The day I took pictures of the bulletholes in Jiries' walls Niveen and her three kids (Issa who is 21, Nermeen who is 18, and Loai who is 13 but looks like he's 16) came over for another gigantic lunch. I know I have written about them a bunch of times before but since there are so many names I don't expect anyone to remember who everyone here is, so back to the point they are the family from San Diego that will be here for another month and a half. They moved to the US in 2002.
Issa is really tall- in the picture is is standing on something but even when he's not he is still really tall- and Nermeen, Loai and I spend a lot of time together babbling in English and sometimes Arabic, they help me out with it a lot. Shorok (Jiries' brother's daughter who lives upstairs) is 16 and she REALLY helps me with my Arabic, she is so patient and understanding; the other day she gave me a reading/writing lesson for over an hour and a half. When Niveen and her kids were here Jiries made lunch in the zarrrrb (roll the r) which is the outdoor oven. He put zucchini, chicken, onion and carrots inside clay pots, burned his fingers badly trying to get them in the zarb, and let them bake for an hour and 10 minutes. It was fantastic.
Monday I went to Tata Huda's university (senior citizen's center) and I noticed that all the old women carry around apples and bananas and fakoos in their purses with kitchen knives to cut them. Its pretty funny seeing all the women randomly whip butterknives out of their purses. I think the women in the kitchen like me a little more now, especially since my Arabic is getting better every day. Tuesday I started work as a volunteer at the Palestine Wildlife Society, apparently I am head of their PR department but I'm not exactly sure what that means and so far all I have done is edit a whole bunch of documents that are written is really poor English. I like editing stuff though, so I am more than content. I will probably be doing fundraising-related activities soon, and tomorrow I am going on a field trip to Hebron where a bunch of kids are graduating from environment camp or something like that. I am going to be traveling with the society a lot to wildlife monitoring stations in places like Hebron and Jericho. Hooray!!
Slightly smaller than the one in Old Saybrook...
The other night I was outside listening to the adults talk and trying to figure out what they are saying. Most of the time it's not hard to figure out based on a few key words and body gestures, but other times it is like white noise that just goes over my head. It is a strange situation to be in but I don't mind it. I can literally stand up and walk away in the middle of a conversation between people because I have no idea what they are saying, and they know that, so they aren't directing their conversation at me and if I get up no one even notices. If I want to write in my journal I can just tune people out for a couple minutes... so anyways, the other night I came inside and Shorok came home a minute later from her friend's place. We sat in the kitchen and talked in mostly English but a little but of Arabic (trying to construct sentences is no piece of cake), and she told me a story about when she was 9 years old.
At that point the Israelis were regularly patrolling the roads in their tanks, and Shorok said that everyone stayed in their homes most of the time because anyone walking in the street when the soliders came through would be shot dead on the spot. When the soldiers weren't around, however, the kids would go out and play in the empty street. One day they were playing a game where they would tie up the wrists of one of them to a streetlight outside, and then that kid had to wriggle his or her way out and go through a series of other obstacles as fast as possible in order to be the "hero" of the game. It was Shorok's turn, and as she was trying to untie the knot she noticed all of her friends were
gone, and the street was completely deserted except for the tanks appearing in the distance.
She said she started to scream with fright- everyone knew the Israelis shot anyone they saw in the street- and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get the rope undone. The tanks reached her, stopped, and the top opened up. A soldier poked his head out and gave her a bewildered look, then ducked back under and closed the opening behind him. The same thing happened with the second tank, and then the third went past her without stopping. When they had passed she finally got herself free and ran inside crying, where her mother was uncontrollably upset because she didn't know where her daughter was and all she knew is that the kids had been outside playing and she hadn't seen her since. Her mom came into the kitchen at the end of Shorok's story and told me it was one of the most terrifying moments of her life, in addition to all of the times that the Israelis shot at their house and they had to relocted to their grandmother's place in Bethlehem in the middle of the night when the firing started.
Random observation: at gas stations people leave their cars on while someone else pumps the gas for them, and even though there is no smoking allowed sometimes they do.
No comments:
Post a Comment