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انجنَت في فلسطين!
A week hath passed since my arrival at the phoenix centre - time to spill the fuul.
Well, a little bit about the phoenix centre. It was founded burnt down and re-built three times since its establishment in 2000, hence its name, al-feniq in Arabic. It is run completely by volunteers for the community of the Dheishe camp where it is situated and beyond. The camp was formed by the arrival of thousands of villagers from around Jerusalem as they fled from the IDF in 1948 who for many many years lived in tents before moving into more permanent accommodation. Officially Dheishe covers an area of approximately one square kilometre and has a population of about 12,000. It's a ramshackle camp, with buildings practically built on top of one another, and it flows almost seamlessly into a couple more camps, including Doha.
At the markaz al feniq there is an arts section that includes painting, theatre and dance (debke of course, more on that later) and a film-making department which deals with making shorts about the camp by children and youth of the camp, both fiction and documentary. They also do supplementary maths and Arabic classes for those who struggle at school, they have a library with computers and internet, one vast hall for weddings and other such delights, a small hall for other activities and they are building a kindergarten at the bottom of their garden. There is also a stunning view of the entire camp from the roof. The head man Naji has the best moustache and warmest heart one could hope for and I must say has coped extremely well with the appearance of a random ajnabia on his doorstep. When I said I was coming to stay having visited him four days before he managed to not just do the easy thing and say there was no place for me. On the contrary he went out of his way to find stuff for me to do, and within two days of my arrival I had two English classes to run (PANIC) and a letter to write out to associations and friends in the US and in France about fundraising for bouncy castles. I have now become the resident of the phoenix centre and live in one of the guest dormitories and sleep with at least two to three layers of clothing plus two very large doubled up blankets at night to prevent freezing. It has taken me at this long to work out the perfect temperature and how to keep the blankets from falling off the bed at night, but rest assured it has been achieved.
I am slowly learning everyone's names and the people here are so considerate I am rarely left alone in the evenings. The first night I went to Naji's house and hung out with his son Murad who plays oud and speaks sickeningly good English. We played, we talked, he laughed at my Arabic, ("so, Murad I try to speak 'amiya, but still I end up speaking half fuhsa half dialect…" "Yes, it's strange.") and ate tasty Palestinian cuisine. The next night I meet his friend Ahmed who is even better at oud and English and here begins a wonderful relationship, because he has NOTES. This means I can actually play along with middle eastern music for the first time ever. You have no idea how pleasing this is and I intend on stealing all his books and never bringing them back. The day after tomorrow we are putting on a small concert, much to everyone's interest. I hope that the next concert I can play oud and Ahmed can play violin for a couple of them. This is my dream.
So that is how I tend to spend me evenings, essentially doing what I do best, playing sort of tuneful violin and not studying Arabic. Bearing in mind Ahmed's 20 and his English and in fact his younger brother's English is better than my Arabic and they are not studying it for a degree, it is all rather depressing. However, even an evening of them shouting out obscure English words and demanding the equivalent in Arabic (agnostic is literally a denier and metamorphosis is masakh) where I practically never know the answer is still strangely enjoyable. I believe I may be a masochist at heart.
The utterly best thing about Ahmed, apart from having notes is the fact that he played my utterly favourite song on oud - Rita by Mahmoud Derwish. It makes me very happy indeed. Now if only I could learn to play that…
Naji doesn't work with Israelis. This didn't surprise me, and although often I tend to be cynical of people who just reject their enemy completely, I don't blame him at all for his unwillingness to associate with the people who on more than one occasion burn down a community centre that started out as a food store during the second intifada. But also living here you get a completely different view point. It seems that many (of course not all) Israeli groups want co-operation on their terms. As Naji said to me, they talk a lot and do or achieve very little. "they want a different kind of peace, a silent one, not an equal one." I know that attitudes differ on both sides, but looking around me the Israelis have a long way to go before earning any trust at all from the people they have repressed ruthlessly over the years.
Just looking out from the roof of Dheishe, or even from my bedroom window you can see what I mean. This small area of Bethlehem and her neighbouring camps are being constantly watched and slowly encroached on by Israeli settlements, or colonies as they are frequently known here. And that's exactly what they are. With military outposts on the hills surrounding this area, and Palestinians forbidden to go there, the Israelis are slowly colonizing what is officially Palestine, hilltop by strategic hilltop. It's terrifying, not just that it's happening, but it's happening so quickly. Just outside Bethlehem are several new mustawatana; these small cities have sprung up out of nowhere in the three years since I first came here. I do wonder what the people living there in their swanky new planned out city must think of the view they have of the camps. I wonder how they can bear it. I suppose it's why the wall was built - out of sight, out of mind. It is one thing to read about the settlements from the morning paper; it is quite another thing to see them looming on the hillside when you wake up. You can always catch sight of them out of the corner of your eye.
