UN, Darwish and Dance

   When you travel with a camera, it is best to pass everywhere twice: once to experience it and once to photograph it.  Similarly, when writing a blog, it is best to experience without trying to write, then reflect and write.  Perhaps if time stood still...  I really don't want to write a travelogue, but this blog tends to slip into one.  The same is true of my journal.  Since time won't stand still, I'll keep writing and hope to get better at it.
   Last night, when we got home from a dance performance and a drink in Jerusalem, Khitam talked to a friend who told her a bomb had gone off in Boston.  She turned on CNN and we watched the account of the two bombs - "Or were there three...?"  There's some irony in my being in Palestine, watching CNN's account of a bombing at the Boston Marathon.  I feel sorrow for the deaths caused by the bombs and for the serious injury and anger that someone has caused this destruction.  I am also aware that far greater destruction has occurred almost daily for over ten years in other parts of the world, and is still occurring and much of it is the result of US action in wars, from drones and indirectly by providing billions of dollars worth of arms to warring countries.  It is good, if painful, for one's perspective to get outside the country and our media to experience other points of view.
   Yesterday, we went to Ramallah to visit a couple of friends and former co-workers of David Whittlesley, a friend from Bowdoinham, Maine.  Nisreen and Manar work with Interpeace and the UN to encourage dialogue among different groups of Palestinians to establish goals for the nation.  "What do you want Palestine to be, to stand for?"  That may be what they are trying to get Palestinians to resolve.  "Everyone wants an independent Palestine, but they don't agree on what they want this nation to be."  So they work with groups of former prisoners, with young people, with other groups they get together to seek answers, to get them to seek and find answers.  Their office is in a UN building that is well fortified and like other UN buildings, I suspect, and US government buildings is almost unapproachable, and, once approached, almost impenetrable.  We were fortunate that Nisreen was wait outside for us to facilitate our getting in and up to their offices.  Once there, Palestinian hospitality ruled and we had a good conversation about their work and a consideration of ways Khitam or I or the two of us together might do some work with young people or teachers and counselors or both.  The meeting was too short but better than no meeting at all.
   We drove a short distance to the memorial and grave of Mohammed Darwish, Palestine's leading poet.  The site is lovely but we couldn't get in.  Khitam was guessing the gate-keeper left to go pray.  This is a site that should be open all day every day and some evenings!  Darwish means a lot to this people.  He was a brilliant poetic spokesperson for the land and its people.  Khitam mentioned that before they built the memorial museum, it was always possible to visit Darwish's grave.
   Ramallah is a boom city with buildings going up everywhere, helter skelter with no thought of city planning.  In that way it reminds me of Beirut.  Soon there will be no land for parks or recreation, at least not much land.  I wonder if the boom will last.  It's fueled by NGO's related to Palestine and gives Ramallah the air of a hub, the center of Palestinian governance.  The problem with this for Palestinians is East Jerusalem, which they consider their capital.  Israel refuses this, says Jerusalem is one city and is the capital of Jerusalem.  This is a long term controversy unlikely to end soon.  Israel's development in and around Jerusalem, like the growth of settlements on the West Bank, make any sort of unified Palestine with an East Jerusalem capital unlikely if not impossible.  This hardly bodes will for peace in the area, in spite of Israel's vast military dominance.
   I have to stop here for another adventure.  I'll write the next installment tonight if I'm awake long enough.

