The Qalquilya boys are interspersed with our
group, they are strictly ruled by their captain
‘the best bodybuilder in the area’, Yousef:
a
man in his thirties and almost as squat as he is
tall. Alex is already their mascot, her ability
to cycle at their pace, and on most days, as far
they can, drawing admiring chuckles.
The lads are brimming with teenage energy, the
angst of their western peers who have so much
more, invisible under a sheen of exuberance.
This surely has a lot to do with the absence of
alcohol and largely (but not entirely) drugs. I
suspect in this conservative society that sexual
frustration has a part to play, and yet that
tetchy anger young men can carry with them is
utterly absent. They are, in short,
adorable.
I am in the van once again, the first stretch of
vertical tarmac doing for me before the camp is
even out of sight. At the tiny town of
Wadu Al Baden
an elderly man rushes over as the group gulp
down water and look, unsuccessfully for shade.
‘Thank you for coming’ he says, handing out free
canned drinks. Vans go past beeping and local
workers yell ‘welcome to our country’ at our two
wheeled convoy.
Around a bend in the sweeping, endlessly
climbing route, suddenly water is pouring from
everywhere at once. A series of stalls are
attached to a moss grown mountain cliff. From
sandy verges we have entered a hillside oasis,
we are in Valley Al Badan. A village of natural
springs that gush randomly from holes in the
mountainside. Between gushes, basket stalls
dominate the kerbside. The small kerb street is
full of locals, chatting, eating ice creams,
generally enjoying their lunchtime. The arrival
of twenty local lads and almost as many
foreigners on bikes doesn’t seem to throw them
in the slightest. They are mutely friendly,
curious, and then it happens. Inevitably, one of
the
Qalquilya
boys spots a drum hanging with others from the
farthest stall, unhooks it without a thought and
starts to pass his forefinger and thumb over its
skin.
‘oorah!’ goes the cry. The beat is mesmeric, a
treat that intensifies the lush green branches,
reminding us where we are and who we are with;
a religious region, under
occupation,
with a rich heritage, and an inspirational
younger generation. So, the boys begin to dance,
hips twisting this way and that, arms twirling.
A big circle forms, with people going in two at
a time. Alex’s hand is grabbed in the melee, she
is shy and tries to resist but soon she and I
and the wonderful elder statewoman of far flung
travel, Janet, are doing the Arabic jive to
claps and cheers. It’s so much fun, another drum
is taken down, the owners don’t seem to mind in
the least, and the drumbeat swells, the laughter
builds, we are having such a good time, the
bikes are forgotten. One of the Mohammed’s
(there are four), gives the old Bedouin style
yodel, flicking his tongue from side to side
against his lips. Others join in, a joyous,
aromatic sound is growing, growing.
Suddenly,
it’s over, the captain of the team has shouted
‘yulla’ and the boys hang up their drums. It’s
time to head off.
A small way on, roadworks make it too dusty to
be wise to continue, so students and a professor
from Al Najah university come to take our bikes
and most of the cyclists past the problem.
Unknown to me, Alex has twice come off her bike
behind the van and is being walked up the final
terrible slope. She is helped by our guide from
the Siraj centre, Rafat,
and a fellow cyclist from
Canada,
Myrle.
The sun is pounding down, as the lads pull in at
last, then at last Alex appears and I rush over
to take her bike and help her. She bites her lip
and shakes her head insisting on wheeling it
right up to the van. She really is incredible.
Alex and I part climb and are part hauled onto
the open backed van with the Qalquilya
boys
and
Martin, Kevin, Simon and Anne. Two of the boys
are standing up dancing about, shouts begin at
first ‘Taqbir’,
‘Allah Akbhar’ then ‘Free Free Palestine, Free
Free
Palestine..’
Their energy is entirely infectious, Simon is
grinning from ear to ear; ‘to be here..’ he
motions to the olive dotted hills, ‘with young
Palestinians singing about their freedom...
I mean life just does not get better’n this does
it?
