Of All the Ways

Above: details of a wall mural painted with a group of students from the UNRWA school at New Askar refugee camp, one of several art projects I had the good fortune to complete during my time with Project HOPE

This particular entry finds me struck with a particularly rigid affliction, one that often corrugates me at around this time of the annum, of what it is comprised it is not difficult to say but the results find one laden with a certain unwillingness to adapt to the intransigent nature of things. The crux of the mater seems to be that, having last week completed my final Project HOPE class, I must now recalibrate my sights so as to maintain a purposeful presence here in the West Bank.


Alas though, I find myself with ideological fires to fight, the first of which has long since taken off my eyebrows and was begun  - in malice - by my tinder dry finances, forcing upon me the cumbersome acquisition of a paying job at a local English academy. Bravo! I hear you cry, but the remuneration between the abstract currency of NGO work and the infinitely more crass motivation provided by the shekel is nothing short of a chasm, all the greater to bridge given that I am attempting to traverse it in the same community that - previously - thanked me for my unending charitable kindness. All of which raises the question, what on earth am I staying for? 


It would be a deception of epic proportions not to at least make mention of the fact that I may - in part - be hoping that my remainder here will serve to aid me in my ongoing quest to circumvent the dull inconveniences of 'real life'. Ultimately though, staying here can really only be validated by the notion that I am somehow helping, now, there are all sorts of debates raging as to whether I was ever doing so in the first place, given the wide range of views on the significance - and indeed need - for NGO's, I hope you will forgive me for working on the self aggrandising assumption here that I, and Project HOPE, was and continue respectively in some way benefiting others.


 Happily, there are still several options open to me on this front as my new servitude to the shekel leaves room enough in the middle of my working week to fill with the kind of activities which constitute 'helping'. The problem here comes from the credibility attached to the organisations offering such work. Members of the main organisation (which shall remain unnamed lest my mention of it make me an enemy of the state), themselves admit they lack purpose these days, and are struggling for direction since the end of the last intifada. One of the main tyrannies currently afflicting the West Bank population is the illegal land grabs and evictions being carried out by settlers supported by the IDF. usually they are unannounced and by the time the aforementioned and unnamed organisation knows about them it is too late for them to ply their trade. All of which leaves the weekly demonstrations in Bil'in (against the wall) and Jerusalem (against settlement building and ongoing mass evictions) as the main staple for the freelance 'helper', and whilst I support and encourage such direct action, I do wonder whether such a diet will leave me feeling Jaded and ineffectual.


As things currently stand, it is likely that I will remain in situ for at least the next four weeks (just in time for my next unbidden crisis of general purpose and direction), until then I must rest in the comfort and knowledge that , with three months of mixed fortunes under my belt, surely there can little I am not prepared for ?

Nablus 101 (episode 4, volume 2)

If this content does not work then please follow this link:


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5nDDCcAfpg

Nablus 101 (episode 4, volume 1)

If this content is not working then please follow the link:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41vIY_kITTE

fragments

Qalqiliya, a small Palestinian town on the border with Israel and almost entirely encircled by the wall. Myself and Some local and international friends pay a visit, I am struck - as always - by the ignorant enormity of this barrier. I had wondered whether the way that it mockingly absorbs the words that are scrawled across its lower third make it impossible to carry out such actions with conviction, whether those who ply their aerosol can hands stand defiant or defeated in its shadow, now I have done it myself I feel closer to the answer....   

Hope?

(top to bottom: mural in Jenin camp, The Freedom Theatre, Project HOPE volunteers relaxing at the theatre)

It is Saturday, late November and winter is finally- and somewhat belatedly - putting out its feelers, they creep around the crumpled cuffs of my shirt and tease the exposed skin on the nape of my neck with late afternoon chills. I finally decide that I can leave the task of updating my blog for not a moment longer lest the fact fester in my mind for even a day more. The thing I find about the way that time hurtles us through particular passages in our lives, is that such assaults rob one of those moments of stillness and reflection required to make sense of the context in which one is living, and in this way I sit now, kicking only the top soil of my understanding instead of striking bedrock.


