We left the camp at about four in Ashraf's cab, our first port of call an old church in one of the neighbouring villages. This church is famous for being the site where Jesus cured ten lepers, although (if I remember correctly) he enacted this miracle from an unusually cautious distance, the men in question having been shut up in a cave (which now forms part of the church and is one of its main attractions), food delivered via an overhead chute. It was pleasant to sit and think there for a while, but the church was not as striking as you might expect, considering its age and religious importance. Call me pedantic, but a church shouldn't need an air-conditioning unit; the coolness should be inherent to it, and such a device would be superfluous in many of the older Arab homes with their canny use of thick walls and other features to create a haven from the sun. We were shown round by a thin, ascetic-looking man who turned up with the church key and - as has been so often the case - accompanied for the duration by a group of children who had spotted us entering town and wanted some of the action. We took lots of silly pictures and played 'thumb war', which has been a total winner in Palestine and a good way past language deficiencies.
Next we drove with Ashraf to a vantage point high above Jenin for a good view of the city and the startlingly flat landscapes which spread outwards towards distant Nazereth, on the other side of the Green Line (the internationally recognised border of Israel established in 1948, but only followed in part by the separation wall). Ashraf directed our gaze to yet more settlements on the neighbouring hilltops, and pointed out the ruins of the Mukata, the Palestinian Authority offices dynamited wholesale by the Israelis during the Second Intifada. We stopped off for a closer look on our way onwards, clambering onto the concrete rubble to examine the remaining parts of the building's structure, wires spilling out of the collapsed floors and lumps of concrete clinging forlornly to cables connecting nothing with nothing.
At the Freedom Theatre, our final rendezvous point, we learned about the pioneering and brave work of the Jewish-Israeli woman who started doing acting workshops with traumatised children in the latter part of her life and settled in the camp, her son now continuing her legacy. We also saw panicky bullet-holes sprayed across the facade of the building adjoining the theatre, and Ashraf related to us how he heard young soldiers crying in their tanks during the siege of Jenin, saying "bullshit Sharon, why'd he send us here?". He also told us the story of the boy in whose name the neighbouring computer centre had been opened. This boy had been killed on Eid at the end of Ramadam by an Israeli sniper who'd spotted him playing with a plastic gun his father had bought him. He was twelve years old. Taken immediately to an Israeli hospital, it was not possible to prevent his death, but, in an extraordinary gesture of compassion, his father permitted his son's organs to be donated to two Jewish children requiring emergency treatment and their lives were duly saved. The father of one of these children offered the Palestinian father money, which - unsurprisingly - he turned down, but he did consent to the Israeli funding a centre in Jenin commemorating his son and this is what happened.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Jenin, pt 1
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
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
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Diary Entry, 23rd of July
Mega-post on Jenin trip coming up, too much to copy from my notes in one sitting. This is also from my diary, from a couple of weeks ago (note - most of my Bir Zeit classes have been great, this was a one-off):
"Jalazone. Exhausting day: hot, dizzy and with sharp stomach cramps after a long and eventually fruitful search for a cashpoint in the midday sun followed by a patchy conversation class with overly timid students, I stumbled off the servees in the town centre (not having jumped off at my usual stop due to a last minute conversation with an English-Palestinian from Brighton on holiday in the camp with her baby) to be greeted with raucous cries and the sight of a freshly decapitated sheep, still writhing on the stone threshold of the butcher's shop as a group of men hosed it down."
"Jalazone. Exhausting day: hot, dizzy and with sharp stomach cramps after a long and eventually fruitful search for a cashpoint in the midday sun followed by a patchy conversation class with overly timid students, I stumbled off the servees in the town centre (not having jumped off at my usual stop due to a last minute conversation with an English-Palestinian from Brighton on holiday in the camp with her baby) to be greeted with raucous cries and the sight of a freshly decapitated sheep, still writhing on the stone threshold of the butcher's shop as a group of men hosed it down."
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Double
People in Jalazone think I look like Gilad Shalit (the young Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas last year, recently reported - perhaps for political reasons- to be in worsening health*). Quite a lot of people have made this comparison, independently, and I've also heard it being muttered in passing. At first, I was a little disconcerted by this, but they seem to hold him in quite affectionate regard, unlike the soldiers who rampage through the camp from time to time and are viewed with rather less equanimity. Gilad, I (sincerely) hope you're being treated with at least a little of the kindness I've received, and that someday not too distant you can know Palestinians as hosts and not captors.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6237458.stm
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6237458.stm
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Teaching pt 1
In case it hasn't been clear - I'm, sure it has, actually, but what the hell, it'll save some people from catching up - I'm here in Palestine primarily as an English teacher. In the mornings I teach at Amari refugee camp; in the afternoons I divide my time between a group of (very serious) Bir Zeit University students and a (rather less serious) group of staff at Jalazone children's centre. So far, I've refrained from commenting on the teaching side of things, probably because it takes up so much time and requires so much energy, mental and physical, that it's nice to dwell on other matters for a change. The teaching has also, in truth, been a dispiriting enterprise at times, and when I drop into my regular chair after another crushing morning there's not much solace in reviewing the day's events, piecing together calamity after abject calamity. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I had had four completely free weeks after my college teaching finished to organise myself, tell everyone how serious I was, and (eventually, after much pontificating about objectives) put some actual actual lesson plans together but a couple of days into the programme I realised that all of these were useless and threw them out.