NABLUS
The ancient city of Nablus is known for two
things; olive oil soap, and one of the sweetest,
stickiest desserts known to mankind aka; Knafe.
October is olive picking season around
Nablus
and across
Palestine.
A simple process obstructed and made ever more
dangerous by the presence of the Jewish
extremists, known as ‘settlers’ whose numbers
continue to swell, and whose loathing for the
indigenous Palestinians clearly knows no bounds.
There are 40 settlements around Nablus alone,
whose inhabitants are known for the violence,
aided and abetted by their armed counterparts in
the IDF, stationed wherever they set themselves
up
protected
by a government that no longer even bothers to
deny its allegiance to their project of creating
a ‘greater Israel’. This project has never
recognised the so called “Oslo’
agreement, never respected the frail formality
of the land agreements before 1967, and is
unlikely to halt simply because Barak Obama tuts
in a fatherly manor in their direction. This
year hundreds of acres of agricultural land, of
olive groves, the main produce here, was razed
to the ground in a series of settler arson
attacks. The farmers whose trees remained
unharmed must plead their case for harvesting
access to their own lands with the Israeli
authorities. Should ‘co ordination’ be given for
this, the permits to do so are a mere two to
three days long. Too little and too late for the
harvest to succeed and for the local farmers to
make the money from their crops that they rely
on to feed their families.
I rejoin the cyclists for the (downhill) slope
into
Nablus,
and the steep final climb to Al Najar university's
new campus. I was here three years ago, when
times were bad, incursions, nightly, right into
the old time and a curfew in place. This time
things are better. 56 students have been killed
by the IDF. Some in the campus dorms.
There are more than one hundred checkpoints
surrounding
Nablus
and its villages. In the past five months
students report that these have been easier to
cross. I meet ‘Noor’ and her friends, a twenty
one year old English student. Despite the
openings, the morning of the day we arrive has
been bad for her student colleagues,
dozens
of whom were kept waiting for more than an hour
at the main Nablus checkpoint without a reason,
as soldiers ‘checked’ their ID.
‘They do this so we miss our lectures. To make
us fall behind, to stop us succeeding.’ she
says, over hot chai with a professor from the
faculty.
‘But this is nevertheless
a very good year’ he says ‘no one has been
killed in
Nablus
(by the occupying forces)’. Noor is not in a
hijab, there is no dress policy nor religious
code of conduct here, jeans, flowing hair, ipods
and iphones, the stuff of modern universities
worldwide are clearly in evidence. What is
different from say UK
campuses
is the lack of a ‘bar’,
and the smiling, happy, connectedness of the
students to each
other, their teachers and now to us, strangers
who are greeted with handshakes and in Alex’s
case sweets and fizzy drinks, hugs and warm coos
of ‘ soo cuutte’ as she is carried along on the
shoulders of a Palestinian cyclist.
Back in the canteen, the professor is stunned to
learn that several
Nablus
residents have,
as it turns out been killed by the IDF over the
previous year. The students who have joined us
say one name and search for another of a
civilian who was shot at a checkpoint, whose
name is already forgotten. The professor is
visibly shocked.
‘Here in
Nablus
we used to care when someone was killed,
remember their name, talk about it, hear it
always on the news. Now...’ he sighs ‘now we are
so used to it, we are immune..’
Alex is called over to sit with her fans from
Qalquilya who call her ‘our little hero’ and
hang on to her every word despite not speaking a
word of English. They talk over and over again
about how she has kept up with them mile on
mile, pace for pace. In fact coming into
Nablus,
she refused yet again to come into the van to
rest and to have some shade when I called her to
do so. Rafat
our guide from the Siraj centre told me it was
too dangerous for her to be on the roads. The
fact that three of the boys had almost been
knocked off theirs in the space of five minutes
told me all I needed to know on that score. In a
motherly wave of protectiveness I got our van
drive to pull over slightly ahead of Alex at the
next lights, I dived towards the roadside
grabbed Alex round the waist, bundling her
inside while Rafat
grabbed her bike and put it on top of the van.
