Afternoon snapshots of Ramallah

There is no point in talking about who did what, or about the killing of the innocent or the guilty; every action takes on a biblical significance here and always has even before the Holy Family passed through here on their way to Galilee. There is no point in telling yet another sensational story about what we have become numb to long ago:
sordid tales of militants or resistance fighters (depending whether you look at CNN or Al Jazeera).

The violence and brutality that we are told permeates the land west of the river Jordan, paints no picture of the very vibrant, intense reality here and the millions of lives lived. Beyond all the rhetoric, which this region seems to inspire in spades, existence continues in these ancient olive groves despite the odds. Did you ever stop to think that in Ramallah, people wake up in the morning, drop the kids off at school, go to work, grab lunch, buy bread, take the kids for ice cream, take walks, make love? There are any number of daily activities that go seemingly unnoticed by the nosy eyes of the TV cameras which construct our realities. Daily life goes on in its startling intensity around the little square in the old part of town in which the church and mosque face one another as if shaking hands. It’s hard to tell the religion of old wrinkled men baking outside; they sit and gossip without affiliation, without time; they have been here for millennia.

You feel the gravity of this place immediately coming off the overnight flight into Tel Aviv and catching a minibus into East Jerusalem, you think of how the three great Western religions sprang up here and you wonder why such similar faiths should inspire such mutual anger and suspicion (or is it the politicians that are doing it?). The hills seem to have been carved into terraces before time, and the olives are shaken loose in the fall as if nothing ever changed.

It can be a bit shocking coming in from distant lands of manufactured knowing into this vortex of truth, but nothing that a good breakfast at the American Colony in East Jerusalem can’t fix – civilized oriental splendor among weathered journalists and career diplomats polishing their rhetoric like crusader swords. From here it’s not far to Al Ram, but who knows how long it will take down the dusty rutted roads to Kalandia checkpoint – have your ID ready and pull your skirt high to show the Brooklyn-born soldiers.

Kalandia is a world unto itself – because this place serves as the only doorway from the West Bank toward Jerusalem through which everyone must pass at one time or another, it has become, for better or worse, a focus of life here. In the shadows of the infamous concrete barrier that separates life in Ramallah, from that in Ram, men and women line up in dark robes and hijabs or blouses and blue jeans in the hope of the being granted permission to climb into another old van and travel one more another kilometer into Al Ram – the end of the line as all locals must stop at the outer limit of the holy city.


Around Kalandia, the entrepreneurial prosper: an impromptu but bustling market has sprung up, selling jewelry, kitchen utensils, clothing, the odd chicken, and just about anything else on the dusty road. Small children wind their way among waiting cars, taxis and pedestrians selling packs of gum for 40 cents. There is an eerie normalcy in all this chaos, not quite, but near joy in the faces of the children who have known no other life, no other possibility outside their infamous refugee camps. Perhaps that is what makes the soldiers so skittish and fearful – when things can’t get much worse, people begin to relax, and there is nothing worse than a calm enemy.
As we weave through the confusion and into the heart of town, our dreams and fears and desires come to us, become more acute. The Coca-cola bottling plant peeks out over the hills and it occurs to us that there might be more to this place than we have been led to believe. We stop off at the corner of Al Tireh road for the best barbecue we have ever tasted.


In the after-lunch waves of heat and ancient, earthbound desire for vindication, we stare out over the endless terraced desert hills and feel strangely at home, strangely at peace in a war zone. Looking back at our artificial constructs lives shaped by media reports of brutality and death, we see the glaring holes in our existence, the flimsy importance we attach to constructs no longer seem to exist, our reliance on, desires of which we know nothing and that ultimately fashion our destruction. In the deep hues of the afternoon, life seems an unfathomable mystery, and everything we had thought we knew about this place crumbles in our hands like dust.


Looking up at the TV blaring the American news from the center of Ramallah – the manara, or ‘star’ – they are reporting a large, barbarous demonstration. Yet when we walk over there, it is quiet; there is nothing but a few cars circling the rotary and a flatbed truck carrying an extremely militant-looking milk cow. Business must be slow today in newsland – it makes you wonder how many other times what you’ve seen go on here was patched together out of scripts and archive footage, and feel a sense of strange pride realizing that you are somehow a part of history, if a manufactured one. You buy a pair of sunglasses and head for one of the many stands that line the streets selling fresh, cool carrot and orange juice. Well, it is a good set to stage the world’s events as any.

A young man looks up at my ostentatious mop of red hair and smiles in English: “Welcome to my country. Would you like to get a coffee with me?” The coffee is as thick as the flattery, but these boys are much happier to see me than I’d expected. “Ah, you’re American – my uncle lives in Chicago, and my cousins live in New York. I hope that someday your strong country can help us to finally be free.” You can only grin back in irony.

In the newer quarters, still being constructed of large, immodest homes, high-rise office and apartment buildings, industrial parks, the odd shopping center, it is not unusual to see Bedouin shepherds tending their flocks in a still-vacant lot, or a horseman navigating his cart among the Fords and BMWs down the road towards Birzeit into the mall parking lot; the large supermarket and Benetton beckon like a mythical promised land. From time to time, some sheep or goats might mingle among the parked cars while villagers in traditional dress pick up a six-pack of Coke next to businessmen dressed in Italian fashions – maybe a few containers of hummus as well and some pickled turnips to go with their Barilla pasta.

After an interminable amount of shielding oneself from the searing sun in a thick-walled house or the air-conditioned mall, the sun sets here more beautifully and magically than anywhere else. Those sublime evenings spent in the softening blue light are still precious; standing out on the terrace in the early darkness under an omnipotent crescent moon. The smell of jasmine poisons the air ever so sweetly, tempting your soul to join in the warbling prayer call echoing off the hills and to really believe that this land is magical, unique, infused with a spirituality that goes beyond belief, that is timeless. In is in these moments when we know in an instant why this parched, aching land has seen so much bloodshed on its dusty roads. It is only here where I find my madness ceases and calm takes me over, I feel shame at all my vain indiscretions and at the anger and hatred that permeates me from time to time.

Off to Ziryab café and gallery for a cold Taybeh (brewed right outside Ramallah in the village that bears its name), a bit of tabulleh and perhaps a narghile to bubble away the hours. All the foreigners and intellectuals are there discussing their day at the center of the world’s attention, and suddenly you realize that you have just spent your day in one of the most hippest and most ‘happening’ places on earth. Did you hear that Richard Gere was just here?


Funny that so many people spend their time zealously discussing the pros and cons of this place without ever having been here, and I am filled with the most unbelievable desire to return. Only by standing there does one feel a profound sense of clarity, not only about the ‘mid-east crisis’ of which we know nothing from watching the TV news or reading hastily constructed pages on the internet, but about everything, about life itself. This is truly is the center of it all; it’s a shame that more people don’t visit Ramallah’s beatiful historic center to see for themselves.