Looking back...

I'm back in Maine, having landed in Boston, Monday night, in a driving rainstorm with visibility of what seemed like a few feet.  Sitting in Little Dog Coffee Shop in Brunswick, I think about how bizarre yet natural it is that three days ago I was thousands of miles away in a different culture with a different climate and terrain where people speak another language and write from right to left...  I also think about the call I got this morning from my friend Khitam in Palestine who corrected the opening of my last blog: "Romani is not eggplant; it's pomegranate!"  I told her I would correct it today.  Done!

Saturday, my penultimate day in Palestine, Khitam and I drove from Nablus, where we had spent the night in our favourite third floor hotel,  to Jenin where Khitam had a workshop scheduled with kindergarten teachers from the camp and surrounding villages.  There were thirteen teachers and school principals, all women and all but one covered.  The workshop was hosted by The Freedom Theatre, where we had been the previous week to see one of their shows.

Khitam is very good at what she does.  Saturday's workshop was the first of six Khitam would be doing with the teachers.  Her goal is to introduce them to ways of using the arts - movement, theater, drawing and painting, music - to work creatively and therapeutically with their students.  As I have mentioned in blogs from earlier visits, some of what Khitam is teaching we might take for granted because of our opportunities to learn a variety of ways to work with children.  In Palestine, such opportunities are limited by the occupation, a lack of funds, a tradition of top down teaching and a paucity of enlightened leadership.  Khitam's workshops increase teachers' ability to work creatively under those conditions.

She begins by talking with them for half an hour.  She introduces the goals of the workshops and asks the teachers to introduce themselves and say a little about their work and goals.  By the end of the half hour, she has established a feeling of trust among the group and a curiosity to discover what they will do.  She asked me to do a warm-up, after which she put on some music and did body and mind freeing movement that helped shake off inhibitions.  Then, leaving the music on, she told me to come outside with her: "They need to move, to dance, and they won't do it with you in the room."

For four hours, with a couple of breaks for snacks and coffee, tea or water or all three, she guides them through theater exercises, drawing, two dimensional sculpting with coloured geometric shapes and talked about what they were creating and why they had drawn or sculpted what they had.  She also had them collaborate to create together, then discussed what happened.  They were learning new activities that they can use with their kids and they were coming up with their own reasons for doing these activities by talking about what they were creating and how that felt.  She asked me to do a few exercises with them and, near the end, to tell a story.

The teachers were engaged for the entire workshop.  Khitam paced it well so that they didn't get tired of any one exercise or discussion.  There were times to move, times to sit around a table and draw, times to collaborate with the coloured shapes, times to discuss, to question, to compare ideas.  The teachers worked hard and had fun.  By doing the activities themselves, they could discover how the exercises worked, what fun they were and how to use them with children.  I suspect this is not a typical workshop for them; more likely they are used to workshops that are more lecture than inter-active.

There is no good reason workshops like this one should be as rare as they are.  Nor is there a good reason schools are run down, underfunded, often poorly led by principals whose idea of what a school should be are not only outdated but probably wrong in the first place!  Conditions in Palestine are more difficult than in many countries and yet many countries have the same problems.  Here in the States, we have some of these problems: poor leadership, lack of funds, lack of materials; however, we are more do have many good schools, better prepared teachers and more materials to work with.

When I visit Palestine, I am reminded how similar the people I work with and meet there are to the people I work with and meet here.  They are friendly, most of them work hard, they complain about daily inconveniences, they love their children and they want a better life.  Sound familiar?  I'm also aware that in Palestine and here, there are people who are not so friendly, don't know what to do with their children, are unhappy because an abusive relationship and complain all the time.  The big difference is the conditions we live in.  We don't live under occupation, they do.  We seldom confront roadblocks and when we do, it's usually because of an accident on the road.  We don't start the day wondering if we can get to work in the half hour it should take us or if, because of Israeli checkpoints, it will take us an hour and a half.  We don't live near or next to an enormous  and faceless wall that cuts us off from direct access to villages and towns we used to walk or bike or drive directly to or to fields we used to farm or, as children, play in.

