Days 27-36: Jericho, Judith Butler and other business!

Sorry about the lack of updates for over a week. I’m still working on a really long post about the wall/barrier in the West Bank after I visited it last week. It’s sad that I’ve missed out on quite a lot of important thins in the meanwhile, but I hope the resulting post will be worth it.

Part of the problem is I’ve really busy – though that’s been great. I’m getting into a routine of spending a lot of time at the office doing whatever needs doing, and I’m also meeting with a conversation parter at university to improve my colloquial Arabic. I also had a couple of projects for friends to finish off, and the usualy Arabic class workload. I feel like I’m getting into the swing of it now.

Among the things I did at the weekend was go with two freinds to the beautiful area around Jericho on bikes. It’s so near to Ramallah but the landscape and weather are a total change. It’s really low-lying, and our ears popped in the bus on the way there.

This week Judith Butler has been visitnig Palestine and I’ve seen her speak twice. I am totally inspired. I’ll write more about this and other things soon.

So there it is in brief. More to come soon I hope. Just letting you all know I’m still alive and writing!

Days 17-21: Settling in Ramallah

I went to view a room on Saturday. Most rooms available here seem to be as part of the standard furnished apartment setup: relatively new-build, white painted walls, soulless.  Not this one. I decided pretty much as soon as I saw the place that I wanted to move in. For a start it’s a a floor of a house, not a flat. It has a conservatory (of sorts) and a big dusty balcony which, I was assured, is good for barbecues in the summer months. I wondered briefly and not for the first time why I chose to move to Palestine in the height of its mizzly weather.

I met my three future housemates – two Palestinian guys and a French woman – as well as a few other people who just were there chilling out. The house is in Ramallah Tahta (the Old Town) so I got to join up my mental map of the city a bit more after my explore there the previous weekend. I can’t wait to continue the conversations we started over beers in the flat and food at a local barbecue cafe.

One of the guys met the love of his life at Birzeit University when they were both students. They got married and graduated. Some time ago now she returned to Gaza to visit her family. Ever since then, the has been denied permission to leave and come back to the West Bank. “Even though she’s married to you, and you’re from the West Bank?” I asked. “Because we’re married,” he corrected, “they have denied her the permit time after time. It’s not part of their plan. The way they see it, we are a family now. We will have children; more Palestinians. They don’t want that.”

The food was awesome: a never ending supply of dips and bread for all of us, and I had to admit that even the others’ meat looked good. Definitely some of the best Baba Ghanouj I’ve ever had! What’s more, I didn’t even pay as I hadn’t had any meat. I walked and talked politics with them until I left to meet a bunch of my university colleagues and their associates in a shisha cafe. Over the weekend my PIN finally arrived back in the UK, so I was able to buy my first beers (Taybeh of course)!

Having access to money has also of course meant I’ve been buying food instead of just scrounging from the people I’ve been living with. There’s a big convenience store in the ground floor of this building which I’d been avoiding as my money spiralled toward the last 20 NIS. So I was very happy to stride in there the other day with a fistful of banknotes to survey their wares. However, to my disappointment, almost everything is Israeli. Now, I still need to educate myself more on the whole issue of boycott, but I was still pretty sure I didn’t want any Israeli produce. I went in looking for ingredients for a good hot meal. I left with bread and Baba Ghanouj, and some juice from the Emirates (which was far from ideal). Since then I have also found more dips, one tin of olives and a packet of wafers, but I think that’s the sum total of the Palestinian produce on offer.

Days 14, 15 and 16: Villages

The last three days have seen my first ventures outside the safe haven of Ramallah and into the wider West Bank. This is a long post of two parts.

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Part One: Hizma

On Wednesday S invited me along with some of his international and Palestinian friends to go and eat maqloubeh at his family home in the village of Hizma. Maqloubeh is one of those dishes with a regional legendary status, commanding a similar amount of idolatry as Egypt’s koshary. It has a similar composition to koshary, bringing together that familiar carb-intensive combination of pasta and rice, but shunning Egypt’s pulses and crispy onions in favour of nuts and vegetables. I politely dodged the chicken.

