One Fine Day and a full one

Friday began with Khitam preparing food for our trip.  I could write often: "Today started with Khitam preparing food..."  Friday was a little different because we expected to be gone for two or three days.  After driving into Jerusalem for a swim - several years ago she joined a club that includes a pool and is connected to The Hebrew University which she attended for two years long ago - and eating some of the food she'd prepared for our trip, we headed north.  The food?  Mjudarah (a lentil salad), leban and lebaneh (yoghurt and yoghurt strained and drained), Arabic bread (always!), olives (always!), tomatoes and cucumbers, salty white cheese and pickles she had recently made with baby cucumbers.

We were going to Sebastia, a village north of Nablus, where we had been last week and had our guest house-hotel adventure and where we would return Friday night.  Hakim, whom we had met on our previous visit to Nablus, was running a ten day festival he had started two years ago.  "I wanted to show that Nablus can produce a festival, not just Jerusalem and Bethlehem," he told us, and he has done that.  Some of the events are held in Sebastia, but most, I think, are in Nablus.

Sebastia is a large village with a small old city section that dates back to the Romans.  In part of the old city, we visited a program that provides sparkling clean rooms with small baths and an active kitchen that produces food for sale and for those who come to the center, that is the heart of the complex, for a variety of training sessions.  We purchased some food from the kitchen: delicious  stuffed young squash and grape leaves and some chicken.

The festival was getting organised in the village square.  A sound system was being set up for a Norwegian trio and the Chilean duet who were highlighting the afternoon's festivities.  People had gathered and were drinking Arabic coffee, sweet tea, water and juice and were chatting or watching children race around the trees and tables and chairs set up in the square.  It was a warm sunny afternoon, like late spring in Maine.  We saw Hakim and Ahmad, who was assisting Hakim with the festival, and said hello.  Hakim, who was busy talking with everyone and checking on the progress with the sound system while making sure the performers were there, introduced us to the group he was standing with, one of whom was Saed Jamal Abu-Hijleh.

Saed is a big man with a big personality.  We began chatting in English and he told me he had lived in Iowa for several years, had graduated from University of Iowa and was, among other things, a professor of political geography at An-Najah National University in Nablus.  He reminds me of a friend in Maine who tells me frequently about someone he just met who is his "his latest best friend." After fifteen minutes with Saed, I felt like I'd known him for years.  He had walked to the festival from Nablus: "It's a two and a half hour walk.  Beautiful!  I sprained my ankle.  I need new sneakers.  Look at these: worn out.  I should get hiking shoes, not too high, to support my ankle.  Are you staying in Nablus?  You should do it."

The  trio from Norway - guitar, flute and percussion - began.  They played mostly traditional Norwegian folk music and spoke to the audience in English, with apologies for not speaking Arabic, not the only apology in English the audience would hear!  There was a lot of chatting among the audience, especially where we were sitting, a ways back from the stage, and children continued to play, some of them dodging around the trees in a game of tag.  Other children sat above the stage on the edge of the street, their feet dangling over the edge of the retaining wall, or they stood, leaning their elbows on the railing on top of the wall, watched for a while, then engaged each other in talk or  rode in circles on their bikes, as if hovering to see if something interested them.

At the end of the Norwegians' set, the flutist, who had played beautifully, thanked the audience and the percussionist spoke of how much they enjoyed partnering with Palestinians in Nablus and how welcome they had felt.  Hakim called for another round of applause and announced that next would be readings by Nabulsi (from Nablus) poets and then storytelling, followed by the Chilean duet.  Five poets read or recited their poetry for the next half hour.  The crowd ebbed and flowed, mostly ebbed, and there was a lot of chatting in the crowd except up front.  Children were more engaged in racing and playing tag.  

Hakim asked me to come to the front and said Saed would translate for me.  Saed went on stage, recited three of his poems in English, all about Palestine, and then I joined him.  In Arabic I said I thanked the audience and wished I could tell the story in Arabic but unfortunately I couldn't.  I said if I was invited back I would learn stories to tell in Arabic.  Saed and I did what could have been an Abbot and Costello bit about using the mike.  I said I didnt need one, I'd be moving.  He said I could return to the mike when I stopped moving.  I said I'd be moving most of the time.  He said he'd get another mike so I could use the one there.  Back and forth we went until we decided to free the mike from its stand and hand it back and forth, and so we did.

The story I told, an Armenian folktale called One Fine Day, tells of a young fox who has tail cut off by an old woman whose bucket of milk the fox drinks.  When he asks the old woman to sew his tale back in place, she says she will when he brings her a bucket of milk.  Thus begins the fox's quest for milk, involving a cow, chicken, fair maiden, peddler and more.

Said was a perfect collaborator.  It seemed like we had told stories together for years.  He immediately got into the story and we were off.  I would tell a little, then mime it while he translated it into Arabic, but he didn't just translate; he animated the translation.  His energy helped pull the audience closer.  Kids in the front leaned in, switching their eyes back and forth between Saed and me.  Most adults stopped chatting and and listened and watched and smiled at both the story and the focus of the children.  The story with translation took about half an hour and, in the end, the kids were repeating the story back to us.  Storytelling works, even across cultures.  I hope I get invited to Hakim's next festival and now I have an added incentive to improve my Arabic which needs a lot of work.

The Nabulsi storyteller told a few short stories, the children got restless again, and the Chilean duet set up to play.  One of the poets came up to me, introduced himself in English and said he was head of a volunteer organisation working to support children with cancer.  "I will translate your story.  I will read it tomorrow to the children and their families in Bethlehem, where we will meet. "  I gave him my card and told him to email me and perhaps when I return, I can tell some stories in Arabic to the children and their families.