I’m sitting in an Internet cafe in Jerusalem’s Old City, seven hours after leaving my apartment. Probably half the time was spent walking, the rest taking pictures, taking breaks, talking to a few people along the way. Now I’m on my way to meet an old friend, and then to relatives for dinner, but I hope to post some photos soon and offer some of my impressions of this walk from Ramallah to Jerusalem.
The bottom line: I made it, and I’m glad I did it. More later.
Well, maybe not all of this….
I’m sitting here in my living room at about 6 pm Monday night Ramallah time, the TV tuned to BBC World News after an hour or so of Al Jazeera. I was out most of the day, and when I finish this rambling I’ll get outside once again, at least to check my email and upload this so my imagined readers will know what I’m up to.
My Internet cafe of choice has been Birth, advertised as “A Taste of the West in an Eastern Manner.” As I may have remarked before, it’s just a block from my apartment, the low-cost salads and beer are just right, the manager (owner?) is helpful, and the Internet works. I’ve been there a few times already, sometimes the only person in the small room, other times surrounded mostly by other English speakers or small bilingual groups.
This afternoon, though, wandering around downtown, I stopped in at Ziryab for the first time this trip. I was there a few times two years ago. It’s bigger than Birth, a well-known institution, with artwork by the owner on the walls, lots of food choices, a nice view of a downtown street, and often a full house at night with a mixed Palestinian and international crowd. When I got there around noon, though, I was the only customer. I spent a long time online while I made my way through the Ziryab sandwich and coffee.
My Internet upload was unusually slow. Among other things, I was trying to send a few photos of last week’s Erez demonstration to someone who needs them to accompany an article she’s writing for a French magazine. After a long while, my second cup of coffee long finished, I got up to make sure it was okay to just sit there for what seemed like could be forever.
Marwan assured me there was no rush, and we chatted awhile. When I mentioned that one of the things I was doing online was trying to find an Arabic tutor and guide for the next couple of weeks, but that I hadn’t yet found someone who could work with me in the mornings as I’d prefer, he told me I had found the right person. He pulled out a business card identifying him as an Arabic teacher with a B.A. in Arabic Language and Literature. So we meet tomorrow morning at 10 for what I hope is the first of several sessions. I’m hoping some direct attention to my scattered Arabic knowledge will help bring some of the pieces together and even advance the weakest part of my ability, actually speaking.
After leaving Ziryab, I wandered in a different directions. Took pictures of some anti-Occupation graffiti.
Ramallah Anti-Occupation Graffiti
And the modern Bank of Palestine, until a couple of guys came outside and shouted at me to stop.
Bank of Palestine
And some birds in cages, and a few other things.
Ramallah Parrot
I also stopped in the market area to get a few things. The guy who sold me bread told me about his relatives in Boston and San Diego. The guy who handed me two cucumbers wouldn’t take any money, an unsettling experience I encountered in the same area two years ago. I bought a big bottle of water in a small store, asked in Arabic how much it cost, and was surprised when the guy at the counter answered “three” in Arabic instead of English — more often people take one look at me and begin speaking English before I even open my mouth. Maybe once Marwan’s had time to boost my speaking I’ll radiate more confidence.
Wandering Ramallah, so long as Israeli soldiers stay out of town the daily confrontation with Occupation seems somewhat remote. Life goes on in this rapidly growing city. It seems to me distant in mood and even culture from rural Palestinian life. Internationals are ever-visible on the streets, in restaurants. As I noted two years ago, children here pay almost no attention to a foreigner with a camera, a sight that in Jayyous variously elicits stares, giggles, and excited requests to take their picture. In this and many other ways, Ramallah becomes less representative of Palestinian life more generally.
Internationals come here and rent apartments, pushing up the cost of living for low-paid locals (I’m pretty sure my own low-rent pad is far below the modernizing norm, but I don’t know what a place like mine would have cost a few years ago). There’s new construction everywhere; I’d like to find a photo of Ramallah’s hills ten or twenty years ago; I’d bet they’d be free of high-rises. Income inequality is growing here as elsewhere, in Ramallah and Jayyous alike. In a corporatized, globalized world. there are more losers than winners, but the winners’ glitz is much more noticeable.
Mashal Tower, Ramallah
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I got through my email as planned last night but lost my Internet connection before I could post this. So now I’m back in my apartment, adding this addendum, and the electricity just went out in the building and across the street. This happened in a downtown Internet cafe the other day also. So I could keep working until my MacBook battery runs down. Or not.
