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By 5 PM we’ re at the water. Long-Hair, the all-too-familiar settler adolescent, is there with his herd, as usual, on Musa’s land. Usually he’s dour, sour, and obnoxious; this time he seems a little curious about Amir and me. Amir—he’s a psychotherapist– wants to talk to him. The conversation, if you can call it that, goes like this:
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Moments of respite. Seven, maybe eight water tankers manage to fill up at the ‘Auja stream toward sunset. We are there to greet them. For once, no settlers come to ruin things.
Continue readingThe Bitter Landscapes of Palestine, by Margaret Olin and David Shulman is now available through Intellect Books, Great Britain, or The University of Chicago Press, USA, or any of the usual places, like Amazon. Perhaps your local bookstore carries it.
The Mini-War of the Water continues apace.
It’s hot in Ras al-‘Ain, in more ways than one. It’s become a flash point. The settlers are fully focused on driving the shepherd families of this village out of their homes and fields. And it’s high summer. Nights are stifling in the tent where we sleep, though the flaps are open to the stars and the distant lights across the river, in Jordan. At 4 AM there’s a cool breeze, a tease; as soon as the sun rises, at around 6, the temperature hits 40 degrees Centigrade; by mid-morning, it’s somewhere between 45 and 50. Sometimes a strong wind blows boiling dust over everything and everyone—our tent, the sheep in their pens, the few vehicles parked on the gravel paths, the shacks of tin or asbestos, the scraggly trees. At first you don’t notice how thirsty you are. Then it hits you and won’t go away, no matter how much you drink. I feel the thirst, first, in my eyes, every minute (even drier than usual). And then there’s the other kind of thirst, in the heart.
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Festive days in Palestine: ‘Id al-Adha, a time for families, feasts, picnics, prayers. The call to prayer, the azan, ends with a solemn, loving formula proper to these days: labbayka allahumma, “We are yours to serve, Lord. There is no other.” At Ras al-‘Ain, toward evening: dozens of cars, young men splashing in the fresh, cold stream, small circles smoking narghilehs in the shade, picnics; and the tankers from the village filling up with water.
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