Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Monday, May 2, 2016
Khalil and Lifta
I'm back in Arrowsic, Maine. I arrived in Boston, Saturday evening and today is Monday. Time to sum up and move on to the photos, which I'll try to post tomorrow.
Khalil, or Hebron, is the site of the Abraham's near execution of his son Isaac. As I recall - NB, may need fact checking - at the last minute, God intervened, pleased with Abraham's devotion, and Isaac's life was spared. Christians, Muslims and Jews recognize Abraham - Ibrahim, to Muslims - as a prophet. Currently, the old city in Khalil is often tense because of Israeli settlers, Israeli troops and Muslim inhabitants. Since settlers moved in and began harassing Muslim settlers, the old souk has been abandoned and parts of the old city are difficult to move through. Abraham is tugged in three different directions.
Last Tuesday, Khitam and I drove to Khalil where we met a representative of the Red Crescent Society, the Muslim Red Cross, and followed her to Red Crescent's center in the old city. There, Khitam organized art play for about sixty first grade girls. They arrived as we set up, a gaggle of very cute kids in matching school uniforms. They were herded inside by their teachers and once there, Khitam organized them into five groups that would rotate through five art areas where they would construct, paint, draw, mold clay, read or hear stories and play with puppets, aided by Red Crescent staff and me. The energy level rose to the ceiling, and the girls had great fun busily building and drawing and painting. At the end, I told a story which Khitam translated. They were an eager and focused audience, once they had wriggled into their places on the floor.
Then, about two hours after we started, it was over, They hustled out of the building and onto their bus and were gone. Khitam and the staff and I packed the materials back into her art car and off we went, out of the old city. Part of me wanted to stay, to wander the narrow streets, recalling my last visit there in 1998, when there were no settlers and the old souk was open and busy.
I remember going back to a square where taxis were parked. There were four of us, two Canadians, another American and I. We were rushed by drivers asking us where we wanted to go, each urging us to follow him. I asked one how much to drive us to Jerusalem and he gave a price that seemed reasonable. My companions agreed, so we got in. We drove out of town toward Jerusalem, then he asked me if we'd come to his house for coffee. I remember hesitating, wondering if this was a hustle, then dismissed that thought and asked the others if they'd like to stop for coffee at his house. They agreed, so we turned off the main road onto a dirt road that climbed into the hills. We drove through a little village and stopped at a house overlooking the road from Khalil.
He led us into his house to meet his wife and three kids, then ushered us outside to sit in their little garden. His wife served us fruit, then coffee and sweets, then tea. His thee children, probably maybe six, eight and eleven or twelve. I started throwing a ball with the oldest boy. I had my three juggling balls so I showed him how to juggle and he worked on it for the rest of our stay. The father, whose name I can't remember, invited us to stay for dinner. I told him we had to get back to Ramallah after we got to Jerusalem, that we had to teach the next day. He urged us to stay, but we couldn't, so we said good-bye and she drove us to Jerusalem.
I won't forget their hospitality, which is typical of Palestinians and Arabs in general. Once you're in their home, you are their guest. They insist on feeding you and making sure you are comfortable, however meager their resources. When I got back home, I sent three juggling balls and some other gifts to the family. Months later, I received a tattered note from Khalil, written in English: "Thank you, Al, for the gifts. Come to see us again." It was signed with their family name.
My last day in Palestine, Khitam and I drove to the village of Lifta. It is an abandoned Palestinian village. Its citizens fled in 1948 during the war that established Israel. Most such villages were then destroyed and remnants scattered or buried to be replaced by Israeli towns. For some reason, Lifta was not destroyed and has been preserved after Palestinians petitioned to prevent its destruction. It must have been a prosperous village. Houses were stone, well built, often joined, perhaps the result of families expanding. There is a spring that feeds a swimming holes in the village. A few Israeli teens were swimming and splashing in the pool. Khitam and I sat under a tree near the pool. For several minutes, she didn't speak, just looked at the pool. Then she said: "I wonder if they ever ask who lived here." We got up and walked back through the deserted village to the car, about a mile.
Khalil and its old city, Jerusalem and its old city, the wall:
Wall, that vile wall that did these lovers sunder;
And through wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper. (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
And the people, enduring, hospitable, confused and frustrated by being walled in or walled out, separated from family, fields, opportunities. The villages, scattered across the landscape, often in the shadow of orderly settlements that look like they were dropped into place by some massive helicopter. The children, bright eyed and eager to learn, to meet someone new - Hallo! How are you? What is your name? Tani and Ireet and their family in Israel, hoping for change. Khitam and Nasser and their good and essential work...
Good-bye for now, Palestine.
Khalil, or Hebron, is the site of the Abraham's near execution of his son Isaac. As I recall - NB, may need fact checking - at the last minute, God intervened, pleased with Abraham's devotion, and Isaac's life was spared. Christians, Muslims and Jews recognize Abraham - Ibrahim, to Muslims - as a prophet. Currently, the old city in Khalil is often tense because of Israeli settlers, Israeli troops and Muslim inhabitants. Since settlers moved in and began harassing Muslim settlers, the old souk has been abandoned and parts of the old city are difficult to move through. Abraham is tugged in three different directions.
Last Tuesday, Khitam and I drove to Khalil where we met a representative of the Red Crescent Society, the Muslim Red Cross, and followed her to Red Crescent's center in the old city. There, Khitam organized art play for about sixty first grade girls. They arrived as we set up, a gaggle of very cute kids in matching school uniforms. They were herded inside by their teachers and once there, Khitam organized them into five groups that would rotate through five art areas where they would construct, paint, draw, mold clay, read or hear stories and play with puppets, aided by Red Crescent staff and me. The energy level rose to the ceiling, and the girls had great fun busily building and drawing and painting. At the end, I told a story which Khitam translated. They were an eager and focused audience, once they had wriggled into their places on the floor.
Then, about two hours after we started, it was over, They hustled out of the building and onto their bus and were gone. Khitam and the staff and I packed the materials back into her art car and off we went, out of the old city. Part of me wanted to stay, to wander the narrow streets, recalling my last visit there in 1998, when there were no settlers and the old souk was open and busy.
I remember going back to a square where taxis were parked. There were four of us, two Canadians, another American and I. We were rushed by drivers asking us where we wanted to go, each urging us to follow him. I asked one how much to drive us to Jerusalem and he gave a price that seemed reasonable. My companions agreed, so we got in. We drove out of town toward Jerusalem, then he asked me if we'd come to his house for coffee. I remember hesitating, wondering if this was a hustle, then dismissed that thought and asked the others if they'd like to stop for coffee at his house. They agreed, so we turned off the main road onto a dirt road that climbed into the hills. We drove through a little village and stopped at a house overlooking the road from Khalil.
He led us into his house to meet his wife and three kids, then ushered us outside to sit in their little garden. His wife served us fruit, then coffee and sweets, then tea. His thee children, probably maybe six, eight and eleven or twelve. I started throwing a ball with the oldest boy. I had my three juggling balls so I showed him how to juggle and he worked on it for the rest of our stay. The father, whose name I can't remember, invited us to stay for dinner. I told him we had to get back to Ramallah after we got to Jerusalem, that we had to teach the next day. He urged us to stay, but we couldn't, so we said good-bye and she drove us to Jerusalem.
I won't forget their hospitality, which is typical of Palestinians and Arabs in general. Once you're in their home, you are their guest. They insist on feeding you and making sure you are comfortable, however meager their resources. When I got back home, I sent three juggling balls and some other gifts to the family. Months later, I received a tattered note from Khalil, written in English: "Thank you, Al, for the gifts. Come to see us again." It was signed with their family name.
My last day in Palestine, Khitam and I drove to the village of Lifta. It is an abandoned Palestinian village. Its citizens fled in 1948 during the war that established Israel. Most such villages were then destroyed and remnants scattered or buried to be replaced by Israeli towns. For some reason, Lifta was not destroyed and has been preserved after Palestinians petitioned to prevent its destruction. It must have been a prosperous village. Houses were stone, well built, often joined, perhaps the result of families expanding. There is a spring that feeds a swimming holes in the village. A few Israeli teens were swimming and splashing in the pool. Khitam and I sat under a tree near the pool. For several minutes, she didn't speak, just looked at the pool. Then she said: "I wonder if they ever ask who lived here." We got up and walked back through the deserted village to the car, about a mile.
Khalil and its old city, Jerusalem and its old city, the wall:
Wall, that vile wall that did these lovers sunder;
And through wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper. (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
And the people, enduring, hospitable, confused and frustrated by being walled in or walled out, separated from family, fields, opportunities. The villages, scattered across the landscape, often in the shadow of orderly settlements that look like they were dropped into place by some massive helicopter. The children, bright eyed and eager to learn, to meet someone new - Hallo! How are you? What is your name? Tani and Ireet and their family in Israel, hoping for change. Khitam and Nasser and their good and essential work...
Good-bye for now, Palestine.
Friday, April 29, 2016
Dance, dance, dance...
Khitam and I have attended more dance here than I have in years, and the combination of new theater and new-to-me dance is stunning and also says something about Palestine's divided state, a state that is not yet a nationstate. This combination also says something about humanity, here or anywhere. First, the dance.