Oh, there are other differences.  Olive trees, for one.  They are a Palestinian farmer's heritage and, if they're not torn up or cut down by settlers for whom the tree is not special, they will be passed on to the next generation in the family.  And in the fall, when it is time to harvest the olives, we don't turn out - fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles and children - to harvest the olives.  I just remembered that when we came to Maine in the early 70's, I learned that families in Aroostock County would turn out for potato harvest in September and schools would close for a week or two, so in Maine we are familiar a family approach to harvest.  I assume that in all parts of the country where agriculture is important that was once the way: all hands turned out for harvest.

This makes for a cooperative and supportive community.  That's what Palestinian villages have traditionally been.  People help each other when they see the need or are asked.  There is a familiarity that offers security if sometimes a lack of privacy.  To lose this sense of community or be denied it diminishes one's humanity a little or a lot.  This is true of the people who lose it and is true of those who would deny it to others.  Many Palestinians I know are working hard to support a sense of community through their work, their relationships, their volunteering.  In an occupied land much of which is riddled with the settlements of the occupier, their hard work gets harder, not easier.  Yet they continue, and few of us notice.  If we know anything of the area, most of us know only about Israel, as if no one else were there.

Artists Retreat

Kufa Romana, which means eggplant, is a village of 1,000 perched and carved into a hillside about an hour from Nablus and from Sebastia.  We drove there from the festival in Sebastia, late Friday afternoon.  Khitam had an idea where it was, but an idea is not enough to get you through the twists and turns that lead to so many hillside villages, so she asked directions of several people along the way: "Kufa Romana, wayne?"  Where is Kufa Romana?"  "Kufa Romana, dugerie?"  Is Kufa Romana straight ahead?  Eventually we reached it, or thought we had: "Haida Kufa Romana?"  Is this Kufa Romana?  "Na'm."  Yes.

It is an old village.  The stone and cement houses have been here a long time.  The roads were probably originally paths for donkeys.  There was no city planner!  So the next question was, do you know where Abed Othman is.  People she asked knew him and directed us to a very narrow street that ended at one of his small stone artist's houses.

Abed looks a bit like a white-haired Picasso, or maybe that is just who I imagined when I met him.  We got to the end of a narrow dirt road crawling between small stone houses and Abed appeared, descending stone steps from a stone house above.  He welcomed us; he knows English well and he and Khitam have known each other for a long time but have only seen each other two or three times in the last twenty-five years.

He welcomed us effusively in a quiet way.  I didn't hear him raise his voice once during the two and a half hours we spent together.  I assume his persona is who he is: he was wearing worn khaki pants, a simple pullover shirt and sandals.  His white hair increased his height by an inch or two, especially when he brushed it back with his hand.  We brought chairs out of the stone building in front of us, which I think is going to be an artist's residence when finished, and sat outside.  Abed rolled a slender cigarette, flicked what looked like a BIC lighter, and we began to talk.

He works in Cologne, Germany, as a journalist for a well known German newspaper.  He is also a village beneficiary - he was born and grew up in Kufa Romana - a philanthropist, visionary and old hippie.  At some point recently in his life, he decided he wanted to: start an artists' retreat in abandoned houses in his village and develop a program to improve Palestinian journalism.

Palestine is a small, would-that-it-were country, occupied by Israel since 1967.  The north, far from Jerusalem, is unknown to many people.  Now, occupied by Israel, it is even more cut off from other parts of Palestine and from the rest of the world, an area easy to neglect, to shrug your shoulders and not give another thought.  "I wanted something here that would offer Palestinian artists in the north an opportunity to develop their art and to offer something to the children in the village," he told us.

So he decided to build an artists' retreat, a place where artists can come live in small restored houses and do their work: write, paint, sculpt, think, choreograph, compose, mime, whatever they needed time and space to do.  The fee?  Abed asks them to spend a few hours a week with the children in the village, sharing their art.  "No one does this in the north.  This isn't Jerusalem or Bethlehem."  He might have said it was a new frontier.  He sees value in supporting artists' developing their work without conditions.  "Here," he's saying, "is a place you can focus on your work and sleep and eat without demands."  They have to bring or buy their food and share their art in some way with the village children; the rest of the time is there to develop and create.  There is no final exam.

