01 February 2007

 
Hebron

At a quarter past two last Friday afternoon I was at the ticket office in Jerusalem's central bus station. I was there to meet up with my friend David Bernstein, and his friend Adam. Not long later I was sat on a bus bound for Hebron. The windows of the bus looked dirty and it was hard to see out of them, particularly when the sunlight, still strong here in January, shone. In fact the windows were bullet-proof, not dirty. Most of the way there was little to see anyway as the view was blocked by an anti-sniper wall.

We arrived not quite to Hebron but to Qiryat Arba. A settlement of 10,000, it is effectively a suburb of Hebron to the east of the city and adjacent to it. There we were met by Yosef and Melody, a nice, friendly couple, originally from the US. Two cute American girls who had been on the bus also turned out to be staying at their place. We walked a short way down a new road in the warm winter sun. The sun's rays were warm but the air chilly, crisp and fresh, high in the Judean hills. Then we turned onto a path, walked along a row of identical four-floor buildings of Jerusalemite stone, and into their ground-floor flat. There we ensconced ourselves, putting our bags in the boys' guest bedroom.

Before dinner David, Adam and I wondered down to synagogue for the evening service, ma'ariv. Yosef and Melody's place is on the edge of Qiryat Arba, facing Hebron. Within a few moments we were on the main road walking downhill, past the last rows of Qiryat Arba's identical homes on the right, past the fence and barbed wire on the left, beyond that the crowded box-houses of a east Hebron neighbourhood. We joined the stream of people walking down into the city in the dusk, every now and then saying "Shabbat Shalom" to the soldiers we passed. I doffed my blue trilby hat, as is my wont. We were walking on a Jewish road. After a few steps we were on a stretch where Palestinian homes lie on either side. We turned a slight corner and began to rise up the slope of the next hill when we heard a commotion behind. We looked round and saw a Palestinian man and two kids trying to get a camel across the road. The camel wasn't having it. The man was pulling at its reigns. The camel pulled back. Jewish men rushed to the scene, one shouting at the Arab. The kids started hitting the camel from behind, frantically, angrily. American and Israeli girls screamed, shocked by the cruelty (to the camel). Soldiers rushed to the scene, one by one. The camel brayed loudly. We continued on.

The road wound up through half-demolished houses, through what looked like an ancient archway, then downhill and out into the open courtyard of the Tomb of the Patriarchs. We walked up the steps and into the building. The place is separated off into a number of services, or minyanim (rough translation), which makes it reminiscent of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Some of the minyanim are fast, others slow; one is for the ultra-orthodox, another for Sephardic Jews. We sat and stood and prayed in the biggest one, the middle one, with the other smaller services going on in rooms to its left, right and rear. Beyond the ark there is a tree, out in the open air, marking the place where Adam, the first man, is said to be buried. I prayed the Amidda, the silent standing prayer. Above there flew a white dove. It circled overhead, then perched on a beam.

The service heated up. Ma'ariv was over and we were into the Welcoming of the Sabbath. The normal joyous songs started, and were repeated. Men crowded around the Bima (the reading table in the middle). Young men in white robes and large colourful skullcaps, typical of the Hilltop Settlers, danced. They leaped up and down, their arms and hands by their sides, their long side-curls lolloping up and down. Ultra-orthodox men in their large black hats joined them. They danced around in circles as the choruses were repeated, then as the melody was belted out wordlessly.

We returned to Qiryat Arba for dinner. On the way David pointed out three people sat at a table in the middle of an empty field. It was cold and they were sat there, eating. The place is known as Geborim, a no-man's-land along the road, claimed by the settlers. In order to further the claim they pray there, and on Friday night some eat there.

Dinner was big. And it was good. I was bound by the 1st rule of the house: no guest is allowed to help unless he/she as been at least three times. So I sat and talked to my neighbour, a large man, a bus driver, whose name I utterly forget. I sat with my back to the other table. There a ten-year-old kid, cheeky but sweet, sat right behind me. He had been given a bit of wine and was a touch tipsy. He tried to get me to surreptitiously give him more. The conversation was jovial and calm, and rather banal. A few songs were sung and the sound of the imam's call to prayer wafted in through the open window. Afterwards Bernie, Adam, Myself and the two Americans (now named as Sora and Rachael) went up to the road where some of us smoked and most of us chatted. There we could see across the hillside of the Palestinian neighbourhood, but only the neon of the mosque's minaret was plainly visible in the darkness.

Morning came. We wondered down to synagogue. Now I was more comfortable, and bounced between minyanim. I caught up with the prayers in one room then moved to another to hear the Torah read in the Sephardi style. The small room was colourfully decorated with Arabic scripture. Through a window in front of the reader we could see another room with a Muslim-style tomb, representing the last resting-place of Abraham. I prayed through the morning. Then I met up with Bernstein and we went to walk in Hebron.

