Today
Today was a day not much different from any other day in Palestine. You could be forgiven for feeling that there is not much need to distinguish between today and tomorrow, today and yesterday. You would be wise to forgive people for crumbling under the weight of a relentless present. Yet the days are separable through the little spaces of joy created by people here. People determined to live. And lives are organized in a chronology of sorrows. In this way, the meeting is 14 days after the old man from Kafr Qallil was shot in the leg while enjoying the early evening breeze on his veranda. And the baby was born two months after the death of his uncle.
Today was different in so many ways. This morning, two young resistance fighters were given a knapsack filled with bread, boiled eggs, fresh thyme, cucumbers and bags of tamarind juice. An elderly woman took pity on the men, who are unable to sleep at their families’ homes for fear of arrest, and decided to treat them to a Ramadan breakfast worthy of kings. They savoured the flavour of friendship seated on the cool stone slabs of a beautifully arched Old City doorway, laughing at sugar–saturated boys throwing fire-crackers under the feet of sleepy-eyed and irritable early risers.
An hour later, a bunch of sleepy-eyed international solidarity activists joined a family in the eastern village of Azmut in picking olives. They climbed trees, so old they have names, which have remained untouched by Palestinian hands for more then 10 years due to harassment from Israeli colonists from Elon More settlement. They giggled and joked as they worked, a fine film of dust lining their nostrils and lending all the world a faint fragrance of summer rain on dirty tarmac. They sewed up big white bags full of olives and packed them onto a surly donkey, its thin little legs stumbling over rocks and bracken. They ignored tired young soldiers on ridiculous missions, finishing when they wanted to finish and not a minute before.
As the group worked, thousands of Palestinian men and women stood held up at checkpoints straining their shoulders and their minds to keep their young children and valuables above their heads to avoid them being crushed by the soldiers’ fervour to subjugate. Young men were detained while trying to go around, their faces beaten and their plans for the afternoon shattered as the soldiers decided to set an example and keep them there for 6 hours. After 45 minutes an off-duty settler cop in an orange kippa arrived to gloat and smoke cigarettes in front of the fasting men. Students, budding farmers, shopkeepers and bankers – all this besides the point, all reduced to men sitting cross-legged on the ground opposite a truck parking-lot.
As the men waited, a Hamas city council member was shot by Fateh gunmen and hospitalised. Palestinian society was seen internally combusting in the pressure-cooker called occupation and armed guards swarmed around the municipality building. Women told their taxi drivers to speed past the site and even the teenage boys stayed out of sight for the first few hours.
As the Hamas politician struggled to survive, a 12 year-old boy from Beit Furik was fatally shot in the stomach by one of a gang of Israeli colonists come down to steal sheep from the village or deal out some other blow to the Palestinians people’s chances of survival. The boy was playing with his pet dog in a field when the bullet killed him. A police report was filed and an investigation is to start tomorrow. But we can already say today that this investigation will lead absolutely nowhere. This is how the days here intertwine, this is how we travel through time, this is how the future is held and foreseen today. Time makes sense and is given meaning here only when projected through the prism of hopeless pragmatism.
Early afternoon, a father and his daughter were told that their trip to Salem was in fact a waste of time and money as their son/brother had already been given his verdict two days prior. They returned to Nablus in dismayed silence, not having seen even a glimpse of their loved one. They bought steaming and sweet knaafe for the son’s mother on their way home but then threw it away in the doorway, the contrast to her red-rimmed eyes turning their stomachs. As the soldiers entered the camp that same night, the youngest sister sat bolt upright in her bed near the window willing the soldiers to see her and shoot her dead with one bullet to the brain. Her big sister saw her craning her head out of the window and read her mind, pulled her inside and turned the radio on ever so quietly. Together they danced and embraced in the night, until the sadness had ached out of their limbs and they could go to bed once more.
