EYEWITNESS  FROM  BETHLEHEM

ARTICLES & REFLECTIONS WRITTEN BY TOINE VAN TEEFFELEN

BETHLEHEM DIARY (33)

July 2 - July 9, 2001

Lately I joined political visitors on a tour along damaged houses in Beit Jala. Our taxi driver, who is familiar with the various targeted places because he is involved in providing relief to the suffering families, effortlessly takes on the cloak of an experienced guide who knows the precise difference between the holes caused by 200, 300 and 500 mm mortars. He points out the places where the Tanzim used to hide and shoot; where the Israeli army threw its shells, and where the German Dr Fischer walked, where he helped his neighbor, hid, and was killed. All these places now carry an enhanced, almost timeless meaning. I myself am a guide and used to point out the places associated with the Nativity. Now there are other guides who, equally authoritatively, show sites of suffering and death, a kind of modern Via Dolorosa. The visitors take pictures. It is an alienating experience, in part due to the peaceful silence which now is enveloping the town, and which so sharply contrasts with the memory of bombings and destruction that the sites themselves evoke. A certain timelessness descends over the Bethlehem area, perhaps because of the heat of the summer and the slowing down of life at the arrival of the holiday period.

Timelessness and pastoral quiet are basic attributes of Bethlehem. The name of the town is known allover the world and has a universal, unquestionable meaning to hundreds of millions of people. During the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th century many photographers, mainly European but also Arab ones, tried to catch and appropriate this timelessness in pictures in which local Palestinians, perhaps against some payment, stood model for the Nativity Scene and for the Shepherds hearing the good tiding. Pictures that have been rightly criticized for their tendency to over-romanticize the image of Bethlehem. They turned people into objects of a Western gaze only interested in “seeing” eternal Biblical scenes where in reality a thriving community was struggling to survive in the face of war and occupation.

The timelessness of the message of Bethlehem blends with the rhythm of a pastoral life adapted to the agricultural cycle and the manual skills typical for Palestinian traditional crafts. Once glassblowers and pottery makers told me how the rhythmic movements of their hands was learned in the early years and could not really be acquired by adults, in the same way as learning to play the piano is best done when young. Some even told that the kinetic capacity for performing a special skill was genetically transmitted.

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My Arabic teacher tells how her mother used to have vivid memories of the times when she and the women of her extended family and neighbors sat next to each other in the courtyard of the house, working on the difficult cross-stitch patterns typical for the Bethlehem embroidery. They looked over each shoulder and jealously watched whether their neighbor was faster, their tongues telling the stories of the day, their hands creating colorful products of art. It is these and similar scenes that old people remember when evoking the good old days.

Some years ago I discussed with students at Birzeit University images of Palestine as expressed in Palestinian literature. We were astonished to see how writers, even in the very rhythm of their language, evoked the pleasant daily life of a quiet, undisturbed Palestine. In a recollection of his youth in Bethlehem, the writer Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, author of the restless novel “The Ship”, lovingly tells about the life among the orchards and trees when the people at the harvest time climbed in the trees and sang their refrains while picking the fruits, one “tree” rhythmically responding to the other’s sung questions. A fragment of Jabra’s life story that touches me especially now is a description of his father just before the man became ill and weak. A tire was accidentally lost, rolling down a Bethlehem hill. The father ran after it and proudly caught it in the eyesight of the son who observed that his father was still energetic and strong. I myself often run after Jara’s balls which repeatedly threaten to roll down the steep hill near my mother in law’s house. Unconsciously I want to show her that her father is still well and running, as if time does not pass by.

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The Palestinian feel of timelessness is not flat, so to speak, but punctuated by bursts of vivid, dramatic emotion and lack of patience. Some of the words most used in Palestine are the impatient chalas (stop it) and yalla (move on) which stands in opposition to the also frequently used istanna (wait). Lately Mary and I, while waiting in a taxi, observed a discussion interspersed with those words that took place between a taxi driver and peasant women who wanted to bring their large baskets and boxes with vegetables and fruits into the car but balked at the price they needed to pay for the space taken. A big discussion ensued, with concomitant gestures and shouts. But not before long all were laughing. The taxi driver helped bringing in the heavy boxes telling the women: “after I have put them all inside, I will have a backache and women will refuse marrying me.” Later on we get out of the car but can only do so by climbing and jumping over the fruits. The driver tells Mary that a little exercise will be good for her.

(In fact, Mary took his advice at heart and is going to learn to swim with some other members of the family. With the anticipated upsurge of visitors for Bethlehem 2000 several clubs and hotels had opened swimming pools for the tourists who after the Intifada stopped coming. The local Palestinians are now profiting from the not unreasonable fees).

