I know this street in the Old City, Al Quds, East Jerusalem. I limped along its dusty pathway after sustaining an injury before arriving in Palestine in late December 2005 to attend a Palestinian-Israeli Peace Conference. This street may be the very path Jesus took to his crucifixion, I was informed. It leads past the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where the 12th century saint, Helena, searched for the true cross and sacred tomb of Christ. Her son, Constantine the Great began the construction of the church in her honor. But I was there to chase down the whereabouts of a Gaza teen, a young scholar who was to speak at the conference I was attending.

The Gaza teen had spent months getting permits to leave Gaza, and then the Israeli Defense Forces held him at the checkpoint for 6 to 8 hours. We were on break when he finally arrived so he decided to go sightseeing. Despite the many documents permitting him to be there, he was arrested and brought to an infamous Israeli prison where he might be tortured if we didn’t get there fast.

I had joined a posse of conference attendees, mostly academics from around the world who were determined to retrieve the teen. They walked faster than I could, so I fell behind and finally stopped to rest in a marketplace not far from the church. A shopkeeper could tell I was near collapse so he offered me a chair and made me a hot, sweet tea as he listened to the sad tale. By then a crowd had gathered to listen to the story of the boy from Gaza. They were all Palestinians and so understood the peril he faced. Several said they knew exactly where he had been taken and to follow them.

Before long we came across my conference crowd and so they departed and thanked me for my concern and obvious love for Palestine. The negotiations for the boy’s release had begun. It was his good fortune that one of the Israeli conference-goers had the same last name as a famous Israeli politician, so we allowed him to carry the argument for the boy’s release, which worked. With the boy in hand when we were well out of earshot, the man who had argued on the teen’s behalf confided that he was no relation to the famous politician.

Genevieve Harris-Fraser lives in Orange.