More ceramics, history and bombs

   Where was I?  Ceramics, Palestine Pottery/Armenian Ceramics and more.  So, three families came from Turkey to Jerusalem to make ceramic tiles for the Dome of the Rock.  After that venture fell through, two of the families, the Karrkasians being the other family, decided to stay and create Armenian Ceramics.  They worked together for years and then decided to separate.  The Karkashians moved to a new location inside the walls of the old city.  Here the stories vary, depending on the story-teller.
   Harout Sandroumi, a very lively and likeable Armenian potter, now owns what was once the Karkashians business inside the old city, and he tells a slightly different tale of what happened.  He tells many tales, all of them interesting, and when Cotton Fite, a classmate at Williams who is now very interested in the area and its issues, and I entered Harout's - "People call me Harry!" - shop, we were soon seated on the other side of the little counter he rules, listening to his tales of what happened and what is happening.
   Harout believes things began to change in the 80's.  "Before then, people looked after each other.  Now, it's different.  The Armenian priests who used to lead the community now think only of themselves, like everyone else.  They don't need money.  They've got plenty.  They want your women.  When there's a problem, they know who to talk to."  Clearly this "who" is the government.  Harout is an engaging guy.  He designs and makes beautiful pottery, and I believe he loves Jerusalem, at least the old Jerusalem.  However, he, like many others, suggest or scream that people don't look out for each other any more.  Where once, people in different communities cared about each other, now people in a single community no longer care.  And minority communities are shrinking.  Harout figures the thousands of Armenians who once inhabited the old city now number less than 100.
   Later, while Khitam, Cotton and I were having lunch at the Jerusalem Hotel - beer, salad and chicken shwarma - Cotton got up and spoke to a solitary figure sitting next to us.  The man had silver-gray hair, olive skin and a quiet air.  Cotton spoke to him of their meeting a few years before and how glad he was to see him again and wished him well.  Soon after that, as he was leaving, Cotton told me the man, Venunu Mordechai, is the Israeli citizen who told the world that the Israelis have nuclear weapons.  Since then, he has been confined to Jerusalem and forbidden to speak to anyone of nuclear matters.  His parting words to Cotton were: "I hope I'll see you soon in Chicago."  I spoke with him briefly before Khitam and I left.  "You know my story?"  "Cotton told me, that's all I know.  Is  there a book?"  "Not yet."  "A website?"  "Yes."  I wished him well.  I'll check the website tomorrow.
   Last night, Khitam and I drove to Bethlehem after late lunch with Cotton.  There we wandered, visited another Armenian pottery shop then went to hear The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music Orchestra play extracts from Bizet's CARMEN in a beautiful new space on the edge of a refugee camp on the edge of Bethlehem.  The hall seats well over 2,000 and was nearly full.  At least three quarters of the audience comprised Palestinians, the orchestra is made up entirely of young Palestinians and a few others who live in Palestine, and the chorus, from Switzerland, combined with many young Palestinian singers.  The concert was wonderful!  The audience, including Khitam and me, was engaged and amazed, and the concert was moving and exhilerating.  What a treat and what an example of the power of art: the concert transformed the audience.  Tired and a little hungry, with an hour's drive home after a full day, we were delighted we had been there.

Music to my ears

It's later, Monday, Israel's Memorial Day.  The sun is out, the temperature is probably in the mid-sixties, higher in the direct sun.  It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

I'm still waking up at 4:30 to the dueling muezzins from the neighborhood mosques, but I'm getting back to sleep faster and rising early, well rested.  The dogs have shortened and muted their early morning prayers.  Khitam says about the early calls to prayer: "Why do they go on, reciting the Koran?  They're supposed to call people to prayer, that's enough.  Then be quiet and let the rest of us sleep!"  She prays through her work and whoever's up there must see that, nod and smile.

Saturday, after the lunch I mentioned in yesterday's blog, rewritten this morning, Khitam and I headed for Bethlehem and were soon there.  We stopped in yet another Armenian pottery shop that she likes, got a sales pitch from  an inebriated fellow who may or may not work there, then had tea and picked out a few small items and had a brief but impassioned discussion with the young man who gave us a good break in the price of our items.  He has relatives in Syria and hopes the US will stay out.  "Look," he says, "Sadam Hussein killed 30,000 people, the Americans 100,000 and look at Iraq now.  Of course Assad's a bad man, but which is worse if you look at the results in Iraq?"

