After uploading my blog entry about Friday’s protest at Bil’in, I went with Rateb first to hang out in a small grocery warehouse of sorts with one of his brothers and a few friends who were drinking tea, smoking argeela, watching three playful young boys and waiting for a truckload of eggs. After that we went to his uncle’s house, where I’d also been the evening before. This time we sat on the deck with relatives visiting from Ramallah. I didn’t understand much of the Arabic conversation, except when they spoke more slowly and simply to the uncle’s young granddaughter. After more cake and argeelah, I begged off on Rateb’s third planned visit to play cards with friends. I was glad to get to sleep early.
I asked Rateb about argeela history (or nargila, or lots of other names). Back in Boston there are a few nargila bars, but here, in addition to finding the mixture of tobacco and sweet flavorings on restaurant menus, it seem to have become a household fixture. Rateb said this sweet nargila is a recent import from Syria, since the 1990s, but has spread rapidly. Mostly men smoke, but some women as well. He said this is not the same thing “the old men” smoke, a stronger tobacco mixture without the sweet. He says it no longer includes hashish, which is illegal. I have no idea if it’s available in any case.
I also asked Rateb about the visiting female relatives whose heads weren’t covered, whether that was a problem at all in the village. He said people do what they want, there’s no pressure. The visitors, he added with a laugh, “are communists.” In Rateb’s house and others in Bil’in, as in Jayyous a week earlier, women were always careful to run and get a head covering if a man showed up unannounced. They seemed to me pretty relaxed about it, and were at east talking with men, offering to shake hands, which I wasn’t expecting.
I have noticed that young men in Ramallah turn more obviously to look at passing women whose heads are uncovered, a much more common sight in Ramallah than Bil’in. Of course, women with uncovered heads also tend to have more fashionable or tighter clothing, sometimes more skin showing. I suspect that elsewhere in Palestine, more conservative than Ramallah, the sight draws even more attention. But I have not seen anything more obnoxious or threatening than double-takes.
Between Friday night’s first and second social visits, we went past the site of the previous night’s men-only wedding party. Friday night was the women’s turn, and we paused at the gate to wait for some of Rateb’s relatives. Inside, a line of costumed women were dancing with a crowd of women and girls around them. I saw one man inside, the guy filming the event as he did the night before. This too reminded me of ultra-Orthodox Jewish weddings where the formal separation is not rigidly enforced.
Saturday morning, yesterday, I got up unreasonably early to head out of town with Rateb, who had to get to Jericho to work (he teaches social work). I had expected him to drive, but we headed instead for the shared service taxi to Ramallah. Rateb said he had to be in Jericho at 8:30, and if he drove and got delayed at an Israeli checkpoint he would be late. If his taxi got stuck, however, he could get out, walk through the checkpoint, and get in another taxi. So he routinely takes one taxi to Ramallah and then another to Jericho.
Still worn out, I ended my visit when the taxi reached Ramallah, came back to my apartment, and went back to sleep. Eventually I spent much of the day catching up on a few projects, and later wandered through the market to stock up on fruit and vegetables. A relaxing day for a change.
Technorati Tags: Bil’in, checkpoints, Ramallah