The food was presented on two unfeasibly large platters with bread and salads and home-grown olives, Bedouin-style. As our stomachs all began to reach breaking-point, the mother/chef of the family appeared from downstairs to survey her work. Almost instantly flared up a conversation on the rights and wrongs of polygamy. The mother is staunchly opposed, while a couple of the men closer to my age are hoping to marry for a second time. I kept well out of the discussion, not least because it was conducted half in Bedouin and half in Jerusalem Arabic.

After the meal we were served tea, argileh (shisha), coffee and fruit one after another by various children of the family, in what seemed like a never-ending stream of Palestinian hospitality. We learned some coffee and smoking etiquette while the discussion raged on. Eventually it was time to drive back to Ramallah. We got our stories straight for the checkpoint (going to Qalandia for Jerusalem) but we weren’t stopped.

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Part Two: Al-Ma’sara

I haven’t been sleeping as much as I should. I’m just not wired to go to sleep early, so getting up at 6.30a.m. every day has been taking its toll. After classes on Friday I took a much-needed nap.  When I woke up I went to meet M to travel to the village of Al-Ma’sara. During the week I’d responded to a call for internationals to be present due to increased repression by the army of peaceful protesters there.

Like many other villages in the West Bank, Al-Ma’sara holds a march every Friday in peaceful opposition to the construction of the so-called “separation barrier” through its lands. This barrier separates villagers from their farmland and livelihood, as well as from vital water resources. Many simply do not see how they will manage once the thing is in place.

The past few weeks have seen violence and arrests at these weekly marches, as well as night raids at the homes of prominent protesters. Therefore, at the request of the village Popular Committee, Israelis and internationals aim to keep a presence in the village to deter and document these acts of repression. Around ten of us were present for the night watch, with some sleeping in a small social centre, while I and others slept in the houses of Popular Committee members and their families. We sat up late talking peace and politics in H’s house while his wife, six children, mother, father, and imprisoned brother’s wife and children slept.

We were served a midnight snack of fresh bread, dibs (“grape honey”), home-grown olives, home-made olive oil and za’tar, which together was the most delicious thing I had eaten since I arrived, despite, or perhaps because of its simplicity. I made a promise to myself to mention it here in the blog, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that it is not quite in keeping with the gloomy-sounding picture of sitting in a house waiting for its possible invasion by soldiers and the arrest of your host. Further testament to the never-ending stream of Palestinian hospitality. We awoke just how we went to sleep, with cameras at the ready. Soldiers had entered the village during the night but as far as I heard, their arrival was thankfully uneventful.

After a hearty breakfast and a tour of H’s smallholding, wereturned to the social centre for a legal briefing by an Israeli lawyer.

When I say legal briefing, it was unlike any legal briefing I’d experienced at home in the UK. Not because it was delivered by a native Hebrew speaker in Arabic and English from a huddle in front of a gas fire, but because there wasn’t much about, well, the law. The general consensus seemed to be that as the law is not respected and could be pulled from underneath our feet by the sudden declaration of a “special military zone”, then there wasn’t much point talking about it. It instead focused on arrest, interrogation, imprisonment and bail.

People began to gather outside the house, waiting for the end of the midday prayers which would signal the beginning of the march. Here I put names to some of the sleepy little faces I’d glimpsed in the dark of the night before, now roaring very much awake around the courtyard in the bright sun. Seven-year-old S took a liking to me, and was very happy that we were going on the demonstration together. In this half hour with so many small children milling around I probably spoke more Arabic than I have the rest of the time I’ve been here!

The children grabbed their flags, we grabbed our cameras, and the march began. The villagers try to vary the theme of their protests in a creative way in order to get their message across. Today was “Tree Day”. Marchers carried olive trees, a symbol of peace, towards a piece of farmland lying on the way towards the site of the wall.

People sang and chanted about freedom along the way, until we reached a point where we could go no further. Israeli soldiers holding M16 rifles stood in front of their Jeeps behind a temporary barbed wire fence on the road.

At the same time as the soldiers became apparent, a family signalled from their balcony that soldiers were inside their house. More soldiers were also seen strategically placed on the hill overlooking the road. The villagers planted some saplings before the soldier’s line, and took some to offer out to them over the wire and ask to be granted passage. They were, of course, refused. People delivered speeches in Arabic and Hebrew, addressing the soldiers directly but calmly.

