Bringing Up Baby

Much to my surprise, I have acquired a puppy. I was spending the day at a friend's house and heard a terrible whelping coming from across the street. A group of teen-age boys was crowded around some tall weeds surrounding a phone pole. They had a dog cornered, a few had sticks and were whacking at the source of the sound. If I see you hurting a child or an animal I may end up hurting you. So, I went over to try to talk to them and get them to leave the dog alone. I asked what the problem was and why they were bothering the dog. As soon as I reached into the weeds for it, shushing it, the dog started licking my hands and let me pick him right up. The boys were pretty surprised I cared this much about a dog. One tried to sell it to me, but another just said they would give it to me, which is mighty generous since it wasn't theirs to begin with. We ended up having a relatively nice talk; I even gave an impromptu English lesson. In the end, I walked away with the dog. A barber across the street asked what had happened and when I explained he agreed I'd done the right thing and that the boys were in the wrong. My friend's husband and I bathed him with Johnson's baby shampoo in their yard and we picked up some dog food on the way home.

So, I have a dog, which is really unusual for this city. Not sure how old he is, but can't be much. A vet's going to take a look at him today. We don't have anything for him to chew on except a pair of men's tennis shoes one of the summer volunteers left. Right now he's asleep on my floor, curled up with his shoe. I "crated" him in my room last night with an overturned table and he did fine. Now I just have to start paper training. Oh, and he's well into the wild stage of teething. Haven't picked out a name for him, though. Any suggestions?

Pioneer Spirit

Just finished: White Noise by DeLillo
Next up: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palesine by Pappe
Listening to: The Calling by Mary Chapin Carpenter & Mahler's 9th Symphony
Eating: Far too many figs from my Fig Guy in the souq. I think even he's getting concerned.

Darwish was buried today. I haven't seen news of the burial yet. Some of us listened to radio coverage between meetings. I thought about going, being a part of it, but decided I would better honor him by continuing to work on getting our school up and running. I think he would have agreed with me. We are very busy at the moment with seemingly everything as the first day of classes rushes up on us. Busy is a bit of an understatement.

I was so happy today to see one of my students from the summer program, a tiny, adorable and wildly bright boy who will enter second grade this year. He was in the office with his sister and parents and his parents, who I'd not met, looked a bit amazed when he walked right into my open arms for a big hug. My group this summer were new students who didn't have much English at all, so I focused on getting them ready to handle school. But hug was one of the first words I taught them and I hugged each of them, and most of the rest of our kids, every day. It sort of became an automatic response with a few of the: they would see me, throw their arms open wide and walk right over to hug me.

School opens on the 24th and there is just a skeleton crew on hand at the moment. The Palestinian teachers are enjoying a much needed break. In the midst of trying to get the two first grade classes arranged and outfitted, planning my lessons, and remembering little things like food and water, we are still working to arrange the library and make it all it can and should be. Then there's organizing the joint staff meeting with its full agenda of discussion and break-away groups, helping develop the new Web site, coordinating with my two Palestinian co-teachers, welcoming the newest members of our international staff as they arrive, my mural projects, sorting out where to plant a student garden, designing my after-school programs, trying to arrange meetings with community groups for joint projects....

I am getting more of a sense of settling in. I exchange far more greetings as I walk through the old city and the neighborhood around our school each morning. A few of the people I see regularly have begun addressing me as "mualeema", or teacher, when greeting me. I feel a part of things and it is wonderful. Sadly, I've no time at the moment to sit and chat, but everybody is very understanding.

Salaam.

Beautiful Things, Terrible Things

Palestine is a surreal mixture of beauty, horrors, pain, joy, warmth, frustrations, sadness...The elements swirl about your wherever you go here.

A few articles from the news today reminded me of this.

Raja Shehadeh's book, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, is in my on-deck circle. People need to know there is beauty here worth saving, in the land and people. This is a nice article from today's NYTimes about the West Bank and Shehadeh's attempts to just go for a walk there. If I every have a child, I may name it Sarha...

However, the pain continues and wounds are opened anew. The Israeli tank crew that fired on and killed Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, 24, and eight young bystanders in Gaza in April will not face legal action. Shana was in a car bearing clear markings identifying it as a press vehicle. From the story in The Guardian: "Reuters said x-rays showed several of the inch-long flechette darts were embedded in Shana's chest and legs as well as his flak jacket. Shana's flak jacket was marked with a fluorescent "Press" sign and his car, which was not armoured and was set on fire in the incident, was marked Press and TV."