We went first to the Avraham Avinu neighbourhood, the Jewish settlement in Hebron. The houses are densely packed, forming in effect one structure. One courtyard is left through a narrow path which leads to another courtyard. The buildings are big, white, of Jerusalemite stone. There was quiet. Boys played football. I found a toilette. Then, calmer than before, we wondered out of the neighbourhood. On the way, in one of the courtyards, we passed a large cuboid structure. It was made of massive concrete slabs erected side by side forming what might have been walls. But there were no gaps. On top were more slabs, forming the roof of the structure. David told me that it had been the home of Palestinians who had not wanted to move. They erected the concrete in defence. Now they were gone. But the concrete remained.

David and I walked along the Palestinian market road, closed for the Jewish Sabbath. On the way we saw Jewish settler graffiti: a colourful mural depicting sheep, hills, a pioneer with a large scull-cap, side-curls and a rifle in hand. There was writing scrawled on the closed shutters of the shop-fronts. And there was a symbol of a Star of David, with its bottom right-hand-corner replaced by a large fist clenched in the star's interior. It was reminiscent of similar graffiti I've seen playing on the map of mandatory Palestine. We followed a prescribed route into Hebron, to two Yeshivot, (Jewish seminaries). We walked past more closed shops. Walking now where Palestinians are allowed to pass. A small group of Palestinian kids passed two Jewish kids. One of the Palestinians fixed his gaze on the Jewish boys. All of them were about nine yeas of age. His stare was hard, sharp, bitter, filled with hatred. Most of the soldiers we passed ignored us, as had their comrades on the walk down from Qiryat Arba. With some there was small-talk about the heat or the boredom. We passed one Yeshiva on our right, an impressive Romanesque building, then turned left towards another. There, walking steeply uphill we encountered a greater number of Palestinians. They were taking a route that overlapped with the Jewish one. Soldiers stood at each corner. They came down, we went up. The men and women tried to avoid eye contact. The children looked straight at us and smiled. One or two waved. Bernstein had had enough. We turned back.

At lunch I asked Yosef why they'd come to Qiryat Arba. The answer surprised both David and me. It was, he said, the normality of the place that had attracted him. Initially he had wanted to rear dairy goats. Indeed there was a book on the subject in their lavatory. But he had backed out of the rural pioneer's life, on the frontier against the Arabs. Instead he still raised funds for Elon Moreh, a (notorious) Hilltop Settlement in Northern Samaria. He himself had opted for the quiet life. Later David told me that on previous visits Yosef and Melody had talked of the holiness of Hebron, of the importance and sanctity of the Jewish presence there. In our conversation he did mention being friendly with the Goldsteins, the family of Baruch Goldstein who was overpowered and killed having openned fire on Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994, killing 29 and wounding 150.

After lunch Adam and David had a nap. I went with Sora and Rachael for stroll. We asked and were told that there was no picturesque place to sit and look at the view. Stood there amidst the Hebron Hills we found this a little hard to believe. We kept on walking. We came across what looked like a pile of boulders: big white rocks, one on top of the other. We clambered onto them, then skipped carefully to the top. We sat down and got comfortable and started to talk. We looked down and across the wadi (Arabic and colloquial Hebrew for valley), and at the low-lying hills beyond. On each small mound there was the permanent parking-place of a set of caravans: a Hilltop Settlement. On the right there was a brand-new road. Directly bellow us we saw a small grove of olive trees. They'd been burnt. One of the girls eventually mentioned them and asked why they were burnt. I said that they were probably Palestinian trees, burned down by settlers. This year they've mostly been stealing olives but two years ago, when the last good harvest came, they'd opted for burning. And it seemed like the tactic had worked in the wadi bellow. The whole vista looked to be devoid of Arabs: a success. The girls were shocked at the burning of the trees.


As we walked back I noticed again a large number of Indians, members of the "Tribe of Menasheh". Qiryat Arba, Yosef later told me, is home to six or seven hundred Children of Menasheh, Indians who claim to be descendents of the biblical tribe of Menasheh. They had lived in China until moving south to North-Eastern India. They have dark skin as do darker Indians, but oriental eyes like the Chinese. In Qiryat Arba they have Jewish identity; they can learn Judaism and are equals in the pioneering quest.

Dusk came quickly, and we performed havdalah, the ritual to end Shabbat. I made a call to my Mum in London on Yosef and Melody's phone, (they pay a lump sum and minutes are free), and called my Dad near Tel-Aviv. We signed their guest book, and thanked them for their great hospitality. They really had made us all feel at home. Yosef leant me a copy of 'Fear no evil', the memoir of Natan Sharansky, a Russian-Jewish dissident under communism, which Yosef thought I might like. I had to get back to Tel-Aviv that night, while the others only had to get to Jerusalem. So I made my eagerness to leave felt as politely as I could and we went for the bus. Yosef and Melody accompanied us until we said our goodbyes and boarded. At some point I'll have to go back, to return Yosef's book. I sat across from Sora, and listened to some of her music, Jewish instrumental music, (she nowadays listens only to Jewish music). The bus was full, dark behind the dirty bullet-proof windows.








-----------

Pictures: First the Tomb of the Patriarchs, then a Jewish couple on a walk in Hebron


Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?