LETTER FROM
BETHLEHEM (26)
Toine van
Teeffelen
18 May 2002
The Bethlehemites once
again try to catch up with daily life. People shake hands with acquaintances
whom they under different circumstances would barely greet. All people say that
they are, well, tired. Some people in the street walk like zombies: shoulders
down, eyes focused to eternity. Briefly after the lifting of the curfew, Jara
mindlessly runs across the street, as if she had all but forgotten about the
cars. She is almost hit by one. Mary and I panick more than during the whole
period of the occupation.
There is a run on the banks
for cash. The prices are increasing due to the scarcity of products and
Israel’s present steep inflation. Jamal, Mary’s uncle who is the mayor’s
secretary, says that the soldiers robbed some 20.000 shekel cash and also
cheques at the municipality, as well as an expensive decorative sword. A
chocolate box was emptied, with the note in Hebrew: “Thank you for your
hospitality.” Another relative, the head of the engineering bureau, tells in
exasperation that all the municipality land maps have been taken away. They now
have to rely upon copies the landowners themselves have in order to prove to
whom which land belongs. And when they don’t have a copy? “Then we face difficulties.”
It goes without saying that all computers have also been simply taken away, as
in the other occupied cities, in order for the Israelis to detect the
“infrastructure of Palestinian terror.” The administrators and engineers must
start their jobs from scratch.
The talk of the day is that
the Israelis are likely to come back, as in Jenin, not for a long period but
for one day or so. Many people on their wanted lists are still in Bethlehem;
and many weapons are still buried under the ground. Even the day is mentioned
when they are supposed to return: next Tuesday. Why, next Tuesday? “After so
many days closed up at home, people talk a lot,” a colleague from an
alternative tourism agency remarks, “and remember that it was no coincidence
that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem – in no other place people would talk
so much that a son of town becomes known throughout the world!”
At least, talking is a way
of coping. An incredible amount of stories are exchanged these days about what
happened in the various houses during the curfew. My Arabic teacher says that
during the curfew she each day watched morning recipe programs broadcasted by
several Arab stations available from the dish. She wrote the recipes down - she
now has a handwritten recipe book – and each day, to her husband’s great joy,
she made another special dish or cake, filling her time and their stomachs. One
of our neighbours, whose father runs a medical lab, says that after a few weeks
one woman after the other came to check whether she was pregnant. “For sure,”
she comments, “when closed up, some people start hating, others start loving.”
But many youth did simply
not know what to do. The problem, a social worker at a private school says, is
that Palestinian youth are just not used to read and write at home. They only
do it when it is imposed. During the curfew, many of the students watched TV
until deep in the night and got up at twelve next day. Now, they lack any
motivation to go back to school. One very young pupil, half-seriously, told his
mother: “I don’t need to go to school, I am sure that all teachers are dead.”
(Another child, hearing this, ruefully commented: “Well, I don’t wish all of
them dead.”)
*
* *
At St Joseph, a school
diary project had an impact: Many of the 11th graders continued
their diary writing during the curfew. Some stopped because they were afraid
that the soldiers might take the English language diaries as evidence against
the family. In a country with a long history of occupations, people have an
inborn reluctance to write things down. So Suzy was all the more pleased to
have collected over forty computer diskettes with diaries. “Ya’ tik
al’Aafye,” a teacher commented dryly. [May God bless your health, an
expression said to somebody who is at work].
One tawjihi
[matriculation] student, Nadine, told Suzy that her head had burst with things
she wanted to write down, but that she was unable to do so. Her family was
contained into one room in her own house; the soldiers occupied the other
parts. The family had to ask for permission when they wanted to leave the room,
for instance, to go to the toilet. During the opening hours, only one person at
a time was allowed to leave the house. At one point Nadine, infuriated,
approached a soldier, asking him whether he knew the diary of Anne Frank. “Yes,
of course, do you want to read it?” “No, I want you to read it!” The
soldier shrugged his shoulders, indifferently. Last year, St Joseph’s students
studied the Anne Frank diary and identified parallels between their own imprisonment
experiences and Anne Frank’s underground stay in the Amsterdam grachtenhuis.