Salaam.

Guest Post - The Loss of Darwish

My friend, Areej Ja'fari, a phenomenal community organizer at the Ibdaa Cultural Center in the Deheisha refugee camp, sent me this today, her thoughts on the loss of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish this week. Darwish is to be buried in Ramallah today. She agreed to let me share her words here:
____________________
Hi!
As Palestinian I am living the shock of losing Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian Poet, he was our spokesperson for decades. I am sharing these feelings with you about this tragedy we are living now:

Mahmoud Darwish is not a passing traveler in Palestine

Singing for freedom has always been a part of national struggles throughout the world; but when you sang for freedom, you sang with words of love with your entire mind and with every drop of your blood ---and for your whole professional life.

You took the responsibility of documenting the moments of our lives and made them unforgettable, like a mural painted across the surface of the moon to be seen and remembered by all who love nature, and especially those who love the moon.

You spoke honestly about Palestinian history and what was happening to us on the ground as if we were watching a movie---informing our minds with beautifully and ingeniously written Arabic poems.

We read your words once, twice and maybe three times to understand the ideas that gave life to your words. We wanted to read your words again and again because we wanted to live the moments of your words, especially when you described our beautiful mother Palestine.

"So leave our land. Our shore, our sea. Our wheat, our salt, our wound. Take your portion of our blood and go away."

We love life as you loved it; we want to live in dignity---not under oppression. You did everything to oppose oppression and to show the world we are not human bombs walking in the streets killing Israelis, We are birds of love, peaceful farmers, lovers of Palestine and life-makers in the midst of domination.

When you wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, your words placed us within the sphere of diplomacy. You led the nations of the world to their first recognition of Palestinian rights, and you made us proud of who we are as refugees and Arabs. You have sown the seeds of the Palestinian Dream since you were uprooted from Al Berouah, and you spoke loudly of who we are when you wrote...

Record!
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged . . .

Your death is not our end, nor will it ever be. Though it might be the end of your love story with your beloved "Falasten", you didn't take your words with you when you left; they remain with us forever to read again and again.

"My homeland is not a traveling bag,
Nor am I a passing traveler.
It is I who am the lover and the land is my beloved"

Your politics never mattered because you were always more than this; you were Palestinian. Your greatest disappointment was the oppression and bloodshed among brothers; and your final wish was to visit Gaza---the added wound to our already divided homeland.

You have seen us lose everything, but you kept hope in your words and in your heart, and you brought this same hope back into our hearts and lives. You made us, the Palestinian refugees, visible at the time when everybody had forgotten us. You remain the voice of the promised return of Palestinian refugees to their homelands. We will return, but we will return without you. Al Berouah and Al Jadeedah will always remember that you tried everything to be able to go back to them.

Mahmoud Darwish always called for peace, but never experienced this peace, even when he lived in France or in other countries outside of Palestine. He lived like a stranger even in his own country. I share this with him and with more than three million other Palestinians. Now he is at peace, but not in Palestine or on the Earth he loved so much. It is only we who will continue this call for peace and justice---the same as he did.

Palestine . . .

You spread onto my body like sweat
You spread into my body like desire
You take over my memory like an invader
And occupy my brain like light.
Die, that I may mourn you
Or be my wife that I may know betrayal
Once and for all."
--
Areej

Salaam.

What Part of 'No' Don't They Understand?

So much for "no new settlements". Not at all surprising, but no less disappointing.

Salaam.

Death of a Poet

I awoke just now to the terrible news of the death of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish at the age of 67 following open heart surgery two days ago. If you don't know his work, you should. Listen to him read his own works in Arabic here. Listen to Marcel Khalife sing (and NPR translate) one of his best known poems, Umi (My Mother) here. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared three days of official mourning. Remember him the best way; read his work. You can start here:

I Come From There

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland.....

Salaam.

Newsline Neopolis

Since local news from here rarely shows up on the evening news in other countries, I wanted to share a few news stories out of my town and the West Bank in the last few days, courtesy of Ma'an News Service and others.

The very troubling, but not unusual, news in the West Bank these days seems to concern the escalating aggressive actions of some Israeli settlers. Settlers attacked a caravan with two British diplomats in Hebron this week. An armed group of about 50 tried to storm the Ibrahimi mosque (the site of the Goldstein massacre of 29 Muslims in 1994), also in Hebron. In our own city, Israeli forces arrested a small group of settlers who entered the city illegally in an attempt to visit the shrine of Joseph. These follow the horrible incident of August 2, in which settlers stormed a home and threw a 14-year-old boy from the roof of the home. He survived the 60 foot/20m fall, but suffered serious injuries. The same group later attacked a nearby wedding party. Living in a city surrounded by settlements, this escalation in the violence concerns everyone.

