire, plus reportedly 7 million land mines, plus 120,000 soldiers, separating the rest of his family, who were in western Sahara, from the place where Muhammad Salahm was born and still lives today. I'm as a refugee settlement, with an estimated 165,000 people in it, on the other side of the wall. So he has all these cousins, from eight aunts and uncles, and? I would never met them, there is nothing common, we haven't shared anything. I know their names, I don't know why I have a relative, but. That must be so frustrating for your parents. All the time they try to get me to call them and talk to them, but what should we talk about? What do we have in common that we can't talk about if we finish the initial greeting? And I feel guilty about it and bad about it, but I don't know what to do about it. Not that his parents get this. They are mad at me, but part of the blame belonged to the fact that we are the occupation and the separation and I shouldn't be totally like the one to take the responsibility for everything. Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying don't blame me. There's an international situation here. I am not personally to blame for this. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't choose to leave away from them. And if I have the chance, I would love to like to be with them and get to know them. In fact, the wall between the refugee camp where he's lived his life and the area where his family's from, where he says they belong. That wall is the central fact of his life, the rock on which everything else is built. If the wall weren't there, instead of his current life, he spends his days doing politics, trying to draw the world's attention to the situation his people are in. I for sure would have nothing to do with politics and I wish I had the option and the choice to care about silly things that the rest of the people, I love swimming. And I have done it just like three or four times, one so when I was child. And there's no place to swim in the refugee camp. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, there isn't. There's a 1,700 mile wall between him and the ocean. When somebody builds a wall, we readjust our lives. We found that wall. So, just tell us what you're doing here. I just, just closing this man get told tomorrow morning. So, what's this gate made of?
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