We then drove to the edge of a huge refugee camp where The Edward Said National Music Conservatory of Music was presenting the concert version of Bizet's "Carmen."  Over sixty young Palestinians and young musicians residing in Palestine comprised the orchestra, and forty-five singers from Switzerland's Choeur St. Michel, Fribourg and young Palestinians were the chorus.  And what a wonderful concert it was, performed in a beautiful new auditorium that seats over 3,000.  There were few empty seats and after an introduction that was well-meaning but too long and in two languages - Arabic and English, the crowd settled down, almost, and the concert began.  In less than a minute the hall was hushed and the applause at the end of each piece was enthusiastic and grateful.  Khitam and I felt that by the end of the evening, when the crowd was on its feet applauding, an audience that was at least 75% Palestinian on the edge of a huge refugee camp in an occupied land, had been moved and united by the gift of music delivered well by young national musicians.  We were both tired but we smiled the whole hour's drive home.

Then, last night, Khitam's nephew Inas, stopped in and spent the night.  He has just switched jobs from the CEO of a tech firm hiring Palestinian engineers who are well trained but unemployed because of tribal discrimination to CEO of a new NGO aimed at finding employment for 10,000 unemployed Palestinian.  The project is supported by an international Jewish foundation and the
government; I don't know if there are other sponsors.  Inas started in December and now has sixty or seventy people working for him, setting up training centers and looking for job opportunities.  This, he believes, is a rare opportunity to support the economic development of Palestinians.

Though he is excited by his new job, excited and sometimes exhausted, he spoke more about a remarkable music program in the area he lives, north of Haifa.  In a fairly small community with a lot of marginal living, a philanthropist has started a music program for young people.  The program includes lessons, band and orchestra work, music theory and concerts.  Each year, musicians from the program's staff, scour the area for young people who are interested and select fifty for full scholarship work in this program.  Inas and Hanady's three daughters take lessons in the program and the second daughter is in the symphony.  Four young people from the symphony played in the orchestra Khitam and heard the night before!  Inas may be more excited about this program than about anything else in his life other than his family, and listening to him talk about it, I can understand why.  Having heard the ESNCM orchestra play the Carmen concert, I can't imagine not being excited about such a program for young people.

Yesterday, after Khitam's work with elementary and middle school teachers in a lovely old building on the edge of the old city, we headed to a restaurant on the edge of Jerusalem to meet Rafat for lunch.  Rafat is a young Palestinian, now twenty-five, who spent a summer in Maine, living on the Bald Head Road and attending our teen summer program at The Theater Project.  He has a full time job, is finishing his college education, wants to go on for an MA and wants to come to the States again.  We had a big and delicious lunch, way too much food, after which Rafat and Khitam shared a narghile and Rafat treated.  For the whole lunch!  He would have none of our paying it or sharing the cost.  Typical Palestinian hospitality, even from a young man who should be saving for his own expenses.