Before leaving Birth I got into a long discussion with a couple of the twentysomethings. They were discussing the problems of Palestinian society that people shunt aside as not worth dealing with until after the Occupation ends. I think they were right on target – that there will always be people trying to maintain focus on the Big Issue by dismissing others that are at least as important to many people. Advice to “wait until later” often just signifies impatience with younger people trying to drop long-standing priorities and approaches.
The main example one woman gave was the loss of connection to the land, partly for internal reasons related to modernization and education, but partly because Israel spent years turning farmers into urban workers before closing Israel to most Palestinians, leaving them hanging. A related issue she brought up was corporate control of seeds, a world-wide problem that involves providing farmers with patented seeds that they aren’t allowed to save for the next year so that they have to keep buying from the corporation.
It’s good to see young people here aware of these issues and motivated to do something about them. Good to see that anywhere, really.
Electricity is back. So is the TV. Euronews, talking about tomorrow’s US presidential election. “Both men are likely to be less go-it-alone than President Bush. But they might not like what they hear from Europe.”
Not having an Internet connection in my Ramallah apartment, with all the neighboring wifi connections password protected, remains a hassle. After checking in yesterday afternoon first from Ramallah Municipal Park until the connection weakened and the rain started, I wandered around the corner to get a cup of coffee and some Internet time at Birth Cafe, which promises “A Taste of the West in an Eastern Manner.” With the sounds of English around me and a menu offering hamburgers and other such fare, I finished my online business.
I had intended to go wandering again last evening, but the rain persisted longer than my interest. I spent the time at what now passes for home, mostly sorting through my photos to delete or fix as needed. I had the TV on in the backgound, sometimes on Al Jazeera’s English channel, which seems to me more varied and interesting than the BBC and something else in English called Euronews, and sometimes on Fox Movie Channel, where I could watch Hollywood movies I probably wouldn’t go to a theater to see.
Last night it got a lot colder than I expected. This morning I called the building’s owner to arrange heat. (I have to pay for the gas container. The landlady made sure the guy who delivered it showed me how to turn it on without killing myself. I also made sure other things worked, at least well enough for three weeks, especially the stove (one burner at least, enough to boil water for coffee) and the shower.
I left to wander over to the Old City, looking more or less for the ISM office I remembered being there two years ago (ISM is the International Solidarity Movement, and I figured I’d find out what was going on locally). I never found it, and will have to call – their address isn’t publicized so far as I can tell, and maybe they moved. I did wander through streets I hadn’t stumbled across last time, and will have to go back to some with my camera. One thing I noticed was more signs of Ramallah’s galloping Westernization. I passed a few new pizza places, and other restaurants and stores that look new. Lots of new construction on the outskirts, and some right here downtown.
I didn’t bring my camera today because I brought my laptop instead, so I could connect at some point (taking both gets heavy). I ended up in an Internet cafe, though again “cafe” doesn’t come with much other than computers. After more wandering, I’m now in Stars and Bucks Cafe, which I remember from two years ago, right in the heart of busy Al Manarah Square. I’m surrounded by a lot of tables with people smokling nargeelah, the sweet smoke not as troubling as cigarettes would be, though it does seem to be getting thicker. The sun is coming in the window. Nice day.
And that’s about it for today so far. Tomorrow I go to Jayyous for a couple of days; I’ll get to Bil’in probably next week instead and maybe stay there for a couple of days as well.
Two years ago I stayed at Ramallah’s City Inn Palace, and was glad the conference was putting us up in what i thought was the same place, a convenient walk from downtown. But when I showed up last evening after my very long travel day — after getting the bus driver to stop right after passing the hotel instead of going to the bus station and then finding a taxi — I learned the conference had us staying in the hotel’s other branch. So I got into a taxi and a few minutes later checked into the right City Inn.
This one, unfortunately, despite being perfectly decent, is on the outskirts of town and thus a longer walk to wherever I might want to walk to. The town is Al-Bireh, essentially Ramallah’s other half. Someday there may be more going on here. There’s a lot of new construction, with lots of empty spaces for more.
Ramallah from City Inn
A closer look show signs of urban street life on Nablus Street:
Nablus Street, Ramallah
Eastward from the City Inn the road heads into countryside. Further up the hill to the left is where the Jewish settlement of Beit El sits.
Eastward from City Inn
I was going to take photos from the hotel’s 6th floor restaurant of what I could see of Beit El and the adjacent Israeli military presence, but the staff got nervous and told me it could make trouble for the hotel. I can see why. I can also see why a Jewish settlement looming over a Palestinian town is a constant irritant.
