Filistine

Nablusi cat

Dora the explorer, Ramallah.

Kids playing football in Sebastia. When I arrived the kids were playing ball on a pitch that you can just see on the right of frame, when i took out my phne to take a picture, the all legged it over and started kicking their ball around the ruins to make a photo-opportunity for me.

The reinterment of a martyr in Nablus, the guy had died in a prison in Israel in the seventies. His remains are in the back of the truck.

TABA

I crossed back at Taba border crossing on the Egypt/Israeli Border. After being questioned by the border police, I was waiting in the hall, it was really quite, a young woman border cop sitting next to me, thats her above. I started chatting to her. How long will I have to wait? I asked. Where are you going she said, Jenin I answered, a LONG time she said Laughing, Why? I asked, There are many activists come to fight the police and soldiers and cause trouble she told me. Do yo live in Eilat? Yes. Do you like it? No, it's a bubble... Don't you dive or snorkle? No it hurts my ears..Oh really, and flying, does that hurt your ears too? uhuh it does.. I told her that in India years ago this guy sat beside me on the street and handed me a notbook full of testimonies from other tourists about what an amazing job he had done cleaning their ears and recommending that the reader also get him to clean their ears. I was waiting for a taxi to the airport and wasn't interested, the guy was persistent, but and I'd kept saying no, I'd no money and was on my way to the airport. Then he'd thrust this really long knitting needle thing into my ear and told me not to move, I could feel the thing way inside my head, terrified I could hardly breath, he poked around for a bit and then pulled the pin out and there was a pea sized lump of grey waxy stuff on the end of it, and my ear felt so clear and light, then he asked how much I was gonna pay him. I gave him what I had and he was pissed off, so did a crap jon on my right ear. It was over ten years ago and my head still feels lopsided. Then another Border guard joined us, she had a bindi on her forehead, and said that a an old Indian woman had put it on her forehead and told her she was beautiful. She's right I said 'cos she was and she said thanks. I'd recently got a taxi ride in Nablus, the driver told me his family were refugees from '67 and now lived in a camp in Jordan, he was back because he'd married a Palestinian woman. As he took me through an Israel checkpoint he was civil and even plesant to the soldiers. He'd been a soldier in the Jordanian army and understood the deal he told me, they were just soldiers they don't make any decisions. I thought this was big of him, and decided if they're plesant to me that I'll be plesant back. My new friend with the Bindi made that funny side to side head gesture that Indian's make. It's like a wierd side to side movement that says hi, how are you nice to see you all at once. Then we spoke about this book called santhraham, a huge doorstop of a book about a guy on the run in Bombay, kinda book you know is all made up but enjoy anyway. We'd both read it. Then she said how she hated it when big groups of indians came through because her hands got so greasy and they always had to wash their hands after. I don't know, maybe this is true. Ive never handelled the passports of 50 Indian tourists. It just sounded so racist. Maybe it's cos they eat with their hands, I said. Trying to make things better. The manager of the border crossing came out of her office and gave me my passport. The stamp said three months, but she'd crossed that out and written two weeks. You need to go to the ministry of the interior she said.

Sinai

On my first day I was floating over this vast upsidedown coral cathederal, never seen anything like it. There's colourful fish all around me and I'm in the middle of thousands of tiny silver fish all moving as one, light was moving through the water like organ music bouncing off everything, and I still felt like shit, what the fuck ?

Day three I was floating, hands round my knees, looking for the longest time into the eyes of this Green and Electric blue and white square shaped fish that was peeking from under a shelf of Coral. I became was embarassed and ashamed for being in foetal position, like i didn't want the fish to think i was a baby. I laughed and we had a moment together and I really let go.

The Cat's Pajamas

At the Nablus Childhood Happiness Center

Joseph Tomb posse

Then

Now


Joseph, of technicolour dreamcoat fame's bone's are buried here they say. Palestinian soldiers guard the site, but they split and Israelis soldiers take control of the area when the settlers come to pray. It's a flashpoint. It stinks of shit, one of the side rooms has been used as a public toilet.

