Palestinian Walks

by Raja Shehadeh

  With Penny now driving I could look out of the window to my left at the perfectly still waters of the sea, transformed by the sun into a luminous platinum sheet, and to my right at the formidable wall of incandescent rock along which we were travelling, seemingly an impenetrable line of defence, a mighty gateway to another world.

  Yet the variegated mudstone and marlstone surfaces were in fact friable. So vulnerable were they that it seemed possible they could collapse at any moment and disintegrate into the salt sea below. This side of the rift valley was streaked with coarse white strata of sandstone running through the silty mudstone. If you looked hard you could see all kinds of castellated shapes, pinnacles and turrets, colonnades and mounds of silt and shingle, carved by the salt-saturated wind blowing against them and smoothed by the water that cascaded from the tableland above.

  We drove away from the main road by the Dead Sea, up a narrow winding track, to get to the start of the walk marked on the Israeli guidebooks. We parked the car and began our hike on the black-marked trail. Even though we were quite high up and the trail was narrow, it was well marked and sensibly planned. I had no difficulty following it. As we walked on the sloping path the views of the valley were spectacular. It was a quarter of an hour before we got to the wide valley in the ravine. The sun was blazing down but it was pleasant with the high breeze. We lay down on the rocks for a brief rest. Before starting off again I wanted to see what was behind a narrow opening to the side of the valley and went to poke about in it. I saw a large crowd of youngsters, Israelis, who were sitting around on the rocks in a semi-circle listening to a lecture by their teacher about this gorge and its different features. They were doing their pre-military training, taking difficult walks and learning about the history, geology and military significance of different parts of the country. They were guarded by two armed soldiers, who stood at the front and rear of the group. The one near the opening eyed me with suspicion. When I left he followed me to make sure I was not up to trouble and was not going to harm the flock he was protecting.

  I got back to Penny and we proceeded up the wadi. During flash floods its narrow mouth must have funnelled water with such force that anyone standing before it would be washed away and have no chance of surviving. We could see from the patina high up on the walls the height the water had reached during the last flood.

  We proceeded at a good pace and were eventually overtaken by the group of youngsters with the soldier guards I had seen earlier. We stepped aside and let them pass. They set about climbing up a rock that was so high they had to use a rope. When the last of the youngsters had ascended, one of the soldiers stepped back to let us pass. Penny went first. She was so nimble. She wrapped the rope around her feet and proceeded to propel herself up. When it was my turn I thought I too could do it. I clasped the rope with my feet and tried to imitate the action I saw Penny perform so easily, only to find myself unable to leave the ground. I tried other ways of doing the manoeuvre, to no avail. I began to regret not continuing with the Boy Scouts until I had mastered these skills. I would have remained stuck on the ground eying the rock with awe had it not been for the soldier, who proceeded to give me a push that almost sent me flying up that formidable rock. I couldn't but be grateful. Without him we would not have been able to proceed with our walk. In the course of this brief encounter the two of us did not exchange a single word. I wondered who he took me to be. Surely not a Palestinian.

  We continued on our way. Now the valley was very deep but the path straddled the eastern side of the wadi and was not too difficult until we got to a point when we had to pass along a narrow passage that rounded a rock protruding from the cliff. It was not so narrow as to be absolutely impassable. Penny went first and was able to go around it without any trouble, but when I tried I found that I could not do it. There was no other way forward. Penny tried to explain how easy it was but she understood the irrationality of vertigo. She tried gentle cajoling to assure me that it was really not a difficult manoeuvre. She knew I needed time and left me to my own devices. I sat down and considered how I should best approach the task, knowing I could not go back. The walk was too long, we would be stuck in the valley in the dark and I would never be able to get down that high rock using the rope without help. I slowly approached the narrow turning and considered what would happen if I fell. I was sure I would not survive. What if my legs failed me? What if they refused to move? I would be stuck in the middle, holding on to the protruding rock for dear life. I yearned for a rope to wrap around my waist but we were not carrying such equipment. We thought of ourselves as walkers, not rock climbers. Perhaps this time we had chosen the wrong walk.

  I stood above the cliff, looking down into the gorge, and began to fret again. I kept stretching my neck around the turn, and every time I saw that rock protruding I imagined that once I was in the middle it would somehow push me down. Or was it that I feared that I would jump? Did I trust myself not to throw myself down into that valley of death with its sharp rocks where I would have no chance of surviving?