As Israeli officials carelessly delivered the news to the imprisoned son’s father, a group of Palestinians and Israelis were chopping away at a roadblock, dust and contrary orders flying through the sticky air. Soldiers arrived. They were ignored. Shovels were wrangled out of people’s grips. They used their hands and feet. Arms were grabbed. The group was united. At last, an opening could be seen among the multi-ton cement blocks, glaring like the gap of promise in the mouth of a six year-old who has just yanked out his front tooth. His gums still bleeding, the six year-old triumphantly walked up the hill with the rest of the villagers, their victory accentuated by loud chants and clapping of hands.
Meanwhile, a recently arrested man was put into isolation. Unable to stand up straight or lie down in the tiny cell, he crouched and prepared himself for the fortnight to come. A second man, arrested 11 days ago from his bed, was let out of isolation only to be beaten unconscious by five prison guards. On this his 20th day, a third man was locked into the fanciest hotel room he has ever seen on TV to recover from his wounds. A beautiful voluptuous woman unlocked the door and entered the room. She walked toward him and smiles, slipped behind him and began to massage his shoulders, sore from fear and determination. She pulled her fingers through his hair and kissed his neck lightly. He clenched his fists and prayed aloud to Allah while a camera silently took pictures of the scene. A fourth man was shown pictures of himself sitting on a double-bed with a woman. He was told that if he didn’t talk these pictures would be sent to his mother and father, his boss and his principal. The man thought for a while and then asked if he could have a copy for himself as well. He does not remember what happened next.
Late afternoon, the streets were left without human company. The trash flew about unhindered and the cats prowled without danger. An occasional taxi-car screeched and swerved around corners, carrying hungry dry-mouthed people laden with sweets. It is Ramadan and time to break the fast. The last remnants of the day’s sunlight were reflected in shop-windows and billboards. Everything was bathed in a golden shimmer and I loved the Nablus of Ramadan with its rumbling stomachs and its prayers to the extra-ordinarily attentive divine.
This evening, hundreds of children went to bed with good food in their stomachs and sweet words in their ears. And hundreds of other children went to bed still hungry despite their mothers’ best efforts. Teenage girls read romantic novels hidden under their pillows to calm themselves enough to be able to succumb to sleep. Young boys, their futures still clearly staked-out and devoid of the dilemmas of adulthood, fall asleep before the woolly blankets with the giant flower motifs have even been tucked around them.
Today was a day not much different from any other day in Palestine. Yet it was special in all its joys and sorrows and it will be remembered by all of us who survived it.
Today was different in so many ways. This morning, two young resistance fighters were given a knapsack filled with bread, boiled eggs, fresh thyme, cucumbers and bags of tamarind juice. An elderly woman took pity on the men, who are unable to sleep at their families’ homes for fear of arrest, and decided to treat them to a Ramadan breakfast worthy of kings. They savoured the flavour of friendship seated on the cool stone slabs of a beautifully arched Old City doorway, laughing at sugar–saturated boys throwing fire-crackers under the feet of sleepy-eyed and irritable early risers.
An hour later, a bunch of sleepy-eyed international solidarity activists joined a family in the eastern village of Azmut in picking olives. They climbed trees, so old they have names, which have remained untouched by Palestinian hands for more then 10 years due to harassment from Israeli colonists from Elon More settlement. They giggled and joked as they worked, a fine film of dust lining their nostrils and lending all the world a faint fragrance of summer rain on dirty tarmac. They sewed up big white bags full of olives and packed them onto a surly donkey, its thin little legs stumbling over rocks and bracken. They ignored tired young soldiers on ridiculous missions, finishing when they wanted to finish and not a minute before.
As the group worked, thousands of Palestinian men and women stood held up at checkpoints straining their shoulders and their minds to keep their young children and valuables above their heads to avoid them being crushed by the soldiers’ fervour to subjugate. Young men were detained while trying to go around, their faces beaten and their plans for the afternoon shattered as the soldiers decided to set an example and keep them there for 6 hours. After 45 minutes an off-duty settler cop in an orange kippa arrived to gloat and smoke cigarettes in front of the fasting men. Students, budding farmers, shopkeepers and bankers – all this besides the point, all reduced to men sitting cross-legged on the ground opposite a truck parking-lot.
