A recent memoir, published in May, describes two years in the life of a young American who finds herself traveling and working in the Middle East, much of it in Ramallah as a volunteer. A native of a small, God-fearing town in Oklahoma, Pamela Olson manages to get herself to Stanford, where she receives a degree in physics. Before she can start her life as a lab rat, however, she lands a job bartending and saves money for some after-college travel.

a memoir and guide for the uninitiated...Olson admits her prejudices toward the Arab world early on, sounding very much the typical American (fewer than 15% of U.S. citizens ever travel abroad). "I'd always hazily pictured the Middle East as a vast desert full of cave-dwelling, Kalashnikov-wielding, misogynistic, bearded maniacs," Olson writes, "and I figured anyone without an armored convoy and Ph.D. in Middle Eastern studies should probably stay of it." But a Lebanese friend's enthusiastic stories about Beirut win her over. Curious, Olson winds up buying a copy of Lonely Planet: From Istanbul to Cairo on a Shoestring. "To my astonishment, it recommended the route as one of the most romantic, historically rich, and friendly in the world, and no more dangerous than Brazil or Thailand."

As I read her book, I couldn't help thinking that another title for it might have been Palestine for Dummies. Although she writes in a warm, empathetic voice that attempts to represent both sides, she takes the reader on a step-by-step journey through every aspect of life in the West Bank, pro and con-including what it's like to hit an Israeli checkpoint. In fact the book opens with an account of her very first entry into Israel from the Allenby Bridge. "The wide, suspicious eyes of the young Israeli border guard were unnerving after all the laid-back hospitality in Jordan," she notes, and lies her way past the soldier by explaining she's a Christian tourist on her way to visit Biblical sites.

Olson describes her many friendships with ordinary Palestinians and Israelis, including Rania, a young woman in Jayyous who wants to study psychology; Qais, with whom she shares a romantic connection, as well as the experience of having lived and studied in Moscow for a semester; and Dan, an Estonian Israeli diver she meets in the Sinai and remains friends with throughout her narrative.

Had 23-year-old International Solidarity Movement activist Rachel Corrie lived, rather than get crushed by an Israeli bulldozer, this is the kind of memoir she might have written about her experience living with Palestinians under Israel's military occupation.

At first Pamela, whom almost everyone calls "Bam-i-la" because of course there is no "P" in Arabic, struggles with the language, but after a while she begins to find her way. "Little by little" she writes, "Arabic began to sound more like a colorful, rocky waterfall and less like an alien, cacophonous jungle."

Fast Times in Palestine is part travel guide, part Arabic glossary, part cookbook, and the diary of an innocent American girl who has to grow up fast in the midst of both beauty and chaos.

After spending a few months as a tourist in the West Bank and traveling to nearby countries, Olson returns to the Bay Area, saves money, and signs up for a volunteer position with Palestinian democracy activist Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi. His Ramallah-based Palestinian National Initiative, or Al Mubadara, founded in 2002, was intended to offer Palestinians an alternative to Fatah and Hamas. "Dr. Barghouthi," Olson notes, "was a rare free agent in a region where nearly everyone was a proxy or a client."

It is while she is settling into her new duties as a public relations writer for Al Mubadara that Israel begins to construct the infamous 25-foot high dividing Wall that snakes back and forth over the 1967 border, or Green Line, between Israel and the West Bank. The International Court of Justice soon rules that any part of the wall built on occupied Palestinian land is "contrary to international law." Discussing this with her roommate, a young Palestinian communist named Yasmine, she asks why international legal rulings aren't ameliorating the situation. "Look," says Yasmine, "we [Palestinians] have international laws all over the place, and none of them gets implemented unless America wants them to. So to be very honest, Pamela...You can stick your international laws in your international ass."

Fast Times in Palestine rarely resorts to such crudity, but when it does, the book conveys the horror and absurdity that is daily life for most Palestinians.

