tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40018626348645230172024-03-21T14:12:25.432-07:00The Big OliveThe Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-31718755643444226052012-09-29T00:14:00.002-07:002012-09-29T00:14:46.702-07:00Welcome to Palestine! A country in waiting! <div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by: R. Kafri</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Welcome to the land of waiting. People here are born waiting. Waiting to return
to a homeland lost, and from the looks of it, in the most desperate moments,
lost forever. Waiting to return to a
home they still carry a key for in their hand and a memory in their heart, an
image hidden in the folds of their dreams, that sadly and in the most realistic
moments, they know no longer exists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In Palestine you wait
for Ramadan, just like you wait for a breath of fresh air in a crowded
restaurant in NYC, you wait for a tasree7 (permit), you wait for the paycheck, or even worse you
wait for the job. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You wait for schools to open, for the strike to end, for the
checkpoint to be removed, for the accident rubble to be cleared. You wait for
the Allenby bridge to empty, you wait for the doctor to finally come in on time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine you wait. You wait for your dreams to happen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You wait to leave the refugee camp, you wait to leave the
village, you wait to arrive to Ramallah, you wait for destiny to embrace you,
but she really never does. In fact at
the first stop she slaps you hard in the face and leaves her mark, and then you
spend a lifetime waiting for that wound to heal. It never does. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine you wait to graduate, you wait to find a job,
you wait for the next job to be better. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine you wait to get married, then you wait to have
children then you wait for them to grow, then you wait for them to become
doctors…trust me they will not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine you wait in line endlessly to receive
permission to see Palestine that is yours.
And after you finally get a chance to see her, you realize she looks
nothing like what your grandparents described, and nothing like the country
your mother cries over. You wait to see
her, only to realize, she did not wait for you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine you wait for the birth of a child anxiously
with the hope she is not born on a checkpoint.
In Palestine you wait for the
hunger strike to end. You wait for sons
and daughters to be released from prison, only to be rearrested again, at the
next checkpoint on the next trip, on their way to find a job and start a life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine you wait for your paycheck only to have it hijacked
by hungry loan payments and red hot gasoline prices. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Palestine , you wait endlessly in Qalandia to get
home. Keep waiting…this might take
hours. . </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You wait for the summer to end in the hopes that winter will
bring more peace, and you wait for winter to end in the hopes that summer will
bring more warmth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">And in Palestine you wait </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">for the next eruption, the next intifada, the
next incursion, the next war…And that always happens</span></div>
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The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-70640229792239016442012-08-15T04:25:00.001-07:002012-08-21T23:57:34.240-07:00On Running <div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by: R. Kafri</span></div>
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</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dedicated to all women runners. Actually to all women out there who seem to
always be running to something or from something. Here is to running towards
your dreams and not away from your fears…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The road does not ask questions. It does not care if she is
wearing hijab, or shorts. The road does not judge if she runs fast or walks
slow. It is not bothered by her earphones or her choice of music. It does not label her as liberal or conservative.
It does not question her ethics based on her hair color or her
clothes. The road never wonders what she
does for a living, or how many children she has. It does not ask about her age, or when will she get married.
It does not encourage her to get married young or old. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The road is present every day, she can go to it at her
leisure. The road curls around her village, her town, her neighborhood or
around her house; it offers her solace from the noise that is her life. The road will not beat her, it will not put
her down. It will not judge her for being Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist,
or Hindu for that matter. It will not
ask her if her shoes are expensive or cheap.
The road will not stop her from pursuing her dream, it will not pull her
out of school and marry her off to a man triple her age. The road is there for her to run on it, to
free her mind, to rest her soul from all that is ugly, all that is
violent. The road will not rape her, or
rob her of her innocence. It will not
leave bruises all over her body. It will not promise to love her only to
control her. The road with its dark
asphalt, its sharp turns and soft hills, will offer her a good morning summer
breeze or a good evening winter chill. The
road does not care if she gave birth
naturally or if she even opted for a C-section. The road will not ask her how
many months did she breast feed and then judge her motherhood based on that. It will not label her too skinny, too fat,
too dark or too light. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The road will not ask why her dress is too short, or her skirt
is too long. It will give her space to
think, because she can think. It will give her a place to feel because she can
feel. The road will not debate with her
whether she has the right to open bank accounts for her children, or if she can
remarry if the love of her life died. The road does not care if she was single,
married, divorced, widowed or none of the above. The road will not promise to love her, marry
her, father her children and then slaughter her over a custody battle. It will not throw her in a well for a crime
she did not commit. It will not kill her
because she is a woman. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The road will never question her honor, and it will not kill
her in the name of honor. The road is
there for her to stand, demonstrate, RUN, walk, play, laugh, scream. And sometimes the road is there for her to
get away or at least try to get away, so the next time you see a woman running
frantically, if you are not ready to propel her to what she is running towards
or protects her from whatever she is running away from, just make way so she
can at least get away…</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Dr. Riyam Kafri-AbuLaban is an assistant professor of
organic chemistry at Al Quds Bard College based at Al Quds University-Abu Dis.
She is the founder and managing partner of Riyamo Natural Body Care Products in
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4001862634864523017" name="_GoBack"></a>Ramallah. She co-writes and co-manages The Big Olive, a
blog about life in Palestine and Ramallah as seen by two young professors
teaching and living here. She is married to Ahmed AbuLaban, and both have
recently joined the fearless frontlines of parenthood with their beautiful and
lovely twins Basil and Taima. She can be reached at rkafri@gmail.com </span></i></div>
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The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-73005423366925659582012-06-30T22:35:00.005-07:002012-06-30T22:36:05.347-07:00Our Writers in This Week in PalestineOur Dearest Readers<br />
We are sorry for the silence on the blog, but between end of semester woes for Tala and returning to work for Riyam, it has been a very busy summer. Rest assured we have not stopped writing. Writing is central to who we are, it is a passionate drive that wakes us up every morning. We have actually been writing a lot. Tala is working on her memoire and Riyam has been contributing to This Week in Palestine and working on a tiny writing project of her own. We want to share with you the link to the latest issue of this Week in Palestine where both Tala and Riyam have published work. "My Dearest Students" is a letter written by Tala to her students at the end of a very trying semester. "For Yara" is a story about human survival written by Riyam about a mother surviving her daughter's death. Enjoy the read and we will be back on The Big Olive very soon. We are turning Two this July!!!<br />
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<a href="http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/index.php">http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/index.php</a>
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<br />The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-62087049840911968842012-04-26T01:18:00.000-07:002012-04-26T01:20:12.501-07:00To Paris: A Letter to the Jabaa' Checkpoint Soldier<div style="text-align: left;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">by:
R.Kafri<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dear Jabaa' Checkpoint Soldier<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I
am going to Ramallah. I will always be going to Ramallah when I pass you. Day
in day out, that will always be my destination. Where else could I
be going in my Palestinian plates car and Palestinian ID passing through your
precious little checkpoint? Paris, <i>mathalan </i>[for example] ?
For the thousandth time, I do not speak Hebrew. No, I do not
carry any fancy foreign passport. Yes, I speak English
fluently, because I am smart, I worked hard, and instead of spending my teenage
years learning how to use a gun, I spent them holed up in my room, reading
books and learning how to use my pen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Much to your surprise, I
am a professor of chemistry, of all subjects. Please collect your jaw off
the floor. I spent eleven years studying abroad, in the United
states to be exact. I did not consider remaining there, and I did
not apply for a green card. The only green card I carry is my Palestinian I.D.
It does not grant me any privileges, in fact it has sometimes deprived me of basic
rights, like the freedom of movement in my own country. But I hang
on to it dearly, and will not replace it with the “good” green card,
as you so eloquently put it. Where is that accent of yours from? Russia? Is
that why you came to "Israel", looking for
the equivalent of a"good" green card? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Don’t you get tired of stopping my
car every day? Isn’t it a bit monotonous to be asking me the same question?
“Where are you going? <i>Lawain</i>?” Every day I have to discipline my
urge to get lippy with you . I have to stop the words
from throwing themselves at you and then exploding in your face (no pun
intended, or maybe it is). What I really
want to say in response to your ridiculous question: To Paris!! I am going to
Paris!! Through your checkpoint I hope the world will receive me
with wide strong arms. I hope it will cradle my dreams and handle them with
care, and that it will not crush them like you have managed to do with the
hopes and dreams of all Palestinians in the past present and many generations
to come. To Paris, so I can have creamy butter croissant, and good
coffee early in the morning, and fine aged wine with my deliciously fresh salad
in the evening. To Paris, so I can attend contemporary dance festivals and
poetry readings. So I can walk in open air markets. To Paris,
so I can meet smart educated people, and have endless philosophical discussions
filled with rhetorical questions pondering the state of the world. To
Paris, so I can sit on my window sill and yearn for better times at home. So
I can live and breathe everything Palestinian like it was the last breath after
a long struggle with a terminal illness. To Paris, so I can never
forget your checkpoint and the long boring humiliating unnecessary delays, so I
can carry the cries of a pregnant woman giving birth at your checkpoint in the
creases of my wrinkled dress, and the endless spaces of my soul. To Paris, so I
can tell the world about my students sitting on the ground, shirtless, handcuffed
for one reason and one reason only…they don’t carry the “good” green
card. So I can write countless blog entries about men, women and
children who were once trying to get somewhere but never did because of your
checkpoint. To Paris, so I can write about Palestine like a distant
land that inhabits the warmest chambers of one’s heart, so close yet so
unattainable.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But wait just a second! I
do that already, all day every day right here, just twenty minutes beyond your
checkpoint in a tiny little town called Ramallah. So NO of course I am not
going to Paris, I am still going to Ramallah. And I still yearn for Palestine and better times, every day, all day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Please wipe that shocked look off
your face. Release the grip on your gun. And relax the angles of
your mouth, it appears that you are smiling, or maybe just smirking. I
am not an untamed animal trying to escape my cage, I do not have a tail growing
out of my behind. This is not a zoo. I am a woman, and to your grave
disappointment you and I belong to the same species. We are both <i>Homo
sapiens, </i>a.k.a humans. Contemplate THAT while
you wait to harass the next car passing through your precious checkpoint. In
the meantime, I am still going to Ramallah!!!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Not So Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">An Educated Palestinian Woman (
possibly your worst and your government’s worst nightmare and Palestine’s best
potential) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-34988555321721617502012-04-22T02:05:00.000-07:002012-04-22T02:06:47.857-07:00Letter to Laila<br />
<div id="gauche" style="float: left; font-size: 10px; margin-right: 20px; width: 450px;">
<div id="texte" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The following piece was first published on Mashallah News on April 12, 2012 </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://mashallahnews.com/?p=7844">http://mashallahnews.com/?p=7844</a>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