For some reason, I'd thought that the kids would be easy. I'd read all the theory about managing difficult behaviour, which I think is pretty understandable in most circumstances anyway. I was going to be a good little facilitator, and get maximum participation from all my students so I'd be able to channel all that wholesome, teenage exuberance into fun and productive lessons. Well, it's not worked out like that, exactly. I don't get a chance to set up lessons involving learning games and interaction because the children won't let me speak long enough to give instructions and make sure they're understood. Every lesson at least half the class will moan about not having anything to write with, despite the astonishing amount of pens and pencils that I've given out (of the original ten packs of felt-tips I proudly stashed in my resource cupboard on the first day I have a couple of individual pens remaining, and those don't have bloody tops). As well as disrupting anything involving writing, the chronic shortfall in resources means that artistic expression is considerably reduced in scope, and I get ten versions of the Al-Aqsa mosque in brown. And I'm all for a certain amount of chaos, usually, but in this situation it excludes the younger / smaller ones, who can't hold their own in the shark-feeding frenzy that takes place when I organise (say) a bartering game with flashcards and retire to the back seats with glum expressions and baleful stares. The worst thing is that this is not a caricature.
For some reason, I'd thought that the kids would be easy. I'd read all the theory about managing difficult behaviour, which I think is pretty understandable in most circumstances anyway. I was going to be a good little facilitator, and get maximum participation from all my students so I'd be able to channel all that wholesome, teenage exuberance into fun and productive lessons. Well, it's not worked out like that, exactly. I don't get a chance to set up lessons involving learning games and interaction because the children won't let me speak long enough to give instructions and make sure they're understood. Every lesson at least half the class will moan about not having anything to write with, despite the astonishing amount of pens and pencils that I've given out (of the original ten packs of felt-tips I proudly stashed in my resource cupboard on the first day I have a couple of individual pens remaining, and those don't have bloody tops). As well as disrupting anything involving writing, the chronic shortfall in resources means that artistic expression is considerably reduced in scope, and I get ten versions of the Al-Aqsa mosque in brown. And I'm all for a certain amount of chaos, usually, but in this situation it excludes the younger / smaller ones, who can't hold their own in the shark-feeding frenzy that takes place when I organise (say) a bartering game with flashcards and retire to the back seats with glum expressions and baleful stares. The worst thing is that this is not a caricature.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Hassan
Today was the second Friday in a row that we've been the beneficiaries of our friend Hassan's hospitality. He took us to Ein Perat, a spring near Jerusalem, for a picnic, a hike and a quick dip before it closed at four. Some of the group were a bit uncomfortable with the thought that we'd come to a settlers' paddling pool (one such outpost looms in the hills above) but by the end of the day the numbers of Arabs mingling peacefully with Jews seemed to disprove the idea that this was an exclusive resort. My friend was quizzed by a group of Israeli teens who wanted to know why he was teaching Arab kids and not Jewish ones, but that was about as openly political as it got. We did engage in vaguely subversive antics with an Arab family who joined us in a magnificent cave high above the valley; burrowed into the settlement hilltop, they sung about being refugees and we reciprocated with "Yellow Submarine", "Flower of Scotland" and a solo rendition of Celine Dion from one particularly shameless member of the group. "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and "Kumbayah" were also considered in desperation before we plumped for the former anthems. Who says we don't have a national identity?
The previous Friday (the first day of our weekend) we had been invited to Hassan's house in Abu Dis for a barbecue, spending the daylight hours larking around with the younger members of his extended family (who can now declare with certainty that "rugger maketh the man" ) and the evening knocking back mint teas in the front office of his mate's letting agency and a threadbare cafe. We finished the night with laid-back engineer and architect friends, eating Kaak and arguing over football after a moonlit visit to the wall, so stupendously tall and hostile in the dark. Seeing the wall was a far more affecting experience in the company of someone separated by that barrier from family members, particularly in the company of a person so decent and pluralistic as to make those brute slabs of concrete seem utterly perverse.
The previous Friday (the first day of our weekend) we had been invited to Hassan's house in Abu Dis for a barbecue, spending the daylight hours larking around with the younger members of his extended family (who can now declare with certainty that "rugger maketh the man" ) and the evening knocking back mint teas in the front office of his mate's letting agency and a threadbare cafe. We finished the night with laid-back engineer and architect friends, eating Kaak and arguing over football after a moonlit visit to the wall, so stupendously tall and hostile in the dark. Seeing the wall was a far more affecting experience in the company of someone separated by that barrier from family members, particularly in the company of a person so decent and pluralistic as to make those brute slabs of concrete seem utterly perverse.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Old Man in Green Cap
After a two-part servees ride, into Ramallah from Jalazone and then onwards to the outskirts of the city, our daily commute finishes with an uphill walk through the main street of Amari camp to the school. During this walk, we are almost always ambushed by a rambunctious old man in a green baseball cap, who waves his stick at us and elaborates a few wisecracks on a single theme: that we are off to work and he is not. The wisecracks are delivered with much cackling and usually mention coffee and cigarettes, though not necessarily in that order. Sometimes it is enough to simply remind us that he is going to spend the day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he ventures the observation that we are drinking water and he is drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he guffaws about the fact that we will be ducking fusillades of chalk and sweating blood while he spends the day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, or vice versa. Every now and again he injects a smattering of Arabic into the greeting, but the basic message comes through loud and clear.
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