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.
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