His other project is to educate Palestinian journalists.  "Palestinian journalism is not developed.  Someone writes an article about an issue and calls it journalism."  I don't remember his words but I do remember their essence.  Local journalism is not not responsible or reliable.  He wants to develop that sense of responsibility in journalism here and give journalists the tools and opportunities to use it.  He has started an on-line program and many aspiring and current journalists have signed onto the project.  He plans to expand it to Gaza soon.

This is a huge undertaking for one man, but I think he would say, "Someone has to start it.  I know what good journalism is.  I can initiate a program to develop it."  This is his approach to a problem or a lack, a need, in his community.  Go to work on it.  He works alone.  Khitam and I agreed he needed someone to publicise his work and raise money - so far he has used his own.  He also needs volunteers to work with him in the village, reconditioning the houses for artists.

Abed's strength is his vision and his artistry and his journalistic knowledge.  He wants to make something happen that will change his village and begin a change in Palestinian journalism.  He'll work in the village for as long as he can, then go back to Cologne to work.  "I go back and forth.  Lately, I've been spending more time here."  He looks like someone who has retired to paint in the village, not like he is attempting two remarkable and creative projects.  I asked him if he made art.  "Oh, I have.  I painted for a while, then I stopped."  I don't remember the other, maybe sculpting, and then he stopped that, too.

We had brought food, so Khitam suggested we share at his house.  We sat in his garden, outside a stone house his parents had owned.  He had been a two room house.  He has added two rooms, improved the kitchen, added a bath.  A lone light bulb hung on the branch of a tree above us.  A cat prowled under the table and on the railing of the deck.  "She just had a litter so she's suspicious of strangers and protective if another cat comes around."  He made Arabic coffee after we ate and talked.  We drank it together, packed up the leftovers and said good-bye.  Saturday, the next day, he was hosting a group of Palestinian clowns who were coming to the village to perform for the kids.  While he was showing us around the buildings for his project, he made a phone call: "I paid a guy to clean up the area where the clowns are performing tomorrow.  He hasn't done it.  I told him to do it tomorrow morning or give me the money back."

Fateh is the political party of the village.  "No other party is going to come here.  Fateh wouldn't let them.  They used to say they were doing things for the village, for the kids, but they weren't.  When I started programs and then had some parties for the kids, things began to change.  Fateh hosted a big party for the kids and the kids loved it.  I'm fine with that.  If they'll do things for the kids, I'm all in favour of it, and I'm the only leftist in the village!"  I asked him if he felt more German or Palestinian.  "Both," he said.

We said good-bye and both of us said we'd like to come back and do something with the kids.  Maybe we will.

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.

Pottery & Glass, Falafel & Hummus and Arab Houses

Sunday morning we drove to Khalil, or Hebron, the putative site of Abraham's - known to Muslims as Ibrahim - near-sacrifice of Issac.  That site is holy to Islam, Christianity and Judaism and part of the old city is occupied by Israeli settlers who often threaten and attack Palestinian residents.  I remember Hebron as an open city with an old section that I wandered through several times, both in the 1960's and ten or fifteen years ago.  Today, the old section has been mostly closed down by the settlers and you move about carefully.

With the potter

Khitam and I had not come to explore the old city this time or do a workshop there.  We had come to buy pottery and probably have some falafel and hummus before heading back to her place in Adahya.  We drove to Hebron Glassworks and Ceramics, which I wrote about a few years ago.  Begun in the 19th century by the Natsheh family, the glass and pottery workshop continues to turn out lovely work that is displayed on shelves in a show room next to the workshop.