Through the relentless endeavours of Abu Shadi I am slowly acclimatizing myself to the taste of coffee, or rather I am getting better at not wincing whenever I take a sip. I was just commenced one such exercise last Friday when the Debke teachers arrived. Noticing my presence (rather difficult not to as I am not an old Arab man) they invited me to come and watch a lesson. Intrigued I gulped down my coffee as politely and unwincingly as possible and followed post haste.
The taste of coffee was soon replaced with my first taste of Debke. It's the most popular style of middle eastern dancing and appears to have a stronghold in Palestine. The class consisted of about 25 teenagers, both boys and girls (Shock horror) who had been learning debke from anything from around 2 to 5 years. It's pretty cool, though , having now tried it, some of the footwork may take a bit of getting used to.
I think the teacher may have regretted inviting me to watch as I proved to be a source of wonder and curiosity for pretty much every pupil at every available (and unavailable) opportunity. It didn't take long for all of them to overcome their shyness and realize that they outnumbered me 25 to 1 and therefore I posed no threat. They crowded round me and barraged me with questions in Arabic and broken English. They were a wonderful lively and funny bunch of people and I amused myself greatly watching the interplay between the giggling girls and the play-it-tough boys. Ah! To be a teenager again…one of the boys is top of the class in
English, whereas another is stupid, but it doesn't matter because his family owns Bethlehem's biggest shopping mall. When his mobile goes off in the middle of class everyone laughs and asks him as he hangs up, "business?" At one point of particular exasperation on the teacher's part which I could not help but feel partially responsible for, one of the boys, Hamze, told me not to worry because the teacher always got like that when he needed coffee. I hope I do not start to feel the effects of coffee in this way.
After class (well actually it began during class) there was a competition between everyone as to who was to take me home. I felt rather like the latest plaything, or perhaps a stray slightly ugly puppy that people wanted to show their parents whilst begging, "ahhhh, can we keep it?". Although the boys pretended to be slighted and did their very best on the journey from the centre into the camp to change my mind, I think I did the right thing of saying yes to the girl who first asked me. I cannot begin to express the wonder that is Arab hospitality - unfailingly generous and genuine. Hiba is newly 13 and lives in Doha, the neighbouring camp. Her father Ghaseen teaches Arabic in Doha and was ensconced on one of the sofas in his dressing gown when I arrived. The other sofa was taken up by a large mass of blankets which turned out to be one of the brothers. It was a lovely afternoon where I got fed more than I could comfortably eat (this pattern has since frequently repeated itself) and my Arabic has proved less than adequate. A real family setting with everyone gathered round the heater (no central heating of course) as the smallest child wailed from the cold of just being bathed and then being rubbed down by his mother. It was my first taste of their national dish matluba; chicken on a bed of rice sized pasta and served with a tomatoey oniony soupy sauce which you spoon on at will. They kept piling more and more on my plate, even though I was strategically eating slowly so as to pace myself, and they looked at me questioningly if I took more than a few seconds between mouthfuls. Then came wafer biscuits, obviously a local favourite, then endless cups of tea and coffee. Just as I thought I couldn't fit any more in, an aunt from one branch or other of the family arrived bringing scone-like things filled with date paste. I spent the next 15 minutes eating two of those very, very slowly whilst playing a little game with mahmoud, one of the boys who looks just like his father who kept grinning at me then hiding, then getting closer and closer to me as he grew bolder and less afraid of the oddly dressed stranger who turned up at his house without warning.
I narrowly escaped sleeping at their house for the night (I returned instead with a yellow jumper with some strange fluffy brown ribbony thing stuck on the front which I hastily removed before wearing it for fear it might leap up and choke me, as they are convinced I cannot be warm enough and an amazing palestine silky scarf with amusing images of a beaming arafat with fluorescent pink lips) as I had to practise with Ahmad, but it has not been the last time I have eaten enough for a week in one sitting. Another was a couple of days ago when I went to one volunteer's house. She is a mother of 6 or 7 I think, though there were in addition many many other cousins hanging around too. After that one successful visit where one of her daughters and a little son who is 5 showed me a photo album, proudly pointing out every cousin, aunt, uncle, sibling and member of the extended family as possible (I was not just impressed by this, but also at the incredible 90's wedding dresses and several of the made-up women who resembled transvestites but without their sense of style) I was invited back today where I helped to make stuffed vine leaves a lot more successfully than my first attempt years back in Egypt. These served as a bed for cheek and tongue of cow. Yep, an unavoidable first for me and no getting out of it as I was the guest and once again my plate was piled higher and topped up more frequently than anyone else's. It's six hours after I ate that meal and I still cannot quite contemplate even a biscuit.