After a while the demonstration dispersed and we headed back to the village. The soldiers that had been inside the house were now clearly visible with weapons on the roof, with the family still standing on their balcony.

Even in these dire circumstances, people still had a cracking sense of humour. People shouted out, “Hey, look! Israelis and Palestinians living together in the same house … In peace!” The soldiers seemed to grip their weapons tighter.

The demonstration passed without violence or arrest or tear gas. Other villages today were not so lucky (Bil’in, Dier Natham, Nabi-Saleh, Nil’in). When I returned to Ramallah I read that after we all left, the army entered the village and arrested a Popular Committee member. I’m thinking of them tonight.

Days 11, 12 and 13: The smell of rain

On Sunday I moved off M’s sofa. I’ve not found anywhere permanent yet but I’m renting with S (in the flat I went to view a few days ago) until the end of next week when his permanent flatmate moves in. He kindly offered to pick me up, an offer I was all the more glad of when I saw it had started raining. I’d read his email wrong and ended up waiting many hours, but in the evening I finally grabbed my bags and walked to meet him up by the Legislative Council. S greeted me wholeheartedly and offered to help with my things, but I could tell he was tired. I knew he’d been out running one of his Israeli-Palestinian co-operation activities for kids during the day. Then I noticed that he looked a bit wet, as did the inside of the car. I further noticed that the driver’s-side window was conspicuously absent. Smashed at the checkpoint car park while he was over in Israel, he said. Maybe it wasn’t the army, he said, trying to sound upbeat; maybe it was thieves. “But,” he conceded, “they didn’t take any of my valuables.”

The storm was breathtaking. There was real orange and blue forked lightning leaping across the expansive sky, the thunder rumbling like a satisfied belly in the hills below. The flashes were so bright I could see them with my eyes closed, as if someone had flashed a search beam in my face. The rain has been running down the streets in rivers, and is expected to continue for a few days as a storm from Egypt meets one coming the other direction from Europe. Needless to say I got quite wet on the way to uni, but despite my earlier comments about the departmental advice on thermal underwear, I am very happy to have brought a raincoat.

On the way home the air was that special just-rained air. The smell is different here though, more heady. I could almost feel the ground and the plants breathing a sigh of relief and thanks, even though I’m not usually inclined to think in that way. Looking less happy was the flaccid hose pipe I saw lying on the pavement outside an apartment block surrounded by palm trees, whose job was surely over for the foreseeable future.

Last night I cooked and chilled with S. We drank Taybeh (the Amber variety is delicious) and watched the storm as we exchanged travelling stories, of which he has a great many more than me. A crack went off in the night, which for me could only have been a firework, but for S likely meant something else: trouble. However, he is very undramatic about these things. My new flatmate is also very easy to please in the kitchen department, which he attributes to his ten years in Israeli prison from age 14. Here, in the prison library, he also learned Hebrew fluently, now giving peace lectures in Hebrew at Israeli universities.

Today I arrived at the taxi station five minutes later than usual and was confronted with absolute mayhem. Two hundred students were clamouring for the minibuses as these returned in drips and drabs from the university run. I understood straight away that you had to be assertive, with most of the buses not even making it to the normal stopping-place before being ambushed by groups of young people brandishing books. The thing is, it just didn’t seem right to try to push in front of 200 people who’d already been waiting a while. I was still in the queueing mentality. Fifteen minutes later I was still walking back and forth on the car park trying to predict where the next minibus would be forced to stop. The only difference was that the 200 people around me were now a completely different 200. It wasn’t for another 15 minutes that I managed to successfully fight my way on to a bus.

After classes today there was a talk from a representative of Stop The Wall. It gave some really interesting facts about the economics of the current situation, particularly with regards to control of agricultural production and tourism (some of which are available here). This was followed by a healthy debate on the usefulness and accuracy of employing the term “apartheid” to the situation. This has inspired me to find out more about who benefits how from the status quo, rather than just thinking in terms of the Israeli government’s plan to have less Palestinians around.