The teachers at the school
are now employing the diary project as a way of coping with the traumas
students experienced. So many students fall into a steep abyss of meaninglessness:
What is the purpose of study and school, when you cannot enjoy life, when there
is no future, no normal university study, no traveling possibility, no work to
be found in an economy that is in collapse? You’d rather be dead, and you’d rather
take your enemies with you. Others repress their feelings and want simply not
to talk about what happened, they heard too much already, they want to avoid
the news, too; it is boring anyway. That is the worst response, teachers
comment, piling up pressures and emotions to become an implosion. Some
students feel guilty that they were not so much exposed to violence and
deprivation as those living around the Church. “Mama, I don’t want to eat, I
cannot get this through my throat when others are hungry.” Still others jump up
at the sound of a school bell or a slamming door; they think that soldiers
enter the building. In fact, Jara lately heard a truck outside and asked Mary
whether it was a tank.
The Israeli army and the
violence may have left the city (although we all the time hear about brief
incursions into the Bethlehem district, like in Karkafeh or Dheisha;
information which I cannot check), they are still in people’s minds. One
student followed her father’s habit of shooting birds and opened the bloody
intestines of a bird in front of people. She apparently became fascinated by
the blood shown on local TV.
Some students started sleep
walking, and of course many have nightmares, for instance about house searches,
probably the most dreadful experience they were exposed to. The other day Mary
told me that she herself dreamt about a house search, and also, strangely
enough, about tanks flying over the house. “At least that’s better than on the
roads. Let them go to heaven, or hell.” Jara said that she dreamt being a good
witch faced by a bad one who wanted to enter her house. She and papa and her
little brother refused entry to the bad witch, then she jumped into the air and
out of the air she shot dead the intruder. At the moment she is completely
absorbed by fairy tales in which a wolf or fox threatens a home. As I cannot
escape my inborn sober convictions (which seem to lose relevance every day), I
am happy that her stories provide peaceful solutions: The fox is frightened
off, the wolf safely taken away to a distant forest.
*
* *
All youth in Palestine are
struggling to give meaning to the fact that they are exposed to intruders
against which the adults cannot protect them. Another kindergarten student,
also four years, was asked whom she thought stayed in the Zeppelin - the
Israeli videotaping balloon that used to hang over the Church during the siege.
“Shalon,” the child said – she couldn’t pronounce the ‘r’ well.
Suzy says that the teaching
challenge now is to find ways for students to express their anxieties. One good
way is joking (“What is the difference between Arafat and Sharon after Arafat’s
siege in Ramallah? Forty kilos.”) She asked the students to write “a letter to
an Israeli soldier” or to comment upon a drawing of a big fish eating a smaller
fish eating an even smaller fish. The big fish thinks the world is OK, the
smaller fish thinks the world partly OK and partly at fault, and the smallest
fish thinks the world a disaster. A prompt which no doubt catches the students’
present mood. One reason why the students feel that the current situation is so
meaningless is that, without exception, the people feel unhappy about the
compromise that led to the deportation of the militants – the small fish - to
Gaza and Cyprus. As if the struggle around the church, the curfew and the
sacrifices, were for nothing. Fuad says that during a youth meeting at the
institute, the conclusion was that the solution can only come from God.
*
* *
The schools now try to
squeeze their semester curriculum into the very few weeks left. At the
government schools, the visual arts and sports fall victim to the need to
compensate for the lost hours in the important exam subjects. At St Joseph they
at least keep the sports, so essential to get out the tension. The private
schools, like the government schools, have also cancelled any real festivity
after the exams. The mood of the public does not allow that. At the Freres’
there will be only “a reception with lemonade and tabouleh” [a delicious
salad cut very small]. My Arabic teacher does not agree: “After eighteen years
of school, they have to leave just like that?”
*
* *
Unavoidably, a great many
people talk about emigrating. As a colleague says: “During Bethlehem 2000 there
was a little hope. Then things only deteriorated. Why should we refuse living a
normal life somewhere else? With the Likud now denying a Palestinian state, we
have many more years of Intifada ahead of us.” I can’t find an answer.
*
* *
Mary plays with Tamer on
her lap. By fingering his chin, she tries to elicit a laugh. Soon we will go,
like other new parents are used to do here, to the Church of Nativity to lay
down Tamer on the Star which symbolizes the place where Jesus was born, and
which for some time was a refuge for the militants. There we’ll take a photo of
him, an icon for a better future.
Mary sighs a lot these
days. I don’t sigh, but deep down inside there is a small ball in which all
sadness and anger is locked up. It should rather not be unlocked but cannot be
repressed or forgotten either.