by: Tala Abu Rahmeh</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Dear Laila,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I couldn’t believe you were finally here until I counted your 10 fingers. They look like real fingers, creased from all the struggle to come into the world. They look like you were clawing your way out, and that idea alone makes me deeply love you.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You looked too tired for a 4-day-old, as if you are storing sleep for years of sleeplessness to come; ones when you’ll be pinning over a crush, studying algebra, applying to graduate school or singing a lullaby. The nights when you will watch dawn break out could be more than your new body can bear.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Your timing was impeccable. You knocked your mother’s stomach at 2:30 am, knowing that Qalandia checkpoint will be empty, and your grandfather would not have to curse traffic (since your father has a<a href="http://learninginpalestine.blogspot.com/2008/08/ids-license-plates-roads.html" style="color: black; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;" target="_blank">green ID</a> and can’t come watch you swim into the world). The car whizzed through the ugly gates, but was searched at the entrance of the Israeli hospital. How can you claim your Palestinian identity if you’re not a suspect while still in the womb?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As your mother screamed you out, Palestinian houses were being demolished, and a kid was nursing a bump on his head from a floating gas canister, but then you came, and the glory of your little body silenced all the dangling rifles. Your grandmother, beautiful with curls, held you so close so you can hear her heartbeat. What else could possibly matter?</div>
</div>
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<div id="texte" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I saw you, I understood, for the first time, how one could love somebody to their bones before they really know them. You insisted on sleeping on your belly (you have opinions already), and breathed the world in and out. When I held you, I could see your lips pouting and your pinky clutching on to mine. You blinked because the sun bothered you, then you succumbed to a squeal. Your hunger these days is bigger than you.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I wonder about this world you’re waking in to. My head is cloudy and I’m scared, but there seems to be so much love in the folds of you, and love like that cannot be let down. I see dusty roads and young soldiers screaming for IDs and I think, I never want you to hear the screech of this terrible loneliness. I don’t want you to get in a car every single morning wishing this whole country could just collapse in on itself. I don’t want you to feel the way I do today; disappointment with a committed desire to runaway.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What does it take to be happy these days? Perhaps you could tell me, because you have brand new eyes. Perhaps its the little things, like when a mother throws herself in front of her child to protect him from a bullet, or when a doctor artistically removes a sharpnel from someone’s thigh, but why must our joy come from the overcoming of suffering? Can it ever be about a quiet day, a sunflower or a really good book? Is it so bad to be one of those awful normals, who think about lunch instead of the fastest way to meander an Israeli jeep?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today, without having a hint of an answer, I wish you this: one starkly bright morning, you rise slowly to face your mirror, and you see the acne scares, the tousled hair, the broken nail, the scarred knee, the unread books and the body issues and think, how lucky am I for this to be me? And in that moment, you will finally be.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Your loving aunt,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Tala</div>
</div>
</div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-37287676684420326442012-03-28T01:32:00.002-07:002012-03-28T07:42:48.882-07:00Goodbye Letter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="il" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #ffffcc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><i>"My beautiful mother passed away three year ago after a graceful battle with Ovarian Cancer."</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I hope that wherever you are, this finds you well.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Last week, I had to teach a book about a woman’s experience with cancer. During classes, I explained to my students the subtle and not too subtle details of being a cancer patient. <span class="il" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #ffffcc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Mom</span>, I think I’m getting over cancer. It scares me immensely.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the past three and a half years, I’ve taken comfort in knowing that whenever I’m incredibly sad, I could resort to worst parts of our life together. To the nights when you couldn’t sleep, to the chemotherapy sessions, to the falling hair, to the last night at home when you wanted crème Brule and you were so sick that Tareq and I had to move you around the house on a blanket. Everything in your body hurt and I couldn’t even touch you. This, to this day, remains my escape when the world crumbles down in my face (and you must know, they’re always little crumbles so don’t worry).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I miss you more than I can possibly fathom without getting entirely overwhelmed. When I look at your pictures I miss every inch of your embrace, your eyes, the way you said “hello” when you called me, and all of our fights. I sit and wonder these days, if you’re proud of me, if you’re looking down and telling whoever is sitting next to you that I’m your daughter, your sunshine that just keeps getting brighter. I wonder if you forgive me better than I forgive myself.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So, without knowing the answer, and without entirely believing anything in my heart, I chose, on this beautiful Friday, to let you go. I want your soul to fly over vast valleys and I want your spirit to watch a waterfall from the top of a mountain. I want you to fall in love and make up for all the pain you felt bringing us into this world, and the guilt you felt when you knew you were leaving us.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="il" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #ffffcc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Mom</span>, I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world. Your smile will always remain one of the best things that have graced this planet. You have been an amazing mother, a kind daughter and the most precious friend.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I hope you find sometime to visit me and tell me all about your adventures. When you do, I’ll tell you all about mine.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I love you, entirely,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Tala</span></div>
</div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-37311839599535688282012-03-25T23:42:00.004-07:002012-03-25T23:47:55.702-07:00A letter to Motherhood<div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; text-align: center; "><i><span>the following entry is just for fun. wishing all mothers a happy belated mother's day fully knowing that your job is never done.</span></i><i style="font-size: 100%; "> </i></div><div style="text-align: right;font-family: Georgia, serif; ">by: R.Kafri</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; text-align: center; "><i style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></i></div><p class="MsoNormal">Dear Motherhood; </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">Hello. I don’t suppose you recognize my voice. In fact I am quite sure you are stunned at my audacity in contacting you so early in the game. After all it has only been four months since I have joined your fearless frontlines, but if you could, just for a few minutes, listen to me, I would be forever grateful…Moherhood, you are kicking my butt, any chance you can ease up on me? I know the request is quite funny. I can only imagine your graceful, beautiful goddess self-you know the kind that glides not walks- having a hearty laugh over this rooky’s plea, my very not so graceful, disheveled, not showered for days, spit up filled shirt wearing self. I should probably not ask or pray for easier days. I should just be surprised and thankful when they do happen. Right? After all I have the toughest job in the world-I am a mother (maybe if I stand in front of the mirror, and repeat it over and over it will sink deeper into my brain, oh don’t worry my heart has no problems with it, it was sold on this new title on the first day; it is the practical part that wants everything systemized that gets challenged every now and then.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"> Please know that it is not the obvious big sacrifices that are so painful to make. It certainly is not the I will become a stay at home mom for the coming seven months and give up the promotion of my life sacrifice. And it certainly is not I will choose a different career path to accommodate my new post in life-Mother. Those are obvious and come to me as second nature. It is the I will sacrifice my shower to feed my child and risk everyone avoiding me at Friday morning brunch, because I STINK. Or I will give up sleep, until the babies sleep, and risk becoming legally insane. Or I will give up an hour of rest to cook dinner early so I can feed the babies, put them to bed and have one uninterrupted meal (that NEVER works by the way). Or I will sacrifice eating altogether so I can change the babies and get them ready for their doctor’s appointment, only to arrive LATE yet again…And the list goes on..</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"> I am sure you are in stitches over this letter and wonder why anyone would bother telling you any of this. Actually I am almost ashamed to be saying these things outloud. But I am sure that every new mother has thought about these things and was too afraid to admit them. So forgive me for asking again, can you please go easy on me, and other mothers like me. I ask you to please remember that just a few months ago, we were carefree, sometimes careless individuals who could have not fathomed holding a life in their hands. And by the way can you please ask other more trained soldiers in your frontline to stop telling the biggest white lie known to human beings? It does not get easier after the first three months. I KNOW, by now, that the shit has yet to hit the fan (excuse my French, I should probably learn new vocabulary now that I am raising children), that once those little feet hit the ground, they will hit them running and that is most certainly accompanied by cyclones of chaos, toys, and long hours of baby tv. But I am also SURE that with these tiny cyclones of madness come hurricanes of contagious laughter that can melt icebergs, and floods of excitement for the countless firsts, and endless days trips, play dates, and lunch dates with <i>Teta, Khalto and Amto </i>(grandma, mother’s sister, and father’s sister). I understand that the happiness that has come my way will only get bigger, louder and better…and the challenges will also get bigger, louder and harder…</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">Motherhood, I fully realize that my daily sacrifices seem trivial in the face of world hunger and the many starving children that do not have neither breast milk nor formula, so forgive me for my selfishness. I am also aware that given the country I live in, I am so lucky for the plethora of bounty we have, and that unlike most mothers who live elsewhere I don’t need an Oprah special to remind me of poverty, hunger, apartheid, oppression and suffering as it resides just a couple of streets away. I am fully aware of all my fellow mothers whose children are sick, or imprisoned or injured. And I KNOW that it is only a stroke of blessed fate that my children were born into this family where they will find endless nurture, love, and colorful childhood memories to cheer up an entire nation. Please know that I am thankful for the plenty of everything… </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">But, I still cannot help but want to ask for your help. If you could just grant me the grace, the intelligence, the patience, the compassion, the strength and most important the health to live it all, the bravery and the courage to admit not to always enjoy it all and the long life to look back and smile at it all, for me, my husband and our tiny village of loved ones helping us through it all. That is all I ask. See, quite simple isn’t it? </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"> Thank you for entertaining my words and taking the time to listen. I think I am done for now…Oh no, rest assured you will be hearing from me again…very soon. Oh and one more thing, before I let you go, since it is mother’s day here, and I really want to bake a cake for my mother, is it too much to ask for an easy day today? Thank you, Motherhood. Talk to you soon. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="right" style="text-align:right;text-indent:.5in">Kindly,</p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="right" style="text-align:right;text-indent:.5in">Riyam</p> <div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; text-align: right; "><span style="text-indent: 0.5in; "> </span></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-42204239061767704172012-03-07T02:39:00.001-08:002012-03-07T02:42:27.606-08:00Diaries of a Daily Commuter:Next Stop...<div style="text-align: right;">by: R.Kafri</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in; font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJK9x9On2OCB7E6hhVM29FddLJA4Vjq6mE7sdV7xV4TU2mtMsr1dHt-sf3fKfv49-FPsYzGCc1bnb31spjXBJ23e1LqO6qoQ46V74i399zMa7n1Z7jfi2zmnoJr81hwJIifh9Cwzv0zYC/s400/High+Speed+Train.jpg" /> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in; font-size: 100%; ">Thank you Israel! As a daily commuter from Ramallah to Abu Dis, and someone who has been delayed in Qalandia anywhere from one hour to three hours, only to turn around and travel through rural areas to get home after a long day of teaching and sculpting young minds, and someone who has sat in her car 3, 4 5, 6, 7 and 8 months pregnant in the white hot summer sun at the entrance of Azariyyeh waiting for the random checkpoint to be removed so I can travel exactly five minutes to get to campus, and the nearest bathroom, I want to thank you. Thank you so very much for this ingenious idea, this amazing creation of yours, this beautiful surreal, euphoric notion….The Peace Train, a railroad track that runs around the West Bank connecting Palestinian cities, illegal settlements and Israeli cities altogether. Oh no, please, this is not unreal at ALL; this is not in the least bit a ridiculous, unrealistic, crazy idea at all.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in; font-size: 100%; "> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in; font-size: 100%; ">Will you be including a stop in Gaza too?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">Just out of curiosity, how will this work exactly? Will you provide recorded announcements clearly explaining what a passenger is to do when arriving at the next stop? I imagine a very serious deep voice with a heavy Israeli accent, coming through loud crisp speakers: “Next stop Ramallah Central Station, if you are Palestinians you may depart the train. Israeli citizens are strictly prohibited from traveling to Area A. Expatriate NGO employees will be subjected to harassment, interrogation and long hour delays the next time they depart Israel via any of its borders, should they travel to the territories.” The doors open for a few minutes then automatically close, and the train travels at high speed. Voice comes back on: “Next stop Jerusalem the Old City, welcome to a land lost, Palestinians not carrying permits are not to exit the train. Special permits are required for those wishing to pray in the Aqsa Mosque. Israelis and foreigners…Welcome to Israel!” Within seconds the train takes off again. I guess fastening your seat belt is a very good idea as the train would be traveling at high speed and considering how short these distances are, screeching halts are to be expected at every station…“Next Stop Maale Adumim: please watch for heavy New Jersey and New York accents that might shock you as you get off the train.”