A personal note: It’s getting to the point in this blog where there is really a lot more I would like to say. So much of what is worth noting here is people’s personal experiences, but with these come issues of consent and confidentiality. In the sphere of activism, the issue is security. I hope I can continue to make this interesting and informative without crossing those boundaries.

Day 10: The Old Town and the Bar Job

Today had one aim: wandering. First, though, I had to do my laundry. Laundry is usually one of those things you usually just bung in the machine and leave to do its thing. But no, not when you have… a top-loading washing machine! I haven’t seen one of these babies since my grandparents’ ancient one, but this one is pretty much brand new. You have to fill it up with a hose pipe, once for the wash and once for the rinse. I was pretty impressed with the effectiveness of the spinner drum on the other side though! Anyway …

When I left the house, instead of taking the usual path into town I headed towards the nearest interesting-looking thing I saw, which was the modest white dome of a church sticking up above the other buildings. I didn’t make it there before more interesting things caught my attention and steered my route. Thus continued my day of wandering.

I ended up in the Old Town, which was beautiful. Its mellow, communal feel and crooked streets with higgledy-piggledy houses is a whole world away from the hectic town centre roads. Quite often I’d come across stunningly artistic-looking derelict houses which would have looked haunted if they weren’t dappled with sun and surrounded by the green of those luscious hills. There was green all around the old town, too. People in Ramallah seem to really love their plants – there are plant shops everywhere!

I eventually worked up the courage to take some snapshots, which I will try to share here soon. Unfortunately the internet is still struggling along at slower-than-dialup speed.

I popped into the bar on the way back to have a beer and do my homework. I ended up staying and working a six-hour shift! So much for not taking the job …

Days 8 and 9: Where does the time go?

One of the main things that drew me to Birzeit in the first place was the Right to Educaiton Campaign. It wasn’t until a few days before I left the UK that I found out A. was working here too. It’s a small world. Then, it turned out that A. actually ran the campaign. He does so with volunteer K. who, coincidentally, is now in the same Arabic class as me.

So yesterday after class I followed K. from our department at one end of the campus to the office at the other end, sharing experiences of Manchester and Cambridge universities’ activism around Palestine. A. is away, so K. gave me an overview of the campaign and we devised some stuff for me to do. It feels good to finally contribute something here instead of just concentrating on getting myself sorted.

On that note, I still have nowhere permanent to live. I enjoy Ramallah and its clamour (and, ok, the possibility to drink lots of beer) but the more I think about it the more A. was right when he called it an escapist paradise. The effects of the Israeli occupation probably seen the least here, which is awesome for people who live here, but I wonder if as a visitor it doesn’t amount to sticking my head in the sand a bit. That said, I don’t know what my situation is at checkpoints without a stamp yet, having not crossed any.

Anywhere further afield would make the commute to university a lot longer, though it would mean getting to pass through even more of Palestine’s stunning landscape every day. Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to draw hills as big green semicircles rising up next to each other from the floor, ridiculously steeply? That’s what it’s like here. There are hiking groups, and I need to join one.

As well as hiking, I’m hoping to use my three-day weekends* to travel around Palestine. I’ve got a couple of people to visit, and someone has offered to drive me out places when they do work with their peace organisation. Enough travel could be a good counter to living in Ramallah.

Time is passing really quickly here. I’ve decided not to take up a regular job at the bar because I just won’t have time. Arabic class is over by 10am, then suddenly the muezzins start for the evening prayer and it’s dark before I know it, leaving me with not enough time to finish the things I’m doing and still go to bed at a reasonable time. I was very glad today that it was the weekend*, taking a massive much-needed if not really well-deserved lie-in.

I did drop into the bar last night though to see M., listen to the live music and have a couple of Taybehs (which in my tired state hit me like cocktails). The bar was full of a mixture of internationals and well-off-seeming Palestinians. It didn’t strike me as strange as first to see local lesbians in masculine-ish dress sat enjoying the music, until someone else pointed out their surprise. And I had to admit on reflection that it’s not what I’d have expected to see in Ramallah.