On the street outside some kids showed me there breakdance moves.





Then they took me on a ten minute walk to the "hash-hish" which I later learnt means grass so they could do flips and not get hurt. The Hashhish was in the meridian between four lanes of traffic on the main road outta town.

AK-47

Exquisite corpse or Cadavre exquis game with 10 year old 6th-ish graders from Askar camp.
There's a wierd cuteness when kids say murderous stuff so innocently, like the kid I met in Bethlehem who told me his heroes were Avril Lavine and Osama Bin Laden (this was well before his death).



Here's one by Man Ray, Joan Miró, Max Morise and Yves Tanguy

TA

Shirt says Here lives something that manages the world.

Balatta

Went looking for a bunch of hip hop B-boy breakdancers in Balatta refugee camp ( pop. 25,000) the other night. Found their spot but they weren't there, anyhow while I was waiting for a friend in a little tea joint I was called over to a table of guys playing cards. The chap next to me pulled out his phone and was telling me that the dude opposite was the best something, about 4 watermellons. He opened a photo on his phone of himself with one watermellon on his head, wait he gestured nodding towards his friend as he said 'Araba' (four) as his phone opened a new picture of his mate across the table balancing four watermelons on his head.
I'd taken a picture of the same guy, in Ramallah (an hours drive south) this summer gone. I had it on my phone and showed him, he said something about allah, and I said Allah akbar. Picture above.






The watermellon balancer took this photo out of his inside jacket pocket and passed it to me. The men are family in prison in Israel, I didn't catch their relationship.

E&OE

So about two weeks ago I posted this picture on face book .with the following:
I pass this football pitch everyday, it's by Askar refugee camp about 10 minutes drive from Nablus city center. Yesterday I noticed all these tyres and rocks and other crap all over the pitch. The kids told me Israeli settlers from a nearby settlement came and did it in the middle of the night. WTF?


It took about ten days for the kids the get rid of all the tyres and crap.


The tyres all neat by the touchline.

A few days later the tyres were back. Now they are gone again. It turns out that the original bit of vandalism was done supporters of Balatta's team (Balatta is a neighbouring camp) the night after match between the camps football teams. And that the kids (pictured top) made up the settler bit. Sincere apologies to the Zionists.

Askar Camp

Kids in Askar

Nablus, West-bank, Palestine

The el Lod center where I teach is just outside of Askar camp on the
far side of old Askar's main drag. Although this is my third week
working this evening was the first time I visited the actual camp
itself.

Myself an another teacher, Sarah, entered the camp through the large
metal archway. All the camps have these archways. Kids start gathering
demanding "What is your Name?" and more crucially "Barcelona or
Real?". The kids keep coming, a middle aged guy approaches, he wanted
to know what we are doing, which was seeming to seem like a good
question as more and more kids arrived. Sarah explained we were
teachers in the center and he welcomed us and took off. More kids
arrive. They all want to play volleyball, this got more complicated as
more and more kids and balls appeared and the kids started competing
for attention, getting more and more hyper and turning into a mob.

One kid was, who was clearly mentally disabled was introduced as
'Majnoon' which means crazy, then slapped across the face as if to
demonstrate. He didn't flinch or protest.

I've seen barefoot kids in Askar. There's not much to do here judging
by how big an attraction we were and there's nowhere to play. 'Go play
in the traffic' was a killer putdown when I was about ten years old
for a about a week. The phrase came back to me the other day when I
saw two kids dodging cars, playing in the traffic.

Askar camp is home to 32,000 people living in a few square miles.
Unemployment is the norm and nearly all families receive flour, oil
and basic foods from UNWAR.

The camp itself is very beat down, it's layout is organic. There's a
Joe Sacco Cartoon strip that shows how the camps a started as empty
fields after '48, where refugees took shelter however they could, then
tents arrived, after another while cement and cinderblocks arrived
from the UN, and the tent sites turned into one story cement
neighborhoods which then had a second and third story added. There's
a medieval street layout, all lanes and narrow streets, graffiti and
kids, and then some.