Old city, coffee and ceramics

It's Monday morning, 15 April. I've already written this entry once, but someone inside my iPad - someone or something - decided what I wrote was inappropriate and ate it, so I'm writing it agai. Perhaps by some cyber quirk, you've already seen it, while to me, it is lost. So much I don't understand. There's a lot here I don't understand either, but here it's human and political, so I can make my way into most of it and emerge with a better understanding than I started with. My friend Cotton, a classmate who I reconnected with at our fiftieth and only college reunion a couple of years ago, is also here, and he is asking the question: "What do you want me to tell people back home?" He writes about the responses in his blog, the name of which I'll include next time...if I remember. I met Cotton by the Damascus Gate of the old city, Saturday morning. We sat for a while, watched people going in and out, Orthodox Jews with their wide brimmed fur hats, long black coats and black pants; Palestinian women selling herbs and vegetables; a woman begging; tourists entering and exiting in groups, led by a guide with a flag on a stick; and people hustling in and out, going about their business. We soon joined the throng. Cotton walks with a cane, purportedly to help him with balance and support when he needs it after a couple of serious operations on his spine. I soon discovered the real purpose of the cane: to prod or chastise me. I accepted it and got retribution by going to the bathroom just before the bill arrived for our long coffee chat. When you walk through the old city, you're in medieval Jerusalem, several feet above the narrow streets Christ trod centuries before. Most of the walkways are too narrow for vehicles but carts, three-wheelers and, on slightly wider "roads," cars make their way, honking if they have a horn, hollering if they don't and nudging if you don't get out of the way. Most routes are crowded with shoppers until you get close to "the sites": the Wailing Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Via Dolorosa and others. We had no particular destination in mind, just wandering, looking and talking. Cotton looked at a small electric kettle; we looked and sniffed in a spice shop where I bought some pine nuts; and he suggested several inappropriate t-shirts and various tourist shops, also a nice dress or two! The best coffee shops, according to him, are in the Jewish Quarter - the old city is roughly divided into quarters: Jewish, Christian, Armenian - so we made our way there, as indirectly as possible: "Do you know where the Jewish Quarter is?" "No. You?" "No." "Got a map?" "Yes." "Let's look." "There is is. Where are we?" "I don't know...here?" "Maybe." And so on; eventually, we got there, after asking five or six people the way and getting some help and some contradictory directions, which happens often here, maybe everywhere. So we sat and talked and talked about what's going on here and what kind of responses he's getting to his question of what to tell people back home, responses like: "Tell them the truth. Tell them what it's like. Tell them to come over and see. Tell them to do the right thing." For a while, we were the only people in the restaurant, a nice place for lunch. People would walk by, look in, talk among themselves, then move on. Meanwhile, we ordered our second coffee and continued to talk. Whenever people paused by the entrance, I smiled and nodded, hoping to encourage them to come in. By the time we left, several tables were full and the guy who had served us was hustling. Next stop was The Armenian Art Center, where Harout Sandrouni - "Call me Harry" - sat behind the counter and greeted us. This is another ceramics shop, selling their own designs. Harry has succeeded the Karakashians who were the partners of the Balian family in the original Armenian Ceramics business that I wrote about in the last blog. Harry is a live-wire, a non-stop raconteur and a delightful guy. He's been around a long time and he's discouraged, though that's not what you get from him at first. He sat us down across the little counter from him and started to talk about the business and life in the old city. The number of Armenians in the old city was around 3,000 a few decades ago; now there are less than 100. In response to a question about communities taking care of their own, he answered, "No!" "I remember that being something that distinguished the Armenian community in Beirut, their taking care of their own," I said. "That was then," he replied. "Now it's everyone for himself, and the priests, who used to be community leaders, care only for position and women." My guess is Harry's not a devout Armenian Orthodox or Catholic! Still, this attitude of looking out for oneself while communities deteriorate is common and sad. After a long conversation, that might still be going on if it wasn't time for us to meet Khitam for late lunch, Harry gave us each a very good deal on some lovely ceramics, then moved right on to make sales to other customers who had come in during our "session." He had mastered multi-tasking in his shop, all with a smile, even if it was ironic at times. We met Khitam for lunch at the Jerusalem Hotel. When we'd finished, Cotton got up to go, then stepped over to a white haired man, olive skinned, sitting quietly behind us. He introduced himself, chatted for a minute, then said good-bye to us and motioned me to follow him outside. He told me who the man was: Vanunu Mordechai, the Israeli who revealed to the world that Israel has nuclear weapons. He is confined to Jerusalem and cannot talk with anybody about his story, which I think he hopes to write someday, when he can leave the country. Before Khitam and I left, I spoke to him, told him Cotton and I were friends and that Cotton had shared with me who he was. He wrote his name for me and told me to google it to get his story. I wished him luck, then Khitam and I left. I looked back and saw him still sitting at the table, a notebook in front of him. He was alone.

