For the past several months Salpi took a leave from her work as a counselor at St Joseph’s School in Jerusalem to stay with and take care of her mother. She tells Mary how, among other things, she consoled her mother when she screamed during the bombings. Like Salpi, there are many women in the Palestinian community taking care of their parents. With almost no services for the elderly available, and often without proper insurance and medical care, it is usually the daughters living close by who take responsibility. Mary and her sister Jeanet presently take care of their father who has been weakened by a serious infection. Sawsan consoles her mother who is afraid of the shellings, while Suzy, whose mother is presently in the US, takes care of friends, and is doing various errands for a medical organization in Bethlehem. Due to the departure of many young men to countries abroad, there are more women than men in Bethlehem, and more older people than youth. 

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the students from Bethlehem and Hebron come to the computer lab of the Institute to share their stories with Dutch students. I have the impression that the visit to the Institute has become something special for many of the kids, not just because of the access to the computers and the Internet but also because of the opportunity of leaving home. The girls of St Joseph put on make-up. Some boys of the Freres School sit outside the computer class for more than an hour, waiting till the girls come out of the room. The girls are of the same age but think that the boys are far less mature, and they walk out seemingly without noticing anyone. Afterwards the boys look out from the windows and try to catch the girls’ attention. Both don’t have evenings to go out and mingle. 

Like usual we, the teachers, share stories too. I am called by Sana’a Abu Ghosh who is principal of a United Nations School in the village of Battir, south-west of Bethlehem. I try to arrange a class of her school to be involved in an exchange program with Belgian schools. She likes the idea but the problem is that the girls cannot come from the village to Bethlehem. They have to pass “road 60” which is a bypass road for settlers who travel from Jerusalem in the direction of Hebron. Because Palestinian cars are not allowed to drive along some 1,5 km of that road, students and teachers have to walk there, which is sometimes quite dangerous because of shootings. The danger and inconvenience prevent some of her teachers from outside the village to come to work, or, if they can come on the way to school, they may not be allowed to cross the checkpoint on their way back home. We discuss whether it is possible that she would arrange having a computer with Internet at her school so that the girls do not need to come weekly to the Institute. 

Like Sana’a’s school, many schools face operational difficulties. Al-Khader, a village between Bethlehem and Battir, is especially affected. The village itself is in area A, that is, under full Palestinian control. However, its four schools are located in area C, which is under the control of the Israeli army. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week, the local military commander determined that Palestinian youth threw gas cannisters at the military out of the school courtyard. He ordered the schools, with more than 2000 students, closed for at least a month. (The school principal did an investigation and asserted that the cannisters were thrown not from the school courtyard but from a neighbouring sports field, and that this was done by youth from other areas).  The students now study on the floor in the local mosque or in a village house, without basic equipment. The older students, who have to work for their final exams, go to schools in other villages where they take a second shift in the late afternoon, after the regular students finish studies. Some of the teachers who come from other areas have decided to stay overnight in those villages. At dark, people don’t travel and generally stay at home.

I know Al-Khader well because I used to go there to accompany school class excursions. Al-Khader means “the Green One” and represents a holy person in Islam, described in the Quran as a somewhat mystical advisor of Musa (Moses). For the Christians, Al-Khader is St George. According to local legend, he was put in prison in the village. Later on, the Crusaders took the legend of St George to the West, where he became the patron saint of England. In the center of the Moslem village is a Greek Orthodox Church in which a lone priest serves a church community which mainly consists of pilgrims - Christians but also Moslems. There is an iron chain on display which believers put around the neck in order to be protected by the saint. On the saint’s day (May 5), many pilgrims come to give sacrifices, or to baptize their child. Palestinian folklore contains a wealth of stories about the healing properties of the saint, and, when asked, the villagers will tell you wonder stories attributed to the saint’s intercession. Traditionally, St George used to bring rain to the peasants while running on his horse over the clouds during a thunderstorm. He also provided protection, like a knightly prince. During last spring I guided a Dutch group along the place. The group leader, a reverend, was somewhat dismissive about the “superstition” of the villagers. I did not have the right theological counter-argument available but expressed my belief that the saint lent a kind of sacred meaning to community life. 

Now the people of Al-Khader need protection more than ever. This week, the Yamama hospital close to the village (Mary’s father was treated there a month ago) was shot right at the moment that some youth, injured from previous shootings, were treated in the emergency room. The room had to be evacuated immediately. In another incident close to the village, a Palestinian taxi was stopped and the soldiers ordered all passengers to leave the car - not through the doors but through the windows. The taxi driver had to assist the people, who were not young , in wriggling themselves out of the windows and bringing them in along the same way. From a shopkeeper close to the Al-Husseini hospital in Beit Jala Suzy heard an even more bizarre story. After a family car was stopped, again near Al-Khader, a father and three sons were asked to come out, start creeping on their arms and legs, and bark like dogs. The middle son refused, and was hit so violently that he was afterwards treated in the hospital from where the shopkeeper heard the story. Ishmail, the school principal from Hebron, explained that there is method in this madness. To ask the father to do such things in front of his children is very humiliating, especially in Arab society where the father’s honour is central to family and community life. Moreover, in Islam, the dog is considered an unclean animal, and to demand imitating a dog is an extreme form of humiliation.

