Chapter 9 Gentrification : Ramallah 2004

The mosquitoes and flies that feed on sheep have teeth like knives and fangs which tear holes in your clothing. Sounds bad, but there is worse. There is a fly in Africa, which lays eggs in your clothing. The eggs hatch little worms that burrow into your flesh. That is the kind of stuff you want to put in the travel brochure. No, the mosquitoes and flies of the West Bank do not seem so bad when seen from places that are worse off.


Not so bad...

No matter how quaint it would seem, awaking to the sound of sheep grazing outside the window, those insects cling on to the window mesh and beg to be let in, wanting to keep you company. It was beautiful to see them; the sheep, the insects can go to hell.

Can’t blame them wanting to get in, there where my wife’s long pale body lay. The soft alabaster of her leg exposed, uncovered, underneath the thin sheet. Her wide eyes gently shut as her head deeply impresses the cushion beneath it, her red hair splayed upon it. What is touched by the sun’s tongue is a constellation of freckles, what is untouched by the sun, her milk smooth stomach, her roundness. Who wouldn’t want to crawl all over her, to receive a slap for waking her up.

There is a meadow next to our house. It was odd that that a meadow was there, we lived in downtown Rammallah, but there it was.  Tall grasses, stone walls, olive trees and mosquito infested sheep.  There were meadows all through Ramallah. Between the white stone villas and apartment buildings would be empty spaces of light and nature. There were also sheep all over Ramallah, which were not as picturesque and bucolic as you would imagine. There was no one seated with a lute strumming away; between orgiastic ovine encounters singing:

For behold, the winter has passed; the rain is over and gone

The blossoms have appeared in the land, the time of singing has arrived, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree has put forth its green figs, and the vines with their tiny grapes have given forth their fragrance; arise, my beloved, my fair one, and come away.

My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the coverture of the steps, show me your appearance, let me hear your voice, for your voice is pleasant and your appearance is comely.

Seize for us the foxes, the little foxes, who destroy the vineyards, for our vineyards are with tiny grapes.

My beloved is mine, we who grazes among the roses.

Never heard anyone with a sheep say anything like that.

The shepard and flock would be in the shopping mall parking lot, in front of the pizzeria, blocking traffic at the Manara or moving in the marketplace. The worse was to get caught behind them in a car, you can't hurry a lamb and honking could set off a chain reaction of effluent. 

Livestock aside, the reach of nature into the interior of Ramallah offset the brutality of the urban and gave it a balance of beauty. An Italoesque beautiful run down sense. 

Our apartment, a two bedroom, with full living room and eat in kitchen, bathroom with bathtub, cost six hundred dollars a month. The one foot thick stone walls ensured the cool. We rented it from a Haj and Hajii who lived above us. Lovely people with two children in San Francisco. They only wanted to rent to foreigners. Only foreigners could afford six hundred a month. 

The front of the house was barren, stray grass, wild flowers, weeds, a gate and stairs. The show was in back of the house. In the back was paradise, Candide's garden. From every corner was an eruption of green, herbs, apricot trees, plum trees, fig trees, and grape vines. Growing outside our door were tea plants. 

The sheik smiled at me and said:

-A friend sent me these from Ceylon. The taste is delicate and subtle. If you want just take a bit and put it in hot water, please do. What ever you want here just take.  God has given it for us to take.

In fact fruit trees seemed to explode out of every corner of Ramallah, their full branches full of fruit hanging over stone walls and steel gates. Upon asking Ali if it was stealing to reach up and take some while passing down the lane, Ali said:

-That is an interesting question, and the Prophet referred to it directly. He said that if you could reach the fruit from the street then it was not theft. Now if you jumped over a gate to get something, that is theft. Perhaps this also refers to women no? 

Ali laughed and took another smoke of the hubbly and continued:

-Seriously, it is a very hard land but a fertile land. So we Arabs garden obsessively...

Really, shoving the foliage aside, looking at Ali's terrace with it's grape vines, herbs, flowers  jungle thick around us. 

-Oh yes, he said pushing back a stray magnolia. We Arabs see the garden as a central to Islam. All land can bear fruit if worked because of the love of God. And so then we plant fruit trees close to the garden gates, so that travelers passers and the poor can take if they need. Like charity, especially for the poor. Poor children can run around and gather fruits and this is better than giving it away. This way the children have to work a bit to get it. Thus the grower can give without the shamming the poor, the poor can take while learning how to work. And the land bears fruit and God is pleased no?

-What about lawns?

Ali looked at me and spit over the terrace. 

Land, power, politics, water

Land, if it is not worked, brings the danger of infertility. If land goes feral there is no worry because it still bears grasses, nettles, shrubs, all the things the sheep can eat. It becomes pasture creating seeds for birds to eat, shade for cats to hide in and food for goats and sheep. What matters is that there is growth. In the same way it is Haram to throw away bread. Instead bread is thrown onto the street for birds to eat.

Vegetation not only takes water, but can save it; in layers beneath the topsoil, in melons, in strawberries, in the moist rot. The green land seizes the water during the months of rain, making the earth permeable and allowing the water to soak into it, and allowing the water to arrive (sometimes after centuries) in the deep aquifers. Vegetation also creates water, the byproduct of photosynthesis is water vapor and oxygen. The more green there is, the more green there could be. Life brings life.  God is Great.