However, in the midst of all the bad news, sometimes good things do happen here:

Turkey to donate 15 Ambulances, PA asks for support for An Najah University hospital

International spinal surgeon trains Palestinian doctors in Nablus

Israeli authorities release Nablus mayor and businessman

Early Friday morning I went for a run up my mountain and ended up, after running up to one of the checkpoints, at a bend in the road overlooking a hilltop settlement in the west, likely illegal even under Israeli law. The morning light was just breaking red and gold and the white trailers, lined up in a tight formation that seemed to mock the original tract homes in the U.S., appeared only a shade lighter than the reddish brown earth they occupied, but still marred the landscape, even in sleep.

Salaam.

Welcome to Israel

An interesting blog post from Stolen Words Stolen Days (via Sabbah's blog) about what some travelers face trying to enter Israel. I got lucky upon arrival and dealt with a witty young woman in passport control who was actually very helpful. She asked a bare minimum of questions and obviously recognized me as the wildly nonthreatening soul I am. Sadly, that's not always the case:

"The woman accused me of lying, saying I wanted to volunteer instead of sight see or visit friends. She wanted me to log into my email so she could go through it because she didn’t believe me and said since I received the papers through an email that she needed to see my emails. I refused, saying I couldn’t, “as an American,” and this was a violation of my privacy. She stated that I was not cooperating in an angry and aggressive tone...

"I asked her how could I have time to volunteer in three weeks, and she replied that I could extend my ticket. She continuously asked if I was going to volunteer or attend Arabic classes. I told her repeatedly no and she replied that I was lying. She also threatened to call the university that was in Nablus that put together the papers to ask if they knew about me, and I told her to go ahead as they would not know whom I was, yet she did nothing but continued to call me a liar. Even though I was going to sightsee and visit friends, I do not see how a possibility of volunteering at a university in Nablus to teach English would be a possible reason to deny me entry. She appeared to refuse to listen to my plans but was just assaulting me with “questions” that were really more like statements or assumptions of what she thought I would be doing, regardless of what I said."

In the end, this person, a tourist, as with so many others, was fingerprinted, photographed, and detained overnight before being placed on a plane and deported. Read the full description and see the photos of the detention center. Welcome to Israel, indeed.

Salaam.

Tell Everyone, Everyday

I saw my friend, the tiny, elderly man who lives up the hill near the Quranic school last night. My roommate and I had gone for a walk up to the top of the hill, near the checkpoint, for exercise. He asked how we were doing and if we'd had any trouble at the checkpoint then laughed when I said there was no way I would walk all the way up to an Israeli checkpoint along a dark stretch of road dressed entirely in black. He turned and explained to the two men with him, who had continued up the road several steps, who are and they nodded in greeting.
"Are you telling everyone you know about what is happening here in Palestine?" he asked warmly, flashing me his grandfatherly smile. I told him I was trying. "You must tell them, all of them. Everyday." He smiled and wished me goodnight before turning to join his companions.

I agree with him. I do have a sense of responsibility. Especially living in Neopolis, a place not visited by many foreigners. I've been slowly coming to know my town and slow to begin documenting it, especially with my camera. I don't like dropping into a place and immediately firing away at the people through a lens. Sometimes I feel it makes people feel like animals in a zoo. And Neopolis isn't always a city where you walk about casually taking photos of people on the streets. Instead I've walked the streets, talked with people and just given them a chance to begin getting to know me and even get bored with me.

As to telling the news, I believe that unless I can tell you about it first hand, you can read it for yourself. I've added a link for Ma'an news service, which covers Palestine, in the sidebar. There are other links there as well. No matter who tells you, it doesn't mean a thing if you're not listening. And most of you aren't listening. Otherwise there wouldn't be an apartheid wall, extending like an ugly scar across the landscape. Otherwise my friends could return to their villages, could move about their country freely. Turn off the t.v. news, do your homework, listen, ask questions and make up your own mind.

Here's some of the latest from the past week in the West Bank:
Settlers push 15-year-old from roof
Israeli forces release Nablus mayor

Salaam.