I will forever remember the scenes in which Mary and Jara, both playing as if exasperate at each other, call yalla, meaning that Jara has to come and eat. Jara, who does not want to eat, shouts at her turn yalla as if to say that she hears what mother is saying, understands the importance and urgency of what is said, but has her own private considerations that dictate her not to go and eat, at least not right at this moment. It sometimes happens here that people who want each other to do something, tell in a crescendo of apparent mutual agreement, yalla, yalla!, but stay unmoved and continue to do their things for another while. A certain stubbornness is definitely another Palestinian cultural trait.

While sitting in a taxi, a few women pass by graciously but very slowly. The taxi driver bends backwards in the chair, put his hands in relaxation on the back of his head and remarks that the women walk “like the Patriarch.” At Christmas time, the patriarch and the procession move solemnly through the Star Street to the Church, as if emphasizing the message of Bethlehem. The deep values of Palestinian culture are likely those values associated with an uncomplicated, quiet rhythm of life. I can’t count the times that people told me “Don’t complicate things!” a sin which is somehow connected to doing things hastily and unreflectively.

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Together with my Arabic teacher I read a local story about King Suleiman, the snake and the mole. (King Suleyman is King Solomon of the Old Testament). While the King is in Damascus, the snake and the mole wish to know why they are without legs and without sight. The King tells them that he will speak justice only on his throne in Jerusalem. The mole and the snake break records in speeding to Jerusalem where they arrive even before the King riding his famous horse. The King tells them that if without legs or sight they even go faster than his horse, how much destruction would they bestow upon the world if they would receive what they ask for? God created them like they are in order to protect the world against their eagerness to speed.

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The slow harmony of Palestinian life has been uprooted not just by the Nakbeh, the wars and the settlements, but also by a capitalism breaking up a peasant economy and the accompanying life rhythm. The quietness of a rural lifestyle has now been superseded by a tenseness that is escaped by few. On my way back home yesterday, I witnessed a discussion between two taxi drivers who complained that their colleagues were all busily going after money. Whatever one’s opinion about capitalism and earning good money, it to some extent contradicts basic cultural values, and you can see that many Palestinians don’t feel at ease with the associated “fast” lifestyle. As if they are doubly uprooted, politically and culturally. The driver who takes me back to Bethlehem, and who doesn’t have any other passengers apart from me, refuses to accept money as if he momentarily wants to say “no” to everything that has corrupted the Palestinian lifestyle. In essence, people long for the good life to come back, if only fleetingly or dreamlike.

This week, we escape the reality of the political situation somehow. Only a few political stories come in, except for the ever-continuing traveling problems imposed by Israel. (At Tel Aviv Airport, five young Bethlehemites, with the required permits, were sent back home to leave through Jordan, the security police ostentatiously tearing apart the permits in front of the youths’ eyes.  Mary relays that three late afternoon marriage ceremonies in the Church of Nativity were delayed till deep in the evening because of the traveling problems of the couples and their families). Mary mockingly puts her arms in celebration in the air saying: “Chalas, it’s peace!”

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Karishma announces that she will got engaged in a few weeks’ time to a Palestinian from Bethlehem, an electrical engineer. They met each other while discussing “the situation.” I think that she, like me, is fond of the rhythms of Palestinian life but it is her fate that she cannot stay here long due to visa problems from which Africans suffer more than Europeans. The engagement party will be at the swimming pool of the Freres School where she used to teach.

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Sunday morning Jara wants to go out to make her habitual drawing. It is beautiful weather, the priceless gift of our region. This week, we meet Mary’s cousins who have come over from abroad, one of them from Canada where his nose froze during evenings with minus 20 degrees Celsius, another from Dubai with temperatures up to over 50. Once in a while Jara looks backwards, her head slightly tilted as if professionally gauging her drawing. We hear the ordinary sounds; the man calling ka’ek, ka’ek (a type of bread), and the muezzin of the mosque. (Once, out on the street, Jara started to loudly sing Allahu Akbar on the melody of the mu’ezzin, to my prompt embarrassment). We also hear the church bells, and the ever-present tazziz (cicada). A timeless and priceless scene. For the moment, Jara does not talk about politics nor draws a gun. In the evening, when I am tired and she is not, she is willing to tell me a story to let me sleep. Papa, mama and Jara are going to buy vegetables in the Jibrin shop near ‘Azza camp, suddenly a wolf appears, bites her, and Jara has to be brought to the doctor. At the end, she tells me in Dutch welterusten (good night).

For her part, Mary dreams about soldiers shooting Palestinian kids. She imagines herself sobbing softly. Politics is never far from the surface. The people still expect some kind of war happening in the near future, possibly the re-occupation of some of the Palestinian areas by Israel. Today’s Haaretz says that, according to existing military plans, some 100 Israelis and 1000 Palestinians would be expected to die.

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