chapter 10- balata camp
Salaam, shalom, waaazup to everyone from beautiful Palestine. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and depressed today. I have been in Balata Refugee camp for 4 weeks now, and it is the belly of the beast. 25,000 people squeezed into an area the size of a large shopping mall, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank. The army asassinates and arrests young men on a nightly basis, they killed two yesterday morning by dropping rockets on their house, which is right around the corner from where I'm staying. There hasn't been one night I haven't heard humvees roaring through the camp at midnight. I haven't met one single male over the age of 18 who hasn't been to prison. I haven't met one single family who hasn't lost a father or brother. There are no jobs, no peace, no justice, no life, the only thing left anymore is hope, it seems. So I want to write to you about why Palestine is beautiful and why Palestinians are some of the warmest, most resilient human beings I have ever met.
I told you about my friend Fayrouz in one of my first emails, a girl I met in the service on my way to Balata Camp for the first time. I am staying with her and her family now, and they call me family. Her mother fusses over me like I'm her daughter, won't allow me to go out in the street if my clothes are rumpled or dirty, always fussing at me to wash my feet cuz they are always dirty. She washes my clothes, despite my objections, and is always trying to fix me food. She asked if I would maybe marry her oldest son once he gets out of prison so I can stay in Palestine. Anyway, Fayrouz is 20 and beautiful and passionate and an English major at Na-Jah University in Palestine. The night before the asassinations I mentioned above, we stayed up until 3 am talking about boys - her favorite subject. She just broke up with her boyfriend, the one she said looked like Che Guevara. But he didn't called her for a month, she thinks he is seeing another woman, so we agree that we were terribly mistaken, he doesn't look like Che at all, that in fact he is actually really ugly and never deserved her in the first place. "You should rip up his picture!" I say. She does, quite ceremoniously, and says "Now I will put it in the toilet!" Fayrouz considers herself a good Muslim girl, a classy lady, so as soon as she said this, she got very red, and I am laughing and laughing, and she starts laughing too. I tell her about my American boyfriends and how stupid they can be sometimes and she tells me about her Palestinian boyfriends and how stupid they can be sometimes, and we agree that it is high time that women are allowed to rule the world. 3 hours later we woke up to the sound of rockets and gunfire, and Fayrouz says, with a half smile, "I hate this life."
I have another friend in the camp, Hamoudi, who lives with his mom and his aunts and cousins, all of whom are fantastically loud, brassy women who like to smoke and watch soccer matches. I mentioned to Hamoudi that I liked the scrolls with verses from the Koran written on them that hang as decoration in his house - he must've told his mom, cuz the next time I came over, she took them off the wall and gave them to me, despite my objections. Palestinians are so generous, and they are always trying to give you things or do things for you despite your objections. I've had to train myself to not compliment anything, scarves or pictures or jewellry, because it will be immediately handed to me, even if the person is very very poor. And all of the Palestinians in Balata Camp are very very poor, although you would never know it. Fayrouz told me that the Koran says that poor people who don't let people know they are poor will be the first to enter heaven.
I've taught Hamoudi some St. Louis slang, so every time he sees me, he says "What is up, my dirty?" with a huge smile on his face. He also likes the _expression "Mi casa, su casa", although he always gets it backwards and says "Su casa, mi casa". He take me and the other internationals for pizza and to smoke the hookah at a rooftop coffee shop, and for trips into the mountains above Nablus, where he points out houses and tells us stories about the families that live in them. On my birthday, Hamoudi brought a cake to my apartment that had "Happy Birthday, my dirty" written on the top, and he and the internationals and a few Palestinian friends sang Happy Birthday to me in English and then in Arabic. I told him that he is my big brother, so now he won't allow any of the guys in the camp to speak to me and calls me all the time to check on me.
5 times a day the call to prayer blares from the loudspeaker of the mosque, and it is a strange beautiful sound that is a cross between chanting, praying, and wailing. The streets of the camp are lined with fruit vendors, one of whom recognizes me now and my penchant for bananas, so when I walk by, he shouts "Moz! Moz! Hamse shekel wahad kilo!" (Bananas! Bananas! 5 shekels for one kilo!") The streets are always busy, there are always old men arguing about politics (I think - I can only understand a few words) who beckon us over and always ask us "What do you think of the situation here? What do you think of Balata Camp?" and are very pleased when we say that even though the situation is very bad, we love Palestine and Balata Camp in particular. Kids ride bicycles and set off fireworks, and when they see our cameras they crowd around and say "Adjenabs! Soorimi!" (Foreigners! Take my picture!) They pose and clown and get big smiles when we show them the picture and say "Damar"...Balata Camp slang for "cool".