Many have worked there for a long time.  The potter who was working at a wheel during our visit has been there over twenty years and has been at the wheel for every one of my visits I can remember.  One of the women painting bowls has also been there over twenty years, as have at least one of the men painting the designs.  Others have only been there for six to twelve years but may stay until they stop working.  Jobs must be scarce and Hebron Glassworks and Ceramics is well-known here and far beyond Palestine's borders...which is another subject!

Painting their traditional designs

Tradition: an important concept in this part of the world.  Palestinians reach back centuries, at least; Israelis back to Old Testament days.  Each has a claim here.  However, it is the Palestinians who were here when Israel was established.  They were here with their traditions, and they still have them.  They live mostly in villages and in East Jerusalem.  They were, and many still are, small farmers who grew food and raised goats and sheep to feed their families and sell the rest at what we now call farmers markets.  Their traditional way of life does not include competing on the world's stage.

Outlining the design

Falafel and hummus are also a part of tradition here, along with Arabic bread (not pita), and some fresh and pickled veggies.  Khitam asked two men who were walking along the road in town where the best falafel shot was; she'd gotten a name from someone at the glassworks shop.  They began to answer and then suggested they get in and they could direct us while getting a ride.  In they climbed and soon Khitam and I were entering a small restaurant that specialised in falafel hummus and foule (red beans in olive oil with a few spices), plus Arabic bread that continued to arrive from a local bakery.  Tables were covered with paper, the food was served in bowls, the bread on the paper, and that, plus a few veggies was the meal with water and sodas to drink.  No ceremony here: they make the food, you eat it, pay and leave.  Simple and very good, even if you leave with sticky hands.  Cost?  About six dollars.  Traditional food served without ceremony, though the man who made the falafel had a twinkle and chatted with Khitam when he brought the falafel.

On our way to Hebron we passed through Jerusalem, skirting the old city, which is surrounded by a Medieval wall.  We also passed some lovely old stone houses, modest and handsome, built to last, each with its own personality in spite of the similarity of style.  "You see so many traditional houses along here," Khitam said, "and the people who owned them cannot even see them.  Sad."  She was referring to those Arab houses that Palestinians had to leave during the war in 1948.  Most must have thought they would return soon to take up their traditional ways in their homes.

Sleepless in Nablus

At 2:30, Friday morning, I had slept little when I heard the knock: "Al, are you asleep?"  It was Khitam.  She couldn't sleep either - loud traffic, uncomfortable bed and a few other complaints.  She was ready to move.  So we left the guest house and drove to a hotel not far from there.  It was on the third floor of a five story building.  We climbed the three flights, the night clerk calling "Welcome" down to us.  He checked us in, showed us our rooms, both clean, with firm mattresses and away from the street in a quiet neighborhood.  I got into bed, checked my watch - 3:30 - and turned off the light.

Not so early Friday morning, Khitam knocked: "You awake?"  We went to breakfast, a combination of a typical Arab breakfast and a western picnic: warm hardboiled eggs, Arabic bread, hummus, white cheese, labneh, zatar, olive oil, two kinds of jam, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers; and also sandwich meat, American cheese slices separately wrapped, canned olives and to drink, hot water, Lipton tea bags and instant coffee.  You could order Arabic coffee.  When Khitam asked about the western additions to a traditional breakfast, the clerk said many of their customers seemed to like those choices and canned or sealed foods last.  Could it be some of them aren't real food?

So, we had slept and breakfasted well for just over $40 each.  We had enjoyed our conversation with the owner of the guest house, but this little hotel allowed both of us to sleep.  We'll spend one more night there Friday, when we return to Nablus for the Cultural Festival.

We went back to the center of the city to get some kanafeh.  Khitam had discovered there was a place in the old city known for the best kanafeh in Nablus, which is saying something because Nablus is the kanafeh center of the universe, or so say the people of Nablus, and I've heard few counter claims.  Inside the old city, we asked for directions and discovered the shop didn't open till 1:00 o'clock when we would be on our way to Jenin.  So, we went back to the center of town to the second choice, a sweets shop near where we had parked.

