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. 

Water Politics, Swimming, and Sleeping on the Roof in Auja

We were greeted by a bony dog pissing its excitement on the stairs. The air was dryer and hotter than Beit Sehour, the landscape expansive and sandy.  A mountain range lay to the east, which I later learned was Jordan.  Muki and I followed Brahim and his German friend Hans into the Auja Eco Center where we met our host for the day, Hanna, a jovial fellow who was easy to like.

Brahim is related to our “host” family. We had met him when we arrived, and on Wednesday night he invited us to join him and Hans on a trip to Al Auja.  Thursday was the beginning of the 3-4 day celebration of Eid, at the end of Ramadan, so we had work off and decided to accept. 

Auja is just north of Jericho, in the Jordan Valley. It’s a small town that used to have an economy of bananas, watermelons and dates.  The Auja spring used to provide enough water for some 90% of the inhabitants to rely on agriculture as a source of income. That number has recently dropped to less than 5%.  The issue is water.  Well actually water is not really the issue—control of the wells and springs is the issue, as well as climate change.  Below the dry expanse, the Jordan valley is one of the water-richestplaces in the West Bank. This water belongs to the Palestinians, according to international law, with a small portion reserved for Israelis. However, when Israeli settlements began popping up all throughout the area, so did Israeli wells, pumps, and infrastructure to control the water flow. Now, Palestinians cannot get enough water to support their own agriculture, which has created an economic crisis leading many young Palestinians to work on Israeli settlers’ farms- where they have no insurance, benefits, labor rights, or protection.  (Another recent article) Palestinians cannot make wells without permits from the Israeli government, which, Hanna said, “of course they never get,” and they are dependent on buying water from the Israeli company Mekorot, at a high price.

Hanna works for the Auja Environmental Education Center (Eco Center), an NGO that provides workshops and trainings for students from all over the West Bank (and internationals) around water conservation, management, regular ol’ recycling, permaculture, etc.

That afternoon Hanna took us to the Auja spring. He said it dries and flows on and off throughout the year since the wells suck up the aquifer, and we were lucky it still had water. As we drove there, the valley opened before us to acres and acres of date palms- all owned by Israeli settlers.  At the spring we set up the hookah and sat in the fresh cold water.  Small fish nibbled on our feet. A group of local boys swam in a pool just downstream. Hans and I climbed the cliff. Looking down there was the spring, the boys, the rocky hills and a green trail of bamboo leading out of the valley. And a fenced-off area with blue pipes and Hebrew signs. A well or pump? Hanna said even though Palestinians appear to have many wells throughout the West Bank, most of them are very shallow or lead to salty water, whereas Israeli wells are fewer but deeper. He showed us short movie (below) about the water issues in Al Auja, and it had images of a lush Israeli settlement with swimming pools and greenhouses while the French reporter said, “for those that live [in the settlements] water is obviously not a problem.” (Read more, and more and more about water issues in the Jordan Valley.)

We sat in a bloated silence.  Just the heat, the view, the rocks on our skin, and the slope of the valley. A goat bleated a few hundred meters away.  The sand shifted beneath its hooves, perhaps a stone rolled loose.  Three boys walked down a road on the other side of the valley, like they were on a direct route from the empty blue.  Empty snail shells became dust beneath our feet. Little purple flowers climbed out from beneath the crumbling soil, defying the odds again.  The broken bones of a mammal lay sun bleached and forgotten outside a charcoal blackened cave.   A hot wind carried the sound of a clumsy bird scrambling into takeoff.  

That night we slept on Hanna’s roof, overlooking Auja and the twinkling outline of the Jordan mountains. The stars were bright, the smell of shisha was sweet and the temperature lulled us into dreams. 

Driving home the next day we passed one of the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It sat unapologetically on the top of a hill, California suburban type houses overlooking the hazy horizon. I was reminded of a section of Eyal Weizman's Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, in which the architecture of Israeli settlements were compared to a Foucault's Panopticon theories (Foucault didn't develop the Panopticon, but he used it extensively in Discipline and Punish)... but I suppose that's another blog post. Stay tuned.