Thoughts on life

Just thinking a bit about how and when people come into your life. You meet someone, even just for a minute; maybe you don't even say more than a few words to them. Then you see them again, across the world, and you know them, even though you don't know a thing, really. But you know the face, or maybe the voice. And it drives you mad for a few minutes; you watch them across the room and the gears turn and creak. Then, if your brave enough, or if you feel it matters enough, you ask them to help you put your stories together. Maybe it comes to nothing, a polite acknowledgment of a shared moment, but sometimes, sometimes, it's the start of something real, special. If you're lucky enough, you'll be awake to see when life gives you a second chance.

Salaam.

Special Morning

Just returned from a special visit to the Dome of the Rock. A friend arranged a tour of the interior for me. Security is incredibly tight for the Temple Mount. I was finally allowed in at the entrance near the Western Wall. It's an intensely powerful place, very moving. I'm still processing. I understand the security issues, as I did at the Western Wall, but it's a shame more people aren't able to experience it. I'll have photos up tonight.

Salaam.

Not A Good Night

I was just shutting down my computer when this headline popped up - 13 Killed in Istanbul blasts. My quiet night in a holy city ended. The two explosions are another blow, following the murders of the police officers at the U.S. consulate earlier this month, to a city and people I love. I hope all my friends and loved ones there are safe. If you read this, please check in with me. My thoughts go out to the families of those killed.

Salaam.

Salaam min al-Quds

I arrived in al-Quds this afternoon from Bayt Lahem, where I'd spent the night at Ibdaa to see a friend before he returns to America to complete work on his graduate degree. I took the 21 bus through the tunnel straight to the Damascus Gate. Unfortunately, one Palestinian passenger with a Canadian passport was held at the checkpoint and not allowed back on the bus for what seemed like weak reasons.

It's quite a great deal to take in and process, really, this place. It's sacred, profane, mystifying, maddening, joyful and kitsch all at once. You stride over stones worn to a sheen by six thousand years of steps, pass covered women, Muslim and Jewish, and half-naked women, tourists in everything from gold stilettos to micro-shorts and bikini tops, and plenty of grumpy Israeli soldiers and police with guns, in and out of uniform but all with their radios at their shoulders. Nuns, priests, hustlers, pilgrims, posers, tour groups, muftis, rabbis, shopkeepers, beggers, ebb and flow the way it's always been. It is a spiritual place, but that brushes up against the costs in the city. The second coming may be canceled due to insufficient funds. I don't think the carpenter's kid can afford this place anymore.

I've made friends with just about every kid who speaks Arabic in the Old City. It helps dodge the requests for shekels and yields some surprising results - one boy insisted I fire off a round of his pellet gun and I got to sit in on a rather intense game of marbles.

I just spent the afternoon wandering around the streets. I expected the Old City would be larger; that new Jerusalem would be like the Jerusalem of old. I've seen most of it, at least the exteriors, in one afternoon. Not to say I won't be retracing my steps in coming days. I've been turned away at almost every entrance to the Temple Mount by Israeli security, who told me it's closed. However, a shop keeper told me otherwise and his young grandson told me to try early in the morning. The dome and al-Aqsa are a powerful sight, even at a distance.

I visited the Western Wall this evening, God's Inbox. Women are again marginalized here; their share of the prayer area is far smaller than the men's. There were hordes of young, conservative girls squealing and schooling around the square. One tiny boy stood in rapt wonder at the pigeons milling about him. A bride and groom arrived in their white bests to offer prayers, the bride having a hard time keeping the bobbing hoop skirt of her dress from revealing to much to the eyes of God and the rest. Another couple had their photo taken kissing in front of the barrier to the prayer section. I offered to take a photo of a young Jewish family, who gratefully accepted, so dad might make it into at least one picture.

The soundtrack to the day has been the adhan and church bells, a heady combination of wake-up calls. The mosque across the street from where I'm staying has a fantastic muezzin, whose adhan is a joy to hear: melodic, a touch mournful, but not overwrought. We're surrounded by at least ten mosques, given my quick initial count of minarets, which produces a remarkable, if not unified, stereo effect.

The Old City is dark and quiet now, it's after eleven. The whole places begins shutting down around 8, security prowling the streets, metal doors slamming shut, dangling racks of goods fished down from their perches. I'm staying at the Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family, which is lovely and highly recommended, at least the dormitory where I'm sleeping is. I'll be here through my birthday, a little spiritual retreat on my own, before returning home. I want to be up early tomorrow to see the city wake up. I have a few new photos posted on Flickr, by the way.

Salaam.