Also in the bar I spoke to H., a guy about my age dressed in denim. He told me about how his family were refugees.  They had moved around, from Palestine, to Lebanon, to Tunisia, family members occasionally getting stuck in Jordan, but now, “after Oslo”, they were back. But he wanted to make it clear that they were still refugees. I wasn’t sure of the significance of this. Things became clearer as M. joined in, asked if he was an “Oslo kid”, and the tone of the conversation became more tense. H. became highly defensive, and M. was trying to explain to me what was happening.

It turns out that after the Oslo agreements, Israel agreed to let a limited number of people back into Palestine. Fatah, which was in charge, chose people who were sympathetic to its views. Other people felt bitter about this, and apparently still do. H. said it upsets him that him and his family are labelled “a3deen”: the ones who came back. Some people do not consider them legitimate Palestinians, said M., or real refugees, because of their special privileges.  “What about my two dead brothers?” said H.**

Full of Taybeh and information, and to the tune of Lady Gaga, I left the bar to walk home. I resisted the urge to practice the new gesture I’d learned from the chef’s teenage son – a tut with raised eyebrows, meaning “no” – and instead contemplated how safe I feel walking round here. A man leaning into a taxi made a comment to the driver about “ajanib” (foreigners) but that seemed to be in distress because I was out disobeying cultural norms on my own at night. In fact, it was me making other people feel unsafe – some poor guy inside the Legislative Council compound nearly jumped out of his skin as I coughed loudly walking past.

* The weekend here is Friday (for the Muslims) and Sunday (for the Christians) but for us foreign students, they thought it might me a bit much to ask us to come in on a Saturday.

** I wanted to do some research on this and provide some verification and background. Unfortunately Ramallah is experiencing really slow internet today.

Day 7: Classes and Househunting

My mental geography of Ramallah isn’t as great as I thought, it would seem. While trying to navigate to the correct bus-station-thing this morning I took a wrong turn and ended up late for my first ever class. I excused myself and sat down. I already know from the day of the placement tests that my teacher hates lateness, but he was kind this time. I decided to redeem myself by volunteering to speak first. A lot of my Standard Arabic, as predicted, had vanished since the last time I attempted to use it.

Every time I try to speak colloquial Arabic, even for only a few words whilst trying to put in all the Palestinian words I know, everyone always knows I’m speaking Egyptian. And laughs. I hope this will change soon. I can’t wait to live with a native speaker. I met S today to view the room he’s renting in his flat. It’s  little far out but I liked it and I liked him. He was characteristically kind and offered me loads of help (and even loaned me a company SIM card!) whether I took the room or not. I think I might.

I saw some new number plates today: white with red numbers on. Less numbers, too. These appear to be for Palestinian Authority vehicles. Today our bus was called over to the side of the road by a man in a blue police uniform with an AK-47 (I think). We were allowed to drive on straight away, but I have to admit it was a little bit more scary than your average ride on the number 142.

Another difference to Manchester (don’t worry, I’m not going to list them all) is the attitude towards rain. Today, people looked at the misty sky and said, “Looks like it might rain today. Hopefully.” People here seem to make no disconnection between the rain that makes them soggy and cold, and the rain which makes the country’s crops grow.

Day 6: No money in Ramallah

Today was financial registration day at the university but I didn’t go in as the Co-operative bank still owe me a PIN code.  I’ve moved onto the sofa today as the flat has got more full. This is due to the addition of E, a film/media lecturer.

I’ve contacted a few Palestinians with rooms to spare and will hopefully see them and their flats during the week. One of them is a man, and I’m not sure how culturally acceptable that would be. It’s true there are sort of different social rules for foreigners and Ramallah is quite progressive, but it’s quite a big taboo and he’s not foreign.

I found out today that my former classmate from Egypt is living just a couple of towns away. It’ll be good to visit. I’m a little concerned that it’s on the other side of the checkpoint though. A lot of people have said I’ll probably be okay without my visa (it was taken off me at the airport, for those who missed that). However, my special combination of one Syrian visa and no Israeli one made one of the course volunteers cringe a little.

I want to institute a new feature for 99 Days called “Name that Settlement”. However, information on them is hard to find, especially as I’m not yet very well oriented in the landscape. I’m pretty sure now though that the one I can see from my bedroom window is Psagot.

