Poet will speak about how she learned to listen

Sitting in a Bainbridge Island library last summer, poet Sarah Zale listened to Sulaiman Khatib, an Arab man from the Palestinian territories, recall the 10 years he served in prison for stabbing two Israeli soldiers.

Instead of retaliating after being released, Khatib co-founded Combatants for Peace, an organization of former militant Israelis and Palestinians who advocate for peaceful conflict resolution.

Zale was in awe of his words.

"I was so moved by his speech that I could not stop thinking about it," the 56-year-old Sequim writer said.

Al-Khatib's speech inspired her to go to Israel and the Palestinian territories to see for herself what life was like. She went for two weeks in November 2006 with the Compassionate Listening Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages peace and empathy through nonjudgmental and unselfish listening.

She will recite her poetry and show pictures of her trip at 7 p.m. Friday at the Bellevue Arts Museum as one of the speakers for the museum's "Offering Reconciliation" exhibition, scheduled to end Aug. 19.

The exhibition features ceramic bowls painted by Israeli and Palestinian artists to express their views on peace and hope.

Zale heard about the Compassionate Listening Project at al-Khatib's speech from Leah Green, its founder.

The project takes groups of Americans and Canadians to Israel and the Palestinian territories to listen to both sides of the conflict without judgment. It also brings together groups of Israelis and Palestinians to listen to each other in order to facilitate peace.

Green started the organization, which is influenced by the Quaker tradition and Buddhism, in 1990 and has led more than 500 people to the West Bank for reconciliation projects, she said.

Zale, a writer for 25 years and a poet since 2003, said the trip helped her see an end to her fourth graduate thesis — this time in poetry from Goddard College (West), a program of the Vermont school based in Port Townsend. Her final project, called "The Art of Folding," now has two parts, one about the Holocaust and the other about her Mideast experience.

Zale uses folding as a metaphor for prayer.

"I was looking for a word that would give people a sense of spiritual coming together that includes hope and a sense of peace in a nonreligious sense," she said. "For me, poetry is about what it means to be human."

One of her favorite memories of the trip includes the time she stayed with a family in a Palestinian refugee camp near Hebron in the West Bank.

She saw the destitution firsthand.

Eight children and their parents lived in a four-room house. They slept on mattresses on the ground and ate crops they had grown in a community garden.

But regardless of their poverty, she said, the family was gracious, "The parents not only had to feed their eight children, they invited their eldest son and served us [five Americans and Canadians] ... dinner."

The men ate in a different room, and the women and children served Zale and the other visitors, she said.

"Everything that I experienced there gave me hope," she said.

"That may seem like an extreme statement, but the people I met did nothing but inspire hope for the prospect of peace. If you talk to people and truly listen to people, you discover a sense of humanity."

Taya Flores: 206-464-3825 or tflores@seattletimes.com