My mind turns repeatedly to the opening sequence of the film Blue Velvet and the way that the camera skims the idillic surface of the American dream before pitching headlong into the grassy shadows of a well kept lawn and the sinister realm of the dark insects that inhabit it. In a similar way, the situation here seems peaceful on a superficial level but the psychological and physical abuses are still suffered daily, the undercurrent of abnormality runs strong through the streets of this town. Rarely do I see or feel them directly, I hear a lot though, I heard one story just yesterday in fact, I heard that the settlers had found a well on Palestinian land nearby, a well belonging to the local people. They took it. They took it by force, with guns and the support of the army, now it is an Israeli well, this is normality. I hear stories like this almost daily and almost daily the anger writhes within me and for a while, takes my breath as if to show me how weak and ineffectual I am, this I usually conclude for myself in the course of 'normality'. An example of which sounds something like this: The week before last was the religious holiday of eid, me and the internationals went to Egypt for a few days, our palestinian friends did not, they are not allowed to go anywhere without the permission of the Israelis. We returned on the Thursday, F16's flew low over the city that day as they had all week, a few days later they pounded the town with sonic booms presumably incase their captive audience were in any doubt of just how oppressed they really are. A trifle, you may think and a trifle, it is true, relative to the atrocities of years gone by but still far from my pampered understanding of 'civilised behaviour'.


One fact that becomes increasingly evident is that the enemy within (The Palestinian Authority), is joining our ignorant interlopers on a level footing as the largest threat to the human rights of those resident in this corner of the globe, a less prudent man would hereby elaborate, alas though the oppression suffered by those native to these parts extends by proxy to anyone who may care for their wellbeing. On this, a visitor may admit, without propaganda, to feeling disempowered beyond words and like never before, and impotent in a way he never considered possible.


In a rather more positive story, the excellent weekly meetings that Project HOPE host turned up another amazing documentary last weekend when the group were shown the film Arna's Children (see following link for the full movie) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EXrA3UFwM , the film documents the way that the Stone Theatre in Jenin's refugee camp gave hope to a group of children therein, who had suffered immeasurably at the hands of the Israeli's during the first intifada. The youthful vitality and potential of the group in question is soon replaced with small arms and home made bombs however and as the film makers return to the camp five years later they find that all but a handful of the original group have been killed, most defending the camp against the occupation during the second intifada. The film ends with the death of one of the final surviving members in a missile strike, and the theatre - it seems - is buried along with any hope for good beneath the rubble of the ruined camp. With this in mind myself and a small group of local and international volunteers from Nablus decided to head over to Jenin to see if this was in fact the case. Happily we found there the latest incarnation of the theatre, renamed The Freedom Theatre, the new space is thriving like never before and providing a creative focus and emotional therapy for those who may otherwise (and quite understandably) feel limited to violence as their only form of resistance. The theatre is demonstrative of the notion of cultural resistance as a alternative to the former and stands as a beacon, shining a light upon the injustices suffered by those who populate it. It appears that hope remains here but I only ever find it in the shadows, the longer I spend here the more accepting I feel of my life's newly imposed limitations and the more I see hope for what it seems to be, all that is left.

Nablus 101 (episode 3)

Nablus 101 (Episode 2)

Samaritans and Soldiers

(Top: Aurin and Marjolein negotiating a checkpoint, bottom: Samaritan boys )

Such has been the acceleration of events in the past few days that it has become difficult to find the time in which to digest them, but of the limited absorption I have thus far achieved there are several worthy of note. The first can be found beneath the gentle inquisition of my present thoughts on the winding trail of a pass high above the city of Nablus and under the labour of an early morning taxi as the rattling pistons of its diesel engine pull grudgingly at the bright yellow carcass and its contents behind them.

 Not long afterward, the same taxi creeps shyly into a tree lined lay by a hundred yards or so short of the impending army checkpoint. Myself and three friends step unreadily from the cab, the day is Thursday and a working day for most but thanks to our respective schedules, the weekend (along with the checkpoint), is exclusively ours, no tourists have come to Mount Gerizim today, and not many will.

Once on the kerb we hurriedly slap a finish on the flakey story we will give to the Israeli guards up ahead, and hope it holds together long enough for us to see the other side. The army are not famed here for their hospitality or understanding and the road to the summit of the mountain is littered with failed attempts to make it to the village beyond. In the event, my two Dutch friends know exactly how to make hurdles such as these and have come armed with their dumbest blonde smiles and camouflage their intelligence - to great effect - beneath a formidable arsenal of lipstick and eyeshadow. Their display of bubbling joviality is never even close to being threatened and before long we are walking the narrow strip which (somewhat unnecessarily), separates the planet's last Samaritan enclave from the world outside.