  I remained standing, forlornly examining this challenge and questioning my ability to meet it. Some thirty slow minutes must have passed with Penny standing on the other side waiting, patient and tolerant. Finally I forced myself to try. I clung to the rock, moving my feet ever so slowly, trying to keep my mind totally blank, feeling my heart pounding heavily in my chest. I do not know how I managed it but through repeating unthinkingly those mechanical motions that I had willed myself to perform, I found myself on the other side. Penny was on the verge of exasperation yet still managed to congratulate me for my bravery.

  The rest of the walk was uphill but there were no other difficult parts. As we walked I had the chance to reflect on what had happened. I could now admit that objectively it was not a really difficult turn. It was true that the upper part of the rock was protruding over the path but the path itself was no less than half a metre wide. Nor did it project over a formidable drop. This part of the canyon wasn't as deep as it had seemed to me. Penny had passed it without difficulty, as must have all those Israeli youngsters doing their pre-military training. As I soon realized, what scared me most about this turning was something inside me.

  The emotions were not too difficult to work out. The first was the old and persistent one of wanting a father, or an elder brother, to protect me. To catch me if I fell.

  The second I interpreted as resulting from being at a point when my hold on life was being shaken. In the past I had lived with a strong sense of mission. What had framed my existence and given it a heightened sense of purpose was my resistance to the occupation, my work for justice. I felt called upon to save something, to speak out the truth, warn, resist and win. Now my struggle had been brought to an end. Consequently I lost the confidence that I wouldn't let myself fall to my death. The failures and disappointments I had been going through these past few years had loosened my grip on life and made me almost suicidal.

  We had reached the end of the cliff walk and were walking on level ground to get to our parked car when we saw the Israeli bus that had come to pick up the youngsters. As they passed on their way to the bus I looked at their faces, flushed with confidence and joy. They spoke to each other in Russian. They must have been the sons and daughters of new immigrants brought to Israel to inhabit the settlements established on Palestinian soil. They looked and acted as though the world belonged to them, for theirs was the new life of victory in war; ours the sour grapes of defeat. Amongst them I recognized the soldier who had given me that crucial push up the rock. He waited to see that all of his charges got on the bus and then firmly closed the door.

  4

  MONASTERIES IN THE DESERT

  Wadi Qelt to Jericho

  By the end of the nineties the future seemed to be moving to only bloodier times. This had been heralded by the increased rate of Israeli settlement and road building, the closing off of parts of the West Bank to Palestinians, settlers' attacks on Palestinian civilians and the brutal kil
lings of civilians by Palestinian human bombers inside Israel. The brief respite that followed the first Intifada and the promise that prevailed during the first springs of the Oslo Accords, when each side watched the other with measured hope, soon passed and with it the freedom to roam freely the exquisite Wadi A'yn Faraa next to Wadi Qelt. It was essential not to hesitate but to venture out and take walks where it was still possible. And though most of upper Wadi Qelt, including the Faraa spring, was already closed to Palestinians, lower Wadi Qelt was still accessible.

  The plan which Penny and I made with our friends Rema, Saba, another keen walker, his brother the doctor, and the brother's Russian wife, Maria, also a doctor, was to leave our cars in Ramallah, use public transport to Jericho and ask to be dropped halfway along the Jerusalem–Jericho road. From there we would walk down, passing by the old building which had once served as an inn for travellers on the ancient road between Jericho and Jerusalem. But the Israeli authorities were imposing another of those frequent sieges of Ramallah; the first obstacle was to be allowed out of Kalandia, the checkpoint separating Ramallah from Jerusalem.

  There was a middle-aged soldier with a smiling face and round spectacles manning the post. He was too old to be a regular soldier and might have been a reservist, on duty in a dusty cubicle checking Palestinian identity cards. He first asked the doctor (who could enter because he had brought his medical identity card) to prove that the Russian woman next to him, who had forgotten to bring hers, was his wife. Then he decided that he couldn't let her pass.

  'But why?' she objected. 'I'm a doctor and you're letting doctors through.'

  'If I refuse to let you pass it would be a humanitarian problem. If I let you through I could be an accessory to murder,' the soldier proclaimed in his heavy accented English, looking pleased with himself, perhaps at being capable of such eloquence. Then he appeared to have another idea. He began to examine our friend's medical knowledge.