For over twenty years, there has been a dance festival in Palestine. Dance companies from Tunisia, Estonia, Norway, France, Morocco, Scotland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Palestine participated this year. There have been over twenty performances in two weeks. Khitam and I attended three in East Jerusalem and one in Ramallah. Here's where politics enter. To get into Jerusalem, you need a yellow license plate, available to people with a Jerusalem identity card and to Israeli citizens. If you live on the West Bank, which includes Ramallah, the city where all Palestinian government offices are, you do not have a yellow license plate and cannot enter Jerusalem unless granted special permission, which is expensive, temporary and not easy to get. So a Palestinian living in Ramallah, or anywhere else on the West Bank, is unlikely to be able to get to a performance in East Jerusalem.
But wait! There's more... Why East Jerusalem? Well, Jerusalem was divided into East and West after the creation of Israel in 1948. The dividing line was marked by what was called The Mandlebaum Gate, an actual gate separating the two halves of Jerusalem and manned by the United Nations. I remember going there in the sixties, when we drove to Jerusalem from Lebanon, where we were living. The June War in 1967 changed that. Israel's victory over the Arab armies began the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This paragraph will turn into a not-very-readable book if I continue to explain these divisions, so I'll return to dance.
Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem and The Culture Palace in Ramallah were the sites of most of the dance performances. Sometimes a company would dance in both, so audiences in occupied Palestine and audiences in East Jerusalem could attend. Sometimes there was one company in one place, another in the other. It added up to a lot of dance. Khitam and I attended four dance performances, one with Chelsea, who has been shadowing Khitam as part of her Masters program, and one with Suhayl, Khitam's neighbor and friend for thirty years. The first performance was a forty minute solo by Mark Brew from the United Kingdom. When he was twenty, Brew was in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. His performance was at times agonizingly moving and it was inspiring. He was on the floor for the whole performance until the end when he was lifted by the ankles ten feet into the air and suspended there as the stage went black. He took his bow in a wheelchair.
The second performance comprised three companies from Tunisia with ties to France. One was a lovely piece by two performers dealing with estrangement in today's world. Another was a solo piece with a bizarre beginning: a pile of newspapers on the floor began to move. The pile looked like a creature from another planet, perhaps one inhabited only by failed journalists. Eventually, the dancer revealed himself by discarding the newspaper pages that covered him and moved freely, as if reborn, or maybe born. Finally another solo piece that was a moving, as in dancing, meditation on religion, at times engaging, at other times confusing.
Monday, we saw Alias Dance Company from Switzerland. Their company included eleven dancers from Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. They were exhausting and wonderful and in very good condition! They moved constantly, crossing from stage right to stage left, returning behind the stage to stage right and going again...and again...and again...and...for an hour. Their movement and energy were engaging and exhilarating. They moved sideways, backwards, twisting, sliding, running, swimming on the floor, and when one stopped, which was seldom, the others would keep moving and soon the one stopped would start again. They were human traffic in New York City, choreographed, or maybe electrical circuitry in action. The audience loved them and brought them back for several bows.
Tuesday night we drove to Ramallah to see the final dance event at the Cultural Palace. The Akram Khan Company from the United Kingdom, dancing a piece about which they wrote: "Hindu Gods, black holes, Indian time cycles, tables, creation and destruction were the starting points" for their fifty-five minute piece. They were stunning: high energy, powerful movement, solos that burst out of ensemble movement, stillness and then a burst of energy. Like Alias the night before, their energy and endurance were remarkable. And, as with Alias the night before, this very large audience brought them back again and again for another bow and another and another.
At the performance, I met Mohammad Eid, an actor with Ishtar, a theater company in Ramallah whose founders and directors, Edward and Iman, I had met several years ago. Mohammad told me about two performances coming up at Ishtar, and Khitam and I decided to adjust our plans, which were pretty loose anyway, after nine days of work, to include the two plays.
Ashtar's theater is intimate, seating about fifty. Edward and Iman run classes, a small professional company of young actors, tour shows and...they sound similar to The Theater Project, and in some ways they are. Conditions in Palestine being what they are, Ashtar is constantly struggling to keep going, and they struggle successfully!
The first performance we saw was a solo production written, directed and acted by German women. The director was touring with the actress, so both were there to take questions and get feedback after the hour long performance. The piece came out of a working visit to Afghanistan by the playwright. Returning to Germany, she discovered it was difficult, maybe impossible to express what she felt after her time in Afghanistan. The theater piece deals with that. If my Arabic is weak, which is an understatement, my German is limited to "how are you" and "the window is..." I don't even remember the word for open or closed! However, as always, it was interesting to me to see the work and to consider what might have been done differently.
Last night, we went back to Ashtar, as invited guests, no less, to see the official opening of their new show, Machine & a Hammer. It was talk back theater, an opportunity for the audience to give feedback and to take part. There were three pieces dealing with Palestine workers: the first about a carpenter who loses his job after seven years and has no benefits; the second about a construction worker hurt on the job who gets no workmen's comp; the third about a tailor shop where conditions are terrible with no recourse for the workers. Afterwards, Edward, the director, talked with us, asked us for feedback and invited people to provide different choices or endings. Two young men tried it, and the ensemble actors reacted to the men's choices. It was good theater and good discussion and people would have talked on late into the evening if Edward hadn't ended it with a shookran (thank you) for coming and a round of applause.
All of these events and the reaction to them reflect similarities, not differences, between the two cultures in this area who want the same space. These events reminded audiences of the role art can play in developing and maintaining community, something we forget when it's budget time. These are not grand events; they are small, mostly intimate, and they invite the community present to participate emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It is the small events, the small steps that remind us of our humanity and of the possibility for change, one small step at a time. There is often a clamor around these events that drowns them out, but not for everyone. Some see, hear, participate and know there is something better worth striving for, one way or another.
For over twenty years, there has been a dance festival in Palestine. Dance companies from Tunisia, Estonia, Norway, France, Morocco, Scotland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Palestine participated this year. There have been over twenty performances in two weeks. Khitam and I attended three in East Jerusalem and one in Ramallah. Here's where politics enter. To get into Jerusalem, you need a yellow license plate, available to people with a Jerusalem identity card and to Israeli citizens. If you live on the West Bank, which includes Ramallah, the city where all Palestinian government offices are, you do not have a yellow license plate and cannot enter Jerusalem unless granted special permission, which is expensive, temporary and not easy to get. So a Palestinian living in Ramallah, or anywhere else on the West Bank, is unlikely to be able to get to a performance in East Jerusalem.
But wait! There's more... Why East Jerusalem? Well, Jerusalem was divided into East and West after the creation of Israel in 1948. The dividing line was marked by what was called The Mandlebaum Gate, an actual gate separating the two halves of Jerusalem and manned by the United Nations. I remember going there in the sixties, when we drove to Jerusalem from Lebanon, where we were living. The June War in 1967 changed that. Israel's victory over the Arab armies began the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This paragraph will turn into a not-very-readable book if I continue to explain these divisions, so I'll return to dance.
Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem and The Culture Palace in Ramallah were the sites of most of the dance performances. Sometimes a company would dance in both, so audiences in occupied Palestine and audiences in East Jerusalem could attend. Sometimes there was one company in one place, another in the other. It added up to a lot of dance. Khitam and I attended four dance performances, one with Chelsea, who has been shadowing Khitam as part of her Masters program, and one with Suhayl, Khitam's neighbor and friend for thirty years. The first performance was a forty minute solo by Mark Brew from the United Kingdom. When he was twenty, Brew was in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. His performance was at times agonizingly moving and it was inspiring. He was on the floor for the whole performance until the end when he was lifted by the ankles ten feet into the air and suspended there as the stage went black. He took his bow in a wheelchair.
The second performance comprised three companies from Tunisia with ties to France. One was a lovely piece by two performers dealing with estrangement in today's world. Another was a solo piece with a bizarre beginning: a pile of newspapers on the floor began to move. The pile looked like a creature from another planet, perhaps one inhabited only by failed journalists. Eventually, the dancer revealed himself by discarding the newspaper pages that covered him and moved freely, as if reborn, or maybe born. Finally another solo piece that was a moving, as in dancing, meditation on religion, at times engaging, at other times confusing.
Monday, we saw Alias Dance Company from Switzerland. Their company included eleven dancers from Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. They were exhausting and wonderful and in very good condition! They moved constantly, crossing from stage right to stage left, returning behind the stage to stage right and going again...and again...and again...and...for an hour. Their movement and energy were engaging and exhilarating. They moved sideways, backwards, twisting, sliding, running, swimming on the floor, and when one stopped, which was seldom, the others would keep moving and soon the one stopped would start again. They were human traffic in New York City, choreographed, or maybe electrical circuitry in action. The audience loved them and brought them back for several bows.
Tuesday night we drove to Ramallah to see the final dance event at the Cultural Palace. The Akram Khan Company from the United Kingdom, dancing a piece about which they wrote: "Hindu Gods, black holes, Indian time cycles, tables, creation and destruction were the starting points" for their fifty-five minute piece. They were stunning: high energy, powerful movement, solos that burst out of ensemble movement, stillness and then a burst of energy. Like Alias the night before, their energy and endurance were remarkable. And, as with Alias the night before, this very large audience brought them back again and again for another bow and another and another.
At the performance, I met Mohammad Eid, an actor with Ishtar, a theater company in Ramallah whose founders and directors, Edward and Iman, I had met several years ago. Mohammad told me about two performances coming up at Ishtar, and Khitam and I decided to adjust our plans, which were pretty loose anyway, after nine days of work, to include the two plays.
Ashtar's theater is intimate, seating about fifty. Edward and Iman run classes, a small professional company of young actors, tour shows and...they sound similar to The Theater Project, and in some ways they are. Conditions in Palestine being what they are, Ashtar is constantly struggling to keep going, and they struggle successfully!
