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.