Alex was stunned into silence a moment then
looked at me bemused and said
‘Mum that felt like I was being kidnapped’ and
shook her head.
Al Najar has a highly renowned, brand new fine
art department. Here students have their own
shop, as swanky as the one at Tate Modern, where
the best of their work is put on sale. Ceramics
of all shapes, colours and sizes are on display,
Tables with mosaic tops, sit beneath oil
paintings. My favourite is a work of thick brush
strokes, a vast market scene, perhaps from
East Jerusalem.
Some
music students present a traditional series of
songs to our combined European/Qalquilya group.
As a young man's hauntingly melodious notes roll
across the room, the lads clap and hail their
respect. Once the tabla gets going they can't
help themselves, in the corner to the potential
fury of body builder Yusef, their trainer and
bemused campus staff dancing begins in earnest.
Jumping around from leg to leg, laughing,
scraping chairs back now two sides of
Palestinian youth have forgotten their visitors
altogether. The young man who leads the
musicians shouts over to his poorer peers from
an agricultural area, 'you want this or this?' I
guess he says. Their is no judgement from one
side of the jubilant energy of the other, they
are all brothers, they are all young, they are
all Palestinian.
And they love each
other. Checkpoints are forgotten
for now,
Palestine
united in music.
TPC2009 Day Four
Soap, Knafe and World Class education, by Lauren Booth
The day begins with a tour of the notorious Al
Farha Prison and former police station, known locally as
'Salah Khalaph'. Built under British Mandate in the
1930's it's exterior is a sandstone Trumpton. The
shuddering horrors of the torture carried out on
Palestinians by successive regimes, British, then
Israeli, are described in cool detail by our guide from
the camp.
During the first intifada, young men were tied back
to back and made to sit on a rock for three days
whatever the weather conditions, whilst Israeli
soldiers threw rocks at them. If they cried or
shouted, they were then taken to a series of
pit-rooms, or solitary confinement, where many 'were
broken', says our guide, their screams iliiciting
laughter from the guards.
'Vietnam was not worse than this.' His descriptions
remind me of the treatment allied troops received in
Japanese POW camps. I am with my daughter who has
been listening intently to all of this. She says she
needs the toilet so I lead her away, the perfect
excuse to remove her from the lingering atmosphere
and the too vivid descriptions of torture.
We sit in a small courtyard where twenty young
Palestinian lads in black cycle shorts and white
t-shirts are lolling in the shade. The Qalqiliya
Cycle Club have combined with Peace Cycle for this
leg of the journey. I admire their white, entirely
thorough knee pads - (I need to find Alex some) -
and am just entering into some sign language with
the least shy of the group, when there is a roar
overhead that forces my shoulders up to my ears. A
rumble... a throb... as if a thousand planes are
above us. The boys carry on lolling, vaguely
curious. One or two put their hands to their
foreheads and peer into the cloudless blue. This is
the sound of the countryside, Palestine 2009.
Israeli fighter jets in formation, practising their
lethal trade in death and destruction. On and on and
on goes the roar. I try not to flinch in front of
the young men but the urge to run inside and cower
under a table is almost irresistible; to hide from
the tonnes of metal hell in the air above us. The
pilots would call this 'manoevres'. The locals call
it 'just-to-remind-you-we-are-here' fly pasts
TPC2009 Day Three
The Children of Jenin by Lauren Booth
(Note: Lauren and her daughter Alexandra have stayed in
Jenin for an extra day because 8-year old Alex has
befriended a local Palestinian girl named Qud. The same age
as Alex,
Qud has asked if she can accompany her to school to speak to
her class).
Alexandra and Qud stick together like glue. Qud is
smaller with pale eyes and hair and seems quite besotted
with her taller, European friend and her strange, thrilling
new games. Rooms, cars and streets echo with their sing song
chants of the French clapping game 'Dam, Dam der der, Si,
si, olero olay...'For Alex's p art
her natural reticence with new people has vanished; when she
is invited to visit Qud's school and speak to classes about
her life in France, she shrugs 'kay'.