The first performance we saw was a solo production written, directed and acted by German women. The director was touring with the actress, so both were there to take questions and get feedback after the hour long performance. The piece came out of a working visit to Afghanistan by the playwright. Returning to Germany, she discovered it was difficult, maybe impossible to express what she felt after her time in Afghanistan. The theater piece deals with that. If my Arabic is weak, which is an understatement, my German is limited to "how are you" and "the window is..." I don't even remember the word for open or closed! However, as always, it was interesting to me to see the work and to consider what might have been done differently.
Last night, we went back to Ashtar, as invited guests, no less, to see the official opening of their new show, Machine & a Hammer. It was talk back theater, an opportunity for the audience to give feedback and to take part. There were three pieces dealing with Palestine workers: the first about a carpenter who loses his job after seven years and has no benefits; the second about a construction worker hurt on the job who gets no workmen's comp; the third about a tailor shop where conditions are terrible with no recourse for the workers. Afterwards, Edward, the director, talked with us, asked us for feedback and invited people to provide different choices or endings. Two young men tried it, and the ensemble actors reacted to the men's choices. It was good theater and good discussion and people would have talked on late into the evening if Edward hadn't ended it with a shookran (thank you) for coming and a round of applause.
All of these events and the reaction to them reflect similarities, not differences, between the two cultures in this area who want the same space. These events reminded audiences of the role art can play in developing and maintaining community, something we forget when it's budget time. These are not grand events; they are small, mostly intimate, and they invite the community present to participate emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It is the small events, the small steps that remind us of our humanity and of the possibility for change, one small step at a time. There is often a clamor around these events that drowns them out, but not for everyone. Some see, hear, participate and know there is something better worth striving for, one way or another.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Teaching with Khitam
"It's just depressing. It's just depressing! That's why I have to go to the north every two weeks. I can do this." (she takes a deep breath)
"You know what I heard? The happiest people in the world are Palestinians. You know why? When the Israelis let us through the checkpoint, we are happy. When the Israelis wave us through the checkpoint, we are happy. And when the Israelis takes away the checkpoint, we are very happy, the happiest people in the world!"
Khitam drives up on the sidewalk on the edge of downtown Jerusalem and turns off the car. "I'll be right back!" She grabs her purse and hurries across the street. Cars honk and speed by. Pedestrians cross the street and walk by the car. A few minutes later, she is back with a plastic bag. I can see the kaak, a popular Palestinian bread, long like a slender baguette and covered with sesame seeds. She takes out a loaf, splits it open with her thumb, peels a hardboiled egg, breaks it up and stuffs it in the bread, opens a little envelop and sprinkles zatar (thyme, sesame and sumac) over the egg and hands it to me. "Tfuddle." (common Arabic word meaning: Here or Take it or You're welcome). Then she makes another for herself. "We didn't have anything to eat! How is it?" It's delicious and a welcome instant snack from Khitam's traveling kitchen.
We drive home from a visit to Nasser at his school in Azareya, where we surprised him with two lovely plants in a big pot for the hall outside his office. He was upstairs in a large room with a group of his students who had done a workshop with me. They were working with Odeh, a musician and half the team who run al Mada, a Palestinian NGO that does music projects with children. The other half of the team is Reem al Madi, who has had to take another job because funding for the NGO has been so hard to come by. They do very good work with kids. We sat in on the rehearsal of an original song the kids had written and Odeh had set to music. They were singing it and Odeh was having predictable problems getting twenty thirteen-year-olds to sing the same tune in the same key, but they were into it. Nasser was surprised to see us and took a break so we could show him the plants and chat about future projects before saying good-bye again.
After the visit with Nasser, we drove to the pool where Khitam swims whenever she can and follows her swim with a sauna. She has problems with her back and the swim and sauna make a big difference. She joined me in the cafe where I had been catching up with emails. I asked her how she felt. "Actually, I'm a little upset. I put my clothes on a hook and left my towel and purse with them and when I got back from my swim and sauna, another woman was sitting there and her things were on top of mine. I asked her to please move them so I could get my things that I had left there. She said those were her things and didn't move them. So I moved them and took mine to another place, and I said to her: "You know what? This is exactly what you have done to us. You took our place and make us move." Then she had a coffee, we talked of other things and we left. The next stop was the kaak and egg and zatar purchase, then a slow drive home because of holiday traffic but without checkpoints our way, though there were checkpoints for cars going into Jerusalem. I reminded her of the joke about Palestinians being the happiest people in the world.
Last Sunday, Khitam and I drove to an orphanage in Azareya. Layali, one of Nasser's army, had told Khitam about it and had told people at the orphanage about Khitam. They were interested in having her come to the orphanage to do art with the sixty-plus boys, six to twelve years old That was our mission, Sunday. I've already written about Layali and Humda's joining us at the orphanage. Like Khitam, they were volunteering. We got there, Khitam asked an assistant administrator of the orphanage how many boys there were and what ages, and after some discussion told him to divide them into two groups: six to eight year-olds and nine to twelve year-olds. We took the older boys first.
They poured in, the administrator doing his best to maintain some order, and Khitam took over. She had them all sit in chairs against the wall around the room. She talked about what they were going to do, the different activities that we had already set out for them. Then she counted them off into five groups and told each group which activity to go to. Meanwhile, she had discovered she had forgotten materials for one of the activities, so she had to improvise and come up with another one, which she did quickly and successfully.
Soon the kids were all busy with their activities. After ten minutes, she told them: "Five more minutes!" When the five minutes were up, we helped the kids restore the activities to something like their original order, and then each group moved to another station, then another and another and another, until they had played at each station. Khitam moved them around as if they had been doing this kind of activity for months, when, in fact, it was their first time. When the older group had finished, they went back to school with their teachers and the younger kids came. Khitam went through the same routine, adjusting her talk to the level of the kids, and then they were busy for the next hour. There were fewer of them so we had four instead five groups and four stations. Three and a half hours after we arrived, we were finished. The kids were in the dining room, eating their lunch, and we were packing up the car. An hour's drive there, three and a half hours working with the kids, half an hour to pack the car: five hours to volunteer at an orphanage on a sunny Sunday, and we were off to have lunch with Nasser and his family, another day in the life of Khitam.
I had finished my workshops, Saturday, so I was free to tag along and help her. Monday, we drove to the Amal School for young people (3 - 21) with disabilities to do her final workshop with teachers there. She pulled up in front of the school, We got materials she wanted to use out of the car - there are always materials to get out of the car for her work, always - and went in. Teachers greeted her as kids clustered around waiting for rides. Some of them were in wheelchairs, some were mentally challenged, some had walkers, all looked well cared for.
We gathered with twenty-one teachers in a big room downstairs. Khitam introduced me, asked how many spoke English - maybe half raised a hand, some half way or tentatively - and then said: "Go ahead." I led them in a few exercises and talked about ways they might use them with their students. A couple asked questions, all did the exercises willingly. Then Khitam said: "Tell them the story." We had talked about this as a possibility. So I told a story and she translated when necessary. A few comments and then it was time for their final session with her.
In four previous sessions, she had done movement, theater, storytelling (they make up stories) and art to illustrate the stories. I may have skipped something. The point is, they get a full and well rounded experience with Khitam, all of which they can use with their students. Monday, she gave each a box and told them to decorate the boxes any way they wanted to. She had paints, markers, glitter, glue, stars, colored paper and more. They worked like Santa's elves to turn their cardboard boxes into works of art. An hour later, they showed them and talked about why they had decorated them as they had, what it said about them. Then they wrote evaluations of the workshops and when they were finished, Khitam asked them to share what they had written. Their thoughts were personal and glowing, and Khitam was proud, proud of them and the work they had done and proud of what they had told her they had learned in her workshops. Its was clear they had learned a lot they would use and they were grateful to this teacher for sharing so much with them.
The next day, we drove to Khalil in the south. Khalil is often known as Hebron. It's an ancient city that has grown up around the place where God is supposed to have told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac and then, at the last minute, stopped him. In Islam, Abraham is Ibrahim (ee-bra-heem) and also considered a prophet as he is in Judaism. As a result, Khalil is now a contentions place and Israeli settlers have moved into the old city and made life difficult for Palestinians there. In a separate blog about Khalil, I'll talk about Khitam's work there.
Today, when we were leaving the health club where she swims, an older Israeli gestured to us. Khitam stopped and he asked her for a ride to the bus. She speaks Hebrew and I think he assumed she was an Israeli. She told him to get in and asked him where he was going. He told her and then she answered her phone, speaking with someone in Arabic. When we got to the bus stop, she pulled over, and the man said, Shukran, Arabic for thank you. He said it again when he got out and Khitam replied in Hebrew. That, not the disagreement in the locker room, not the killing of Palestinians at a checkpoint or Israelis at a bus stop - that is the way Israelis and Palestinians can live together.
Welcome to Palestine and Israel.
"You know what I heard? The happiest people in the world are Palestinians. You know why? When the Israelis let us through the checkpoint, we are happy. When the Israelis wave us through the checkpoint, we are happy. And when the Israelis takes away the checkpoint, we are very happy, the happiest people in the world!"