An Arab sweets shop is not a small candy store.  Arab sweets are prepared on large rectangular or circular trays.  They cover a lot of space and there are a lot of them.  My last blog includes a picture inside the shop where we had our kanafeh: a long counter covered with large trays of Arab sweets with others stacked near to be baked or dressed with crushed pistachios or a sweet syrup.  We each had a serving of kanafeh and it was, as I remembered, delicious!  Then we were off to Jenin, to visit The Freedom Theatre.

Approaching Jenin Refugee Camp

When you get to Jenin, a medium size busy city north of Nablus, you ask someone directions to The Freedom Theatre and you are directed to Jenin Refugee Camp.  Soon you're driving on a narrow road crammed with two and three story buildings on either side of the road.  Children walk and ride bikes along the street, cars drive and honk by, and a small space opens on the right, the entrance to The Freedom Theatre.  We parked on the street and walked down a short two-car wide entrance to the theater complex.

Complex may give the wrong impression, a suggestion that The Freedom Theatre is something grand along the lines of Lincoln Center in New York.  This theater complex is in a Palestinian refugee camp where people are crammed together with little or no empty space.  That this theater even exists is a wonder.  But here it is, with the six actors performing Return to Palestine, the show we were going to see, hanging out with friends who also act or have studied there or are connected in another way.  To the right is the entrance to the theater; upstairs a rehearsal space on one side and on the other, the theater itself with sloped seating for about 200 and a bare open stage.

In front of The Freedom Theatre

Rana, a member of the ensemble performing Return to Palestine, came over to hug Khitam who had interviewed her as part of her Ph.D research.  After meeting her, we talked with Milad, an actor who trained at a theatre school in Ramallah and is now an itinerant actor, finding work around Palestine.  I asked him what his dream was and he answered: "To act and be with my girlfriend."  He has acted with The Freedom Theatre but is not in this production.  His girlfriend was there, so it seems he's close to his dream!  We also talked with Mustafa, the Managing Director while his five year-old son sat silent and probably bored until Khitam got some colored clay from her can and started making flowers and strange creatures with him.

Nabil al-Ra'ee, the Artistic Director, joined us for the few minutes he had before hurrying back to the stage for a final sound check.  Nabil is tall and slender, with dark curly hair and dressed in black collarless shirt,  black pants and sandals, Birkenstocks, I think.  I noticed the sandals when he gave a short curtain speech that included, "Turn off your phones.  Turn off your phones.  Turn off your phones."  Then someone in the audience said: "Bil Arabi!"  (in arabic)  In the few minutes we had to talk he spoke of working with Juliano, son of Arna Mer Khamis, who founded what is now The Freedom Theatre as a program for children in the camp.  In 1993, Arna was awarded The Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as "an alternative Nobel Peace Prize."  With the award money, she built a theater for children, which was destroyed by the Israelis during an invasion of the camp but was rebuilt by Juliano, who succeeded his mother as the theater's director, and volunteers. It stands today as a tribute to his commitment, and his mother's, to art, culture and freedom.

Nabil and Khitam after the performance

Nabil worked with Juliano for several years.  After Juliano was assassinated by an unknown or unrevealed killer in 2011, Nabil was asked to take over as artistic director and agreed.  He has led the theater since then, with a hiatus of one year, after which the theater's board urged him to come back.  He did.

Nabil speaks with a calm passion about The Freedom Theatre as an educational program, a theater, a cultural center that offers training in other arts and as a leader of cultural resistance.  "There will be another intifada," he said.  "I don't know when.  I hope when it happens it will use cultural resistance, not violence or passive resistance."  He went on to talk about the arduous path to creating and nourishing such a theater program, a long path but one which he believes requires taking first steps first and moving forward step by step.  "There are many levels to our occupation," he said, and went on to list them, then he had to go.  I look forward to our next conversation.