Children here are up at dawn to dress for school.
The birdsong so lacking during the scorching
sunlight hours is more than made up for by the
vibratto of the dawn chorus. Prior to 1948 Jenin was
the 'garden of Palestine' abundant with fields of
vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. Even today
despite decades of poverty, the soil refuses to be
silent pushing her green threads between rocks,
stone walls and in the ankle grinding granite that
counts for pavements in this part of the world.
Al Ryiad is a progressive private school in the Al
jaberiat suburb of the city. I swear that I have
never been anywhere to noisy in my life. The decibel
level at morning break when Alexandra and I arrive
along with Qud's mother makes Alex momentarily
clingy. Then there is a scream and a bundle of
plaits come hurtling towards us - Quds.
'What eez your name?'
'Where do you come from?'
'How old are you?'
There are 350 pupils at the school and langugage is
a priority. Qud's and Alex jabber all day in the
secret language of little girls, but it is now clear
that Qud's actually understands a good percentage of
what Alex is saying.
The head mistress Saheer Khalil, is a smart lady,
with a temper (I can tell, I am proved right). She
is like most people here a heavy smoker, which is
lucky as I've forgotten mine. We puff away over
photo albums of the cloak-wearing grads of last
year.
'These children all went on to university' she says
between puffs,
'In Egypt, Ramallah, Jordan...'
The school is three storeys high, with a cement
playground on three sides. The outside walls are
covered in murals; the kindergarten with an
attempted Sylvester the Cat, the larger children
rushing around before painted mountainscapes.
Crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate bars from the school
shop, keep the noise level at airport landing strip
level as we head towards the classes where Alex will
give a short presentation on life in France. The
schools two female English teachers are excited at
the unexpected cultural exchange and class plans are
dropped.
'My name is Alex and I am going to tell you about my
life in France' whispers Alex. She is standing
before a class of children her own age staring at
her with the curious blankness all students wear
after school yard fun and fizzy drinks. However, the
by-now nerve jangling volume still coming from the
halls makes her have to begin again. And again. Dear
thing, she struggles on not really getting beyond
her name and age before the head English teacher, a
cheeky woman with a sparkling grin and beige hijab
shouts above the din, 'ask her her name, what is she
doing now? Writ-ing her name, yes, writ-ting.'
The next class is better for Alex, who this time
gets to 'my family and the animals who live near
us...' before I am forced to interrupt her:
'My father had a motrobike accident because he
was drunk and he was out with the rugby guys and...'
'Alex!' I yell.
'What is dr-u-nke?' Asks the teacher, bemused.
'Never mind, nothing' I say, not really wanting to
explain alcohol excess in the West.
I needn't really worry or have been so sensitive;
this isn't Gaza. In fact the differences are so
pronounced between life in Jenin and say, Khan
Younis, I feel tearful at times. In one classroom
the children are curious to hear from a foreigner
who has spent time in that strange place so
physically near, yet so culturally removed from
them.
I feel an odd anger welling up in me. Why don't they
know what it's like, why don't they call people
there and ask them? Do their families care about the
people in Gaza really, or are they a racially
inferior class of Palestinian, even to those in
Jenin? I fear they are. Of course it's the
occupations fault; the Israel's pride themselves
that the West Bank and Gaza are now utterly separate
entities. No one who lives here has been there and
almost certainly never will. Their permits after
negotiation may get them to other parts of the
Middle East but never to Rafah.
'Jenin is Hollywood compared to Gaza' I say, wanting
and receiving shocked looks off the assembled
fourteen year olds. This region of road blocks and
refugees can make you irrational if you let it.
'And Jenin Camp is a PA-LACE compared to Gaza.'