Khitam drives up on the sidewalk on the edge of downtown Jerusalem and turns off the car. "I'll be right back!" She grabs her purse and hurries across the street. Cars honk and speed by. Pedestrians cross the street and walk by the car. A few minutes later, she is back with a plastic bag. I can see the kaak, a popular Palestinian bread, long like a slender baguette and covered with sesame seeds. She takes out a loaf, splits it open with her thumb, peels a hardboiled egg, breaks it up and stuffs it in the bread, opens a little envelop and sprinkles zatar (thyme, sesame and sumac) over the egg and hands it to me. "Tfuddle." (common Arabic word meaning: Here or Take it or You're welcome). Then she makes another for herself. "We didn't have anything to eat! How is it?" It's delicious and a welcome instant snack from Khitam's traveling kitchen.
We drive home from a visit to Nasser at his school in Azareya, where we surprised him with two lovely plants in a big pot for the hall outside his office. He was upstairs in a large room with a group of his students who had done a workshop with me. They were working with Odeh, a musician and half the team who run al Mada, a Palestinian NGO that does music projects with children. The other half of the team is Reem al Madi, who has had to take another job because funding for the NGO has been so hard to come by. They do very good work with kids. We sat in on the rehearsal of an original song the kids had written and Odeh had set to music. They were singing it and Odeh was having predictable problems getting twenty thirteen-year-olds to sing the same tune in the same key, but they were into it. Nasser was surprised to see us and took a break so we could show him the plants and chat about future projects before saying good-bye again.
After the visit with Nasser, we drove to the pool where Khitam swims whenever she can and follows her swim with a sauna. She has problems with her back and the swim and sauna make a big difference. She joined me in the cafe where I had been catching up with emails. I asked her how she felt. "Actually, I'm a little upset. I put my clothes on a hook and left my towel and purse with them and when I got back from my swim and sauna, another woman was sitting there and her things were on top of mine. I asked her to please move them so I could get my things that I had left there. She said those were her things and didn't move them. So I moved them and took mine to another place, and I said to her: "You know what? This is exactly what you have done to us. You took our place and make us move." Then she had a coffee, we talked of other things and we left. The next stop was the kaak and egg and zatar purchase, then a slow drive home because of holiday traffic but without checkpoints our way, though there were checkpoints for cars going into Jerusalem. I reminded her of the joke about Palestinians being the happiest people in the world.
Last Sunday, Khitam and I drove to an orphanage in Azareya. Layali, one of Nasser's army, had told Khitam about it and had told people at the orphanage about Khitam. They were interested in having her come to the orphanage to do art with the sixty-plus boys, six to twelve years old That was our mission, Sunday. I've already written about Layali and Humda's joining us at the orphanage. Like Khitam, they were volunteering. We got there, Khitam asked an assistant administrator of the orphanage how many boys there were and what ages, and after some discussion told him to divide them into two groups: six to eight year-olds and nine to twelve year-olds. We took the older boys first.
They poured in, the administrator doing his best to maintain some order, and Khitam took over. She had them all sit in chairs against the wall around the room. She talked about what they were going to do, the different activities that we had already set out for them. Then she counted them off into five groups and told each group which activity to go to. Meanwhile, she had discovered she had forgotten materials for one of the activities, so she had to improvise and come up with another one, which she did quickly and successfully.
Soon the kids were all busy with their activities. After ten minutes, she told them: "Five more minutes!" When the five minutes were up, we helped the kids restore the activities to something like their original order, and then each group moved to another station, then another and another and another, until they had played at each station. Khitam moved them around as if they had been doing this kind of activity for months, when, in fact, it was their first time. When the older group had finished, they went back to school with their teachers and the younger kids came. Khitam went through the same routine, adjusting her talk to the level of the kids, and then they were busy for the next hour. There were fewer of them so we had four instead five groups and four stations. Three and a half hours after we arrived, we were finished. The kids were in the dining room, eating their lunch, and we were packing up the car. An hour's drive there, three and a half hours working with the kids, half an hour to pack the car: five hours to volunteer at an orphanage on a sunny Sunday, and we were off to have lunch with Nasser and his family, another day in the life of Khitam.
I had finished my workshops, Saturday, so I was free to tag along and help her. Monday, we drove to the Amal School for young people (3 - 21) with disabilities to do her final workshop with teachers there. She pulled up in front of the school, We got materials she wanted to use out of the car - there are always materials to get out of the car for her work, always - and went in. Teachers greeted her as kids clustered around waiting for rides. Some of them were in wheelchairs, some were mentally challenged, some had walkers, all looked well cared for.
We gathered with twenty-one teachers in a big room downstairs. Khitam introduced me, asked how many spoke English - maybe half raised a hand, some half way or tentatively - and then said: "Go ahead." I led them in a few exercises and talked about ways they might use them with their students. A couple asked questions, all did the exercises willingly. Then Khitam said: "Tell them the story." We had talked about this as a possibility. So I told a story and she translated when necessary. A few comments and then it was time for their final session with her.
In four previous sessions, she had done movement, theater, storytelling (they make up stories) and art to illustrate the stories. I may have skipped something. The point is, they get a full and well rounded experience with Khitam, all of which they can use with their students. Monday, she gave each a box and told them to decorate the boxes any way they wanted to. She had paints, markers, glitter, glue, stars, colored paper and more. They worked like Santa's elves to turn their cardboard boxes into works of art. An hour later, they showed them and talked about why they had decorated them as they had, what it said about them. Then they wrote evaluations of the workshops and when they were finished, Khitam asked them to share what they had written. Their thoughts were personal and glowing, and Khitam was proud, proud of them and the work they had done and proud of what they had told her they had learned in her workshops. Its was clear they had learned a lot they would use and they were grateful to this teacher for sharing so much with them.
The next day, we drove to Khalil in the south. Khalil is often known as Hebron. It's an ancient city that has grown up around the place where God is supposed to have told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac and then, at the last minute, stopped him. In Islam, Abraham is Ibrahim (ee-bra-heem) and also considered a prophet as he is in Judaism. As a result, Khalil is now a contentions place and Israeli settlers have moved into the old city and made life difficult for Palestinians there. In a separate blog about Khalil, I'll talk about Khitam's work there.
Today, when we were leaving the health club where she swims, an older Israeli gestured to us. Khitam stopped and he asked her for a ride to the bus. She speaks Hebrew and I think he assumed she was an Israeli. She told him to get in and asked him where he was going. He told her and then she answered her phone, speaking with someone in Arabic. When we got to the bus stop, she pulled over, and the man said, Shukran, Arabic for thank you. He said it again when he got out and Khitam replied in Hebrew. That, not the disagreement in the locker room, not the killing of Palestinians at a checkpoint or Israelis at a bus stop - that is the way Israelis and Palestinians can live together.
Welcome to Palestine and Israel.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Nasser, Part II
First, a correction of my blog on Passover with Tani and Ireet's family: their son-in-law, is Yaniv, not Yanid. My apologies to Yaniv if he happens to see this blog some day!
I want to go back to Nasser because he is so much a part of why I come return to Palestine, he and Khitam. I enjoy being in Palestine and they are my Palestinian brother and sister, and I would happily visit them whenever I could, but Palestine doesn't occur to many non-Palestinians as a place to vacation. I come back to see their work and work with them or support their work when I think I can help. It's their work, not mine, an important distinction. I come to them with questions, not answers. They know what they want to do, how they want to do it and what they need. I don't know any of that unless they tell me and suggest ways I can help.
Nasser has acolytes this year whom he named Nasser's Army, and they happily agreed to the name. They are five women, getting their bachelors or masters degrees in social work. Part of their requirement for the degree is 200 hours of internship with a professional. They put in their 200 hours and then told Nasser they wanted to continue as volunteers. That may be when he named them Nasser's Army.
"Until now, they have spent more than 400 hours," Nasser told me, "and during that time, they got to know Khitam." While I worked with him, they participated, and two of them came to last Saturday's four hour workshop with school counselors. Those two, Layali and Humda, are the leaders of his army and are very different but equally devoted to their work and to him.
Layali is probably in her mid-thirties and I think she has a family. Humda is in her early twenties and is single and a Bedouin. The Bedouin are the traditional desert Arabs, those who live in tents that are usually black, and keep sheep or goats or camels. They are the Arabs you see in the film Lawrence of Arabia. Their lives are changing. Israel wants to move them into solid houses in towns and most of them want to continue their itinerant ways, grazing their flocks in the desert. Like many traditional cultures, theirs is sliding away, pushed by modernization.
The traditional role of a Bedouin woman is at home, cooking, organizing the tent, raising the children until they can accompany the father or take over grazing the flock. As Bedouin culture changes, the role of women is likely to change slowly and grudgingly. Humda's choice to continue school and become a social worker clashes sharply with her culture's tradition. I asked her how her family felt about her choice to continue her education and start a career. She said they were resistant at first but now they support what she's doing.
Humda and Layali observe traditional dress, though neither covers her face as traditional Bedouin women would in public. They wear both hijab and jilbab, a scarf over their heads and an ankle length coat, robe or dress, under which you often notice jeans and sneakers. When we were working with Khitam Sunday, Humda hitched up her jilbab around her knees so she could kneel and crouch and sit on the floor more easily with the kids.
Sunday, Khitam went to an orphanage in Azareya, the town where Nasser's school is. She had offered to do some work with the kids at an orphanage there, nearly seventy five to twelve year-old boys. We picked up Layali in town on our way; she had told Khitam about the orphanage where I think she volunteers some time. When we got there, Humda was waiting for us. When she learned Khitam was going to do organized art play there, she wanted to help. And help she did, she and Layali. Without them the three hours of play would have been difficult. A couple of teachers at the orphanage helped out with the younger boys, but they were not as comfortable as Layali and Humda who helped get each group started and then got down with the kids and did the games and puzzles with them, helping out whenever needed.