Palestine, pottery and people

   My first full day in Palestine - "Oh, you mean Israel?"  "Well, not really: 'occupied Palestine.'"  "Not Jerusalem!"  "Not all of Jerusalem, but East Jerusalem."  "Oh, come on!  Be serious."  A good question to begin with: Can one be serious about this "situation"?  Yes, but without a sense of humor and a tad of faith in the human spirit, it's easy to be glum here."
   I arrived yesterday around 5:00 in the evening, 10:00 AM in Maine.  I flew out of New York around midnight, had dinner, such as it was, around 1:00 AM, then we flew into the sunrise and time passed more quickly than our watches, and we had breakfast at 2:00 PM, 7:00 AM Maine time.  And then around 5:00 we landed at Ben Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv, Israel.  Khitam was at the airport to pick me up.  We drove to her place outside of Jerusalem, on the "other side" of the wall - like being on the "other side of the tracks."  She made some dinner and opened a bottle of wine and we ate and talked until late.  Not surprisingly, this morning I woke at 4:00 AM, 9:00 the night before in Maine, and stayed awake to a muezzin's call from a near-by mosque at 4:30, followed by a cacaphous chorus of dogs rejecting the muezzin's timing.  I'll get more sleep tonight.
   Today, we left the house before 9:00 for Jerusalem.  She dropped my near the Damascus Gate of the old city and went off to her Saturday gig, working with kindergarten teachers.  I stopped in at Palestinian Pottery, where I chatted with Nishan Balian, third generation owner of The Armenian Ceramics, also called, The Palestinian Ceramics.  I had met him on my last visit, two and a half years ago.  I had told him then that Margie and I had come to Jerusalem on our motor scooter from Beirut in 1962 and had heard about and found his shop.  I told him how impressed we had been and remembered talking with someone about the pottery and someone's being across the little entrance hall, working on the destinctive designs the mugs, bowls and tiles still wear.  "That was probably my grandfather, who was still working then.  He died two years later."  The father took over and the grandson, Nishan, went to Ohio University to study ceramics and the opened a studio in or near Washington, D.C.  He had not beer working there long when his father was diagnosed with advanced Parkinson's, and he made the decision to return to Jerusalem to continue the family business rather than stay in D.C. with his new project.
   The back story is a good one.  In 1918, or thereabouts, the Brtitish Mandate government of Palestine invited the Balians and two other Armenian families to come from northeast Turkey to make tiles for the Dome of the Rock, Islam's cherished mosque in Jerusalem, built over the spot from which Muhammed on a white horse rose into heaven to receive the word of God that became the Koran.  Money ran out and politics reared its ugly head, as politics is wont to do, so the job ended soon after it began.  The Balian family and one of the other two families decided to stay and they started Armenian or Palestinian Ceramics.  Not long after Margie and I visited in 1962, the two families split up, one, the Balians, keeping the shop two blocks from the Damascus Gate of the old city, where the shop still is; the other family set up shop inside the city walls.
   The beat goes on and I'll have more to say tomorrow.  It's almost midnight here, 5:00 in the evening there.  My sleep clock may be getting into sync which means I am about to fall asleep, so I'll not attempt more words except to say it is good to be here making discoveries about Palestine and Israel, history and politics, pottery and hospitality and a little bit about myself (ho-hum)

Just practicing...

Greetings from Logan Airport. Off the bus, through security - "Is this your knapsac, sir?" "Yes. Is there..." "You can't take this water through." "No! I meant to finish it." "I'll just scan it." She does, then tosses it. I also had to toss my moisturiser...or is it "moisturizer"? Either way, it was too many ounces, so I may return in two weeks with dry skin! Oh, dear... To Kennedy in an hour and a half, then just before midnight, onto a non-stop flight to Tel Aviv, the sun rising soon after we take off...which means I'll be aging more rapidly than normal: that and dry skin may have drastically affected my appearance when next you see me. Instead of, "Al, you look the same," it'll be, "Al! What happened?!" As I said, "just practicing."

I'm back

I'm heading back to Palestine and will be blogging, without photos this time because I'm using my iPad and don't know how to do the photos, yet. I'll post some after I'm back. Check facebook to read the blog. I'm leaving NYC, Thursday night, arriving Jerusalem, Friday. Al