The main theme, and one that the teachers are
clearly keen to keep alive in their pupils is:
Jerusalem. Teachers ask if I have been there, for me
to describe it to the pupils, is it beautiful, what
are the roads like, did I go to the mosque (where
they cannot?) Across the West Bank, no further into
the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, 'Al
Quds' (Jerusalem) is a burning sore that cannot
heal. This Holiest of Holies, this city of history,
pride and light, must be visited and seen again
before death. Of this trip so far, I have cried just
once: at Mount Nepo in Jordan, at dusk. Standing on
the site where Moses is supposed to have looked over
the Holy Land and said 'this is it chaps, but we
can't go there (yet)', the whole sprawling story lay
beneath us. To the left the Red Sea, shimmering,
looking depleted from its banks after a long summer.
The green and sandstone hills of painters, poets and
religious clerics, a signpost for visitors with
arrows bearing the legends "Hebron, Nablus,
Bethlehem and..Jerusalem". I was utterly
overwhelmed, crumpled by it's hilly closeness, by
the temptation to just vault the barrier and walk to
Jerusalem myself. Our guide, a 1948 refugee whose
mother and family were driven from Jerusalem, was
with me. He sighed.
'Does your mother ever come here and look for Al
Quds?' I asked.
'Every week for fifty years' he said, shaking his
head.
'Every week....'
Alex took up the theme; really she is quite
something for an eight year old.
Hands clenching slightly, she spoke loudly for the
first time:
'On our television news and in our newspapers you
are shown as bad people, as violent'... there are
gasps, some nervous laughter.
Cheeky teacher says,
'and are we Alex.. are you afraid in Jenin.. are we
horrible people?'
'NO!' she shouts back, looking upset at the very
idea..
you're nice, I like you'
..'and are you afraid in Jenin?'
'NO! I am happy in Jenin, the people are kind.'
This, after all, is the message they want to hear -
children, teachers, janitors, shop keepers. They do
have information from the outside world; TV's are on
night and day, dawn till dusk. But an abused nation
suffering collective emotional hurt, they are
compelled to ask visitors over and over again 'do
you think we are bad, nasty, wrong, violent? Are
we scary, strange, deserving of this...?'
Gaza is on my mind as we drive away in the taxi.
------------------------------------------------------------
By Lauren Booth on the Peace Cycle 2009
TPC2009 Day Two
Peace Cycle Reports
Day Two: Nazareth and Haifa
by Lauren Booth
Nazareth is not charming from the outskirts, you encounter a
giant McDonald's on the road into the city centre, a road
lined with cracked and crumbling cement blocks of flats. In
the Nazarene hills we arrive at St Margaret's Monastery and
Alexandra at last has a chance to run, her feet touching the
soil of the Holy Land for the first time. We will stay here
two nights before beginning our cycle journey in earnest as
the Israeli authorities demand that groups must have police
permission and permits to travel the countryside.
At a vast Arab school on the outskirts we attend a lecture
given by Muhammed Zeidan, Director of the Arab Association
for Human Rights. Alexandra is greeted by excited children,
boys yelling, girls staring, some come and touch her hair.
Even here in this 'open' Palestinian area, European children
are a rarity, Christian pilgrims prefer to stick to the main
tourist sites, their largely Israeli tour guides telling
them that not to is 'unsafe.'
Zeidan's insights into Israeli politics is chilling, in a
gentle yet certain tone he says:
'Israeli political society has been moving to the right
since 1977...In ten years Avidor Lieberman could be the
Prime Minister' there are some gasps from our group.
'Everyone who is now seen as extreme and far right in ten
years time becomes 'the centre' in political terms.'
The 'cantonisation' of Historic Palestine into ever smaller
sections, breaks not only the cultural identity, it creates
social and economic differences between cities, villages,
even families. Contact between the separate, disunited
people, between Gaza and Ramallah, the refugees in Jordan,
to those in Lebanon is fading, fading. The situation for
Native Palestinians, now labelled 'Israeli Arab's is
particular in that any communication they make between
themselves and their brothers and sisters in the West Bank,
or Syria, or Lebanon, is tacitly forbidden by the State of
Israel. Calls are logged, emails routinely browsed, contact
with 'enemies' of the state can lead to harrassment by the
authorities, or imprisonment. Israel considers most Arab
nations 'enemies' and the West Bank a closed military zone.