When the Bedouin village Humda was raised in wanted Nasser to talk and lead a discussion about social problems in the village, he sent Humda and she spoke to the group, a group that would have been dominated by the men in the village, some grizzled, bearded veterans of Bedouin life. "She did it!" Nasser told me with the pride of a father. "She gave the talk and they listened. This is remarkable!"
Nasser's Army is well trained and dedicated, and Nasser is wise enough to know how valuable they can be to Palestinian society, how they can be agents of encouragement and change. He nudges them forward, no strings attached, no credit asked for. He wants to facilitate.
After the work at the orphanage, we drove Layali and Humda back into town and picked up Nasser at the school. Sunday is a workday in most of Palestine, except for Christian villages. Weekends are Friday and Saturday, Muslim and Jewish holy days. With Nasser, we drove to Shuafat Refugee Camp, now a walled in city of over 80,000 in a space that would comfortably hold 15,000 - 20,000. Nasser and his family live here during the week. On weekends, they try to go to his village. There is one green space in the whole camp, a smaller than regulation soccer field. Traffic was cheek to jowl on roads that needed repair and often lost their definition; we knew we were on the road because there weren't any buildings on it.
The road system in Shuafat would make Boston's road system look like a finely designed grid, with roads evenly spaced and perpendicular to each other. If you have to turn around, you need the power of prayer coupled with some luck and the will to refuse common sense. When behind the wheel, Khitam has those attributes! It took us about forty-five minutes to get from the camp's entrance to Nasser's apartment, a distance we probably could have walked in less than half an hour.
Once there, Nasser led us down some steps to their door. Inside, were Majida, Nasser's wife, and three of their four boys: Mouad, Muntaser and Mohamed. And then, the current star of the home show, their seven month old daughter, Majdelle, a smiling cutie who lights up the room. Majdelle was born while Nasser was in Maine last summer. We sat and talked, passing Majdelle around while Majida chopped vegetables for a Palestinian salad. Lunch, the big meal here, especially if there are guests, was makhloubi, a chicken and rice with vegetables dish, prepared on top of the stove, then turned over for serving, so there is a crust on top of the rice. This, plus yoghurt and salad, made a bountiful meal that was followed by coffee followed by tea. We sat and talked for a while, then had to leave.
Nasser went part way with us, to guide us out. Khitam started by defying the impossible and turning the car around in the narrow street, after a male driver said it was mish mumkin, "not possible." We got out faster than we got in, but traffic was still bunched up because of the checkpoint at the camp's entrance.
Welcome to Palestine.
I want to go back to Nasser because he is so much a part of why I come return to Palestine, he and Khitam. I enjoy being in Palestine and they are my Palestinian brother and sister, and I would happily visit them whenever I could, but Palestine doesn't occur to many non-Palestinians as a place to vacation. I come back to see their work and work with them or support their work when I think I can help. It's their work, not mine, an important distinction. I come to them with questions, not answers. They know what they want to do, how they want to do it and what they need. I don't know any of that unless they tell me and suggest ways I can help.
Nasser has acolytes this year whom he named Nasser's Army, and they happily agreed to the name. They are five women, getting their bachelors or masters degrees in social work. Part of their requirement for the degree is 200 hours of internship with a professional. They put in their 200 hours and then told Nasser they wanted to continue as volunteers. That may be when he named them Nasser's Army.
"Until now, they have spent more than 400 hours," Nasser told me, "and during that time, they got to know Khitam." While I worked with him, they participated, and two of them came to last Saturday's four hour workshop with school counselors. Those two, Layali and Humda, are the leaders of his army and are very different but equally devoted to their work and to him.
Layali is probably in her mid-thirties and I think she has a family. Humda is in her early twenties and is single and a Bedouin. The Bedouin are the traditional desert Arabs, those who live in tents that are usually black, and keep sheep or goats or camels. They are the Arabs you see in the film Lawrence of Arabia. Their lives are changing. Israel wants to move them into solid houses in towns and most of them want to continue their itinerant ways, grazing their flocks in the desert. Like many traditional cultures, theirs is sliding away, pushed by modernization.
The traditional role of a Bedouin woman is at home, cooking, organizing the tent, raising the children until they can accompany the father or take over grazing the flock. As Bedouin culture changes, the role of women is likely to change slowly and grudgingly. Humda's choice to continue school and become a social worker clashes sharply with her culture's tradition. I asked her how her family felt about her choice to continue her education and start a career. She said they were resistant at first but now they support what she's doing.
Humda and Layali observe traditional dress, though neither covers her face as traditional Bedouin women would in public. They wear both hijab and jilbab, a scarf over their heads and an ankle length coat, robe or dress, under which you often notice jeans and sneakers. When we were working with Khitam Sunday, Humda hitched up her jilbab around her knees so she could kneel and crouch and sit on the floor more easily with the kids.
Sunday, Khitam went to an orphanage in Azareya, the town where Nasser's school is. She had offered to do some work with the kids at an orphanage there, nearly seventy five to twelve year-old boys. We picked up Layali in town on our way; she had told Khitam about the orphanage where I think she volunteers some time. When we got there, Humda was waiting for us. When she learned Khitam was going to do organized art play there, she wanted to help. And help she did, she and Layali. Without them the three hours of play would have been difficult. A couple of teachers at the orphanage helped out with the younger boys, but they were not as comfortable as Layali and Humda who helped get each group started and then got down with the kids and did the games and puzzles with them, helping out whenever needed.
When the Bedouin village Humda was raised in wanted Nasser to talk and lead a discussion about social problems in the village, he sent Humda and she spoke to the group, a group that would have been dominated by the men in the village, some grizzled, bearded veterans of Bedouin life. "She did it!" Nasser told me with the pride of a father. "She gave the talk and they listened. This is remarkable!"
Nasser's Army is well trained and dedicated, and Nasser is wise enough to know how valuable they can be to Palestinian society, how they can be agents of encouragement and change. He nudges them forward, no strings attached, no credit asked for. He wants to facilitate.
After the work at the orphanage, we drove Layali and Humda back into town and picked up Nasser at the school. Sunday is a workday in most of Palestine, except for Christian villages. Weekends are Friday and Saturday, Muslim and Jewish holy days. With Nasser, we drove to Shuafat Refugee Camp, now a walled in city of over 80,000 in a space that would comfortably hold 15,000 - 20,000. Nasser and his family live here during the week. On weekends, they try to go to his village. There is one green space in the whole camp, a smaller than regulation soccer field. Traffic was cheek to jowl on roads that needed repair and often lost their definition; we knew we were on the road because there weren't any buildings on it.
The road system in Shuafat would make Boston's road system look like a finely designed grid, with roads evenly spaced and perpendicular to each other. If you have to turn around, you need the power of prayer coupled with some luck and the will to refuse common sense. When behind the wheel, Khitam has those attributes! It took us about forty-five minutes to get from the camp's entrance to Nasser's apartment, a distance we probably could have walked in less than half an hour.
Once there, Nasser led us down some steps to their door. Inside, were Majida, Nasser's wife, and three of their four boys: Mouad, Muntaser and Mohamed. And then, the current star of the home show, their seven month old daughter, Majdelle, a smiling cutie who lights up the room. Majdelle was born while Nasser was in Maine last summer. We sat and talked, passing Majdelle around while Majida chopped vegetables for a Palestinian salad. Lunch, the big meal here, especially if there are guests, was makhloubi, a chicken and rice with vegetables dish, prepared on top of the stove, then turned over for serving, so there is a crust on top of the rice. This, plus yoghurt and salad, made a bountiful meal that was followed by coffee followed by tea. We sat and talked for a while, then had to leave.
Nasser went part way with us, to guide us out. Khitam started by defying the impossible and turning the car around in the narrow street, after a male driver said it was mish mumkin, "not possible." We got out faster than we got in, but traffic was still bunched up because of the checkpoint at the camp's entrance.
Welcome to Palestine.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Driving over to Passover
Friday evening, Khitam and I drove to Ganei-Am, a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel, to share a Seder meal with Tani and Ireet Halperin, friends of Khitam. Since this particular Seder marked the beginning of a weeklong celebration of Passover in Israel, traffic was heavy; fortunately for us, it was mostly headed toward Jerusalem which we were driving away from. An hour and a quarter from leaving Khitam's and after passing Tel Aviv, we turned off for Ganei-Am, and within minutes, we pulled up to Tani and Ireet's.
Their house would not be out of place in southern California or Florida. One story and spread out, cool and shaded, it offered entrance to a different world. Ganei-Am appears to be fairly new, an offshoot of Tel Aviv's growth. Yanid, their son-in-law, was playing in the small yard with a golden retriever. His wife, Leet, and her younger sister Ma'ayn come out, hugged Khitam and met me, followed by Tani and Ireet.
Tani is a big man, maybe six feet and barrel bodied. He looks Teutonic. He was dressed in shorts and a short sleeve, partially buttoned shirt. He smiles a lot and listens, commenting when nudged by the conversation or when asked. He was born on a farm in Israel and raised there. Now he works in real estate in Israel and Boston. For much of our visit, he was busy cooking and then cleaning up. In stature, In stature, Ireet is a robin to Tani's hawk; in personality, it appears to be the other way around. She's a mother and grandmother, wife, psycho-drama therapist and political activist. Leek - Khitam thinks her actual name is Eleanor - is the oldest of three daughters, Ma'ayn the youngest. The middle daughter was with her husband's family for this Seder. Leek and Yanid and their two young children are immigrating to the States as soon as they get their green cards.