It also amply describes the beauty of the landscape. One day when she and Yasmine go on a long walk, she realizes, "I was infused with a sensation I'd never felt before, a feeling of having arrived, of finding myself in just the right place on earth at exactly the right time. Suddenly I couldn't imagine living anywhere but Palestine, close to olive trees and white stone houses and Bible hills turning blue as the sun set over a sea we couldn't walk to and touch without crossing walls and checkpoints. Life here was hard and lonely and confusing, but it was also full and exciting, cynical and funny, and often lovely beyond description."

Editor of the Palestine Monitor
A few months into her volunteer position writing reports for Al Mubadara, the head writer and editor of the Palestine Monitor steps down. Out of the blue, Mustafa Barghouthi—the Monitor's managing editor—offers Olson the job, at the ripe old age of 24. "The pay is $900 a month plus a free apartment and health insurance." Olson admits she has no formal training as a journalist, but muses, "I was already researching and writing long stories and articles about the situation in Palestine and posting them on my web site. If I took this job, I could...have a worldwide audience, and get paid for it."

Predictably, Olson develops strong ties to the Palestinians she bonds with, sharing stories, meals and good times. Little wonder then that she becomes unnerved, fearful, frustrated or angry in response to Israeli military incursions and arrests. One day, when Quais fails to show up to see her in Ramallah as expected, she gets a text that he's been stopped at a checkpoint, "My blood runs cold. This is how it starts. The soldiers take them off their bus, off the street, out of their house, and they disappear, maybe for hours, maybe for days, maybe for years. Palestinians can be held in Israeli jails for up to three months without charge or trail, a practice known as ‘administrative detention.' The three-month sentences can be renewed indefinitely. I've heard stories of innocent people being held for years in Israeli prisons, of people being destroyed by the experience. No warrant. No charge. No phone call."

Israel has long insisted it is the only true democracy in the Middle East, yet without habeas corpus—a prisoner's right to be brought before a judge, to know the charges against him—it fails the test.

Olson amply documents and footnotes her narrative, frequently quoting Israeli sources such as Haaretz and B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization that monitors life in the Occupied Territories. Sometimes she feels she's bordering on a nervous breakdown. "But breaking down wouldn't help anything," she realizes. "I could leave, but leaving wouldn't help anything, either. The occupation wouldn't go away if I closed my eyes."
Olson travels up and down the West Bank and manages to get into Gaza at one point. She does not spend much time in Israel although she does offer the reader a brief jaunt through Al-Quds (Jerusalem) with a visit to the Haram Ash-Sharif.

When Dr. Barghouthi decides to up the stakes and run against Israel's client, Mahmoud Abbas, he taps Olson to be his press secretary. Despite being the only serious presidential candidate running against Abbas in the 2005 elections, Barghouthi receives less than full coverage by the western media. "He had to get himself arrested to grab any headlines," Olson notes, "and he still didn't get the kind of press you'd expect for something as exotic and exciting as the first serious democratic opposition candidate in Palestinian history."

You have to read the book to discover how Israel thwarted Barghouthi's campaign at every turn. Still, in the end he earns a respectable 19% of the vote. One can't help but wonder what the outcome might have been had Israel stayed out of the way. With almost 20%, Olson adds, "it was a huge protest vote—a harbinger of things to come. Yet it was virtually unreported in the international and Israeli media."

Although Olson has her eyes wide open and matures on the job, she and other internationals maintain a romantic connection to Ramallah. "There was an air of 1920s Paris or Casablanca about the place," she writes wistfully—"a city cut off from the world except for a small group of dissolute, disillusioned expatriates who weren't sure whether to fight injustice or get drunk and forget about it. The atmosphere of mute shock expressed only in sidelong glances, of being on the right side of history against long odds, of knowing something few people knew, and of genuine connection and collective struggle was something tenuous and rare. Every foreigner who spent time in Palestine felt it. No matter where we were from or where we went after, the parts of Palestine where we lived, worked, and studied always felt like a home to us."

In Fast Times in Palestine, and in just two years, Olson becomes transformed by her experiences, traveling from the ignorance of the average Middle American to become a consummate insider on Palestinian affairs.

Pamela Olson blogs at pamolson.org.

Jordan Elgrably is the editor of the Levantine Review.