… “Next Stop: Abu Dis, please be advised what once used to be a suburb of Jerusalem is now nothing but a passersby corridor that leads to Bethlehem. Traveling to Area C is not recommended due to political unrest, unless you are a settler looking for a cheap mechanic to fix your car.” Of it goes again, swallowing the land with all its flashing scenes… “Next Stop: Bethlehem…the cradle of Christianity…Christian pilgrims may depart the train only if this is part of their Holy Land/Israel Tour, if you are traveling through the West Bank, please see the expatriate advisory note on harassment, and possible arrest when attempting to depart the state of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.” The train goes off again, you hang on really tight as it speeds through the hills passing one settlement after the other…. “Next stop: Kiryat Arba, please watch for armed fanatic settlers, any suspicious looking Palestinian is at risk of being shot…DEAD…in the HEAD. Also we would like to advise you not offend any incoming passengers by sitting in their seats or any seats for that matter…tell you what if you are Palestinian, we strongly recommend you move to another car, or depart the train altogether. Your life may be at serious risk…Next stop…….</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">Forgive me, I should probably give you a chance to explain this proposed project, I got carried away in your La La Land conjuring up fast trains carrying Palestinians, Israeli and settlers all in the same confined space. But seriously, there are so many questions that need to be answered. Who will sell the train tickets? Who will collect them? And most important how will the money be divvied up, will the Palestinian Authority keep the income that comes from tickets sold in the West Bank? Will you offer snacks? Kosher and Halal? What will the cars look like? To avoid conflict, will you designate certain areas to Palestinians and others to Israelis and settlers, perhaps the back of the car-stand only-for Palestinians? I think Rosa Park might just walk out of her grave if you do that. What about security? Isn’t that your main concern always….security…Israel’s right to defend itself? How will you maintain it, railroad checkpoints? “Next stop a random railroad checkpoint, the train will come to a sudden and forceful stop; you may lose balance and drop your belongings on the floor. Please watch out for any luggage that may fall off from the overhead compartments. Palestinian Authority passport carriers please step out of the train for random check…this check is for your own security and safety. So what if you feel disrespected and humiliated. Security comes first…” Oops I am sorry, here I go again…did not give you the chance to quite explain… Just one more thing and I hate to be the one to rain on your parade of great imagination (you should genuinely consider writing the next Harry Potter series with this imagination), but in order to build the railroad track, won’t you confiscate more land like you did when you built the bypass roads? Again I hate to be a party pooper here, but if you keep confiscating lands, there will be no place for us to live don’t you think? Or wait is that the point? The aim? The goal? "Next Stop…Diaspora…” </p></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-83472558613182199902012-02-29T22:52:00.001-08:002012-04-29T00:27:44.627-07:00A Few Words to a Ramallah Virgin<div style="text-align: right;">
by:R.Kafri</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yesterday a friend of mine from the US called to tell me that her friends were coming on a tour of the region. She was hoping we would have the time to meet them. I was thrilled to do so. In Palestine, hospitality is built in. You welcome guests into your home no matter how tired, sad, happy, poor or wealthy you are. A colleague of mine recently told me that of all his travels in the Middle East, it is Palestine were he felt most welcome. He was amazed that despite the painful life betrayals, Palestinians remained so welcoming to strangers, and that despite the monstrous apartheid wall, people kept their doors open to guests from all over the world. A small country like this, where cities have been completely isolated from each other, should display severe lack of interest in the outside world, but instead the isolation in this incredibly large open air jail has made Palestinians more hungry for guests. My colleague is continuously touched and moved by the generous gestures of hospitality and has promised me to write about it soon…I am still waiting on his generosity…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I wrote to this total stranger, I was trying to convey the message of warm welcome and utter excitement to have guests at our house. I started thinking of how Palestine in general and Ramallah in particular is a lot like me, happy to receive guests, sad to see them leave only to smile again at more strangers who dare to cross through the Qalandia checkpoint. During the summer I was browsing through books we have in our library and came across a compilation of pieces written about the city by different Palestinian writers. A reoccurring theme that jumped at me immediately was the description of Ramallah’s kind welcoming arms offered to each one of those writers when everywhere else shut them out. Ramallah was their stable in which the seeked refuge and safety after every other inn turned them away. A few weeks ago, a young Palestinian writer described her great love to Ramallah in a short poem published in Al Hayat newspaper. And I am sure more people will write about this dynamically changing city with its vivacious spirit. Ramallah charms you. ..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I think of this place I call home, I remember the longing I felt when I was far away, and the comfort that enveloped me every time I came back. The tingling inside as I walked down the streets as a young girl and now as a young mother only to be greeted by familiar faces and places. The joy that overcomes me in a few moments of quiet after the babies have gone to bed when I realize that I am getting a very rare opportunity in this ever changing world to raise my own children in the same place I was raised. I get the chance to watch them live, love, hate, miss, run away and run back (hopefully) to Ramallah just like I did…. I sleep better knowing that if I teach them to love this space, this place this city, they will feel connected to something stronger than a good job in London, Paris or New York…they will feel connected to a home, to a street to a city and most important to a country that desperately needs its young educated and present, and I really mean physically present. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So as I sat in front of my computer writing fiercely (trying to finish before the babies wake up again), I struggled to explain Ramallah and Palestine to a total stranger. Here she was a tourist, coming to visit “both” sides, but who was smart enough to realize that a tour guide cannot and will not tell you the full story. I started to think of the different articles that have appeared about Ramallah recently. I knew that there are two images vividly painted by media about the city: one is poverty, violence, dirty streets, traffic lights that don’t work, ad hock speed bumps peppered randomly on roads, barefoot children selling gum anywhere they can, corruption, and corrupt leadership; another is night life, fun, bars, alcohol, girls in short skirts and LV bags, boys with baggy jeans, iphones and a tinge of rap music in the background, NGOs, NGO workers, intellectuals leisurely smoking argeeleh and sipping on a drink in a chic café, Mahmoud Darwish, Mahmoud Darwish’s resting place, open air <i>souk </i>(market), cultural events, a contemporary dance festival, film festivals, an art scene…a writhing metropolis. But the truth is Ramallah, Palestine is much more complicated. Ramallah has a very special recipe, with even the best of cooks unable to replicate. She is a lot of things. She is the woman busy in the kitchen cooking for all thirty guests in Ramadan, and welcoming them with a huge smile ignoring the shooting pain beginning from her feet and climbing persistently all the way to her neck. She is the vegetable stores in the old city mixed in with the new nail salon that just opened, and the new fancy bakery neighboring the Catholic school which looks directly onto the Friends school that has witnessed Ramallah since the 1800s, which then glances over new buildings and old ones leading to the heart and soul of it all…Al Manara circle which now leads to the newly renovated and less green Yasser Arafat square, which is surrounded by stores from my childhood, my husband’s childhood and even from before that time too. Her streets are busy and spend most of the year dug up as part of municipality rehabilitation projects; the traffic is unbearable at times, and the stores seem full but yet so empty. People throw smiles and hellos but look so drawn and hungry. Young men hang out endlessly in the streets showering young, old and middle aged women with all kinds of comments from the funny to the plain inappropriate simply because they have nothing else to do and nowhere to go. Ramallah enjoys the newly paved and renovated city center, and is beautifully and festively dressed up for Ramadan, Eid El Fitr, Christmas, Eid Al Adha and Easter, yet you catch the sadness, the despair, the underlying poverty. Ramallah is where normal signs of daily life melt so deceivingly with the incredibly not “normal” political situation. She hides her scars, her economic pangs of pain so well. For the untrained eye she seems like a new up and coming center in the Middle East. She dishes up hope with restaurants and cafes and covers up her bruises from years of occupation, military incursions, closure and suffocation. She hides tears for those lost on her streets and commemorates them with pictures as a constant reminder of the never ending ache. She fancily serves herself up as available and unafraid, only to sleep at night anxiously anticipating the next destruction. Of all cities, and all people Ramallah and her inhabitants know that nothing is constant and everything can change in one discontinuous moment in time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Palestine, Palestinians, and Ramallah have learned to adjust, to build, to move forward as much as they can, whenever they can. They have mastered the art of living with relentless determination. I knew that no tour guide or travel agency can capture all of this in just a few days. I also knew that it would be unfair to reveal the secret to this tourist, this Ramallah virgin. With the sound of both babies waking up I hurriedly wrote: “Dear Judy, We are thrilled to meet you , please let us know when you will be arriving. We look forward to having you over for dinner as a minimum. Kindly, R.Kafri.” And I thought, let Ramallah and Palestine slowly uncover themselves to her, at the end something beautiful is waiting for both the city and the tourist…Love and a new understanding of a place so misunderstood…Let the magic happen…Ramallah, Palestine and Palestinians charm you….</span></div>
</div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-23518741822690016762012-01-28T06:40:00.000-08:002012-01-29T01:45:56.125-08:00Delicious Almond Cake...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOHbR_O2qnS1SRr2EOJbHPfOZixVQ7sCCTJpSsHzxJGNSogq5X6cDC4XM27dc1gdFJVQHKHojZTosoMKhnkoo-eaDmwLa90rqPKlSmoKrN7RKzp5Q61FMDS5ARGNCrqOOAwTAjXlF3T4/s1600/Food.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 239px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOHbR_O2qnS1SRr2EOJbHPfOZixVQ7sCCTJpSsHzxJGNSogq5X6cDC4XM27dc1gdFJVQHKHojZTosoMKhnkoo-eaDmwLa90rqPKlSmoKrN7RKzp5Q61FMDS5ARGNCrqOOAwTAjXlF3T4/s320/Food.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702987094850448082" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">by: R.Kafri</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">If you live in Ramallah, belong to a large family and enjoy an ever larger circle of friends, you would know exactly what it takes to put together a dinner party. We were getting ready to introduce our new twins to our group of friends. No easy feat I might tell you as in Palestine the birth of a baby is cause of celebration on multiple levels. While people are expected to come visit and bring gifts, you in return are expected to have a decadent line up of sweets and tiny gifts filled with chocolate to give away. While I would say we had an incredible line up of desserts from the very special Careway drink <i>karawyeh</i> to <i>knafeh</i>, <i>kollaj</i> and other sweets lined up for well wishers, we still had the daunting feat of inviting our closest friends for a get-to-know our babies dinner. When I say closest friends the number is not less than twenty guests and can easily exceed thirty adults, that is, not counting the children. Such was the case this past Thursday. Our guest list was full, our menu was complete and preparations were well under way at least two days in advance. The multiple course meal includen oven roasted meat with <i>7ashweh</i> rice (spiced rice covered with minced meat and roasted almonds and pine nuts), roasted chicken with potatoes for those none meat eaters, and stuffed kusa and dawaly (zuchine and grape leaves). For starters it was <i>tabouleh, salats arabiyyeh</i> (Arabic Salad), and hummus. And for dessert…..mmmmmm dessert…..the most essential part of a meal, like the end note in a symphony, the last few words in an ever enchanting novel, the perfect end to a long day…Dessert, the part most people skip, but really should be the part all people never ever miss. For dessert I pulled out the big guns…moist chocolate cake, strawberry jello cake (it is strawberry season and the time is perfect to serve this cake) and my absolute master piece, my mother’s very special recipe: <i>Ka3ket Al-Lawz Al-Latheetha</i> (Delicious Almond Cake)….which is indeed delicious. After everyone ate, drank laughed and caught up. Our dessert buffet was rolled out, and pieces of chocolate cake, strawberry cake were carefully cut and served. Then came the night’s star, warm and ready to serve I brought out the almond cake…</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> The cake batter is very simple with sugar, canola oil, and flour mixed together in equal amounts, eggs are then added ( 4 eggs when using 1.5 cups of sugar), baking powder and a dash of baking soda. The topping is ground raw almonds sprinkled generously on top. After the batter is prepared, it is spread thin on one of the oven pans that come with it. The almonds are sprinkled generously all over, and then it is baked at 175 C for about 20-25 minutes. You know it is done when the almonds have a tinge of golden brown in them. Pull out of the oven and immediately soak with <i>kater (sugar glaze)</i>. Serve warm and watch the happy faces around you melt into the crunch, the warmth, the sweet and the absolutely soft. Enjoy the flood of seconds requests from everyone, even those who are watching their sugar intake. This cake warms you up and lifts your spirits. It is like falling asleep and waking up in your lover’s arms every morning. It comforts and reassures you that life is still good. It reminds you that on cold winter days, with the winds howling outside your windows, it is the little things in life that warm you from the inside out. I love this cake for all its goodness. I love that this is a recipe my mother shared with me years ago, and now that I have a home and children I can share it with them. I love the flood of childhood memories that rush through me as I take the first bite, because when I cook, and every time I cook, I want to recreate a memory, a thought a feeling that I once had. And this past Thursday, I loved serving this cake to our guests and loved watching their faces react to the burst of sweet inside their mouth. It was only appropriate that a taste of my childhood was served to mark the beginning of my children’s life. Here is to many cold winters, to a busy kitchen, and countless times of baking this almond cake and watching the happy faces look back at you with gratitude and satisfaction. Here is to creating a childhood taste for my children….