Leek studied at Brandeis for a year, Lesley, where Khitam and Ireet both studied, for a year, then returned to Israel. She found Brandeis' reputation for liberalism selective. During an organized protest at the school against oppression, she mounted a display of art illustrating the oppression in Gaza and the West Bank and was soon told to take it down. Raised an activist - "It wasn't possible to grow up in this family and not be a political activist," she said - she found Brandeis hypocritical and left after a year for Lesley. "I was disappointed in the quality of education I was offered. It didn't measure up to the standards I expected coming from Israel."
Now she and Yanid are waiting to immigrate. She said Israel is getting more and more conservative. "I feel there's no place for us here anymore. A lot of people like us are emigrating. Others have become conservative or avoid politics. They don't even vote." Later, when I asked Ma'ayn about her generation and how they feel, she said: "I don't express how I feel anymore. There's no one to talk to except at the university." She goes to Hebrew University in Tel Aviv. "There are Arab students there and a lot of liberal students." She expresses her views there.
I asked her about her generation and their beliefs after they're out of university. "It's different here. After high school, there's compulsory military service for two years. Then they need a couple of years to find themselves or recover from PTSD, so they travel, get laid, smoke weed and then go to university. Both sisters commented that Israeli students are much older than the typical American college student. I think Ma'ayn is 23 and just finishing her freshman year. Once finished, she said they think about getting a good job, starting a family and they get busy "and don't have time for anything else, or don't have the will or energy to make time."
We talked about Nasser in response to questions about who I was working with besides Khitam. I spoke about his commitment to the kids, to making a fair peace, to non-violence. Nasser has told me: "I missed childhood and I don't want my kids or any kids to miss that experience." As Khitam and I talked more about his work with kids, teachers and communities, Yanid said: "I want to meet this guy. This is not what we're told about Palestinians."
These are people I want to see again, want to know better, and I think I will. Ireet and Tani are coming to the States this summer for a trip to Alaska and a few days in Boston. They'll see Khitam in Boston and plan to come to Maine for a night to visit and eat lobster. I will certainly look up Leek and Yanid when they move to the States. Meanwhile, I will try to visit them next time I'm in Palestine.
Their house would not be out of place in southern California or Florida. One story and spread out, cool and shaded, it offered entrance to a different world. Ganei-Am appears to be fairly new, an offshoot of Tel Aviv's growth. Yanid, their son-in-law, was playing in the small yard with a golden retriever. His wife, Leet, and her younger sister Ma'ayn come out, hugged Khitam and met me, followed by Tani and Ireet.
Tani is a big man, maybe six feet and barrel bodied. He looks Teutonic. He was dressed in shorts and a short sleeve, partially buttoned shirt. He smiles a lot and listens, commenting when nudged by the conversation or when asked. He was born on a farm in Israel and raised there. Now he works in real estate in Israel and Boston. For much of our visit, he was busy cooking and then cleaning up. In stature, In stature, Ireet is a robin to Tani's hawk; in personality, it appears to be the other way around. She's a mother and grandmother, wife, psycho-drama therapist and political activist. Leek - Khitam thinks her actual name is Eleanor - is the oldest of three daughters, Ma'ayn the youngest. The middle daughter was with her husband's family for this Seder. Leek and Yanid and their two young children are immigrating to the States as soon as they get their green cards.
Leek studied at Brandeis for a year, Lesley, where Khitam and Ireet both studied, for a year, then returned to Israel. She found Brandeis' reputation for liberalism selective. During an organized protest at the school against oppression, she mounted a display of art illustrating the oppression in Gaza and the West Bank and was soon told to take it down. Raised an activist - "It wasn't possible to grow up in this family and not be a political activist," she said - she found Brandeis hypocritical and left after a year for Lesley. "I was disappointed in the quality of education I was offered. It didn't measure up to the standards I expected coming from Israel."
Now she and Yanid are waiting to immigrate. She said Israel is getting more and more conservative. "I feel there's no place for us here anymore. A lot of people like us are emigrating. Others have become conservative or avoid politics. They don't even vote." Later, when I asked Ma'ayn about her generation and how they feel, she said: "I don't express how I feel anymore. There's no one to talk to except at the university." She goes to Hebrew University in Tel Aviv. "There are Arab students there and a lot of liberal students." She expresses her views there.
I asked her about her generation and their beliefs after they're out of university. "It's different here. After high school, there's compulsory military service for two years. Then they need a couple of years to find themselves or recover from PTSD, so they travel, get laid, smoke weed and then go to university. Both sisters commented that Israeli students are much older than the typical American college student. I think Ma'ayn is 23 and just finishing her freshman year. Once finished, she said they think about getting a good job, starting a family and they get busy "and don't have time for anything else, or don't have the will or energy to make time."
We talked about Nasser in response to questions about who I was working with besides Khitam. I spoke about his commitment to the kids, to making a fair peace, to non-violence. Nasser has told me: "I missed childhood and I don't want my kids or any kids to miss that experience." As Khitam and I talked more about his work with kids, teachers and communities, Yanid said: "I want to meet this guy. This is not what we're told about Palestinians."
These are people I want to see again, want to know better, and I think I will. Ireet and Tani are coming to the States this summer for a trip to Alaska and a few days in Boston. They'll see Khitam in Boston and plan to come to Maine for a night to visit and eat lobster. I will certainly look up Leek and Yanid when they move to the States. Meanwhile, I will try to visit them next time I'm in Palestine.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Nasser Rides Again
With apologies for my cyber-ignorance, I'll post photos as soon as I can, once back in Maine on May Day. I won't bother with the reasons, but know it is I, not my laptop, that is the stumbling block and stumbler. There, I feel better already.
Monday, Khitam and I headed for Azareya, where Nasser's new school is. Not far from Jerusalem, Azareya is a busy town with a middle school that has kids from a Bedouin camp, a refugee camp, from the town itself and from neighboring villages. The students are a very mixed population of twelve to fifteen year-olds who do not normally socialize; to put it another way, a good setting for a Palestinian production of West Side Story...East Side Story.
Here's some essential background. Nasser had been the sole counselor for several years at a middle school in Adahya, near heard my friend Khitam's home. The last two years when I've been here, I've done some work with Nasser at that school. Last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Education announced this year's postings and Nasser discovered he was being moved to another school. The community around the school in Adahya rallied to keep him here. Nasser urged the Ministry to let him continue his work in Adahya where he had developed programs that were successful keeping kids in school, committed to doing their work and not causing trouble. He was working with students from difficult surroundings: single parent homes because the father had been killed, was in prison, or had given up and left the family; families with drug and alcohol abuse; families with domestic violence. The answer was no and Nasser was moved to Azareya.
New school, new problems, new community: Nasser went to work. The principal, Mohamed, was new, a former chemistry teacher in his first principal's job. His predecessor had been there a long time and had had no interest in change. Mohamed recognized he had a leader in Nasser, one who could make a real difference in the school if he supported him He also needed him; Nasser's experience would be very important to this new principal. Soon Nasser had enlisted a few teachers to join his merry band of reformers. "I thought it would take me three years to make progress here, but now, seven months into the school year, we already see change," he told me. He was right.
Palestinian schools do not receive the support Israeli schools get. It's complicated. Some schools for Palestinians are under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Ministry of Education, and some are not. Some receive funding from Palestinian NGOs; some receive funding from European, or American NGOs. Some receive extra funding from the Ministry for special projects but not without jumping through several bureaucratic hoops. In general, Palestinian schools are underfunded.
Nasser does not receive extra pay for extra work. As far as I could tell this week, he is the last educator to leave the school, not because he has nowhere to go. He is married and has five children, including the family's first girl, born while he was in Maine last summer. Nasser is the last to leave and probably often the first to arrive because he has a lot he wants to do. Tuesday, parents prepared a small banquet for us - Nasser, Khitam, Nabil (a science teacher who is an early convert and in some ways Nasser's right hand man), five BA and MA candidates at Jerusalem University who are doing on the job training at the school and have become "Nasser's Army," (more on them in another blog), and me. Nasser began telling me about his dream and how he has started on it.
"Do you remember last year when I told you the dream of having a space where teachers can do workshops. learn new methods, meet to plan new work? We talked about finding some money to rent a space." At the time, I thought the dream a good but unlikely one. Finding money for such a project is difficult anywhere and especially difficult here. Then he said: "We have a space! One of the parents is donating it to us. He has a building near here."
I was amazed and delighted, almost as excited as Nasser was. He reminded me: "Remember I told you if you have a dream and believe in it, you will find it." If you build it they will come. So we began to discuss what can happen there. "I want to be partners with The Theater Project and The Telling Room. We will be separate and far away from the Ministry of Education!" Bureaucracy be damned. He wants to encourage child centered learning which is not the tradition in Arab education, though it is practiced in some Arab schools. He wants people to do workshops in the arts, in new ways to use technology, in teaching techniques and styles.
This man is ahead of his time here and he is timely. He is also tireless and I think eternally hopeful. He doesn't approve of the alternative. When he returned from his two weeks in Maine last summer, he flew into Amman, Jordan and then took a bus to the Jordan River, the border with the Israeli occupied West Bank. Jordanian Security quizzed him on where he'd been, why he'd been there, what he had done. He told them he had been in the States visiting a theater and looking for non- violent alternatives for raising Palestinian children to become good Palestinian citizens.