Once in town we quickly acquire two Samaritan boys who seem keen - for a few sheqels - to show us to the far side of the settlement. Our local guide Sami seems more than willing to humour them and I feed myself out just a little further on the serendipitous thread upon which this uncertain journey has thus far been conducted.

before long we find ourselves at the end of an unremarkable cul-de-sak which promises little before delivering rather more than that. At its end a stone terraced path jags its way gently upward over a semi arid waist to a pile of rocks about a quarter of a mile away, as we approach them it becomes evident that they are rather more hewn than our previous distance gave them to be and further still, enrolled within a high chain link cordon. A sign in both hebrew and arabic there gives a warning that needs no translation, no entry! The Samaritan boys give it no credence though, before peeling back the loose end of the fence and clambering up onto the tumbledown fringes of the ruin beyond.

The same ruin, we are told, has stood - and now lain - in one form or another for one and a half thousand years before now and as we navigate its gracious footprint we hold only our transience against its epoch swaying longevity. It is clear from the modern addition of two observation decks and some faded signage that the site was once open to tourists but such is the trial of the checkpoint that its splendour now stands idle as its delicate murals continue their gracious decomposition beyond the protection of those who would care.

After lunch we visit the compounded rock upon which - the Samaritans hold - Abraham made for the throat of his son before the intervention of god, and then head back for the settlement and the rather more earthly site of Nablus' only off license. At this point we make our only substantial contact with the locals, The Samaritans are only 700 in number and, given their faith's rejection of outsiders (recently revised to allow women from outside to convert and marry in), victim to a number of genetic abnormalities as a result of inbreeding, the most obvious manifestation of which can be found in their disproportionally large ears and improbably slender torsos. Before long we are once again crossing the thin religious line for home as our next outing stands just the far side of an evening's rest.

If the unexpected delights of Thursday fell with the pleasure of an unplanned party then Friday's offering struck with all the invitation of an ambush, so it was with mal-rested eyes that our alarms had called us forth to the pick up point in the centre of Nablus from where we were ferried to the olive plantations of a nearby town for a solid days picking at the expense of our ill rested bodies. The journey there had been too short for my heavy head despite the roadside military presence which repeatedly served to prod my lolling mind into a state of reluctant cognition. Not wishing to present the impression that I was unwilling to give up my time for the task, I feel obliged here to suggest that I was - rather - physically incapable of any meaningful contribution toward the harvest on this particular occasion. As it transpired, within hours the skies had sent us prematurely upon our way from the proverbial coalface with the first rainfall in seven months and in so doing, presented us with the opportunity to converse with our host family back at their home. The conversation - initially at least - idled pleasantly around the family before moving on by gradations and finally - and perhaps inevitably - to the troubles, with which even the safest subject can be made unsuitable for all but the very lightest of footsteps.

The farmers two adult sons led the conversation only in their father's absence, such was the canopy of his wisdom - which unfurled in all its complexity from the simplicity of his weather beaten bones during the course of that morning in the field - that one sensed a certain freedom there in their unchecked opinions. I will not attempt to record here, every facet of their reasoning but rather focus on the feeling of profound inadequacy and shame it left me with for the actions of my forefathers during that period when they saw fit to gave away another man's home without recourse to humanity.

Those two honest men, about my age if not a little younger, sat opposite me without blame or malice and, each with an intellect far in excess of my own, and lacking only the freedom that held them from a forum to use it, spoke themselves in ever decreasing circles, shedding every conceivable reason we could offer until they were left only with themselves and no more answers to the question; why? A question that they were asking all along, perhaps to neither myself or any of the other guests in the room that day but ultimately only of their own racked minds, and all in the fullest of knowledge that they would receive no satisfying answer, now or ever. Because there is none that will justify the invasion of their land, or the sound of the concrete cracking as the Israeli army drove bulldozers though the family home when they were boys. One has the feeling that those conversations were born of well practiced lips and spoken a thousand, thousand times, if not aloud then in the minds of every single Palestinian who has breathed air in the past 60 years, all of which diminishes in no way, but rather only increases their impact. I admire these people, their humanity and strength is such that I would fear to measure myself against them lest I fail even to register. The Palestinians are still strong, they have not forgotten and never again will I, what injustices have befallen them.

Nablus 101

First Class at Zawata

(Top: Students at Zawata village. Bottom:Teaching Tom)

Yesterday evening bought with it something of a late flourish as the barren roast of the post noon heat gave way to the playful gestures of an afternoon breeze which impishly joshed with the unweighted flotsam on the gritty wending way back down from Zawata village. Myself and Tom - another volunteer - had been up on the northern flank of the valley with which the city is cradled, giving an English lesson to a community group consisting of ten to twelve year old girls.