</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>interested in the full recipe please email us at <a href="mailto:riyamo.delicatassen@gmail.com">riyamo.delicatassen@gmail.com</a> </i></p>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-82434212582447728522011-07-05T13:12:00.000-07:002011-07-05T13:32:42.920-07:00What would the olive tree tell you?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7SZO6sgKXjCSWRwBCvbXCqxE4NOAdKWkJTp-cIVlUf1X0pipmbrwMd7-lYTB78ZTkPETs3gY2bCLE-Ph-Ta2GV73cKyQRoXpZLN4-pB2gZdcqH2Ro9zDxrEoPMnUlagyoMH2I7KfdTfY/s1600/whatwouldtheolivetreetellyou_pic.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7SZO6sgKXjCSWRwBCvbXCqxE4NOAdKWkJTp-cIVlUf1X0pipmbrwMd7-lYTB78ZTkPETs3gY2bCLE-Ph-Ta2GV73cKyQRoXpZLN4-pB2gZdcqH2Ro9zDxrEoPMnUlagyoMH2I7KfdTfY/s400/whatwouldtheolivetreetellyou_pic.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5625967989447770210" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: right;">by: R.Kafri<br /><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>AR-SA</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> 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mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">On my way to Abu Dis, right before the road turns onto the big Ma’ale Adumim Highway, sits an olive tree graveyard.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Tree stumps neatly organized in rows like grave stones witness to what once was on this land.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I remember the first day I drove to Abu Dis and saw them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I did not really comprehend what was in front of me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I thought there must be a scientific reason why all these trees have been cut down almost to their roots. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After all who would really cut a tree unless it was deathly ill with no hope for a cure or posed a serious threat on its fellow trees? Right?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My scientifically trained mind needed a logical explanation to what it was observing; something based on facts and observed experiments.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As I drove back and forth between Abu Dis and Ramallah teaching day in and day out, I slowly realized that what I witnessed every morning on my way is nothing but an olive grove grave yard, cut down by Israeli occupation forces for “security reasons.” Perhaps it is the same grove I saw on the news.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is probably were cameras stood filming the massacre.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And every morning, with no fail, the pang of pain, mixed with a dash of despair and a rush of anger washed over me, causing me to push the gas paddle a bit harder to end the scene slightly quicker. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was sadly poetic, with an eerie wind about the stumps, <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>as if haunted by ghosts of seasons past when they used to be green, lush and filled with shiny olives. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It all belonged in a thriller movie; the heavy silence, no leaves rustling in the wind, no farmer sitting to take shade in the trees…just heavy silence…just tree stumps…standing on dry, desert like land, with no water, no hope…just simply dead. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The entrance to Azariyyeh is in fact a junction that leads to Maale Adumim, the largest and one of the oldest settlements in the West Bank.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This monstrosity of architectural disaster is now forming a ring around Jerusalem, making any negotiation for any reasonable and just agreement almost impossible. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Ironically at the junction in the middle of the traffic circle, where Palestinian cars and settler cars meet, sits an ancient olive tree, its stem wide and tangled, its leaves shiny and blow so gracefully in the wind. At first sight it looks majestic, but when you look closer, bulldozer scars are visible from the day she was uprooted from her original land to be planted here. So beautiful, so out of place, so lonely she stands.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If this tree could talk she would tell you about the old grove she belonged to, the kind hands that harvested her every October, the children who played in her shade only to grow up into men and women who cared for her and watered her roots; trimmed her branches and plucked her olives.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She would sing of families laughing, lovers meeting secretly under her shade, whispering to each other words of eternal love and promising her to always come home at harvest time; hoping to bring their children with them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She would tell you of cold wet winters, and hot scorching summers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She would tell you of rolling hills dotted with olive trees, loud with birds chirping and bugs squeaking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But then, she would also lower her proud leaves as if in shame to tell you of the day they took her. ..</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">It was a dark day; she was uprooted with the wails of loved ones in the background, the resilient but helpless cries of those who once filled her shade with life. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She would point to her scars and say: this was a bulldozer, this was where they dug the hole to take me, and this one is where they threw me into the empty, hot, dry truck. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They planted me here, but oh how I wish they just cut me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I would have rather died with the rest of my trees than been brought here. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am what have become of my owners, scattered, separated and pushed away from home…I am a refugee like countless others…I am you and you are me…Diaspora</p><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">note: Picture by interfaithpeacebuilders</span> (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifpb)The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-11753230263405599112011-06-25T10:28:00.000-07:002011-06-25T10:38:19.990-07:00The Return of Summer<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>AR-SA</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> 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mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><p style="text-align: right; font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal">by: R.Kafri<br /></p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal">Summer has returned, and your trees have bloomed again, with majestic green and bright reds and orange. Apricots hang so heavily on outside of old homes, cherries glisten in the sun, ruby red in color, sweet as sugar in taste and figs poke their heads awaiting the hot dusty days to fully blossom.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Your streets, abandoned, quiet and very grey in the winter are now dotted with walkers, joggers and runners, flooded with cars from all directions and drowned with the smell of argeeleh.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The schools have gone silent, and the swimming pools have gone wild.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The playgrounds empty very late, and ice cream men start their daily tours at 11 a.m yelling my favorite two words: “Roookkyyaaaab;” “Ballaaddnnnaaa.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even the young boy selling <i>nawa3em </i>[sugar cakes] is back on the street corner.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At night wedding convoys with their beeping horns fill the street s, one, two , three, four…..countless weddings. Everyone gets married in the summer.</p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal">Homes are busy with the long anticipated warm hugs, hot tears wiped with a kiss on each cheek.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Your long, patient wait for your far away children is over for now; they are back, so rejoice, they have returned to fill silent homes with conversation, music, dance, and never ending feasts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Rejoice. For soon it will be time for goodbyes and your streets will empty again, your tree leaves will yellow, and quiet will fall as Fall washes over you. </p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal">Oh how beautiful you are in the summer; so elegantly dressed, softly manicured, and revving with life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Never mind a few bad hair days; everything is fixable.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Broken streets will be paved, wilted trees will be groomed….It all really does not matter,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>for you are beautiful, ever so inviting, ever so exciting, ever so ours.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Summer has returned, our Big Olive…Shine…<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-66178423234799023222011-05-18T14:13:00.000-07:002011-05-21T07:44:49.840-07:00On the TownBy David Moser<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVUgdEgb6XwZg7IQTnPJCbV5b1y41hPQmtalecR-oT_wrNk0xq4kvOUeRp0ERiS5CWS5Di8anzF-GNs8_S1eaDBovut0jTIhqSeM6x5bitSNRE3RVv1IL2g1spk5s-b8q8GMeXR_W8COY/s1600/Church_Candles.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 225px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608175938867099202" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVUgdEgb6XwZg7IQTnPJCbV5b1y41hPQmtalecR-oT_wrNk0xq4kvOUeRp0ERiS5CWS5Di8anzF-GNs8_S1eaDBovut0jTIhqSeM6x5bitSNRE3RVv1IL2g1spk5s-b8q8GMeXR_W8COY/s400/Church_Candles.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><br /><div>“Hi Ahmad, how are you?”<br /><br />“David, I am very good. I am very good. Where are you?”<br /><br />“I am in Abu Dis now, on my way home.”<br /><br />“Do you want to do something? I too am here in Abu Dis.”<br /><br />I wanted to go home. I wanted see if there is more news about yesterday’s protests and violence for Nakba day, I wanted to look at facebook and take my shoes off, but Ahmad almost never calls, and I felt like I should see him. I had written to him the night before to see if the posters I had been seeing hung around Abu Dis the past few days were of a man he introduced me to. The man was murdered with thirty six bullets on a busy street the week before over a blood feud between Abu Dis and the next village.<br /><br />“Ok Ahmad. Are you in the junction?”<br /><br />“Yes. I am exactly in the junction.”<br /><br />“Ok I will see you in two minutes.”<br /><br />Ahmad’s face has been thin from fasting since Ramadan almost nine months ago. It was just over a year ago that we met. “David, I am Ahmad. You don’t know me, but I work at the university also, and I have seen you. You work with the Bard College.” We met through mutual Spanish friends who were living in my building while spending a semester at the university. Tonight, I spotted him, talking with two other young men leaning against a grey sedan. I greeted him, “How are you Ahmad? It has been a long time. How are you doing?”<br /><br />“Ahh David. My friend. It is good to see you. I have been thinking of you.” He turned to his friends, “This is David.” We shake hands and exchange hellos. “Would you like to go to the café?”</div><br /><div>“Yes. I want to eat pizza.”<br /><br />“Ok. We will go there.” We invited his friends to come along and when they thanked us we said goodbye and turned around.<br /><br />"So how are you? I wrote you last night because the man who was killed looks so familiar. I thought maybe I met him through you.”<br /><br />“No David, you thought he was Iyad who took us to Jerico. The man who was shot, he was a driver. He is a poor man. It is so sad what is happening here. These people are ignorant people. They try to make the law with their hands.”<br /><br />“Yes it is sad. It feels strange to see his face on the posters. I guess I didn’t know him. But I recognize his face.”<br /><br />“You know this is new in Palestine, in Abu Dis. This did not happen before, families killing each other in Abu Dis.” We walked into the café to find it empty of customers. “There is no one here, its like we are in curfew.”<br /><br />“Can we still get pizza?”<br /><br />“I will check, if we cannot, I can take you somewhere different.” He asked the two teenagers standing behind the brown stone counter with a smooth marble top. We were in luck, so Ahmad ordered. Before sitting down we each took a soda from the case. I had a can of Fanta, Ahmad a glass bottle of sprite. One of the guys working was mentally retarded. As we turned away from the counter he handed us two straws. We said thank you. As we turned away again he held out a bottle opener and raised his chin and squinted, looking at our faces over the flesh of his cheeks, scrunched up as two mounds. Ahmad placed his Sprite back on the counter to be opened. We said thank you again.<br /><br />“He is doing well,” Ahmad said. “His mind is not perfect you know, but he is doing good I think.” We sat down on firm couches under a brown tapestry. “I am not happy here in Palestine David. Really I feel depressed. There is nothing fantastic in Abu Dis.”<br /><br />“You used to say you loved it here.” </div><br /><div>“I know. I used to love it. I don’t know why I am unhappy. I was blaming myself for this.”<br /><br />“You were blaming yourself for being unhappy?”<br /><br />“Yes. You know I was in Spain during the winter. I could have stayed there illegally. I could have married Diego too. You know, we are both straight. But for the law to stay, I could have married him.”<br /><br />“Is gay marriage legal in Spain?”<br /><br />“Yes, come on, Spain was the first in Europe to make this law. Is it the law in United States? I think in Louisiana.”<br /><br />“No, not in Louisiana.”<br /><br />“But I know a woman who was there eighteen years. She said it was very common in the cities there. It was like normal.”<br /><br />“I’m sure being gay is in some parts. But gay marriage is only legal in a few states.”<br /><br />“Europe is amazing. The people are very free there. With their bodies. They will go on the beach with nothing. In Spain I saw this. They will go on any beach. In America it is only in their clubs that they will go like this. It is the law. If you go with nothing on the beach they will arrest you.”