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.