More fragmentation, disconnection.
The road to Haifa is a revelation. How green and verdant is
the land here. Forests, line the hillside, flowing down to
fields of abundance. Israeli cities shine their new story
into the heat haze, Kibbutz, line our way, built on the
bricks and rubble of razed Arab villages.
At the Arab Youth Centre 'Baladna' in Haifa we are hosted by
Jowan Safadi, a young 'Israeli Arab' whose fashionable,
curled, cool appearance blends seamlessly with his Jewish
peers.
Before 1948, Haifa's population was roughly 20 per cent
Jewish. Many families had been there generations, others
joining the slowly growing population in the 1920's and
1930's. During the Nakbah more than eighty per cent of
Haifa's Arab population were driven from the verdant
hillside, the coastal city and the surrounding villages.
Winding above the world famous Baha'i gardens is a street
lined in some places with Jewish villas in others the cement
apartments of the poorer Arab inhabitants. The road is
called Ben Gurion. It was here that in 1948 hundreds of Arab
families were fenced in by the invading Jewish terrorists.
They were told that if they set foot out of the cordon they
would be shot. Today the fences are gone, but the social and
economic divisions remain. Haifa is now an 80 per cent
Jewish city.
Jowan a twenty something musician whose parents are '48ers'
deals with young Arabs who struggle today with a confused
identity. For the grandchildren of Palestinians who did not
flee during the Nakbah, are rejected by the Arab world.
Their passports tell the world they are "Israeli's" they
will not find work in Arab nations easily with that. Jowan
tells us that to compound this problem, there are many
university courses and jobs that are closed to them at home.
Bio chemistry, atomic research, yes, it's funny to even
imagine a Native Palestinian of the highest talents getting
a job in those industries within Israel. More, acting, radio
broadcasting on Israeli channels, limited to non existant
says Jowan. Their is not a glass ceiling here but a
religious ceiling, jobs for Jews is a social policy enacted
by corporations both big and small, segregating the Native
minority, maintaining Jewish dominance in the economy and
politics.
Jowan was unlike any Palestinian I have met before in my
journeys in the West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps in Jordan.
He is Westernized, cooller (by which I mean less open, the 'chai
and chat' friendliness of his peers the other side of the
check points, removed by the society around him into which
he must blend to survive.
Drugs he says are a problem for young Native Palestinians.
Fuelled by frustration. I remember earlier in the day,
outside the sparking Arab school in Nazareth the plump
teenage boy, who seeing my blonde self and my equally
blonde, Swedish companion walking in the sunshine, ran over
to us.
'You want drugs?' he shouted up at me excitedly.
Why would you ask that I wondered aloud?
'Because drugs are good' he shouted, making his friends
laugh. Behind us in the school car park a fist fight broke
out amongst two other boys. It was serious, ending up in a
punching bundle on the ground, cheered on by dozens.
It is all too easy to forget the 48'ers, the persecutions
they suffer, the growing fear of 'transportation from this,
their land of 'milk and honey.'
Lauren Booth
The Peace Cycle 2009
By: Peter Merrick 12October 2009
Today I woke up in a hotel in Amman, and was not surprised
to see it was sunny. We were supposed to load our bikes and
head off to the crossing into Israel. In the event, the bus
that came was being driven by a man who thought we could
lift the bikes onto the roof and they would be ok without
being tied down, or so it seemed to me. Some of us have hire
bikes, and others have brought their own. I brought my own
bike so was really uncomfortable with making a big bike
mountain on top of a bright orange minibus and driving 2 ½
hours to the frontier. Eventually we communicated this and
thanks to Sarah (spelling Sa’rah…?) we insisted they send a
pickup truck for the bags and bikes. It took hours, and I
get the feeling this is just how it is and getting peeved
about it would be pointless.
