beirut blues

even

Nothing is even, even this line

I am writing, even this line I am waiting in,

waiting for permission to enter

the country, the house, the room.

Nothing is even, even now

that laws have been dran and peace

isdiscussed on high tables,

and even if all was said to be even

I would not believe for even I  know

that nothins is even - not the trees,

the flowers, not the mountains or the shadows...

our nature is not even so why even try to get even

instead let us find an even better place

and call it even.

                                                                                                                                                     By Nathalie Handal       who performed last night at the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah.

faces with one feature.

I loved this image, when I saw it, made by Nura Asad from UAE and presented at the 7^th Sharjah Biennial in 2005.

"Faces with One Feature, a project that includes photographs of heads wrapped in undulating, red satin cloth, and craned back as though trying to see the sky in spite of their faces being veiled. In other photographs are groups of people with veiled torsos. The visible parts of their bodies (clothing, hands, footwear) hint at what kind of people are hidden under the cloth: local couples and everyday workers, usually recognised as immigrant workers that came to the Emirates from poor countries." 

More information at: http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/islamic_world/articles/2005/asad

min wein inti?

“Min wein inti?” (Where are you from?) asked the driver as I got on the taxi. “Min Sbania”  I said (there is no P in Arabic so amusingly to say Spain the ‘P’ becomes a ‘B’). “Ahlan wa Sahlan” (Welcome) he replied.

He drove away … and a while later he turned round “Inti messajiye?” (Are you Christian?). “Aiwa” (Yes) I replied. “Ahlan was Sahlan” he said again. There was a silence… a long silence, one of those silences that you feel the person is wanting to say more. But he drove on, silently and every so often looking back at me through the car mirror.

After some hesitation, he looked at me and asked …“Shu raiak fi al cartoon al denemarki?” (What do you think of the Danish cartoons?). I can get by with basic chit-chat but at that point I was literally stuck for words. How could I say what I felt about the whole affair in Arabic? I replied what came to my head “Mushkilla kbiir” (A big problem – a phrase I strangely find myself using very often here). He nodded and I continued “kull ness fil ayyam majnun” (all people in the world going crazy) in a broken mix of Arabic words, that I hoped would allow me to continue in the conversation with him. He nodded again in accordance. “Njad, mushkilla kbir” (Yes really, a big problem)… and he continued to explain how he as a Muslim had felt offended but how even if he was angry he still respected Christians and those who think differently. At that point, I could really every so often just reply “saj” (true) and tried to follow his speech. His name was Bassam and in a very sweet and concerned way tried to explain to me how he saw the cartoon crisis.

Taxi drivers and my drives in the yellow cabs in Ramallah are actually a big part of my life here. It is the people I get to talk to and listen to what they have to say, in my routine of daily life in Ramallah. It is my enjoyable way of measuring the pulse of things here.

hamas: the perils of power

Very good article from The New York Review of Books.....

In the days following the Palestinian elections on January 25, in which Hamas won seventy-four out of 132 seats in the Palestine Legislative Council, Hamas officials expressed hope that they could join with Fatah in forming a government. They spoke of national unity and referred respectfully to the authority of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. In statements aimed at the West, they claimed they had never truly advocated Israel's destruction, and they made it clear they were willing to deal pragmatically with both the Jewish state and the agreements the Palestinian Authority had made with it. They apparently dropped, at least from their immediate goals, their demand for an Islamic Palestinian state; and they said nothing about resuming armed attacks. An outsider could be forgiven for failing to realize that Hamas had done quite well in the voting, let alone that it had won, let alone by a landslide. 

Out-and-out victory was not what Hamas had expected or, for that matter, what it had wished for. It had come to see itself as a watchdog on the sidelines, sitting in the legislature without controlling it, shaping the government's policies without being held accountable for them, taking credit for its successes and escaping blame for any setbacks. Its triumph presents it with challenges of a different, more urgent, and less familiar sort. Hamas suddenly finds itself on the front line, with decisions to make and relations to manage with the world, international donors, Israel, Fatah, and, indeed, its own varied constituents. The Islamists may have secretly expected to sweep the elections but, if so, that secret remains well kept. Referring to Iraq, President Bush once spoke of America's catastrophic success. Judging from the Islamists' initial, startled reactions to their triumph, this may well be theirs. 

machsom watch

Living in Ramallah, I can be in the middle of things, and yet simultaneously little details of events here can pass unnoticed, until I am woken up by the harsh reality. I read the other day from Machsom Watch that beginning of last December, a new decree had imposed "quarantine" on the northern West Bank. This means that 800 000 Palestinians living in Jenin and Nablus districts are not permitted to travel south to Ramallah and Jerusalem!!

It is incredible and saddening, the West Bank is being carved into enclaves, and somehow even if living here, everyday obstacles pass unaware to me in my daily routine of home and work in Ramallah.

Machsom Watch (www.machsomwatch.org) is an interesting organisation comprised of 400 Israeli women who quietly but assertively are present in checkpoints throughout the West Bank.