I found an afternoon a couple of days ago to wander into Bethlehem and re-discover the church and explore the town itself which the tour I was with before did not deign to give us time to become acquainted with. It was very enjoyable slowly strolling the backstreets and I experienced a strong sense of déjà-vu in the church of the nativity when, looking up at one of the windows I heard the midday call to prayer. It is a real privilege to do that sort of thing without a tour group, and it is surprising how few tourists venture beyond the church and manger square into the town proper. I was lucky enough, like Nablus, to experience it on a Saturday, market day, so the place was really alive. That evening, an impromptu decision on mine and Ahmad's part to go for a walk ended with his father driving us to eat keneffe at a local emporium then driving us round the streets of Bethlehem, the very same ones I had walked by day. All to the accompaniment of Marcel Khalife, what could be more perfect?
Yesterday was unusual for two reasons. Firstly, it was the (epic) meal for friends and family provided on the occasion of a death by the family of the deceased. In this case it was the father of one of the men who works at the centre, and so I was counted as a friend and invited along. From my corner sat on a stool feeling somewhat useless, I watched the women dish out platter upon platter of lamb and rice as I marvelled at the importance of food and family in the Middle East. I don't know whether the camps generate a closer sense of community, but I imagine there is a shared sense of something that aids it.
Secondly, following a random visit the night before, two girls appeared to shoot a short dance film on the roof of the centre. Fatima is a Lebanese film-maker and Alfi is a Malaysian dancer, though both of them appear to have been bred in Sydney. They had been staying at Ibdaa, another centre nearby, trying to run film-making and dance workshops and were going back to Ramallah and thence to Australia and Malaysia respectively straight from shooting. It was a unique half an hour or so up on the roof on a clear day looking across the camp and improvising violin and dance together. I don't know what will come of it, but it was well worth the little time and very little trouble it took to set up and film.
Last night I got talking to the group of men who are also staying at the guest house. They are all from Gaza, one of them is Omar who is 23 and learning to walk again with prosthetic legs at the hospital in beit jala. He is a Fatah supporter, evidently a little too actively for the liking of Hamas. He expects it will take about a month to learn to walk again. Raji is here looking after his 16 year old son who lost an arm and parts of both his legs in an Israeli attack which took place when he and some friends were playing in the street. Yet again, he was considered lucky as he was one of the 20 or so who were hospitalized, not one of the ten who were killed. Last night we made pleasant small talk about the cost of living throughout the middle east, dialects, the joys of no borders in Europe, Slovenia, Egyptian film, Syrian drama series and the beauty of Gaza. I have invitations to go and see it 'after all this is over'. I met Raji's son this evening as he was bringing him up to the guesthouse. It reminded me of the headline of an article I read here in my faltering Arabic, "we have no time for death." I know it's not really my place to voice a valid opinion, being an ignorant decadent westerner and all that, but despite the myriad of problems on both sides, my respect for the Palestinians grows daily. I only hope my stomach keeps up.
Until last night I hadn't roused the courage within myself to try the heater that had been bequeathed to me upon my arrival despite arctic nights. This is because I didn't trust myself not to set something alight, willingly or otherwise, nor did I have any faith in the unnerving metallic utterances that were emitted when I turned it on as if I had prematurely awoken some nest of chipmunk aliens that had been unwittingly trapped in a tin can. The heater itself looks like something out of a 70's sci-fi movie (we covered that word in one of my classes today) with three blistering looking coils that give out quite a heat in a deadly shade of vermillion and a no less powerful, fatal odour - no doubt some evidence from its last victim it failed to thoroughly dispose of before being given to me. I also am not encouraged by the angry red warning on the top of it because it's in Hebrew and I though I can read it, I cannot understand it. For all I know it could say, 'HEATER SET TO EXPLODE WHEN SWITCHED ON EAST OF JERUSALEM' or 'HEATER EATS FOREIGNERS WITH FRIZZY HAIR FOR BREAKFAST'. As it was I tentatively plugged it in, and after I became accustomed to the smell of the previous gallant fallen it was really quite nice to feel, er, warm. With this wonderful glow, and recalling with happiness the confusion in one English class between coathanger and cannibalism (they were on a desert island and had a bottle, a plastic bag, a knife, some string and a coathanger to survive and protect themselves against wild animals and cannibals) and the way the older men here ask how you are which reminds me of some East European female heavy weightlifter (Chaif Halich) I fell into blissful slumber. Without turning the heater off. Then woke up in a panic because the room was glowing an evil red and I thought that my newest acquired arabic phrase had actually come to pass - yom al qiyama, or Day of Judgement.
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