When we got to the frontier we had to show our passports to
4 different sets of Jordanian officials before we even got
to the Israeli crossing. We were dropped off and had to wait
for another bus. Eventually we finished off with half a
dozen bikes inside the bus with us. The ride to the border
was minutes. Jordanians have lots of police and army and
lots of different kinds of smart uniforms. Israeli security
wear jeans, short sleeves, sunglasses and carry enormous
automatic weapons. The border crossing seemed to be filled
with teenagers. We were hustled inside the building. We’re
travelling with Lauren and her daughter Alex who’s 8 years
old and adorable. Lauren is a journalist with reason to fear
she may not be welcome here. There is a particular stamp in
her passport that made it a virtual certainty that she would
be denied entry. Having cleared passport control myself, I
went to sit down and watch what would happen with Lauren.
Alex had already taken herself to the passport control and
got herself an entry stamp. She is intrepid. Lauren looked
very cool as she approached the kiosk. She handed over her
passport. Then the fun started. She was told to go sit down.
Two security men in regulation jeans, sneakers and clear
sunglasses (why clear sunglasses?) approached her. It was
obvious that Lauren arriving had kicked off some real
interest in the place, that in early October is starved of
anything much going on. We were the only group passing
through. It seemed she had been ‘rumbled’ and wasn’t going
anywhere, that that would be the end of her trip. I felt
upset because it’s hard to make a connection with someone
and then have it cut short. In a brief time she has become a
central figure in our group and to lose her would be a great
loss indeed. Eventually we had all cleared passport control
except Lauren. She sat to the side with Alex who had by this
time started to ride her bicycle around the building and
saying she wanted to go outside with the rest of us. Anne
and Sarah stayed sat beside her. Did I say that Sarah is of
Palestinian origin with a German passport. She knows the
score and they were loathe to leave Lauren alone. I went
outside to the bus and felt bereft. I waundered around
twiddling my thumbs until, low and behold, what should I see
but Alex’s great big smile come walking through from inside
the security zone followed closely by her mother. It felt
like a miracle. How could it happen? We reckon that Lauren
has some pretty close political connections and a phone call
or two had established that it would be a PR disaster to
separate a mother and child from a peaceful cycle trip at
the main tourist crossing point into Israel. No doubt her
story would have been on the late night international news
and it would not have looked good. But there is no doubt
that Lauren was mightily relieved to get in with her
daughter and be with us rather than making her lonely way
back to Amman with two hire bikes, a bag of dirty laundry
and a heart-broken little girl.
So we got on the bus and headed to Nazareth. Jesus’s home
town. We’re staying in the Hostel of St. Margaret which sits
on a hill overlooking the town. It was a convent, but now
it’s a place for people to stay. Our room has a vaulted
ceiling. There is a central courtyard with a fountain and we
ate outside. Dinner was lively. The conversation is about
the details of politics. It helps that the people in the
group are well informed and I find myself doing more
listening than talking; there is so much to know, where I
feel myself more comfortable with just allowing myself to be
here.
How does it feel to be in Israel? It feels good. Israel is
much greener than Jordan. I know there are reasons for that;
it’s called using all the water – but still it looks
productive. The young people at the border crossing were not
impolite, they weren’t exactly friendly, but where there are
tales of it taking 5 hours or more to cross, we were
processed efficiently in under an hour and a half. That was
a blessing because it was really really hot today.
But the thing is, that where Jordan is a pretty stark and
desolate landscape, the people are always smiling and the
energy is really high. Here, the roads are better, the
infrastructure, the bridges, the tunnels, the agriculture,
the shops, etc. but the people seem low, like their energy
is more somber. I can’t really put my finger on it, but
that’s how it feels.
It’s really good that we didn’t get split up. Every day is
an adventure
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