<br /><br />“Yes, it’s not like Europe. We always wear a bathing suit.” Another group entered the restaurant – three men in their mid twenties. They were each unshaven and sat down on other couches around a table. They looked exhausted in the way one does during a long flight, enduring the work of stagnation. They ordered two water pipes of sweet flavored tobacco and instant coffee.<br /><br />“Ahmad, do you think that the fighting here will continue, from yesterday, from the Nakba day?”<br /><br />“Yes, I think there will be an intifada. I hope it will not. But I think it will. Because of the political situation here. There is no future in Palestine. The future is blackness. I see only blackness.”<br /><br />“Yeah, it’s bad.”<br /><br />“Why did Fatah and Hamas come to work together? They are surrendering.”<br /><br />“You think so?”<br /><br />“You cannot go ten meters without a settlement or a checkpoint. I want to tell the Israeli government to take and give, take, and give. Don’t just take! Look at what is happening in Abu Dis. Families are killing each other. They are shooting. No one can stop them. There is no Palestinian security, there is no Israeli security. Give us something!”<br /><br />Our pizza arrived. I knew not to expect much from Pizza in Abu Dis, but it still looked beautiful, the shining yellow cheese bejeweled with salty canned vegetables: red and green peppers, kernels of corn, brown mushrooms, sliced green olives. I could never understand why they cover pizza in colorful but mushy and salty vegetables in a place with so much cheap and delicious fresh produce. Perhaps they are worried it would rot; business did seem slow. We started eating.</div><br /><div>“I am so depressed here David. I tried to change it. I went to a church. I went to a mosque. Do you believe me that I went to a church?”<br /><br />“You prayed in a church to be happy?”<br /><br />“Yes I went and fired a candle and sat there but it didn’t work.” He paused. “Do you know b-12 vitamins?”<br /><br />“Yeah, I guess.”<br /><br />“I went and bought b-12 vitamins and took them. They are for your spirits. They are to make you feel excellent. I tried them but they did not work. I feel like it is hard. I am still looking for my girl. I am twenty nine now. I feel like I am getting old.”<br /><br />“Man, you look like your fifteen.”<br /><br />“That is because my face is thin now. Do you remember last year when we met?”<br /><br />“You looked good then and you look good now Ahmad.”<br /><br />“Thank you David, really, thank you.”<br /><br />We went to the counter. I tried, but Ahmad paid. He insisted, “I invited you. You deserve something more than thirty eight shekels. You are my guest here.”<br /><br />We thanked both the guys at the counter and turned to the door. I pushed it open and stepped out into the air. I breathed in deeply through my nose. It was cool for May, and that was a nice surprise.</div></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-72001809570762296682011-01-29T03:35:00.000-08:002011-01-29T03:40:34.562-08:00Long Time Comin'By Tala Abu Rahmeh<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaWIiQKHNxzn9R9BT97taUPFov00l3IKp__K76GuMlYcJ8HxUG5TIYuyJcNZgX3EG4l7HdXr2zsD_CqmYLZgDMxRCh0BhGk-Hxyy1EVro-tqSjEk2gfxfMRHqHwkT7CZ3RSkKUpEmK2wvP/s1600/Egyptian+Protests+.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaWIiQKHNxzn9R9BT97taUPFov00l3IKp__K76GuMlYcJ8HxUG5TIYuyJcNZgX3EG4l7HdXr2zsD_CqmYLZgDMxRCh0BhGk-Hxyy1EVro-tqSjEk2gfxfMRHqHwkT7CZ3RSkKUpEmK2wvP/s320/Egyptian+Protests+.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5567571028754601474" /></a><br />A Tunisian man, with beautiful silver hair, stood in front of the camera a day after the ex Tunisian president fled the country and said, "I have grown old waiting for this golden day to arrive," he kept saying "old" while touching his soft hair and shedding tears. Last night, an Egyptian man, 29-years-old, said that he has never understood democracy or freedom, but he always wanted them both, badly, together, and now is the time. <br /> <br />I was born in a house where pictures of Jamal Abdul Naser and Yassir Arafat glimmered side by side, and stories of Arab dignity and pride weaved themselves against the harsh water of Jordan, then suddenly, the pictures grew dusty, and became occupants of the slit sitting between the fridge and the wall. At 7, I used to tell people that I was Arab; not Jordanian, not Palestinian, not Egyptian, but Arab. My mouth tasted the honey of vowels and the bitter weather. At 16, while hiding under my bed from bombs and having little to no mention in the news, I renounced it all. <br /> <br />Then, out of nowhere, a slit in the clearest sky pushed itself open, and suddenly, we became alive. People took over their streets and screamed in hunger and anger. Demonstrators are still getting shot in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. Everybody who endured garbage city and slept on old graves of past kings finally said NO to tyranny and indignity, no to being so rejected from life. Most demonstrations were planned via Facebook and text messages. On the news, Arab thinkers are calling us the Facebook generation who is sparking a modern revolution.<br /> <br />It all started when a Tunisian graduate student, exactly my age (26), burned himself in protest. He had been selling vegetables to support his family, and the government, for no reason at all, confiscated his cart. I think of him every night, his brown skin curling in flames and shedding like flakes of thin chocolate. His body slowly folding in on itself, surprised at its ability to burst in pure, unstoppable fire. Two days later, young men burned themselves in Algeria and Egypt.<br /> <br />You might wonder, why should anyone be proud of youth burning themselves and getting shot in their own streets? Because who knew, that in the year 2011, people would still believe in hope? If our people didn't believe in an enormous amount of humanity, why would they bother? News channels race to report the names of the fallen, all aged 20, 21, 22. In the times of iphones and big houses, there are still people willing to die for the freedom of their people. <br /> <br />If anything, this proves how long our path really is. In Amman, people flaunt their Gucci bags in giant malls while the rest of the population is hungry. In Palestine, officials glued themselves to their seats and took the initiative to sell their people for little to nothing. In Cairo, Mubarak thinks he can silence his people by firing their own army at them. In Saudi Arabia, women can't even drive let alone have rights. In Iraq, people are killed by the American Army then bombed by their own people. We need so many revolutions to restore just an inch of love and dignity. <br /> <br />Nevertheless, today, we should celebrate; celebrate our own capacity for courage, and determination to never be silent. Real change has never been made overnight, but even the most pessimistic of us cannot deny that there is revolution in the air, and the taste and sweet smell of something new. So, hurray to our Facebook generation, may you never let yourself be silenced.Its the time for hopehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10903607814345796585noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-44760593899647655522011-01-16T10:26:00.000-08:002011-02-15T00:35:28.343-08:00An American High School Story<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xaOWuvO6ONw5vHy2jnxgngE42atPKq8DQiRpe8HjlqfAFjLLs-WE97xlzbVnIcszyhyxJpzRpUWtPe729LACjGt-EVlzVPIBU8i-jDNb5qHmZDhT6yO1uSDTxuXpAWYlF7r_2LCn9Aw/s1600/31814_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px; display: block; height: 266px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562852986852401138" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xaOWuvO6ONw5vHy2jnxgngE42atPKq8DQiRpe8HjlqfAFjLLs-WE97xlzbVnIcszyhyxJpzRpUWtPe729LACjGt-EVlzVPIBU8i-jDNb5qHmZDhT6yO1uSDTxuXpAWYlF7r_2LCn9Aw/s400/31814_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />By David Moser<br /><br />Continued from <span style="font-size:180%;"><a href="http://ramallahthebigolive.blogspot.com/2011/01/american-high-school-story.html">Part One</a></span><br /><br /><br />Part Two: Three Wars<br /><br />The week after the planes hit, our team had a party. We each drank several two-ounce shots of cheap vodka around a kitchen table in Stockbridge— I was the first to take mine. That night the alcohol ran through my blood like nothing I had felt before or since. I was light and nimble and warm as the world around me pulsated and bent. The next morning we rose and drove to the high school where we joined the effort to paint a 1500 square meter American flag across the hill in front of the building. A few days later, the whole school was photographed sitting around it for the newspaper.<br /><br />The weekend the United States began bombing Afghanistan, I was in New York. The city was still covered with pictures of the missing, the dead—our dead. Every corner had flowers, phone numbers to call if the pictured were spotted, prayers. I spent that Sunday afternoon making out in Central Park with a fling from camp. We found grass in the sun and then let our sixteen year old tongues take over. As we walked out of the park, Fifth Avenue was waving hundreds of flags. It was Columbus Day weekend, and I was excited by the new air of the new season and the rare occurrence of a hand in mine.<br /><br />That night I took the Long Island Rail Road to Great Neck for a seventeenth birthday party. It was a crowd of camp friends, many of whom had not seen each other for over a year; with our trip canceled, we had just spent our first summer for a while in different places. In a furnished basement, we drank whatever watery beer and no-name liquor we had—I was angry at a friend who drank too much too fast and spent the rest of the night drooling over the toilet. Some of the other girls held her hair back as she vomited; I told her she fucked up our chance to hang out. The television in the corner talked about the opening hours of a bombing campaign against the Taliban. Later in the night a few of us found a spot down the street, obscured by a pine tree, to smoke pot from a water pipe.<br /><br />When the weekend ended, and I returned to Grand Central, a middle aged white man with dark hair, a blue shirt and jeans, stood in the great hall holding a sign over his head: “Death to the Taliban.” His display, in this center of the world, did not bother me, or it seemed anyone else. He smiled with bravado and hope, and most of us smiled back. It tickled me as I got on the train.<br /><br />The Taliban fell quickly as our soldiers lent fire power the good guys of the Northern Alliance. The news was excited:<br /><br />“The men can shave again! Look at how they fill the barber shop!”<br /><br />The months passed with college visits and anticipation. When I visited Bard, the students wore strange sunglasses and cursed in class. A white sheet hung from an Ivy covered building with, “Free Palestine” hand painted in dark orange. When I visited Syracuse, there were signs advertising a discussion of “Life in the IDF,” with recently discharged Israeli soldiers. The war in Afghanistan was reported quietly enough for most of us to ignore. Reverence for the morning pledge depleted, and people in the government started to talk openly about a war with Iraq. My community divided between “No Blood for Oil” and “Bomb Saddam.” Two of my friends were arrested in town for protesting against a war without a permit. They loved that they were arrested and the story of their detention was more brutal with every telling. One of them later joined a sniper unit.<br /><br />I didn’t go to many protests, but decided to make a documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Now that I live in the West Bank I hate every filmmaker I meet. I was eighteen and traveled around the northeast taping interviews with young Israelis and Palestinians studying and working in the states. I asked them about their home and their conflict. I heard testimony from a Palestinian college student in Portland Maine about sneaking around checkpoints to enter Jenin and find much of the city in piles. He talked about soldiers who took over his cousin’s house to use as a base, piled the family’s clothing in the center of a room and defecated in it for days. I listened to a red haired Israeli tell of losing his grip on sanity staring into the night on guard at his base. After I turned the camera off, he told me the soldiers used to compete for who could masturbate most in a shift. Two months after our interview, as a civilian, he watched a bus explode outside of his home in Haifa, and then carried bodies out of it.<br /><br />The weekend the United States began bombing Iraq again, I was with Palestinians in Westchester. They told me that the Arab satellite networks were reporting large numbers of American casualties and a strong Iraqi defense. They weren’t sure who to believe. After the interviews, I joined them for a cigarette. One of the guys was hung over, and took me to the dining hall for greasy French fries.<br /><br />That spring I spent hours most afternoons in the editing room. I would drive home excited, listening to Guru rap about American ghettos, and feeling that somehow, I was taking my stand: against the war, against the intifada, against the occupation. In May of 2003, I screened my video in the high school auditorium. My family was there, my friends and some of their parents came, my teachers came, and some teachers who I hardly knew showed up out of interest. The movie ended with hope: there were good people living through this conflict, most wanted peace, and they all had faces. The project was well received and I was deeply happy to share its stories and take my stand. That night, lying in bed, I pressed my face against the plastic screen of my bedroom window. Rain was landing loudly against the new, full, leaves of spring, and I could smell the earth drinking. It was the most accomplished I had ever felt, and in that moment I thought, “This peace shit is for dreamers.”<br /><br />I still hope I was wrong.The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-62820065965089219922011-01-12T00:13:00.000-08:002011-09-07T10:15:10.586-07:00An American High School Story<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcyxNYCDbAgBE-G0Tx0b8vNrpg8ys3e6bvtbc5L9nQyH3RIGIDtASTVIwQvhRaeXN0-ciS7pxKiZpGFhrFn2HI1zQ1ys6h8UG7HJMtsXNIaDbFV2MzN3fs0oDUYOHUo0u7Wsg31Y5t6zU/s1600/Flag+Group.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 226px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcyxNYCDbAgBE-G0Tx0b8vNrpg8ys3e6bvtbc5L9nQyH3RIGIDtASTVIwQvhRaeXN0-ciS7pxKiZpGFhrFn2HI1zQ1ys6h8UG7HJMtsXNIaDbFV2MzN3fs0oDUYOHUo0u7Wsg31Y5t6zU/s320/Flag+Group.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649666928851128322" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>By David Moser</div><div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Part One: Two Autumns<br /><br /></div><div>I started reading the news the day Mohammad Al-Dura appeared on my porch. He was in his father’s lap, on the front page of our paper. I had known Palestinians had arms and legs, feet for stepping on flags, hands with fingers for pulling triggers or ignition chords. But their heads had always been masked. Rather than eyes or dimples, they had featureless cloth, sometimes a black and white checkered pattern wrapped their heads, other times it was just black or white, like bank robbers or the Ku Klux Klan. Mohammad and his father though, they had faces—one a man, and one a boy, and their hands held each other. I was fifteen, and felt closer to the boy. My mother explained the pictures: screaming for help, cowering in terror, still. That day, my mother made me read the news. Every day after, the news itself did. I desperately wanted the violence to stop. Through my camp, I had been registered for, and was eagerly awaiting, a trip to Israel the following summer. I would hike Masada, swim the Dead Sea, and celebrate Shabbat in Jerusalem. The trip was eventually canceled, and America was about to get scary too. In less than a year, during Spanish class, the towers fell.