Eggplants, Photos and a Wedding

Since I haven't posted in quite a while and I want to work on my "real" next post a bit more before publishing it, here is a short update of the past few weeks.

Muki and I have recently acquired a life, as they say, which has been a nice development, but has come at the cost of time for reflection, writing, emails, etc. 

A few weeks ago we participated in a photography training put on by PNN. Two Germans came down and there was a 5 day workshop which will culminate in two exhibits- one here in Bethlehem and one in Germany.  We all ended up focusing on different projects/themes. Muki wanted to focus on taking portraits of children with their most prized toys.  I focused on hands. As we walked around taking photos, Muki quickly discovered that the kids she was talking to didn't really have toys in the US sense of the word. So her series became simply about children playing, and the objects that they play with.  It should be clear to tell the difference between Muki's pictures and mine, but just FYI, Muki's pictures are all in color and mine are all in b&w. 

 

During our photography adventures in Aida refugee camp we met a very lovely girl, around 3 or 4 who Muki wanted to photograph. Well, fast forward ten minutes, full of laughs and introductions and her family invited us in for coffee. Then fast forward another half an hour and one of the daughters of the family, a little older than us, is telling us how she does weddings. She does the set up- brings the lights, white and gold cloths, the fancy loveseat for the bride and groom, the candle holders, the fake flowers, and she's the DJ to boot. She was showing us pictures of her past wedding sets- and suddenly she invited us to a wedding that Saturday. 

So... we went to a wedding...  

Well, we went to one very small part of a wedding. It was just the part where the bride and groom dance in front of all the female guests. (The guys were somewhere else... we never found out where.) Only the groom and the young kid-boys were allowed in the dancing area. 

It was a time for the bride and groom to dance, then for the bride to dance, then the sisters of the bride, then the bride again, then the sisters of the groom, then the bride and groom, etc. There were also lots of props that the bride had to dance with- an umbrella, a basket full of sweets, a bird cage (which was apparently supposed to have a dove in it that the bride was supposed to release, but there was no dove), another basket full of lipstick tubes, a baton, another basket full of bags of peanuts (all of the things in the baskets were passed out by the bride to whoever was lucky).  

The bride wore a white wedding gown. As in, a very "American" style white wedding gown. Which gave pause to reflect on the export of US culture around the world. And the symbolism of the white wedding dress indicating chastity, purity, good... and how that feeds sexist and racist narratives....

We also went to an eggplant festival in the small village of Battir, which is an incredibly beautiful area that has an irrigation system that is thousands of years old. (I may have already mentioned Battir in another post, so please forgive the repetition.) The gardens and orchards are terraced, the water comes directly from a few springs in the middle of town, and there is an enormous walnut tree in on one of the terraces. Battir is an interesting place for a few reasons. It lies within the Green Line (the line which was established in the 1967 war that demarcates between Israel and the occupied West Bank), so technically Israel could decide to build the apartheid wall right next to Battir, cutting it off from the West Bank. There was a lot of activism that went on to prevent that from happening, and in one of the rare happy stories for Palestinians, the village won, after proving the vital necessity of the water system. I don't know all of the details (like how the water system would have been effected by the wall) but for now Battir is a beautiful, wall-less village. There is also a train that runs down below Battir. Apparently it was built during the Ottoman Empire days, and has since come under Israeli control.  Unfortunately Israel decided to destroy the Battir train station, so Battiris can not longer enjoy the tracks that run through their view at the bottom of the valley.  (We actually went on an agricultural tour of Battir a few weeks ago, and you can watch an English video of it here.) 

So, that's a little update of the past few weeks. I'm working on posts about our trip to the Dead Sea, and one about our experience witnessing clashes between the Israeli soldiers and young men and boys from the refugee camp, which included our first encounter with teargas.  

Seen in Aida Camp, during clashes between Israeli soldiers and young men from the camp.