Return to Palestine is less than an hour long and has been developed from conversations in refugee camps and in Gaza.  The actors originally took stories they heard from their audiences in the camps and Gaza and "played them back," that is, acted them on the spot.  They have since turned those stories into a unified piece, developed with a director by an ensemble of three men and three women in a small confined space on a bare stage.  In his introduction, Nabil mentions this, saying,
"...performed in a small space, like Palestine."  The plot is the visit of Jad, a Palestinian-American, to Palestine for the first time.  It is fast paced, dynamic with the actors playing everyone and everything.  It is funny, sad, tragic, goofy and moving.  In the end, after losing a new friend, Jad decides to stay in Palestine.  My guess is no one in the audience of Palestinians, Americans and Europeans thought that was the wrong decision.

Nablus, third oldest city...?

What is the oldest permanently inhabited city?  Damascus is one claim, though the Chinese or Japanese or other countries in Asia may claim another.  Those standing with Damascus go with Aleppo as the second and Nablus as the third.  That was Ahmad's claim as we wandered through Nablus old city, Thursday, and I have no reason to doubt him.  He may well be right.

Nablus sweets shop with kanafeh (3rd large tray)

Early Thursday afternoon, we left Adahya, where Khitam lives, just outside East Jerusalem, and headed north to Nablus.  Our ultimate destination was Jenin, further north, but we wanted to stop in Nablus to visit Project Hope and to eat Kanafeh, or Kanafeh bit jibneh.  The latter is what I remember the Lebanese calling it, decades before I knew it was a Nablus specialty.  If someone here knows you're going to Nablus, they are likely to say, "Be sure to eat some kanafeh!"  Kanafeh, the most famous of many Nabulsi sweets, originated in the 15th century and by the late 16th century it was exported throughout the Ottoman Empire.

I remember Nablus as a medium size, sleepy town, perhaps because one of the last times I was there, it was mid-morning and the shops were just opening.  Now it is a large bustling city.  It is also the home of Project Hope, a Palestinian non-profit that works to provide activities, education and entertainment for the youth and families of the city and its surroundings.

Nablus' kanafeh and its old city were the secondary reasons I wanted to stop there.  Project Hope was the first because I had not heard of it until our granddaughter, Leila, volunteered there for two weeks last summer.  Most of Hope's volunteers are in the twenties or thirties; Leila was seventeen.  During her two weeks there, she taught a conversational English class at the university where all her students were older and also worked with younger children.

Hakim

AbdulHakim Sabbah, who goes by "Hakim," is the Director of Project Hope.  He founded it several years ago as a Palestinian non-profit and he is a no-nonsense leader.  In order to develop Project Hope and to pull off Nablus' first arts and culture festival two years ago, he has had to be.  He is witty, salmon the surface and a hard worker.  That, at least, is my impression from sitting with him and talking for less than an hour.  He is also quick to seize an opportunity.  When I mentioned storytelling and jokingly said maybe I could get to the festival next year, he said: "Why don't you tell stories there!"  I said I'd see if I could make it to the next festival and he immediately replied: "No, I mean next Friday.  This year!  We have Nablus' sole surviving traditional storyteller,  Friday at 5:00.  Join him."  "I'd have to tell in English."  "I'll translate for you.  So, you'll do it?"  I wasn't sure it was a question and agreed.

spices & veggies & beans in the souk

Au natural herb!

For the next two hours, Ahmad, a young university graduate who studied Arabic literature and works for Project Hope, led us through the city's souks, a few kilometers of covered narrow walkways between shops of all kinds, displaying everything from plastic and metal kitchenware from China to traditional Arab robes and kaffiyehs; from cheese shops - Nablus is famous for a white-brine cheese called jibneh Nabulsi, which not surprisingly means, Nablus cheese - to butchers with recently skinned animals hanging in front, to spice shops whose scents make you want to stay and breathe in as many scents as you can.