As this was my first class I knew little of what to expect and when we arrived we found the community centre locked, both Tom and our local guide Ali gave the kind of unconcerned gestures that suggested this was to be expected and confirmed as much when I asked them. Perhaps inevitably it was not long before our presence was noted and someone dispatched to fetch the key holder, at the same time we were slowly decended upon by our charges who trickled to our muster point from beyond the parched nowhere of the rock strewn crossroads over which the community centre presided. As we waited in the shaded refuge of the doorway one girl sidestepped playfully across the top step of the building's entrance as if on some precipitous ledge. With her back pressed firmly against the locked doorway she reached back through the bars across the window gripping both them, and the broken edge of the glass therein in order that she may hold her fragile sway and thus avoid plummeting to her imaginary doom, Tom demonstrated the significant peril her small fingers were in, a danger by which she was happily unmoved and she dismounted only under the gentile guidance of his hand.

As we entered the building it was with the omission of the four or five boys who had been present outside, when Tom later asked our guide why they had not joined us his reply was that they had simply been disinterested, as it was they preferred to play football in the road and when that no longer amused them, to beat at the classroom windows with plastic cable sleeving and sticks, perhaps it was they in their boisterous way who had holed the windows but it was not for this reason alone that we felt bad for their exclusion. 

The class itself was an overwhelming success, due entirely to the absolute enthusiasm of the students whose desire to comprehend was worn on the ripples of raised brows and in the brights of their attentive eyes. Tom Ali and I will return to Zawata on Wednesday and already the class promises to be a highlight of my timetable. 

As we made for the doorway of the community centre in Zawata ten to twelve fingers of evening sunlight pierced its aluminium skin, highlighting ruptures therein that had not been visible in the shadows outside, and pointed accusingly across the hall to the holed stud wall adjacent. They - and the broken glass - had not - it seems - resulted (*directly) from the actions of boisterous boys but something altogether more sinister.

 That the destruction wrought by shells had previously proved integral to the games of a young girl may seem an extrenuous observation to make at this point but none the less, leaves my mind still oscillating uncomfortably between two readings of its undeniable symbolism: had their presence somehow corrupted her childhood or had her unharmed and innocent proximity to such bullet hewn destruction rendered it somehow ridiculous and weak? Perhaps the answer lays - as often it does - somewhere in between the two.

*I later learned that the attack on the community centre had, in fact been carried out as collective retribution by the Israeli army for the stoning of settlers cars by some local children.

Nablus: A New Dawn

What exactly does that mean anyway? A New Dawn, does the reason I have chosen it here as the moniker for my first blog entry not lie in the contrivance of some kind of departure from my previous one, and the oriental life that accompanied it? Well everything about it speaks of continuity so I must hereby debunk any such disassociation: A New Dawn, the naive hope then, of a lasting resolution to the predicament with which my new home is afflicted? At the time of writing the fragile peace talks which may lead to such conclusions are on the very edge of the abyss with the refusal of Israel to halt the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank, so no.... not that either. A New Dawn: the possibility that one may rise above the baseline of indolent apathy and into the realm of engagement through action in the area of perceived injustices against humanity? A self aggrandizing proclamation it is true, but an indulgence I will - for now - allow myself in the obvious absence of anything more fitting.

I have been a resident of Nablus for a little over 48 hours now and I do not claim - at this stage - to know it but the early signs are largely good. At every turn I have been offered the hospitality and kindness for which Muslims are famed (such has been the volume of offers to partake in the drinking of coffee, that I now take the unsolicited twitching of my caffeine embalmed limbs as a matter of normality), but to suggest that I have not already felt the undertones of hostility which come with the weight of heavy stares and distrustful intimation would be a mistruth, it is there and will inevitably show itself in greater form before too long. The key to enduring any such attention can come only with the breadth of understanding, which at present I possess, but not without the awareness that we are (most of us), raised in the cradle of narrow minded men, and under the trinkets of knowledge with which we are adorned, still crawl the folds of our ignorant skin.

A greater measure of my new reality will undoubtedly come this afternoon when I make my first journey out to teach, I - along with another Project Hope volunteer, will travel to a school across the city to give a two hour lesson there. More on this- perhaps - later.