I don’t know if you have seen a family living in terror.
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April 24, 2021. Homra, text: David Shulman
I am not sure I can find the words for what we went through today.
Continue readingAfter Ten Years at Umm Al-‘Ara’is, March 13, 2021 (texts: Margaret Olin and David Shulman)
1. Why wasn’t I there? (Olin)
It can feel like you’ve been hired as an extra chaperone at a children’s party. On most Saturdays in Um Safa, Sa‘id ‘Awad packs his wife Rima and six, seven, or eight of his fourteen children into his lively SUV, all of them bumping and bouncing on the uneven roads. After a short hike to the family’s fields in Wadi Al-‘Ara’is, the soccer games begin.
Continue readingA-Rakiz, February 23, 2021. Text: David Shulman; photographs: Guy Butavia, others
A-Rakiz is perched on the sharp spine of a rocky ridge in the South Hebron hills. It would be a charming, if rugged, place to live were it not for the ruins of its houses scattered over the village lands and for the two illegal settlements of Avigail and Chavat Maon on either side. A-Rakiz has a history of house demolitions going back some years. On November 25, 2020, the army destroyed another five houses there, including that of Harun’s parents, Rasmi and Farsi, and the one Rasmi built for Harun and his bride-to-be. Since then the family has been living in one of the caves still more or less intact in the village. It’s cold in the cave during these winter months. I know, I sat there with the parents for some hours last week.
Continue readingFebruary 6, 2021. The Hague, text: David Shulman, photographs: Margaret Olin
Sometimes, possibly more often than we think, there is also good news.
Continue readingEzra Nawi, 1952 – 2021 text: David Shulman, photographs: Margaret Olin
Ezra Nawi. A Baghdadi Jew, born in Israel, fluent in Arabic. A man like and unlike all others.
December 18, 2020 Al-‘Auja and Taybeh: David Shulman, text and most photographs
Abu Isma‘il promises me that if I come every day, he’ll teach me the language of the sheep. In time, I could become fluent. It’s an offer that’s hard to resist. Those throaty clucks and clicks and lengthy grunts and warbles—to my ears, it’s like some rustic dialect of Italian.
Continue readingNovember 6, 2020. Harat Makhul. Humsa al-Foqa. Text by David Shulman
1.
The rains have come in force, the hills are muddy, and there is food for the goats and sheep. Over morning tea in Makhul we get the weekly litany of hurts. Walid—still a boy—was out alone with the herd, and settlers came and beat him. It’s really dangerous to be alone on the hills. A large posse of settlers attacked Qadri and several others; there were two broken legs. A few days earlier, settlers killed Qadri’s uncle’s cow.
Continue readingOctober 21, 2020. Ein Sukut. Text and Images by David Shulman
Wednesday seems to be the day the settler has set aside for harassing Palestinian shepherds. That’s what Ahmad says, and he should know. Last Wednesday, October 14, it ended in murder.
Continue readingHollywood Endings: The Northern and Southern Jordan Valley. Text and photographs: Margaret Olin
Before the fires: Al-‘Auja, July 22, 2017
Fields were burning in the fall of 2017, but in late July the story was different.
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