Class begins tomorrow.

Day 5: Birzeit university with the other kids

Today the campus was full of people.  Near the entrance a PA boomed with upbeat Arabic dancing music. This completed the festival atmosphere created by the sunshine and by the hundreds of  young people who were  flurrying to register or sitting around chatting in roughly equal numbers. The music was occasionally punctuated by fiery speeches by young men in kuffeyyahs bearing the black stitching often associated with Fatah.

There was also a guy ploughing a flower bed with a horse. I’m not quite sure where this fits into the general flow of things but it definitely merits mention.

After the placement exam I accompanied a classmate to the campus museum, which may have been a little over-hyped to us on yesterday’s tour. That said, what little was there was interesting.  It was about interior design in Arab homes in Jerusalem. Of course.

I dropped into the library, chuckled at the “No Smoking in the Library” signs and accidentally spent a good hour getting stuck into someone’s thesis from 1978 about proposed reforms of the Arabic writing system. I finally managed to go and drag myself away to chase up some admin but I think I will return. I chuckled for a second time when I arrived at my programme office because people were smoking there.

We had a little tour of Ramallah which was more sociable than strictly practical for me. I’ve had some really interesting conversations today and I’m looking forward in the next few days to finding out further what my coursemates are doing in Palestine aside from study.

One of our course volunteers is from Jerusalem, so he has an Israeli ID. He’d thought he was relatively lucky to have this as it would afford him the same rights as Israelis. However, because he is an Arab, he is not allowed a full Israeli passport.  Not-so-coincidentally, it turns out you need a passport to be able to study prestigious subjects such as medicine in Israel. He showed us his laissez-passer documents, which say he’s Jordanian. (Jordan once occupied the region, and Palestine doesn’t exist.)

I cooked a coconut vegetable curry tonight to fulfil a craving. M is very happy that I’m a veggie cook as other veggies are surprisingly hard to come by round here. In other food news, today will go down in history as the day I discovered the succulent persimmon/sharron fruit. I have eaten three today and I’m not ashamed.

Day 4: Lazy Day in Ramallah

I did very little today, which was nice. However, I decided it would be a little too lazy to spend the whole day inside, so when I heard the muezzin in the late afternoon I decided it was time to leave the house before it got dark. I went out for a walk to better orientate myself in Ramallah. Between all the standard Middle Eastern calls of “Welcome!” and “How are you?” I heard today possibly the best thing a random man has shouted at me on the street: simply, “Take me with you!”

The streets were full of people and vehicles, pedestrians spilling out everywhere over the high curbs of the pavements into the paths of slow-rolling cars, taxis, yellow minibuses and trucks. These all have the white and green Palestinian number plates, marking drivers out for special attention at checkpoints and denying them access to the country’s motorways. Those are reserved for Israeli yellow plates.

I dropped into the bar (gosh, this is going to be a very overused string of words) and found M working on her website. I ate some homemade olives as well as garlic, lemon and dill deep fried cauliflower, which is apparently one of the constituent ingredients of a national dish called Maqloob, which I haven’t seen yet. I poured a couple of Taybehs to demonstrate my barkeeping prowess.

I met someone there who’s being messed around with her Visa. Apparently a year or so ago the Israeli authorities made it compulsory for anyone staying longterm to declare that they worked in Jerusalem (whether they did or not; a lot of NGOs had to acquire Israeli addresses). Now the working Visa has been taken away but people have been allowed to stay on tourist visas. Of course, you are not allowed to work on a tourist visa, but people had always been forced to do so under the radar in the past. However, now the authorities know that they were all working and probably still are, they’re not sure what will happen to them.

I have my Arabic placement tests tomorrow so I’m doing a bit of hasty grammar revision this evening using some resources from the internet. It’s not going very well. It’s a real shame I couldn’t bring anything with me. I did consider bringing some study materials, maybe just a dictionary, but after the bag search I’m glad I didn’t. (I’d even deleted things from my laptop but they didn’t switch it on in the end.) To add to my chagrin, the internet keeps dropping out and it seems to happen more in the evening. I think the building’s router may be a little overloaded.

Maybe it’s a sign telling me to get some sleep. Goodnight yous.