Ahmad in the souk with a visitor

seller of natural sweets and herbs

After a dinner of skewered chicken with tomatoes, onions and a side of fried potatoes, preceded by a mezze of hummus, baba ghanoush, pickles, jibneh Nabulsi and other local dishes, we returned to the guest house where we were spending the night, at least we thought we were.  There we sat up for a couple of hours, most of it talking with the man who managed the guest house: he owned the business but rented the building. He was smoking a narghile (hookah) and he talked almost non-stop about work he organized and volunteer work he did in the refugee camp he'd been born in.  He wanted kids to have options, to discover themselves through sports, arts, crafts, studies, so he has helped start programs in the camp.  To run these programs, he needs volunteers, lots of them.  Volunteers are even needed in the schools where he thinks the leadership and teaching are lacking.  He has little money to work with, though he has requested and received money to build facilities for the programs.  He didn't sound like he was giving up.

Eventually, we "turned in," as my father would say.  There were a few surprises ahead.

Hamda and Arab al-Jahalin

Hamda is the daughter of Bedouin parents.  Actually, she is one of five daughters and ten sons of Bedouin parents.  Bedouin refers to the original Arabs of the desert, those who lived in black tents made from the hides of sheep, goats or camels, depending on what animals the Bedouins kept.    While living in Lebanon in the 1960's and early 70's, we often saw Bedouin settlements when we traveled there and in Syria and Jordan.  These are the Arabs depicted with Hollywood panache in David Lean's film, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole, Anthony Quinn and Omar Sherif.

When Hamda was nine - she's now twenty-eight - she and her family and the rest of their Bedouin settlement numbering in the hundreds or more, were uprooted by the Israeli occupation and forced to move to a new space which lacked grazing land for their livestock.  Not only did it lack grazing space; it also lacked shelter for living.  There were containers available for some of the families to find shelter in, but not housing or tents.  Some of the Bedouin managed to bring their tents; others did not have time after being ordered out of the area in a matter of hours.  Their first winter was a cold one and many suffered without reasonable shelter or warm clothing.

Now there is a village of stone houses called Arab al-Jahalin with a population of 3,500 Bedouin.  It is likely most of the adults wish they were still living freely in tents where they once did and where an Israeli settlement now spreads across a large area, comprising look-alike houses in an orderly segregated community on confiscated land.

Hamda and her sister Suad with me in her Arts & Learning Center 

Hamda is a remarkable young woman.  She is one of the first young women in the village with a college education, getting a degree from al Quds University in social work.  She is bright, energetic, playful and determined.  She wants to work with kids as an educator, social worker or therapist.  She has worked and learned with my friends Khitam, a creative arts therapist, and Nasser, a middle school counselor and social worker who works with families on violence and substance abuse issues.

It is impossible for a young woman, and difficult for a young man, to find work in Arab al-Jahalin.  Hamda is looking for work outside her village but without a car or the money to buy one  So she has created a program for kids in an abandoned container the size of a railway car, perhaps one of the original containers when her village was moved there.  She runs programs three or four times a week, doing arts activities and games with the kids.  Khitam has helped her set up the container as a learning and playing space and has also helped her with arts activities that are engaging for kids.  She also brings people to lead discussions about women's rights and other issues.

Wednesday, Khitam and I visited Hamda at her activity center, where we met Suad, her elder sister, and five of her friends: Shadieh, Asthma, Soraya, Tahani and Huda.  One is engaged and will marry in a few months; one has a degree in economics and hopes to find work; one does embroidery at home and the others may find something they want to do before marriage.  Traditions change slowly and Bedouin tradition did not allow for women to work outside the family.  That will change, also, as women like Hamda break the mold and, with their parents' permission, go outside the family for an education and then work.

Isolation by tribe, whatever and wherever the tribe, and strict adherence to a behavioral code do not work in a shrinking, changing world, but customs change slowly and are often kept in place by traditions that have long served the tribe.  The most efficient and ethical way to support change comes from understanding and empathy.  If the modern West insists on one way of living and attempts to force that, we will encourage conflict and resistance.  The Bedouin live the way they do because that has served them well for centuries.  That is where our understanding and support should begin.  Just as we perceive their culture and history through lenses influenced by prejudice, media and propaganda, so do they perceive our culture and history through similar lenses.  Hamza is an example and an agent of change, in small but significant ways moving Bedouin culture into modernity without sacrificing what is essential.