When he crossed the Allenby Bridge onto the West Bank, Israeli Security asked him the same questions. He said: "You can put your gun down. I'm not a violent person. I had experience with violence when I was young and now I want non-violent ways to raise our children." The Israeli said he agreed. Nasser said: "Good. We don't have to be enemies, but I can never agree to your occupation." This is the gist of what he told me; my faulty memory allows me only approximate quotes.
Then Nasser went home to rejoin his family and meet his new daughter.
Welcome to Palestine.
Monday, Khitam and I headed for Azareya, where Nasser's new school is. Not far from Jerusalem, Azareya is a busy town with a middle school that has kids from a Bedouin camp, a refugee camp, from the town itself and from neighboring villages. The students are a very mixed population of twelve to fifteen year-olds who do not normally socialize; to put it another way, a good setting for a Palestinian production of West Side Story...East Side Story.
Here's some essential background. Nasser had been the sole counselor for several years at a middle school in Adahya, near heard my friend Khitam's home. The last two years when I've been here, I've done some work with Nasser at that school. Last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Education announced this year's postings and Nasser discovered he was being moved to another school. The community around the school in Adahya rallied to keep him here. Nasser urged the Ministry to let him continue his work in Adahya where he had developed programs that were successful keeping kids in school, committed to doing their work and not causing trouble. He was working with students from difficult surroundings: single parent homes because the father had been killed, was in prison, or had given up and left the family; families with drug and alcohol abuse; families with domestic violence. The answer was no and Nasser was moved to Azareya.
New school, new problems, new community: Nasser went to work. The principal, Mohamed, was new, a former chemistry teacher in his first principal's job. His predecessor had been there a long time and had had no interest in change. Mohamed recognized he had a leader in Nasser, one who could make a real difference in the school if he supported him He also needed him; Nasser's experience would be very important to this new principal. Soon Nasser had enlisted a few teachers to join his merry band of reformers. "I thought it would take me three years to make progress here, but now, seven months into the school year, we already see change," he told me. He was right.
Palestinian schools do not receive the support Israeli schools get. It's complicated. Some schools for Palestinians are under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Ministry of Education, and some are not. Some receive funding from Palestinian NGOs; some receive funding from European, or American NGOs. Some receive extra funding from the Ministry for special projects but not without jumping through several bureaucratic hoops. In general, Palestinian schools are underfunded.
Nasser does not receive extra pay for extra work. As far as I could tell this week, he is the last educator to leave the school, not because he has nowhere to go. He is married and has five children, including the family's first girl, born while he was in Maine last summer. Nasser is the last to leave and probably often the first to arrive because he has a lot he wants to do. Tuesday, parents prepared a small banquet for us - Nasser, Khitam, Nabil (a science teacher who is an early convert and in some ways Nasser's right hand man), five BA and MA candidates at Jerusalem University who are doing on the job training at the school and have become "Nasser's Army," (more on them in another blog), and me. Nasser began telling me about his dream and how he has started on it.
"Do you remember last year when I told you the dream of having a space where teachers can do workshops. learn new methods, meet to plan new work? We talked about finding some money to rent a space." At the time, I thought the dream a good but unlikely one. Finding money for such a project is difficult anywhere and especially difficult here. Then he said: "We have a space! One of the parents is donating it to us. He has a building near here."
I was amazed and delighted, almost as excited as Nasser was. He reminded me: "Remember I told you if you have a dream and believe in it, you will find it." If you build it they will come. So we began to discuss what can happen there. "I want to be partners with The Theater Project and The Telling Room. We will be separate and far away from the Ministry of Education!" Bureaucracy be damned. He wants to encourage child centered learning which is not the tradition in Arab education, though it is practiced in some Arab schools. He wants people to do workshops in the arts, in new ways to use technology, in teaching techniques and styles.
This man is ahead of his time here and he is timely. He is also tireless and I think eternally hopeful. He doesn't approve of the alternative. When he returned from his two weeks in Maine last summer, he flew into Amman, Jordan and then took a bus to the Jordan River, the border with the Israeli occupied West Bank. Jordanian Security quizzed him on where he'd been, why he'd been there, what he had done. He told them he had been in the States visiting a theater and looking for non- violent alternatives for raising Palestinian children to become good Palestinian citizens.
When he crossed the Allenby Bridge onto the West Bank, Israeli Security asked him the same questions. He said: "You can put your gun down. I'm not a violent person. I had experience with violence when I was young and now I want non-violent ways to raise our children." The Israeli said he agreed. Nasser said: "Good. We don't have to be enemies, but I can never agree to your occupation." This is the gist of what he told me; my faulty memory allows me only approximate quotes.
Then Nasser went home to rejoin his family and meet his new daughter.
Welcome to Palestine.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
The Dead Sea, The Live Land
Sunday is a work day in Palestine. The weekend comprises Friday and Saturday, except for businesses that also recognize Sunday as a religious holiday. I was going to teach at a school in Adahya not far from Khitam's abode, but Sunday morning we learned the students would be released early in support of Palestinian prisoners. "Why do the students have this time out of school?" Khitam asked. "There are already more than enough days when school is not in session, and they need the time in school." She was passionate about this. She questioned whether most students recognized the day as special: "This should be adults' responsibility, not the students. They need the time to study!" This even as she has many questions about the values and techniques in many Palestinian classrooms.
So our day was knocked off center. Khitam does not sit around and brood. "Do you want to go to The Dead Sea?" I said, sure, if she did. She went to the kitchen, packed a picnic and soon we were off, including Chelsea who had spent the night on Khitam's couch.
A drive to The Dead Sea is a drive down, down, down. One of the lowest places on earth, it is far below sea level. As you descend, the air gets drier and warmer, and there is less and less sign of anything growing. It isn't bleak; it's just a different landscape; like landing on a different planet. When we arrived on the floor of the valley, we proceeded toward The Dead Sea, passing a deserted Jordanian Army base en route. The Jordanians lost the fort and everything else in the 1967 June War.
We pulled into a parking lot above The Dead Sea, changed into our swim suits and climbed down many many steps to the water's edge. The land is gritty, pebbly, hard on bare feet; we all had sandals. We parked ourselves under an umbrella and unpacked lunch on a picnic table, then went into the water. Actually, it's more like going onto the water. The sea is so salty that you bob to the surface and it's a struggle to completely submerge yourself, and doing that is undesirable. If you get any water in your eyes, the stinging is intense, and the only way to wash them out is to bob back to the shore, climb out and get under one of the fresh water showers for relief. You clamber over a rocky seafloor, your balance a little cockeyed from the buoyancy of the sea, squinting out of one eye, hoping no one is watching your clumsy progress toward the relief of fresh water.
I remember the first time I swam there, in 1962, when we went by motor scooter from Beirut to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and The Dead Sea. It was easy then and so it continued until the war in 1967. Now you wonder about checkpoints and roadblocks if you're Palestinian and starting on a little trip, whether it's work or pleasure. From time to time, Khitam has to cancel a teaching project because of road blocks that can delay her passage for hours. Monday night, after she had taught for three or four hours in Jerusalem, it took her two hours to get home because of check points and an accident on the way. I had gotten home around 5:30 and expect her around 7:00. I was beginning to worry about her when I heard the door open and her voice: "Hi, babe." She had called the neighbor, Abu Abdullah, to ask him to come over and tell me she was on the way if she hadn't shown up in half an hour.
Welcome to Palestine.
Back to the afternoon, we had a picnic after floating on the sea for a while, then sat under and outside of the table umbrella for a couple of hours. Khitam and Chelsea went in for another float, then we headed home, an hour's drive. It had been a relaxing, hot and salty day, and Khitam and I caught up some more that evening. Monday, we both had teaching gigs, and it looked like they were going to happen, though you never know, here. It's such an austerely beautiful place, this land of eight month summers, and it is so tortured by the area's politics. And still, the people welcome you and say you must come to their home for a meal. You must!
Welcome to Palestine. .
So our day was knocked off center. Khitam does not sit around and brood. "Do you want to go to The Dead Sea?" I said, sure, if she did. She went to the kitchen, packed a picnic and soon we were off, including Chelsea who had spent the night on Khitam's couch.
A drive to The Dead Sea is a drive down, down, down. One of the lowest places on earth, it is far below sea level. As you descend, the air gets drier and warmer, and there is less and less sign of anything growing. It isn't bleak; it's just a different landscape; like landing on a different planet. When we arrived on the floor of the valley, we proceeded toward The Dead Sea, passing a deserted Jordanian Army base en route. The Jordanians lost the fort and everything else in the 1967 June War.
We pulled into a parking lot above The Dead Sea, changed into our swim suits and climbed down many many steps to the water's edge. The land is gritty, pebbly, hard on bare feet; we all had sandals. We parked ourselves under an umbrella and unpacked lunch on a picnic table, then went into the water. Actually, it's more like going onto the water. The sea is so salty that you bob to the surface and it's a struggle to completely submerge yourself, and doing that is undesirable. If you get any water in your eyes, the stinging is intense, and the only way to wash them out is to bob back to the shore, climb out and get under one of the fresh water showers for relief. You clamber over a rocky seafloor, your balance a little cockeyed from the buoyancy of the sea, squinting out of one eye, hoping no one is watching your clumsy progress toward the relief of fresh water.
