On Thursday night we travelled up to Jenin, our first trip to the north of the West Bank. The drive there was incredible: the hills are so beautiful, and the sad thing is that even the Israeli settlements don't look out of place, although they're easily distinguishable from Palestinian towns by virtue of the red, slanting roofs which crown each dwelling. There are a lot of settlements, appearing on hilltop after hilltop, quaintly alpine, almost, and seemingly innocuous. However, the steep walls which undergird many of these outposts reveal them as the fortresses they are, protected by an extraordinary array of coercive measures - walls, fences, checkpoints, permits, guns and tanks - which, in their most benign guise, restrict the movements of the West Bank's Palestinian inhabitants, hugely diminishing their quality of life, and often take a much more deadly toll.
Our entry into Jenin was dramatic. Thursday night is the traditional night for pre-wedding festivities, and our entrance into the city was livened up by a car which pulled into the road behind us, two of its occupants firing machine guns into the sky. I was in the back seat, and suddenly there were loud shots at close quarters, which stayed close as we drove into the centre of the city, tailed by the car responsible. Michael later told us that he could see them in the wing mirrors, but for me it was too unfamiliar a sound to understand where it was coming from, or what was happening, or to feel anything beyond a vague apprehension. We reached our final stop, and, with a signal to move, I stepped out of the car gingerly as the wedding party continued up the road, guns blazing away. We were all shaken as we pieced together what had happened, but locals confirmed this was merely the prelude to a wedding taking place in the morning, and nothing to worry about, although perhaps the men following our car had also wanted to give the newcomers a proper Jenin "hello". (Ramallah, incidently, does not have this 'frontier' mentality, less visibly touched by the occupation, more accustomed to westerners, and with a busy and modern commercial centre). Our sleeping place that night and the next was Jenin Creative Cultural Centre, four floors up, hot and humid when we arrived. Most of the taps in the centre were dry, but we managed to get enough water from one to fill the toilet cistern a couple of times, although it took ages to collect it from the thin trickle that came out, and you had to hold a button down to produce that. My friend had a bad stomach, and it was not an easy night for him.
In the morning Chris and I went for breakfast after getting fed up waiting for the others. After great coffee in a cafe with wall to wall mirrors, we were invited to sit with a group of taxi drivers who saw us walking by and hooked us in. Their office spilled out into the street, its dark interior lined with comfy chairs and cooled a little by a single fan. One of our companions was an English teacher during term-time, and some of his co-workers had a little English too, enough to communicate with us beyond our Arabic level. The atmosphere was very friendly, and Chris lightened the mood further by making some quick drawings, their boss excellent sketching material with his wrinkled forehead, tufty hair and pugnacious mustache. We talked about movement restrictions and other aspects of the occupation, and on the wall was a picture of a driver killed when the IDF fired a tank shell at his house. One of the men, who was courteous and friendly but not warm, pointed out that it was not possible for him to be a tourist, making clear one of the basic differences between our situations. Generally, however, things were cheerful and we left in a good mood, hugely reassured after the ambiguous welcome we'd received the previous night.
Joined by the rest of the group, we walked around the centre of Jenin for a bit, exchanging the usual greetings, nods and smiles with men gathered socially or perched on stools outside shops; after forty five minutes of this, which included a few moments of cool respite in a cavernous, derilict Arab house, the english teacher we'd met earlier - Ashraf*- pulled up in his cab and took us to his house, ostensibly to shower. We'd mentioned the lack of running water at the Cultural Centre and there were probably other clues to this fact.
Ashraf and his family live on the outskirts of Jenin refugee camp, near patches of wasteland, and the area felt very open - an ironic (and misleading) first impression, considering the camp's reputation for being cramped. Near to his house were many that had been built to replace those destroyed by the IDF during the siege of Jenin in 2002, and perhaps the space in the vicinity was previously filled with other buildings demolished at that time. After showering Ashraf's wife bought out sweet teas and a large bowel of fruit and we realised that we weren't going to be let go that easily. A meal appeared, chicken and stuffed vine leaves on a pile of rice spiked with beef and peanuts; wonderful food, even though I passed on the chicken and had to perform forensics on the rice. We talked with Ashraf's oldest son, a muscley twenty-one year old with a broad grin who didn't know what he wanted to do except travel to Europe. Andy noticed that he was wearing a belt buckle which said "my other ride is your mother". We suspected that the meaning of this had probably bypassed his parents, and perhaps him too: he was quite softly spoken, gentle, without the brash (but friendly) posturing we've come across in many of the younger Arab men. Perhaps this was just because we were guests, though.
Outside the house was a peaceful space surrounded by walls to shoulder height, including a garden on the left and a narrow area at the front with plastic chairs in two facing rows. This strip, where we sat, was about two metres wide, and led past the front gate and porch to a future guesthouse being built on the right end of the house (due to be completed soon, and intended to be a 'motel' for strangers passing through Jenin and needing a place to stay). The garden would have been incredible were it not in a refugee camp, with a canopy of vines and figs, oranges, grapefruit and lemons as well as the trees from which the olives in our meal came. Chris drew some pictures of this garden which turned out beautifully and added another three or four drawings to the half dozen portraits he'd already done that day. Someone produced a violin, the second that had been put into my hands since arriving in Jenin, but this time I didn't break a string tuning like I had done at the Cultural Centre and eked out a few rusty notes. Michael was quiet, running prayer beads through his fingers and preoccupied with thoughts, as he often is on these occasions. Andy taught me Arabic grammar. Time passed in perfect serenity.
As the afternoon wore on, we heard more from Ashraf about the situation in Jenin and probed him for further information. He told us about the nightly incursions into the camp by the IDF, explaining that sometimes the Israelis came to make house raids and arrest militants but often they had no clear purpose but to disturb and aggravate residents trying to sleep. We learnt that his wall had been knocked down four times by Israeli tanks reversing in the streets - with no recompense for the damage. I found it hard to put this together with the tranquil environment his house encompassed, and that he had somehow created in the middle of all the violence and disruption. His wife was quieter and less forthcoming, but his daughter beamed at us from the voluminous, bat-shaped, one-piece dress / headscarf she was wearing, a pretty outfit with green flecks on a white background. She invited us to her wedding taking place in two weeks' time, and her father mentioned a party they'd held the previous weekend to celebrate her graduation (in "sports", mysteriously). Clearly, everything was happening for her right now.
It also emerged in the course of the afternoon that Ashraf had left us in the morning to visit his nephew in hospital, where he was recovering after an accident earlier that day. Fourteen years old, he'd been playing outside when he picked up a metal object which turned out to be unexploded IDF ordnance and blew off the top parts of two fingers. That Ashraf felt able to bring us to his home after such an awful event - and moreover to find enough composure for the rare kind of hospitality that puts you instantly at ease - was an astonishing thing and perhaps indicative of the extent to which such events have become normality.
* Name changed
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