Ok, so that's lovely Palestine, and I feel much better.
Free Palestine, peeps.
magan
I told you about my friend Fayrouz in one of my first emails, a girl I met in the service on my way to Balata Camp for the first time. I am staying with her and her family now, and they call me family. Her mother fusses over me like I'm her daughter, won't allow me to go out in the street if my clothes are rumpled or dirty, always fussing at me to wash my feet cuz they are always dirty. She washes my clothes, despite my objections, and is always trying to fix me food. She asked if I would maybe marry her oldest son once he gets out of prison so I can stay in Palestine. Anyway, Fayrouz is 20 and beautiful and passionate and an English major at Na-Jah University in Palestine. The night before the asassinations I mentioned above, we stayed up until 3 am talking about boys - her favorite subject. She just broke up with her boyfriend, the one she said looked like Che Guevara. But he didn't called her for a month, she thinks he is seeing another woman, so we agree that we were terribly mistaken, he doesn't look like Che at all, that in fact he is actually really ugly and never deserved her in the first place. "You should rip up his picture!" I say. She does, quite ceremoniously, and says "Now I will put it in the toilet!" Fayrouz considers herself a good Muslim girl, a classy lady, so as soon as she said this, she got very red, and I am laughing and laughing, and she starts laughing too. I tell her about my American boyfriends and how stupid they can be sometimes and she tells me about her Palestinian boyfriends and how stupid they can be sometimes, and we agree that it is high time that women are allowed to rule the world. 3 hours later we woke up to the sound of rockets and gunfire, and Fayrouz says, with a half smile, "I hate this life."
I have another friend in the camp, Hamoudi, who lives with his mom and his aunts and cousins, all of whom are fantastically loud, brassy women who like to smoke and watch soccer matches. I mentioned to Hamoudi that I liked the scrolls with verses from the Koran written on them that hang as decoration in his house - he must've told his mom, cuz the next time I came over, she took them off the wall and gave them to me, despite my objections. Palestinians are so generous, and they are always trying to give you things or do things for you despite your objections. I've had to train myself to not compliment anything, scarves or pictures or jewellry, because it will be immediately handed to me, even if the person is very very poor. And all of the Palestinians in Balata Camp are very very poor, although you would never know it. Fayrouz told me that the Koran says that poor people who don't let people know they are poor will be the first to enter heaven.
I've taught Hamoudi some St. Louis slang, so every time he sees me, he says "What is up, my dirty?" with a huge smile on his face. He also likes the _expression "Mi casa, su casa", although he always gets it backwards and says "Su casa, mi casa". He take me and the other internationals for pizza and to smoke the hookah at a rooftop coffee shop, and for trips into the mountains above Nablus, where he points out houses and tells us stories about the families that live in them. On my birthday, Hamoudi brought a cake to my apartment that had "Happy Birthday, my dirty" written on the top, and he and the internationals and a few Palestinian friends sang Happy Birthday to me in English and then in Arabic. I told him that he is my big brother, so now he won't allow any of the guys in the camp to speak to me and calls me all the time to check on me.
5 times a day the call to prayer blares from the loudspeaker of the mosque, and it is a strange beautiful sound that is a cross between chanting, praying, and wailing. The streets of the camp are lined with fruit vendors, one of whom recognizes me now and my penchant for bananas, so when I walk by, he shouts "Moz! Moz! Hamse shekel wahad kilo!" (Bananas! Bananas! 5 shekels for one kilo!") The streets are always busy, there are always old men arguing about politics (I think - I can only understand a few words) who beckon us over and always ask us "What do you think of the situation here? What do you think of Balata Camp?" and are very pleased when we say that even though the situation is very bad, we love Palestine and Balata Camp in particular. Kids ride bicycles and set off fireworks, and when they see our cameras they crowd around and say "Adjenabs! Soorimi!" (Foreigners! Take my picture!) They pose and clown and get big smiles when we show them the picture and say "Damar"...Balata Camp slang for "cool".
Ok, so that's lovely Palestine, and I feel much better.
Free Palestine, peeps.
magan
In the dark times,
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing,
About the dark times.
--Bertolt Brecht
posted by miss magan at 12:29 PM
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