Living in Neopolis

Some things to note about living in Neopolis:
Water is very tight. It's a problem in many parts of the region and wider world for sure. Even posh Istanbul endures water cuts from neighborhood to neighborhood at times. Here things are compounded by Israel and the illegal settlements in the WB, where most of the ground water is siphoned off before it can reach Palestinian villages and towns. In Nablus there is a municipal water system for delivery, but all water is rationed. Roofs are topped with large, black plastic water tanks where your rationed water is stored. Despite gravity, water pressure is generally low and the responsibility to conserve water is high. We have a washing machine, but it uses too much water. The summer volunteers found this out the hard way last month and had to endure several days without water for the bathroom. One good thing is that the tap water is safe, clean and tasty, something Istanbulites cannot even brag about.

All foreigners look alike. Almost every day I walk to work through the old city. And every time most of the same people welcome me to Nablus. It's very nice of them, but rather amusing and leaves me feeling a bit like Bill Murray in the film Groundhog's Day. The people I buy my coffee, spices, honey, cheese, olives, etc. from know me well, obviously. It also reminds me of my former-mother in-law in Morocco commenting that I looked exactly like the anchorwoman on BBC who did bear a striking resemblance in that she was carbon-based, human and female.

The kunafe comes two ways - "hard", with the shredded phylo on top, the way it's served in Turkey and Syria and the only way I'd ever seen it made, and "soft" with a simple wheat meal topping. Soft's the way to go. Nichole and I have decided to eat at every kunafe place in the city and write the definitive guide. You know, as a service to the public. If unsure, start eating at Damascus Sweets, just west of the fruit and vegetable market at the clock tower.

You will see a variety of what I term "public art": shaheed (martyr) posters, election posters and graffiti. What strikes me most about the martyr posters is how nonthreatening almost all of them look, even holding ridiculously large weapons, like boys playing war. That and how incredibly young some of them look and were.

There is a mall, not American-sized mind you, but the Israelis are shutting it down August 15 because they claim it funds Hamas or the shop owners fund Hamas or something, depending on which story you here. The closing date is also flexible. I'm meeting friends there for lunch tomorrow.
Supposedly the whole place is having a going-out-of-business sale at the moment, in case you're in town.

Some people believe you should boycott all Israeli goods and a boycott can be a good form of non-violent protest. However, almost everywhere I go, people stock products from Israel, so the consensus on boycotting seems a bit weak.

Ladies, there are no tampons in Nablus. Trust me. Head to Ramallah.

There are goats on the roof of the souq. Seriously. Two of them almost fell on me through a hole in the roof in front of a butcher shop the other day. I heard a commotion above my head and looked up to see the shadows of two goats scrambling around like fallen ice skaters. No word on what else is up there.

Off to the pool with friends.
Salaam.

No time for kunafe!

Just finished: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Reading: White Noise by Don DeLillo
On Deck: Gardens of Light by Amin Maalouf
Listening to: The Seeger Sessions by Bruce Springsteen

Things are very hectic here at school, with summer camp ending and planning for the coming school year shifting into high gear. With about a month to go until the first day of school we've made the rather momentous decision to scrap the existing textbooks that coincide with the Palestinian curriculum and create our own. While this is exciting and will produce far more challenging materials for our students, it's also a bit crazy-making at the moment. We'll be deciding who will teach what grade at today's curriculum meeting. Each of us will be creating books for English, science and math. The math we'll be teaching is not simple arithmetic but rather what's not covered in the Palestinian curriculum: measurements, word problems, time, money, etc. We'll be selecting themes based on the grammar points included in the Palestinian curriculum and building from those. The overall goal is, obviously, to create a challenging, innovative and well-designed course of study.

In addition to that small task I'm working in the library to catalog the English-language materials. It's slow going, but I enjoy getting to see what I have to work with and reminisce over some of the titles from my childhood. I'm also working on updating the school's web site with stories and photos from summer camp. In short, I'm crazy busy and wildly happy.

Last night we enjoyed a wonderful time at the palatial home of Munib al-Masri, the wealthy Palestinian businessman who is working hard to develop his beloved hometown. He was kind enough to invite all our students to his estate for an evening of games, music and a quick tour of his home. Click on the title of this post to read more about him and see the estate.

The internet's been out at the house, which makes updating challenging with all the work to be done first at school. We may be moving again, splitting into seperate homes for the men and women. I hope to get to Jerusalem for at least a few days while school is closed for the next two weeks, but my original plan to travel north had to be postponed due to the massive textbook project. I finally have a few new photos up on Flickr and am trying to post more when I - ha, ha! - have time. Bear with me, folks!

Salaam.