</div><div><br />I must say, the weeks following September 11th were a good time in my life. I was running varsity cross country, and for the first time feeling that I had come into my own within the high school social world. A senior from the team was teaching me stick, letting me drive his Jeep without a license. My mind was never far from the towers though, and times were strange. At a candle-light vigil for the victims, I saw my father join others in song for the first time. When I was a toddler he w<img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 223px; float: left; height: 166px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561209908266856146" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9ydb3wBoeeadvoHN0ZOVUbqSv2ztboNeXsneDpkWo3lCat_0pVz0GrB0ODnkxfXqAc9ih6F64kochA5o_WRlFTt3Iwyd9tIjjvVZMxbw3Aqpo9x55XN7iQ0oxYhdwkCA7N2nGIoqlSHc/s400/dave+pic.jpg" border="0" />ould sing “Chicken” along with Mississippi John Hurt. That evening, he sang “God Bless America,” although I don’t know what he would have meant by the God part. At night, the wonder of the stars had to compete with the wonder of the planes, criss-crossing our sky and blinking with terrible new potential. But none of it compared to the wonder of growing. I was sixteen, and one Saturday afternoon stepped out of the shower and noticed, to my surprise, that I had abdomen definition and burgeoning visible pectorals. My right hand tracked the growth of my chest every morning in homeroom as I recited the Pledge of Allegiance with, for the first time since kindergarten, a sense of earnestness and awe. The Berkshire Hills turned orange and yellow, ever oblivious to the other changes of the day.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">(<a href="http://ramallahthebigolive.blogspot.com/2011/01/american-high-school-story_16.html">To Be Continued</a>)</span>…</div></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-14437804003784854942010-12-13T11:27:00.000-08:002010-12-13T12:04:07.711-08:00Habibi Don't Love Meto Omar & Anees
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<br />By Tala Abu Rahmeh
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2ZCMHREBrEn4xkQdCANCcbAHGK24JoeRUy_8gZcaDb_ohYTAeQQHrx8H2-h7pFT7yIBNen2xRyjduU0pPIgRJFwbAsnX6pZWhkoGYfsBuSXrmDdhfB-dX0zo9ljo0Y7BgGJRtcCbMuNNF/s1600/yafa1998_jpg.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 299px; height: 269px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2ZCMHREBrEn4xkQdCANCcbAHGK24JoeRUy_8gZcaDb_ohYTAeQQHrx8H2-h7pFT7yIBNen2xRyjduU0pPIgRJFwbAsnX6pZWhkoGYfsBuSXrmDdhfB-dX0zo9ljo0Y7BgGJRtcCbMuNNF/s320/yafa1998_jpg.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5550251449589614434" /></a> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/talaaburahmeh/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>329</o:Words> <o:characters>1877</o:Characters> <o:company>American University </o:Company> <o:lines>15</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>3</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>2305</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>“Habibi don’t see me” </i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> <span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" >Suheir Hammad</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" > </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I went to Yaffa on Friday night. I have a permit that expires next month, so my friends are taking me all over the place to milk it before I become illegal. It’s almost funny that my ability to drive 20 minutes outside of Ramallah in the direction of Jerusalem will actually expire on a specific date.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have always avoided Yaffa, I never had a relationship with the city aside from my family’s stories of being uprooted from their homes and the smell of the sea, but every time I go there I feel incredibly rejected, like nothing I will ever be or say will ever make me worthy of this city. It is obviously an unhealthy relationship.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After we approached a row of stunning lights shining from Ben Gurion Airport, our car slowly began sinking into Yaffa’s streets that were dimmed in anticipation of Saturday. There was something incredibly sad about such an ordinary ritual, like a child being forced to sleep and go to a terrible school in the morning. </p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sensing my anxiety, my friend Anees drove us to the beach. Since I have little to no knowledge of the city I had no idea we got there until he parked. I never told either of my friends that I was terrified of the sea at night, but for some reason I wasn’t scared. Perhaps it was that feeling of having so little to lose that hung upon my entire space.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We stood there for a bit and all I could think of was how inadequate I felt. I kept wondering that if this city saw me, really saw me, wouldn’t it at least love me a little? A scarier thought chocked me for a second, what if it did see me, and found nothing worthy of love? That would be the ultimate nightmare.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After our night in Yaffa was over, we drove all the way on road 1 accompanied by some songs, a little sadness, three jumbo slices of pizza, and a promise “to do this again.”</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I haven’t felt myself since that day, and maybe I won’t for a while, but tonight I’m sending a prayer of love to the city that won’t love me, to those who fight so hard against hate, for those who love themselves no matter how mutilated they feel (and those who don’t), for my four grandparents who lived and died in the shadows of Yaffa’s oranges, and for all of us, may we all be loved, precisely and plentifully. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Its the time for hopehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10903607814345796585noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-27588891389683148552010-11-25T01:35:00.000-08:002011-01-17T12:46:14.838-08:00Feast of the Sacrifice<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8P1-zZlLQ2dtGh7kVCs4A_BQWeuTnZivtfw5lT-bw27p9aNbJ2cjiIpEKAlbHfp9Pr0BW3ML-wGKrUaIsznUT7qFOM3cLa8-Pg4MWfVrD4ieFGvvmx7TpP8NGd_g_fLSHf8TeOLkVoxAc/s1600/abu+dis.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8P1-zZlLQ2dtGh7kVCs4A_BQWeuTnZivtfw5lT-bw27p9aNbJ2cjiIpEKAlbHfp9Pr0BW3ML-wGKrUaIsznUT7qFOM3cLa8-Pg4MWfVrD4ieFGvvmx7TpP8NGd_g_fLSHf8TeOLkVoxAc/s320/abu+dis.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543422355297958338" border="0" /></a><br /><div>By: David Moser</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In Abu Dis, during the Eid, when the children have been given gifts, the parents take rest, and for two days the streets are run by boys with guns.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">They stand next to boxes of yellow oranges and green cucumbers, and against the Jerusalem stone of homes, with black rifles strapped on their shoulders and pistols in their hands. They dash across filthy empty streets where on most days men drive their cars, racing from wall to wall. Sometimes the boys hide behind garbage dumpsters and shoot at the windows of passing vehicles. Sometimes they shoot each other.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, the guns are toys, for who would give guns to boys?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Bo bo bo (come here),” one of the teenagers says, parroting the Hebrew he has heard from soldiers as he points his plastic pellet shooting<span style=""> </span>weapon at me while his friends smile, impressed. Before he says another word, I take my passport from my jeans pocket and pass it to him. He pretends to flip through, and gives it back with a grin at my one-upmanship. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have also had thoughts of how it would be to be in the army.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Years ago, I had a dream. I was an Israeli soldier, uniformed in olive green, alone amidst urban battle. I was standing against an outer wall of a boxy building and glanced around the corner to see two Palestinians, one man and one woman, who I knew were ready to kill me. These weren’t anonymous fighters, but people I knew in real life, and even dreaming I knew they would never hurt me, if they could only know who I was behind the uniform. But I had to turn the corner. If I turned and spoke to them, they would shoot me before they could see who I was. So I had to shoot first, at my friends. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I did it. I turned and fired at them, hitting both the man and the woman. Rather than fall dead, or even begin to bleed, they sat speaking softly and smiling to each other, unaware of what I had done to them. But they had been shot nonetheless, and would surely die in a matter of seconds. I could not take back the bullets, and panicked at the thought that as they passed from life to death, they would see that it was me who had sent them there. In my terror and humiliation, I started shooting again, and as the dream went dark, fired round after round in prayer that I could kill them before they knew who I was.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I woke up, the sky was already blue.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote></blockquote><br /></div><div><br /></div>Its the time for hopehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10903607814345796585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-81819648686512736762010-11-17T02:43:00.000-08:002010-11-25T01:35:11.947-08:00Roast Beef Eid<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq0jbB7JG7bPZJPokEDUn-5a-cMScUZh5AHTGs3Eh9rZn0L242DZE3ZaMQHuo5xcNRxCJXVGhc6fqyWwk07RUuxrUmSTT3Lajb7OOtlq1DT7PmVTflEuoPyGeaKsHl0NGau0PS4T1YP_3z/s1600/hindbeh.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq0jbB7JG7bPZJPokEDUn-5a-cMScUZh5AHTGs3Eh9rZn0L242DZE3ZaMQHuo5xcNRxCJXVGhc6fqyWwk07RUuxrUmSTT3Lajb7OOtlq1DT7PmVTflEuoPyGeaKsHl0NGau0PS4T1YP_3z/s320/hindbeh.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5540467708346073922" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">By: Tala Abu Rahmeh</span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I was on the phone with my great aunt this morning, she was talking about how happy her grandchildren were with Eid Al-Adha, all dressed up and running around the streets of the village collecting tiny gifts and cookies.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">On TV, there were images of the Eid festivities in Gaza city. A pregnant looking correspondent asked a child about what he wanted to eat in celebration of this holiday, “Shawerma” he said, one of the cheapest foods one can buy. On a holiday where people boast their huge tables crowded with meat and cookies, this kid wanted a cheap sandwich.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I was in the back of the car, driving to my aunt’s huge lunch, when I started thinking about hope, or perhaps, how hope works. Driving to our small family lunch were people who lost their sister, their moms, their fathers, and said goodbye to traveling daughters (not knowing whether they’ll ever come back), and here we were, on the road to celebrate a holiday of food and hope.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It occurred to me then that (hope) could be the running theme of the city; less than a few years ago, Ramallah was collecting its rubble like pieces of blown up children, thinking that it might never survive the agony of lost limbs and loves, but look at us now, the whole city, heck, the whole country, is going to lunch somewhere.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">When we got to my aunt’s house, there were three huge platters on the dinning room table; stuffed zucchini and grape leaves, thickly sliced roast beef, some goat’s well baked internal organs (yup, we eat that), salads, hummus, and a plate of cooked dandelions dipped in tahini (yes, we eat that too, they are really good for you, you should try them sometime).</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I filled my plate with salad and dandelions; the less complicated foods. I stared at my plate for a while and thought, this time around, and after so much loss, I’m thankful for the less complicated things. Tiny love notes, kind phone calls, warm music, long novels, funny kids, good poems, and of course, delicious food, prepared with at least an ounce of optimism. Most importantly, I’m thankful for the ability to be grateful, despite my deep inability to not mark this as the fourth Eid without my mother.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As for you, little child from Gaza, I hope you get to eat a huge Shawerma sandwich, filled with fresh vegetables and heaps of outstanding (dripping-all-over-your new clothes) tahini.</span></span></p><div><br /></div></span></div>Its the time for hopehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10903607814345796585noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-79609216746783346362010-11-06T03:19:00.000-07:002010-11-27T04:09:59.094-08:00On the Bus<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">by: David Moser</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Welcome, welcome. There is space. You can stand.” He says.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I step onto the blue carpeted bus. Palestinian bus. Jerusalem bound. I pay my six shekels, get my ticket, and stand at the front. The seats are filled with women from the university. The men huddle by the door.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Where are you from?” </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“America.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“America. I love America. Especially Las Vegas.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Las Vegas?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. I love the poker.” He rubs his right thumb and index finger together. He raises his thick black eyebrows and purses his lips. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Really? Do you play poker?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He nods once.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Are you good?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He raises his chin and makes eye contact. “What do you study at the university?” He asks.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I am a teacher. I teach writing. In English.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Ahh, welcome. Really, I love your country very much. But you make fuck up in Iraq. You make fuck up in Pakistan. You make fuck up in Afghanistan. But I hate Bin Laden. He is total mother fucker. And you, do you love Israel? “</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I live here in Abu Dis.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes, Abu Dis, Israel. Do you love it here in Israel?" </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I look at him knowingly. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“What country is this?” He asks.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I thought it was Palestine.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He smiles a wide, toothy smile, touches my shoulder then shakes my right hand. “Yes this is Palestine. Israel, it is nothing. It will be gone in ten years. Believe me. In ten years.