On Monday, Lynn and I left for a couple days off in Tulkarem and Nablus. Maybethese don't seem like prime vacation spots to you, but I hadn't yet experienced city life in Palestine, and I wanted to see what it was all about. After two days, I've had enough.
I told you in my last e-mail about Ruwayda, the woman who works for the General Union of Disabled Palestinians (now I have the name correct). We went back to visit her and her family Monday evening, and Tuesday we planned to go to Qalqilya to see where she works and to see the concrete part of the Wall up close (I have only seen fence so far, and the city of Qalqilya is surrounded by concrete). We arrived in Tulkarem to a house full of excited people, and ate delicious m'sakhen – bread with onions, spices, and almonds. After dinner, Ruwayda said, "Now I'll give you a tour of Tulkarem at night." I was shocked. It was not yet 7:00, but in Haris we don't go out after dark, and I thought that this was the case in most of Palestine, since soldiers are more likely at night to shoot at anything that moves. Ruwayda, however, was fearless, and she got in the car and used her good leg to drive us around town. We asked if she was scared – at night, as a woman, with internationals – but she said no andc ontinued to blare music as she showed us the university, the hospital, her sister's house, her family's bakery, and the Tulkarem refugee camp. The poverty was palpable as we entered the camp. It was dirtier and noisier than the city, and people were hanging out in the streets. Ruwayda explained that since the houses were so small in the camp, people tended to be outside later at night. As is often the case, I regretted the fact that I didn't read Arabic better when we drove past dozens of messages in graffiti on the walls. I did understand one, though. In English it said: "No War the Iraq."
We drove past a friend of Ruwayda's in a wheelchair, and she explained that two of his brothers had been killed by the Israeli army, and he had been shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Ruwayda turned the music down and continued onto a place that she told us was dangerous to drive. We told her she didn't have to go, but she said that she wanted to show us the Wall. We got to the end of a dark, eerie road and could see the fence a kilometer or two in the distance. Beyond the fence were well-lit, well-paved roads. "Those are Israeli cars driving," Ruwayda said. "That side is Israel… it's so close…"
As soon as we hit the main roads again, the volume of the music increased. I asked her to write down the name of the musician for me, and in true Palestinian fashion, she said, "No, I will give you the cassette." I can't say I'm disappointed about this, although the two shirts and hat she gave me were a bit over the top.
When we got back to her house, she turned on the TV, we watched part of Alien 4, she gave us pajamas that she insisted we wear instead of our own, and we went tosleep. A few hours later I was dreaming about loud airplane sounds. In the dream, I looked out the window wherever I was and saw several commercial planes flying past each other very closely. Suddenly there was an Apache helicopter, and a moment later I was inside it with several soldiers. My dream ended then and I woke up to the sound of real gunshots. Lynn and Ruwayda were sitting up in bed looking out the window, and they told me there had just been a loud explosive sound, like a bomb from a plane demolishing a home (or like the sound of the airplanes and helicopter in my dream). Ruwayda explained that it's like this every night: that soldiers come into town and shoot, usually looking forsomebody, and stay most of the night. Just then roosters began crowing. I'm not sure if the gunshots confused them or if they have a different concept of dawn (2am), but they kept at it almost as long as the soldiers with their guns (hey, maybe they were crowing in protest). Ruwayda took my phone and called her friend at the refugee camp, who told her it wasn't happening there, so the soldiers must be in the city. A couple minutes later, Ruwayda's sister-in-law Arij walked in with her 2-year-old daughter Hanin, who had woken up with trouble breathing. Arij's husband took Hanin to the hospital to get medicine, but ofc ourse this was extremely risky while soldiers were somewhere in town shooting.
This string of events did not seem particularly unusual to Ruwayda or her family, but I cannot imagine living constantly with such a threat of organized, sanctioned violence so close to my home. I suppose this is one privilege most Americans have – most organized, sanctioned American violence takes place in other countries. Even most Israelis rarely feel the results of the occupation of Palestine, and it is only a matter of a few kilometers from one place to the other.
I tried to go back to sleep, but my thoughts wouldn't rest. First: "Well, I'm safe. If the soldiers are trying to find someone, it must be someone who has done something. They wouldn't come in here." But then my thoughts went directly to Latin America, thinking of all the dictatorships in the 1970s and1980s, all the people disappeared, stolen from their beds in the middle of the night because they were activists, or students who attended one meeting, or just students… And then my thoughts went back another 40 years to Europe and I thought of all the people taken to concentration camps or death camps for manyr easons, one of which was the simple fact of being Jewish. Like the simple fact of being Palestinian… I'm not trying to equate the Holocaust with the situation in Palestine, but it amazed me how quickly my brain moved to that place. And they are not entirely without their similarities. Israelis have all the power, all the control. The army can do whatever it wants to do. Maybe, if it goes too far, some voices of protest will arise from the world community, but nothing too significant, nothing to deter them from continuing the destruction of an entire people. And Palestinians, on the other hand, are caught in a trap of relativity: "Well, at least it's not as bad as Gaza." "We're not starving, we have homes…" Somewhere deep down, I think people still believe that if they go along with what is expected of them, they might be safe. In saying this, I do not wish to shortchange the resistance that happened during the Holocaust or the resistance that is happening here in Palestine. I do have to say, however, that I wish there were more. I wish people had more real hope for change through creativity, and less false hope of thinking that they may be able to survive in some form if they comply with what their oppressors demand of them…
I did fall back to sleep eventually, and needless to say, the army did not come for us. We woke up to the news that 11 had been killed in Gaza and many more wounded. Ruwayda called friends in Qalqilya, only to find out that the West Bank was still under heavy closure and it was not likely we would reach Qalqilya. Instead, we visited the family bakery and learned how to make kras (incredible bread with cheese or zatar in it). We then went to Ruwayda's local office in Tulkarem, right next to the mukata'a (the Palestinian Authority building) that was bombed last year [Apparently Israel has destroyed the mukata'a of almost every city in Palestine. I find it ironic that the Israeli government then complains that the Palestinian government doesn't do enough.]
After a couple hours and many phone calls to Ruwayda's taxi driving friends, we found a car to Nablus – or so we thought. In one town we stopped andt ransferred into a truck, which took us up and down the mountains and hills surrounding Nablus on a path that was at its best suitable for donkeys, and at its worst merely a tract of untenable rocky land. We did arrive, however, and went straight to a wonderful hotel called the Yasmeen. We walked around a bit and then went back to the hotel for dinner. As night fell, we heard gunshots in the distance. Nobody seemed fazed. I had heard that the extreme violence ofthe occupation was more blatant in the cities, but I was not expecting its constant presence.
We then turned to the television and saw Al Jazeera filming the incursion into Ramallah. The army had imposed curfew, and some were saying this may be the moment that Israel tries to remove Arafat. We asked our waiter if this was unusual, or if curfew like this always happened. "It always happens," he replied. "It happens here in Nablus all the time, too. It's just that usually we don't have journalists here to cover it." Well, there was technically no curfew in Nablus last night, but like every night, the army lurks around corners and people are afraid to go out. So for Nablus and for Tulkarem, on these particular days and from this particular experience, perhaps I can be your journalist.
Happily home in Haris,
Hannah
Arabic phrase of the day: zaaki ktiir (very delicious)