Afterwards, Suzy asked her 11th graders what they would do when asked to bark like dogs. The students told they would not comply, never. “And what if your father was threatened by a gun, would you comply or not?” In that case, most of the girls acknowledged that they would comply - what can you do? 

Suzy likes to challenge her students with such “moral dilemmas.” Both at the Freres and St Joseph we used to ask students what they would do if they were in the desert and encounter settlers who had lost their way and lacked water. A modern application of the Good Samaritan parable. At the Freres, one boy in an auditorium with some 500 students said that he would not give water, since the settler was his enemy. Almost everybody else objected, saying that this was against the principles of Christianity and Islam, and that of course one should give water to whomever was in need. (Right now, I am not so sure about their opinions on the matter). One clever student developed a political compromise, saying, “OK, I would give water, but organize a press conference afterwards.” At St Joseph’s, Suzy asked her students to think about a reversal of the situation. What would the students think the settlers would do when the Palestinians were without water? As it turned out, the students did not trust the settlers as much as they trusted themselves.

The present-day moral dilemmas are not hypothetical, and underline the vulnerability of people in everyday life. Confronting her students with the story about the family forced to imitate dogs, Suzy said that one girl started to cry uncontrollably. She was related to the Abayat family, the local Fatah leader who was assassinated in a helicopter attack two weeks ago. The girl is well-known for her harsh opinions and feelings of revenge, to the point that her father regularly tells her: “Choose your words, lady.” Her opinions seem to suppress a basic fear and sadness. 

These weeks I see, and hear about, many people crying. With my Western-Dutch background, I sometimes tend to become impatient with intense expressions of grievance. But Mary points out the obvious, that at many moments crying is the best thing you can do. It’s not just for releasing tensions, but also a way of showing that you are together and care about each other. Suzy tells that one of her students interviewed her grandfather for an oral history research. He spoke about the Palestinian rebellion during the time of the British Mandate, in 1936. His memories resonated so much with the present-day experiences of the girl, that she started to cry and said that it was only now that she took seriously all those family stories from before. Like silence, crying can be an intensely social act, here bridging the gap between generations.

Coming to grips with an impossible reality creates uncommon habits. One of them is this fascination with violence which in the beginning I found strange to the point of somewhat distasteful. Now I think that the hunt for knowledge about bullets and rockets gives people an almost magical feeling of controlling what cannot be controlled.  People go and watch the “firework,” and become instant experts in all kinds of bullets (except Mary and I, it seems). Karishma has set up a “bullet project” in which students search for different type of bullets and document them on digital video for exhibition and email-exchange. Suzy tells that one of her foreign students in an afternoon class that she gives at Cremisan, a seminary run by the Salesians, asked her to collect bullets for a rosary he made. I have to laugh, but Suzy says that he was quite serious. For the Italian student, praying for peace got a greater urgency when done with a rosary of bullets. Suzy’s girls now collect dozens of bullets for what may well become a series of rosaries - with beads of very uneven sizes. We also discuss that strange longing some people have for the sound of bombings, as if the bombings are somehow part of normal life. I guess that people are so jumpy inside that it feels almost uncomfortable when the world outside is quiet.

The week ends with the wedding of the son of Fuad Giacaman, Teddy. He is the coordinator of pre-school education at the Freres. Apart from the families, all teachers, and many students, are present at St Catherine’s Church. There are perhaps some 500 people, all well-dressed, and there is a gay atmosphere. In front of the altar, the groom is thrown three times into the air and women make the “ululeh” trills with their tongues. Afterwards, in the courtyard around St Jerome’s sculpture, people’s social talk strikes a pleasant echo like the expectant whispering in a music hall before the start of a performance. It is the first time since the beginning of the new Intifadah that I see people with sunny faces. Mary says that a wedding like this is now one of the few opportunities to go out and get social. 

When we discuss this, a friend of ours tells about her need to have fun these days. She says that somebody told her that it was now not appropriate to go out, when all people around are so depressed. She instinctively answered, “I don’t care, I do like to go out, I want to go to the mall, and dance.” Jara, who was present during the conversation, agreed: “Yes, I want to dance too.” 

This morning Jara tells that she is Cinderella, and I ask her “So, who is your prince?” “Yes, where is my prince?” and she looks around, searching in vain.