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“How? How will it be gone? Will you beat Netanyahu at poker?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He smiles again. He makes the fingers of both his hands into guns. Lines them up with the left in front and the right in back like he is aiming a rifle. “Me and my brother, we will do it.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You will do what? Someone will kill you. And then what?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No. We will shoot them. All of them.” He looks at the floor. We roll down a hill, guided by curving asphalt, into a rocky valley. Two leather skinned men face Mecca in afternoon prayer from the roof of a two story house they have built all day. The sun is still high.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Are you married?” He slides his right pointer and thumb down his left ring finger. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No. I’m not married.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“How old are you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Guess.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He looks at my nose, my eyes. “Twenty…six.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Twenty five.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Will you marry next year?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Enshalla.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He rubs his two index fingers together. He asks, “Are you Fatah or Hamas?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I am Democrats.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Democrats. But here, do you love Fatah or Hamas?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I don’t vote here. What about you? Fatah or Hamas?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Fatah.” He nods twice. “Hamas.” He says and squints his eyes, flares his nose, flicks his right palm open as if shooing a fly. “Do you know Ismail Haniyeh?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. From Hamas. He is in Gaza.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. He is a donkey. He is a big donkey.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“That’s true.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You know Mohammad Dahlan?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. From Fatah.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. He is my father. I love him.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“He is your father?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. I am from Gaza. He is my father. I love him. Really.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“If he is your father, why are you riding the bus?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He laughs once. “He is not my father, but I do love him.” We enter the round-about in front of the settlement Ma’ale Adumim. A middle aged man with grey hair and a grey kippah drove his ocean blue sedan in front of our bus as he entered the settlement. My companion flicked his hand again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“We are not terrorists here in Palestine. Right?” He was asking only what I thought. He knew already.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You just said you plan on killing every Israeli.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No. This is not terrorism. This is an important thing.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“So what is terrorism?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“What Israel did in Gaza. What Israel does in Jerusalem.” He made only his right hand into a gun this time. “Every day.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Where do you live in Jerusalem?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Shuafat. My mother is from Hebron. Have you heard of the Jaber family?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes I have.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Do you love George Bush?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I make eye contact. Scrunch my eyebrows. “No.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“He is a good man! A great man!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I elbow him lightly in the ribs and smile. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">He smiles and nods. “He fucked every country.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“And America too. He fucked America too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We drove slowly into the A-Za’im checkpoint. The contract security guards were changing shift. We stopped. The door opened. The whole bus emptied as we stepped into the hot afternoon, walked through the fenced passageway, showed ID to a female soldier with a brown ponytail and big hips. We stood outside the bus as the girls reentered. When we stepped back in, we took different places. There was someone between us, and we didn’t speak again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-50578260238385784422010-11-02T02:14:00.000-07:002010-11-05T07:37:59.277-07:00...And Release<div style="text-align: right;">by: R.Kafri</div><div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">I release you…I release me of you and search for peace away from anything that is you.<span style=""> </span>I am letting you go. I am freeing you and me. I am turning my back to the dead end and moving into the open streets.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>I want to forget you in Ramallah, because I met you in Ramallah. I want me to dissolve into the city’s shadows until you no longer haunt my sleep, my food, my morning runs, until you forget me and I can no longer remember you.<span style=""> </span>I am letting you go, not for you to come back, but for you to disappear into the dust of dug up streets, into the remains of old deserted buildings, into the ghosts of old homes turned into high rises, into the brightness of neon signs, the loudness of Thursday nights at Orjuwan, and the mist of argeeleh at Azure.<span style=""> </span>Vanish! Please go and let me go… I release you to melt into the smells of hot Eiffel Knafeh, and sizzling Abu Khalil Falafel.<span style=""> </span>I release you into the sounds of car horns, the call to prayer, and church bells ringing.<span style=""> </span>I am releasing you into your city, my city…OUR city. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I walk through the streets hoping to forget you on the corner of Rukab or to accidently drop you at the Manara.<span style=""> </span>I walk from one store to the other gradually picking up my pace hoping to shake you off.<span style=""> </span>I want to discard you like an empty Zaman cup, like a half eaten shawirma sandwich from Abu Al Abed. Release me, let me go like a helium balloon so that the wind can pick me up and elevate me.<span style=""> </span>Set me free so I am free to see you or not see you, to miss you or not miss you…</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I release you, release me… </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">But oh how miserable I am! Because every time I let you go, I find a way to leave you behind, the city reminds me of you, for you are the city, and the city is me, and we are of each other….</p><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Peace, peace, peace….and release<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">To the skeletons that haunt us, to the past that makes us, to the present that shapes us and to the future that fills us with hope, lets hope...</span><br /></p></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-68550114374364780822010-10-16T04:24:00.000-07:002010-11-06T03:22:26.821-07:00The View from my Room<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dYv7zd3kNWmBMsEyT8v-gXDXTJS8qpWJqkssVPEgu_UKxu6tJvVxgDRBffoN6VL3gfwhPrVjY1wZ-LYmlIeeY53ZNS0qM5KyG5SwR1sCJLkrSij4MhcuHGVfbmW0RQNW0AueZ2C6uT4/s1600/Klean-Kanteen.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 224px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dYv7zd3kNWmBMsEyT8v-gXDXTJS8qpWJqkssVPEgu_UKxu6tJvVxgDRBffoN6VL3gfwhPrVjY1wZ-LYmlIeeY53ZNS0qM5KyG5SwR1sCJLkrSij4MhcuHGVfbmW0RQNW0AueZ2C6uT4/s320/Klean-Kanteen.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5528604365005883458" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"> <i> *By David Moser </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have a room here in Palestine. In my room I have my water bottle I bought on a rainy day early last spring on the Jersey shore. My parents and brother and I were visiting my grandparents at Easter. My grandfather can’t walk more than a few steps now. We love him. He feels worse than he has to because he lets himself get dehydrated. It’s very hard on my grandmother to care for him all the time. After a while in the living room, with the TV turned up high, we get a bit of cabin fever. When it’s cold and cloudy like it was this Easter we don’t really want to go to the beach, so we go the mall. That’s where I bought my water bottle. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I can sit in my room here and notice my bottle and remember that afternoon with my parents and brother and how we laughed about how we dislike the mall. That afternoon my brother moved an expensive copy of the Bible to the “Religious Fiction” section of the Borders Express. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">On my desk here I have a postcard of the Cloisters in New York. I lived in Inwood off and on for nine months and spent afternoons in Fort Tryon Park reading short stories and noticing the seasons changing. That’s where I read the first story of Dubliners and thought of how cruel the sun is to leave us as it does after the summer. How quickly it seems to lose interest. Of course the first cool day feels great. To be warmed by our bodies inside of wool or cotton rather than the fire of the sun. We warm ourselves! But by March we are very cold. The park is also where I sat and thought of how Tegan too cooled to me. I walked through the park when my heart was still beating hard knowing I was moving to Palestine. I walked there before I told my parents. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">From my room, I hear fireworks most nights. The first time I was very scared. My first night here I heard booms from the street. After the booms I heard bottles breaking. I was nervous and didn’t know what I could be hearing. It wasn’t fireworks. It sounded like demolition maybe. I didn’t know what demolition sounded like. I went to sleep. My second night here I was taken out for argelia and tea. We smoked a block from the huge ugly wall those who follow events here, hear so much about. It’s covered in political paint: slogans, maps, promises. That night my hosts drove me home. We turned a corner and found Israeli soldiers blocking the intersection to my building. One of them pointed his rifle at us and screamed “lech lech lech” (go go go) as he approached our car. It was dark. I think he was scared. The other soldiers kept focus on the men down the block.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The men down the block stood behind dumpsters tipped on their sides in the road to block the army jeeps. They knew the soldiers would come that night. The dumpsters make booms as they are pushed on their sides and bottles fall out and break. It hadn’t been demolition. We made a three point turn and drove away from the fighting. I was in the back seat and shaking. We drove to the back roads. I asked my host if he was scared. He told me only a little, and that Kevin Costner was one of his favorite actors. I thought of Field of Dreams and playing baseball with my father. On weekends he took me to the little league field and pitched to me and hit me ground balls. There were no soldiers on the back roads. When I got to my apartment my hands were still shaking when I unlocked the door. And still when I locked it behind me. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The third night here I stayed in. I spent the night with my laptop. I like telling people that Barack Obama gave me my laptop. A year ago I was in Poplar Bluff working for the campaign. I spent days organizing democrats and nights reporting numbers and printing canvassing materials. By the end of the campaign I had a guard with a gun at the office twenty four hours a day. It was also a scary place to be at night. I don’t tell many Palestinians that Barack Obama gave me my computer. Many would not be impressed. It was the third night that I first heard fireworks. I didn’t know they were fireworks. I did know there had been street fighting the night before. I thought the new booms were guns. I would have enjoyed a quiet night, and think many others might have also, but a wedding calls for fireworks here, and the show goes on. The happy nights and the terrible ones both come with booms. Many years on the Fourth of July, my parents took my brother and me to see the Pittsfield Mets play in Wahconah Park. They were a triple A team, full of young, hard-working players chasing their major league dreams in a park named after a princess of an exiled and exterminated Indian tribe in a city depressed by addiction and the closure of the General Electric plant. After the Fourth of July games, fans could walk onto the field and watch the largest fireworks display in the county. I remember feeling the booms in my ribs and leaning against my parents. I only came up to their chests then. After the fireworks we would avoid the heaviest of departure traffic by going through the back streets of residential Pittsfield. In that neighborhood, fat old white women watched us pass from their porches where they had also watched the fireworks.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On those car rides home, I usually fell asleep.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>*David Moser works at Al Quds University and lives in Abu Dis, where he talks to people in the streets and looks at the mountains of Jordan.</i></p>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-39063849399075953072010-10-03T14:29:00.000-07:002010-11-06T03:24:38.307-07:00Diaries of a Daily Commuter: Morning of Random Thoughts<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: right">by: R.Kafri
<br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:arial;"></span></span> </div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:arial;">Disclaimer from author: I have been suffering from blogger's block for two weeks. The pressure to produce an entry did not help. The chaos we have experienced at work has left me uncentered and filled with random thoughts. I am sharing with you one of my free writes...This is in no way meant to be a literary piece of art.</span>
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<br /></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Instructions for reading this blog: assume a very sarcastic posture. Please do not read too much into it. Read with a deep bored monotone with an occasional high pitch when asking questions.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Again, do not read too much into it.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Close your eyes and imagine the actual commute.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Laugh (well let’s hope you will find this funny, if you don’t,<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>wait for the next entry, perhaps that will be more of your style).<span style="font-size:0;">