As the men waited, a Hamas city council member was shot by Fateh gunmen and hospitalised. Palestinian society was seen internally combusting in the pressure-cooker called occupation and armed guards swarmed around the municipality building. Women told their taxi drivers to speed past the site and even the teenage boys stayed out of sight for the first few hours.
As the Hamas politician struggled to survive, a 12 year-old boy from Beit Furik was fatally shot in the stomach by one of a gang of Israeli colonists come down to steal sheep from the village or deal out some other blow to the Palestinians people’s chances of survival. The boy was playing with his pet dog in a field when the bullet killed him. A police report was filed and an investigation is to start tomorrow. But we can already say today that this investigation will lead absolutely nowhere. This is how the days here intertwine, this is how we travel through time, this is how the future is held and foreseen today. Time makes sense and is given meaning here only when projected through the prism of hopeless pragmatism.
Early afternoon, a father and his daughter were told that their trip to Salem was in fact a waste of time and money as their son/brother had already been given his verdict two days prior. They returned to Nablus in dismayed silence, not having seen even a glimpse of their loved one. They bought steaming and sweet knaafe for the son’s mother on their way home but then threw it away in the doorway, the contrast to her red-rimmed eyes turning their stomachs. As the soldiers entered the camp that same night, the youngest sister sat bolt upright in her bed near the window willing the soldiers to see her and shoot her dead with one bullet to the brain. Her big sister saw her craning her head out of the window and read her mind, pulled her inside and turned the radio on ever so quietly. Together they danced and embraced in the night, until the sadness had ached out of their limbs and they could go to bed once more.
As Israeli officials carelessly delivered the news to the imprisoned son’s father, a group of Palestinians and Israelis were chopping away at a roadblock, dust and contrary orders flying through the sticky air. Soldiers arrived. They were ignored. Shovels were wrangled out of people’s grips. They used their hands and feet. Arms were grabbed. The group was united. At last, an opening could be seen among the multi-ton cement blocks, glaring like the gap of promise in the mouth of a six year-old who has just yanked out his front tooth. His gums still bleeding, the six year-old triumphantly walked up the hill with the rest of the villagers, their victory accentuated by loud chants and clapping of hands.
Meanwhile, a recently arrested man was put into isolation. Unable to stand up straight or lie down in the tiny cell, he crouched and prepared himself for the fortnight to come. A second man, arrested 11 days ago from his bed, was let out of isolation only to be beaten unconscious by five prison guards. On this his 20th day, a third man was locked into the fanciest hotel room he has ever seen on TV to recover from his wounds. A beautiful voluptuous woman unlocked the door and entered the room. She walked toward him and smiles, slipped behind him and began to massage his shoulders, sore from fear and determination. She pulled her fingers through his hair and kissed his neck lightly. He clenched his fists and prayed aloud to Allah while a camera silently took pictures of the scene. A fourth man was shown pictures of himself sitting on a double-bed with a woman. He was told that if he didn’t talk these pictures would be sent to his mother and father, his boss and his principal. The man thought for a while and then asked if he could have a copy for himself as well. He does not remember what happened next.
Late afternoon, the streets were left without human company. The trash flew about unhindered and the cats prowled without danger. An occasional taxi-car screeched and swerved around corners, carrying hungry dry-mouthed people laden with sweets. It is Ramadan and time to break the fast. The last remnants of the day’s sunlight were reflected in shop-windows and billboards. Everything was bathed in a golden shimmer and I loved the Nablus of Ramadan with its rumbling stomachs and its prayers to the extra-ordinarily attentive divine.
This evening, hundreds of children went to bed with good food in their stomachs and sweet words in their ears. And hundreds of other children went to bed still hungry despite their mothers’ best efforts. Teenage girls read romantic novels hidden under their pillows to calm themselves enough to be able to succumb to sleep. Young boys, their futures still clearly staked-out and devoid of the dilemmas of adulthood, fall asleep before the woolly blankets with the giant flower motifs have even been tucked around them.
Today was a day not much different from any other day in Palestine. Yet it was special in all its joys and sorrows and it will be remembered by all of us who survived it.
posted by lina at 6:56 AM
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