 If land drys then there is terror, because once it is desert, it will never bear fruit again. The topsoil drys and is blown to the wind and the desert arrives. Death brings death. No water enters the earth around the concreate poured at the settlements, nothing grows around the trailers the settlers put on top of hills. At the Separation wall there is only dust and death. 

Yet there was plenty of life back at Al Minara, the center of Ramallah. Money changers stood in the street, dollars moving to NIS to euros to dinars, who stood up the street from the market spilling out into the full streets. Men selling breads crusted with seseme paste, olive oil salt, carts of fresh fruits, fresh dates, couples seated street side with the hubbly bubbly. These couples did not touch, the women would always be in full hajab, it was dangerous. The youth of today were going wild, drinking  blended fruit drinks and sit talking to each other.

That is how this Cristian saw it, he told me this seated in the Gothic garden of his abandoned hotel. His family owned the main olive press in Ramallah but the power of the family came from the days when the city had been the vacation get away for the great and good of Trans-Jordan. 

-The King of Jordan would come here for three weeks every summer, you see we are higher up than Jerusalem, so it is a few degrees cooler here. The King would stay here when he came to pray. Also Jerusalem, was a war zone, not like the cold war zone it is today. So the King would cross the Jordan and come here. This hotel was filled with the richest of the Arab world, all here to visit Al Asqa, Hebron, and all of the other holy sites. Every summer this garden would be filled with people eating, children playing, everyone seated smoking the hubly bubbly. 

After '67?

-We closed the hotel part after '67, there wasn't enough demand for it with the Arabs not being able to come, but the restaurant kept going untill about 5 years ago. 

Then came the second intifada...

-No no no, it wasn't that at all. What happened was that people started to come here from all over Palestine. Not just into the garden but into Ramallah and flood the place. The came from Nablus, from Hebron, from Jenin...

The Christian shuddered: 

- From Gaza, yes from Gaza. They are worse than the Africans from Jericho. And even worse they came from the Villages. You don't understand me, you must understand the difference in culture. Look at this place, it was a small Christian town and today it is full of Muslims, young unmarried Muslims. Night after night the groups of young men would come in smoking the hubbly and then groups of young women to do the same. They would just stare at one another trying to find ways of getting at each other. It was shameful. 

What where they doing?

-Here? They were doing nothing, but you could imagine what they were imagining. Everyone in Ramallah could imagine what they were imagining. Disgusting.

Wait! You closed a money making business, because of what you though people were thinking about what other people were thinking?

The Christian smiled:
-Appearances matter here, this is not New York. Our family is an important family, a family that used to serve the King of Jordan. Were we obliged to serve tight panted villager boys who were scheming  to get girls? Is that what my family should be? Now when they see me and my mother they know we are a good family, not some damn pimp. 

The turning twisting vines of the garden, the rose bushes, the trimmed rows of flowers, all of the growth was still maintained and trimmed for the occasional dinner party where christians would sit, eat the meats and drink their sweet wines, complain about Muslims, remembering the glory of days past while the wind eroded the stone furnature, where the King once sat. 

Ramallah's glory is linked to Christ. In the midst of the chaos of the town, behind the snarl of new buildings, there is a ruin among the grasses, stone steps. The Arabs say that this is the Temple where Christ was found within as a child, lingering among the the doctors. There is no sign, there is no marker. Yet for the Arabs, they are sure, Christian or Muslim, they are sure and they are sure of it all over Palestine. Why do you seek me?

-There must have been a scared place here once, or else it would have been built upon, says Ali looking down at the birds eating pieces of bread someone left there. Ali looks to me:
-You see the Prophet said never to distroy a holy place and never build upon on. He says to take a rock and throw it and where it lands build a Mosque. And look, there's one there. 

 He pointed to a small Mosque hidden among the houses. 

Ramallah was a christian town, and even after 48 the wealth was in christian hands. Until Oslo it was accepted that the city council would be mostly Christian. That world was linked to hills, to medows, to sweet vinyards, to small town life. All of this becomes covered over, one piece of concrete at a time. The future calls the people. 

Whatever they PA's talk about Jerusalem being the capital, Ramallah already has all the buildings, built with US money. All of the foreigners, the diplomats, the british council, the spanish represenatives; to here come the peace activists, blond and sunburt in the sun, truging up the streets. Here come the secluar muslims that want to have the occational drink, get away from their families, live a more modern life. Here the Arab villages empty out, they cannot survive the checkpoints and the separation wall will distroy them. So the people move into the citys.  

Even in the middle of 2004, the midst of the second intifada, construction is everywhere. Building prices continue to go up. Houses, bone white house go up everwhere. This is an earthquake region, we will see how well these buildings are made, one way or another. 

One day this will all look like Amman, someone told me. Every olive grove will be torn out to build upon, every shrub burn, ever slope will be covered in cement. One day there will be no place for sheep to graze, or birds to feed and rest within the city. 

Dream 4

Humphrey Bogart is standing in Sam Spade's office, looking panicky out of the window. The murders are coming for him, he runs through the wood carved room, looking out of the windows onto the street, a tram rolls past the window below. His fingers come up to the glass, his hands are shaking. The glass stretches before him, like it was plastic wrap, stretching out into the street. There are only Bogarts eyes, the camera tracks out slowly from them, he is screaming, his skin has been cut off his face and staked out to the ground in under the desert sun, he is in the middle of other faces staked out drying like leather curing, Maralyn Monroe, Woody Harlson, Buddy Holly, Marlon Brando, James Dean. there are thousands, they are screaming, the rays of light from the sun pours on their faces like hot lead.