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<br /></span></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">7:00 a.m. Morning coffee with milk, no sugar….No No anise cookie, too many calories…</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">SMS to Colleague: Meet me downstairs, on my way</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Facebook Status update: Abu Dis</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:0;"></span>7:10 a.m. Exiting Ramallah…sound of heart breaking, no seriously, heart breaks. I have become a local, cannot get away from this city…that is sad…very sad….</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">7:15 a.m.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Stuck in Qalandia traffic, no reason for traffic jam, yet stuck in traffic. Oh wait, Qalandia checkpoint is blocked, so there IS a reason. </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Facebook Status update: stuck in Qalandia</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:0;"></span>To my right: the Wall. Favorite graphite entry: Ctrl + Alt + Delete.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Random thought crosses my mind. What if Israel had a Facebook account? Imagine the notifications:</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">Oppressed Palestinian just wrote on your wall</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">Angry and humiliated Palestinian drew on your wall.</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">Pissed off Palestinian woman posted a link on your wall</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">Solidarity expatriate posted the Apartheid application on your wall.</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">The US sent you a message: can you please please, pretty please keep the settlement freeze…love ya!</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">Angry, but very smart Palestinian just infiltrated your wall.</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">England just tagged you in a note: The Belfour Declaration</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hamas > Israel, you are going down with handmade rockets baby!! </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Still at a standstill; to my left: The Camping Center. Tents, tarps, and all camping needs… A camping center in the middle of a refugee camp, anyone here sees the irony? <span style="font-size:0;"></span>(Note to self: excellent blog entry, must write about this sometime). </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:00 a.m. Finally made it outside of Qalandia; on the “open road” (if you call that an open road); more like an open death trap. It should have a disclaimer: Drive at your own risk, loose pot holes, high speed bumps and armed settlers.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Why hasn’t anyone made this into a video game yet? Hmmmmm……</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:05 a.m. stopped again at Jaba3 checkpoint, no reason whatsoever. Ok this one is brief, back on the “open road,” if you call that an open road.</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:08 a.m. stuck behind a slow driving settler.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span><span style="font-size:0;"></span>Are you serious?<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>You want to take our land, build on it illegally, banish us from our own roads, and then drive slowly on the ones we can actually use?! Get out of my face FOOL! My mental tirade, pleas, demands and threats make no significant different. The road finally turns into two lanes, if you call those two lanes.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:18 a.m. Arrive in Hizmah…here is a question, what the hell is Hizmah?! (Must discuss in blog entry) </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:20 a.m. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Back on the open road, if you call that an open road. Cars are flashing their lights at me. I am so popular this fine morning.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Oh wait that means there are police on the road, and….</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:25 a.m. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Stopped by Israeli police. He has the nerve to smile at me. I hand him my papers. He asks me if I know why he stopped me, and all I can think off, I bet I am about to find out.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Facebook status update: getting a ticket by Israeli police for ignoring a stop sign, please don’t tell my mother!! </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Policemen hands ticket and says: “don’t ignore stop signs,” and I want to say, would like to ignore your entire state if I can! </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8:35 a.m.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Back on the open road, the only portion of the road that comes close to an open road. To my right a Jerusalem Exit. The Exit I can never take.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Here is a thought, what do you call an exit you cannot take?<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>According to the dictionary, exit is a passage out; a way to leave.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>But if this exit is never going to be my way out, or my way to leave, should I even be calling it an exit? Huh? What... I need coffee. </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">8: 45 a.m. Arrive in Azarriyyeh…Thank you USAID for the new controversial road! From your people to my people! (Please note the sarcasm) Only in Palestine can a road be controversial! </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">9:00 a.m. After squeezing my car through the old roads in Abu Dis, I am on campus. </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Facebook status update: In Abu Dis; in other words NOT in Ramallah….</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left">
<br /></div></span></div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-58952737639250579322010-09-12T07:28:00.000-07:002010-09-12T16:02:13.395-07:00Eid Sagaby: Tala Abu Rahmeh<br /><br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>After watching Santa selling balloons in downtown Ramallah the night before Eid, I left the bustling town to go to Aboud.<br /><br /><div>Aboud, my mother's hometown, is a village 30 minutes away from Ramallah. Its residential stretch is the size of a long narrow street, surrounded by gorgeous hills that overlook the coast. It's going to take me years to understand the culture of that tiny village, especially when it's one of the few ones housing Muslims and Christians side by side.<br /><br />The reason we had to go there on the first day of Eid Al Fitir, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan's fast, is because it's the first Eid following my grandma's death. Apparently, her house had to be open to visitors who wanted to commemorate her passing. I sat with my aunts at my grandmother's deserted home, shaking the hands of tens of women coming in and out. All of them knew who I was (the daughter of the dead mom and grandma), but I had no idea who most of them were (pretty awkward).<br /><br />The conversations swung from dead relatives to living ones that have royally messed up in the past few years. I had no idea who most of the characters were so I hungout with the little kids. What I found most fascinating were the toys; all made in china, each kid had a collection of plastic guns, a plastic Winni the Po character, and a fake plastic phone. It's obvious that these toys were especially imported for Eid since the phone sang a strange, barely audible song about Makka, and had a picture of a religious singer dude in a grey suit. I couldn't believe the constant sound of exploding fireworks in a town that is still echoing the memory of Israeli army jeeps and past-midnight gunshots. Perhaps the kids try to gain control by inflicting the noises themselves.<br /><br /></div><div>Granny's house felt sad. For a little family that lost three of its members in the past three years, the idea of spreading Eid cheer seemed unrealistic. I spent little snippets of my afternoon looking for old pictures of my mother in grandma's room. Grandma owned one of those ever expanding beds that had a little cassette player embedded in them. I imagined my grandparents laying in bed on lazy Friday afternoons listening to old songs, then granny getting up to bake fresh bread dripping olive oil and za'atar, cheese, and delicious farm eggs from chickens she herself fed.<br /><br /></div><div>My grandmother was not the nicest person; she judged people too quickly, was short tempered, thought men had a higher status in the world than women, and always prayed for Allah to inspire me to wear a hijab, but my grandmother was two things that will always move me: righteous, and courageous. She fought for my mother, aunts and uncles to get a stellar education (my mother was the first girl from her village to get a high school then collage eduction), and she always rooted herself on the side of whatever/whoever she believed was right. If my grandmother loved you, you can always count on her to be there for you, argue for you, and unleash wrath on whoever would dare to bother you. The concept of objective and neutral were alien to her.<br /><br />This eid, my first in four years, felt like an ode to santa and grandma. May santa live forever in downtown Ramallah and hand kids balloons to celebrate all days, bitter and sweet, and may my grandmother float inside of my sky and help me be unabashedly loving, courageous and loud!<br /><br /><i>Hope y'all have a Merry Eid</i>.</div>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4001862634864523017.post-11005780981656907022010-09-04T10:31:00.000-07:002010-11-06T03:22:59.003-07:00Friday<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: right; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal">by: R. Kafri<br /></p><p style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal">Here, there was no quiet lazy summer breeze teasing your face. There was nothing but people and the stifling heat.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>I have dreaded passing through the Qalandia checkpoint.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>I thought it would kill me to see what everyone has described as chicken cages.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Yet here I was, standing in line surrounded by so many hoping to cross into Jerusalem.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Almost everyone in line was on their way to pray.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>They stood patiently in this fly infested place, and slowly one by one walked into the cages designed to make even the most vicious of animals feel helpless.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>We all passed a locked revolving door.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>How can a revolving door be locked? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of having a door that spins?<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>After we were buzzed through the revolving door, we passed through a metal detector that shrieked every time.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>I was personally convinced that it is designed to sounds its alarm even if you were totally naked!<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>But everyone around me waited patiently,<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>deeply convicted, truly believing that a prayer in Jerusalem might just save their soul, or give them strength and patience to survive this country and this world.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>It may just help them get by in this senseless time.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Nothing makes sense anymore, even Mother Nature seems troubled these days, how else can you explain the extra hot summers, the mudslides, and floods?<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>She is pissed! And as far as I can tell, we, humans have angered her royally.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Anyway, I digress; Mother Nature’s wrath is hardly what is crossing my mind while I am crossing the revolving door threshold.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>I looked around at old, young, men, women and children all pushing forward.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Is it faith? Is it conviction? Or is it perseverance that causes them to stand on a hot Friday morning waiting for a seventeen year old’s push of a button to catch a glimpse of their beloved Jerusalem.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>They inch slowly one by one into the city hoping that their prayers will be answered this time that their son will come home, their daughter will get married, their job will get better, and this checkpoint will one day disappear. </p><p style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal">Fridays are lazy, it’s the day families reconnect, lovers meet secretly away from the rush of week days,<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>and friends lounge sluggishly in each other’s apartment too tired to do anything, yet too lonely to go home.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Fridays carry the promise of a gathering, a luncheon or an argeeleh on the terrace.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>They are beautifully slow, but not here.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Here Fridays are of resilience and determination.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>They are a joyous reminder that we are still here.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Sixty-two years of shock and awe has not erased us from existence.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Sure we may have lost more land, and yes there are many moments of weakness, but we are still here.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>Walls, check points, death, and arrests have not stopped us from coming back every Friday to stand in line. <span style="font-size:+0;"></span>So listen up my “imposed neighbor;” you erect a wall and we will climb over it.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>You post a checkpoint, not only will we stand in line, but we will turn it into a sale point of water, coffee, tea, kites, snacks.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>You separate, brutalize, demolish, confiscate, hand cuff and arrest; we build, develop, heal and hope.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>You look back into history; we look forward to the future.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>You isolate our cities, we choose to work in one and live in another only to travel every day between both.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>We are here, our Fridays are here and so are our Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and every day of the week.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>We are NOT going anywhere; you can beat us, bruise us, and break our bones, but you will NEVER break our spirit! <span style="font-size:+0;"></span></p><p style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal">I stood humbled by everyone around me, bowed my head and took a few more steps into the cage.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>I lazily made my way from Ramallah to Jerusalem for the first time in fifteen years….<br /></p><p style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"></p>The Big Olivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04454773879993952653noreply@blogger.com1