Last Saturday, as my three weeks in Ramallah were close to ending, I was cocooning in my apartment. I was pretty wiped out by four especially busy days – my walk from Ramallah to Jerusalem, wandering around Jerusalem visiting friends and relatives and taking in a variety of scenes before returning to Ramallah by bus, my West Bank driving tour. I had thousands of photos to sort through, seemingly endless arrangements to make for my post-West Bank visits, which meant repeated trips to Internet cafes to follow up on things. (As it turned out, I had to cancel most of those arrangements when I ended up coming home early.)
But still, I headed to Al Manara for my Saturday morning Arabic class, only to find that my teacher’s other-job schedule had changed. It turned out we’d have no more classes during my remaining three Ramallah days. That was disappointing, but at least in the time I did spend with Marwan I managed to pick up some new vocabulary – finally, some Palestinian dialect – and learned something about the transition from the classical Arabic grammar I first studied in college to less rule-bound street talk. As I told Marwan, I don’t think I’ll really learn to speak unless I spend a month or two with Arabic-speakers who don’t speak English. Still, I was pleased at times that I could get my point across with taxi drivers and store owners. Improvement!
On Sunday I had lunch with Soraida, the sister of a Boston friend. She’s the one who found me my Ramallah apartment, but this was the first chance we’d had to get together since my arrival. We ate at Angelo’s, a Ramallah institution, because I wanted finally to try the local pizza. Boston or New York it’s not. The conversation, however, was great.
And then I went back to my apartment to pack. That night, after my final beer-and-Internet visit to Birth, I watched The Matrix on TV. I could describe how our propensity to believe the matrix of comfortable lies we’re fed is not so different from common Western reactions to Israel’s propaganda, but not right now.
Monday morning I went to Soraida’s office, as described in the previous post. After that meeting, I got my luggage and gave the apartment key to the owner around the corner, who offered the expected Arabic coffee and invited me to come back to her building the next time I’m in Ramallah. I got a taxi, which took me to Qalandia, and then boarded a bus to Jerusalem.