When I was a kid, the last thing I would have wanted to do in my free
time was go to extra classes, I'd rather have played in the traffic,
and while we all do our best to make the classes fun, it's still
school, Huckleberry Finn knew it, I knew it, it's universal. School sucks, but these
children really want to be in our classes, and they really want to
learn, they are not naive and understand where they are and at ten
years of age thay are fighting to change that.

Silwan

Silwan, 2012, This messiah returns pulling folks out of their graves. This is the spot. Anastasi Fresco Chora church Istanbul 14th century




Equal opportunity T-shirts seller Jerusalem Old City.



In Jerusalem today I walked through the old city to Silwan an arab neighbourhood next to the Mount of olives. Silwan is a densely populated 'hood thats got about fifty Israeli settler families living under Israeli flags, cheek and jowl with their arab neighbours. Violence happens all the time.

Leaving the old city through Zion gate, it's not obvious which direction to go in to get to there. On the way there's a Daniel Burren installation from the 90's, he was hip when I was in art school, but today, the thing somhow manages too feel older than the ruins it over looks. Next to that is the graveyard where Oscar shindler is buried. At the end of Shindlers List there's a scene where 'Shindlers children' pay their respects by putting stones on his sarcophagus. I remember it looking fancier in the film.
I headed down a steep alley next to the graveyard, on the way I met a kid pushing his bicycle up the alley. " Wheyn Silwan?" I said pointing ahead and got a Palestinian upward nod and 'tut', which means 'No! Don't be stupid..' And he says "closed closed". I went on anyhow.

Palestinian are super hospitable, this is a given, maybe thats like people saying the irish are super friendly (if people still say this, which always annoyed me, 'cos i know we're really just drunk and it means nowt) but it's true, Palestinians are super hospitable, and when they are not, it might be because they think you are an Israeli settler nutcase scoping their neighborhood, or maybe the kid was just having a bad day. But the next folks I met, a father and son shoeing a horse, got a load of mis-prounced Arabic greeting ' the guy is clearly a tit, but he's not a settler'.

After a while the lane twisted through a load of houses, Silwan. People are surprised to see me. I think their first though is 'Oh shit'. I've no good reason to be there.


'Fuck Abu Shara in this neighborhood' or some combination of those words.

A kid, 16 maybe, saw me take this picture, 'No No' he says approaching. As a bunch of little kids appear I made friends with him in Arabic, and all was cool. "What is your name?" x 20, The kids were all cute as hell and I was high fiving them in a production line, another kid appeared in my periphery and I turned to high five him and I notice he's wearing a kippa or skullcap, and I hesitate. He was probably 6. It took about half a second for me to think that was messed up, but by then it would been weird to offer my gift of an Irish high five, and he would not have, I think, been open to it, (keep your head down kid) but maybe if I'd just gone for it, he would have.



Arabs left, Settler's right.


No comment

When I reach the main drag, a souped up Mitsubishi full of young men, the 'shabab' pulled up, "No, Back Back, children, stones, no good" I said I wanted to see Silwan and the wall, would the kids think I was a settler? Ok Ok no problem, but 'Shway, schway' meaning slowly, easy does it. I bought some sesame seeds and went slow, smiled lots 'hi everyone'.

This neighbourhood featured in Louis Theroux's documentary the Ultra Zionists, there was a scene where a developer/settler agent guy was showing Louis around a building that had just been Judafied, I think that word's Ok, You come across it alot in Israeli litreature, anyhow the building shared a courtyard with an arab building. The developer guy was having a housewarming and his the caterers were using a table they found in the courtyard. An old arab guy was giving out. 'That's my table, don't use my table, first the building now my table' He repeated. But would not move to take it back. That would be dangerous.
I saw Ilyan Pappe speak at the American Colony hotel about his new book, which is about the Palestinians that live inside Israel. He opened by saying that the Zionist's were unique among colonialists because they believed that the indigenous peoples were the invaders, that they didn't really belong and were somehow there by mistake. So why not take this guys table ?


The city of David, a building site, soon to be a biblical theme park, built in arab Silwan.



Cool truck.