On with the blog, after fumbling and mumbling and punching keys and conniving with Khitam to get back to the blog and publish the last one, which is riddled with typos - do we call them typos in cyberland? Apologies. I'm not a Ludite, just a very slow cyber-learner.
Last night we attended the opening of the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival at the Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem. Now the title bears some explaining. Ramallah is north of Jerusalem and home to numerous NGO's and the offices of the Palestine Authority, the governing body of Palestinians on the West Bank. East Jerusalem is the future capital of an independent Palestine if there is an independent Palestine and if the international community supports Palestine's claim and if Israel relents. None of this is guaranteed; far from it! With Palestine divided into area A, administered by the Palestine Authority; area B - jointly administered by the Authority and Israel; and area C, administered by Israel and comprising 65% of the West Bank; and with Israel able to intervene in areas A or B and the Palestinians having no significant military or police force, the Palestinians don't have much say in the matter. Unless strongly backed by the rest of the world, particulary by the United States, Palestinians have little hope of an independent contiguous state.
So the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival is held in Ramallah and East Jerusalem because Palestinians on the West Bank cannot attend it in East Jerusalem, and Palestinians living in East Jerusalem cannot attend it in Ramallah. This separation affects the development of Palestinian art, among other things. Artists from the West Bank and artists in East Jerusalem cannot get together. This blocks the development of a national theater, dance program, opera, symphony, art program, of sharing knowledge, technique, art! However, Palestinians keep trying and they are succeeding in large and small ways. I wrote about the concert at the refugee camp outside Bethlehem. And now a dance festival.
Khitam and I attended and were joined by Rafat, former student and tenacious and delightful young friend, and Khitam's friend Khaloud, who, like Khitam, studied art therapy at Lesley in Cambridge. The opening performance was full and the performance by a Swiss troupe was remarkable: very physical, with a strong suggestive narrative and powerfully executed. After the dance, the four of us went for a drink and a snack. East Jerusalem's late night offerings for a drink and a snack are not much of an improvement over Brunswick's but there was a place nearby. While we talked, Khaloud spoke of returning to the city she loves to live with her mother, who she deeply loves. Khaloud is 35 and returned from two years studying at Lesley. She is an independent thinker from a very conservative family. She has brothers and sister, all of them married and all of them believing she should live with her mother until she is married. It is not all right for her to have "a date." She can meet someone for coffee, but not go out for a date. Because people know each other in the old city, where she lives with her mother, she cannot "sneak off." So she's a little bit stuck, trying to figure out how to live her life and not offend her family. This convervatism is typical of the old city, I think. Khitam, like Kholoud the youngest in her family, grew up in Acre and went to school in Haifa. Her father died when she was 9, her mother a few years later. An older sister became her surrogate mother and several other syblings - there were eleven, now ten - helped. She has, I suspect, been an independent thinker since a teenager and she did not live in such a tight community so she was not subjected to the same constraints as Khaloud.
I think I won't press my luck. I'll end for now and write another tomorrow about today. I hope I can proof this before posting it, but if it, too, is riddled with faux-pas, you'll know I couldn't figure it out.
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