I remember the first time I swam there, in 1962, when we went by motor scooter from Beirut to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and The Dead Sea. It was easy then and so it continued until the war in 1967. Now you wonder about checkpoints and roadblocks if you're Palestinian and starting on a little trip, whether it's work or pleasure. From time to time, Khitam has to cancel a teaching project because of road blocks that can delay her passage for hours. Monday night, after she had taught for three or four hours in Jerusalem, it took her two hours to get home because of check points and an accident on the way. I had gotten home around 5:30 and expect her around 7:00. I was beginning to worry about her when I heard the door open and her voice: "Hi, babe." She had called the neighbor, Abu Abdullah, to ask him to come over and tell me she was on the way if she hadn't shown up in half an hour.
Welcome to Palestine.
Back to the afternoon, we had a picnic after floating on the sea for a while, then sat under and outside of the table umbrella for a couple of hours. Khitam and Chelsea went in for another float, then we headed home, an hour's drive. It had been a relaxing, hot and salty day, and Khitam and I caught up some more that evening. Monday, we both had teaching gigs, and it looked like they were going to happen, though you never know, here. It's such an austerely beautiful place, this land of eight month summers, and it is so tortured by the area's politics. And still, the people welcome you and say you must come to their home for a meal. You must!
Welcome to Palestine. .
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Welcome to Palestine
My Turkish Air flight from Istanbul landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv at 8:30, Friday night. It was dark here, the plane was full of passengers returning home to Israeli and Palestinian homes and people visiting. When we got to passport control, there were no lines at the booths designated for visitors. A year ago, when I came, the lines were backed up to the entrance to the hall. I remember watching a family of four, the two kids about six and eight, both tired, and the mom and dad patiently soothing the kids, telling them, "It won't be long now." I had let them go ahead of me when we arrived in line together. A week and a half later, on a visit to friends of my friend Khitam in Beir Zeit, a university town not far from Jerusalem, I met them. They had come to visit Khitam's friends, all of whom met in Cambridge, while studying in the States.
Welcome to Palestine.
"What is the reason for your visit? Where will you be staying? Have you been here before? Many times? Why?" And then through the doors into the hall where friends and relatives wait, and there was Khitam, smiling as usual, looking very comfortable in skirt and sleeveless blouse. I had on a long sleeve shirt and a jacket from LL Bean, easier to wear than to carry.
We drove to Adahya, a town on the wrong side of the wall and where Khitam lives. Adahya used to be a part of greater Jerusalem, but the wall brought separation. She parked, half on the street, half on what's left of the sidewalk in front of her house; nor was her car the only one on the sidewalk. "Have more people moved here? There are a lot more cars than I remember." She said several people had moved in. They like the area because it's relatively quiet and there are plenty of apartments in buildings that went up before the wall when Palestinians were returning to their homeland and also moving to the city from villages outside.
We ate some chicken and rice with local spices and those we know well. And there were green and black olives from olive tress on the family land, and fresh khubs Arabi - Arabic bread from a nearby bakery, and olive oil from the family olives and zatar, a mix of sumac, thyme and a few spices for the bread after it's dipped in olive oil, and salad and a bottle of wine from the monastery in Latroun (more on Latroun later). A light supper while we talked until midnight (5:00 PM in Maine, but my inner clock, which is generally unreliable, had given up trying to figure out the time. To bed until 4:00, when I was briefly wide awake to hear the muezzins in the neighborhood call the faithful out to the day's first prayer, then back to sleep until 8:30.
Welcome to Palestine.
Late yesterday morning, after Arabic coffee and more talk, Khitam packed a picnic and we headed out to drive to Latroun, west of Jerusalem. We drove out of Adahya, taking a circuitous route to Jerusalem to avoid a clogged Qalandia checkpoint by going through the usually vacant Jeba'
checkpoint. Traffic was backed up hundreds of yards from Jeba' and there was no movement. Cars were turning around and driving back on the side of the road. Khitam did the same: "We'll try Qalandia." We got close to Qalandia and ran into the same stuck long line of traffic. We waited, then she bucked traffic again, turned around while cars jostled and honked, and drove back toward Jeba'. The line hadn't moved.
We waited in line, barely moving, for at least an hour and a half - tick-tock, tick-tock... People got out of their cars and trucks, walked toward the front of the line to see if there was news of...of what? A reason for the roadblock? A time it would be removed? Then, all of a sudden, people started running back up the line toward their cars and trucks. Khitam and I got back in her car. Engines started; it was a poor man's Indianapolis 500 revving up. Traffic started moving. Within minutes, we got to the checkpoint where the roadblock had been. No one was there. It had disappeared.
Welcome to Palestine.
So we drove to Jerusalem to pick up Chelsea, who is shadowing Khitam while pursuing her MA in Arts Therapy, then on to Latroun, site of a Trappist monastery settled among olive trees. The monks make fine wine and honey and sell it in a shop at the monastery. There is parking nearby and Saturday, there was a crafts fair in the parking lot. Friends of Khitam were selling beautifully embroidered Palestinian pillow covers and handbags of various sizes. It was hot. Khitam grilled some marinated chicken and beef to go with the salads she had brought, along with the olives, olive oil, salty white cheese that I love, khubs Arabi and zatar. We sat at a picnic table and enjoyed our relaxed meal. Afterwards, Khitam got her narghile going, we talked, and eventually headed back to Jerusalem. We left Chelsea at her hotel, then Khitam said: "One more little stop before we go home." She pulled up to a small Arabic sweets shot, ordered two Kanafe bil Jibneh, a delicious Arabic sweet of creamy cheese, a shredded wheat sort of topping and a sweet syrup. We got back in the car and Khitam said, "If this wall weren't here, we'd be home in three minutes. It's right there," and she pointed to the wall. Twenty minutes later, we were home.
Welcome to Palestine.
Welcome to Palestine.
"What is the reason for your visit? Where will you be staying? Have you been here before? Many times? Why?" And then through the doors into the hall where friends and relatives wait, and there was Khitam, smiling as usual, looking very comfortable in skirt and sleeveless blouse. I had on a long sleeve shirt and a jacket from LL Bean, easier to wear than to carry.
We drove to Adahya, a town on the wrong side of the wall and where Khitam lives. Adahya used to be a part of greater Jerusalem, but the wall brought separation. She parked, half on the street, half on what's left of the sidewalk in front of her house; nor was her car the only one on the sidewalk. "Have more people moved here? There are a lot more cars than I remember." She said several people had moved in. They like the area because it's relatively quiet and there are plenty of apartments in buildings that went up before the wall when Palestinians were returning to their homeland and also moving to the city from villages outside.
We ate some chicken and rice with local spices and those we know well. And there were green and black olives from olive tress on the family land, and fresh khubs Arabi - Arabic bread from a nearby bakery, and olive oil from the family olives and zatar, a mix of sumac, thyme and a few spices for the bread after it's dipped in olive oil, and salad and a bottle of wine from the monastery in Latroun (more on Latroun later). A light supper while we talked until midnight (5:00 PM in Maine, but my inner clock, which is generally unreliable, had given up trying to figure out the time. To bed until 4:00, when I was briefly wide awake to hear the muezzins in the neighborhood call the faithful out to the day's first prayer, then back to sleep until 8:30.
Welcome to Palestine.
Late yesterday morning, after Arabic coffee and more talk, Khitam packed a picnic and we headed out to drive to Latroun, west of Jerusalem. We drove out of Adahya, taking a circuitous route to Jerusalem to avoid a clogged Qalandia checkpoint by going through the usually vacant Jeba'
checkpoint. Traffic was backed up hundreds of yards from Jeba' and there was no movement. Cars were turning around and driving back on the side of the road. Khitam did the same: "We'll try Qalandia." We got close to Qalandia and ran into the same stuck long line of traffic. We waited, then she bucked traffic again, turned around while cars jostled and honked, and drove back toward Jeba'. The line hadn't moved.
We waited in line, barely moving, for at least an hour and a half - tick-tock, tick-tock... People got out of their cars and trucks, walked toward the front of the line to see if there was news of...of what? A reason for the roadblock? A time it would be removed? Then, all of a sudden, people started running back up the line toward their cars and trucks. Khitam and I got back in her car. Engines started; it was a poor man's Indianapolis 500 revving up. Traffic started moving. Within minutes, we got to the checkpoint where the roadblock had been. No one was there. It had disappeared.
Welcome to Palestine.
So we drove to Jerusalem to pick up Chelsea, who is shadowing Khitam while pursuing her MA in Arts Therapy, then on to Latroun, site of a Trappist monastery settled among olive trees. The monks make fine wine and honey and sell it in a shop at the monastery. There is parking nearby and Saturday, there was a crafts fair in the parking lot. Friends of Khitam were selling beautifully embroidered Palestinian pillow covers and handbags of various sizes. It was hot. Khitam grilled some marinated chicken and beef to go with the salads she had brought, along with the olives, olive oil, salty white cheese that I love, khubs Arabi and zatar. We sat at a picnic table and enjoyed our relaxed meal. Afterwards, Khitam got her narghile going, we talked, and eventually headed back to Jerusalem. We left Chelsea at her hotel, then Khitam said: "One more little stop before we go home." She pulled up to a small Arabic sweets shot, ordered two Kanafe bil Jibneh, a delicious Arabic sweet of creamy cheese, a shredded wheat sort of topping and a sweet syrup. We got back in the car and Khitam said, "If this wall weren't here, we'd be home in three minutes. It's right there," and she pointed to the wall. Twenty minutes later, we were home.
Welcome to Palestine.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Going again...
I'm flying out of Logan, Thursday night, for Tel Aviv. I'll be spending two weeks in Palestine, teaching workshops and visiting friends. I plan to blog again, announcing the blogs on Facebook, so tune in if you're interested.
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