  'Can you tell me where the sternum bone is?'

  The Russian doctor looked askance at him. She seemed utterly baffled. Her light skin became pink, her long face seemed to grow longer and her eyes looked vacantly at her husband as she tried to understand this soldier's English.

  'I can't understand,' she told her husband in Russian. She had very poor English.

  The husband turned to the soldier and answered his question.

  'I know you are a doctor. I want her to answer.'

  Then he hurled another question at her: 'What disease is caused by the Epstein Barr virus?' he asked. Maria again looked confused while the husband tried to answer on behalf of his wife.

  As this oral medical examination was taking place a whole line of people waited patiently, in silence. The rest of us also waited on the sidelines, too stunned, or perhaps fascinated, to intervene. The examination proceeded with Maria getting more embarrassed, on the verge of tears. She was desperately trying to decipher the questions of this middle-aged Israeli who spoke English in a strange accent. Meanwhile a Middle Eastern-looking soldier next to the round-faced one ordered all of us to go over to him. 'What's the problem?' he asked accusingly as if we were causing the delay. We told him that we were on our way to Jericho for a walk but his colleague had decided to conduct an examination of the medical knowledge of our friend the doctor. He turned and gave his colleague a patronizing look. He demanded we give him all the hawieat (identity cards). He put them together in one bundle, handed them back to us and let us pass, leaving the first soldier without the satisfaction of acting as a solo medical examination board.

  After we passed the checkpoint I realized that I was seething with anger. Not at the soldier, but at myself. I, a lawyer, for many years a human rights activist, stood silently by and allowed this travesty to take place. More than any of the others, who also stood by in silence, I should have spoken up. What had happened to make me so passive that I made no attempt to stop the soldier from humiliating my friend? I was so grateful to the other soldier for saving us that I almost wanted to thank him. And what of the others? A motley crowd of Palestinians stood by as the soldier had fun at the expense of a respectable woman. Have we internalized defeat to this extent? Had this taken place before the Oslo Agreement I would have screamed at the soldier, demanded to see his superior, made it clear that he was exceeding his orders and made sure I put an end to my friend's ordeal. Instead we all stood by meekly, without so much as a whimper of protest and ended up feeling grateful just to have been allowed to pass. Perhaps it was time for me to leave.

  My school friend Victor was amongst the first from my generation to decide that he would not be able to survive under the new regime. He had spent the best years of his life establishing a computer company under the most gruelling of circumstances, under the restrictions and obstructions of the Israeli occupation and the first Intifada. With the expectation of peace he had ambitious plans to expand his business regionally and had enough talented young people around him to manage this. One day he was called for a meeting along with other owners of computer companies to one of the Palestinian ministries that needed new software. They were asked to submit bids. He along with his staff worked day and night and produced the best offer. But they did not win the tender. A relative of the minister got it. This was a blow to Victor, who had pinned much of his hopes on this big job. This incident was followed by other depressing experiences of corruption and foul play. He sold programs to another ministry and did not get paid. He wondered how it was going to be possible to survive under the new regime.

  One evening he came home from work and told his wife that the time had come for them to pack up and leave. They applied for emigration to Australia. They were both computer experts with money to invest. Their application was approved without difficulty. They had the brains, resources and skills. I visited them in their new country and found that they no longer bothered even to read the newspapers to learn what was happening here. They had made a complete break. And these were people who had been full of plans for developing the new Palestine. They had suffered the hardships of the first Intifada. They had ambitious schemes for outsourcing computer programs similar to those which helped Ireland and India revive their economies. All these plans had to be aborted because of short-sighted Palestinian officials drunk with power and determined to make quick gains. When I visited them in Australia, they seemed to have no regrets. Has my time to leave also arrived? Was the sumoud I had maintained for so long at an end?

  We let the taxi drop us on the Jerusalem–Jericho road and scrambled down the mainly bare hills halfway between the two springs, Faraa and Qelt. We were going to start by walking upstream towards Faraa spring in upper Wadi Qelt, then wend our way back to the lower Wadi, visit St George's monastery, and continue to Jericho.

  Wadi Qelt is a 25-kilometre-long wadi which has a greater abundance of water than most passable wadis in Palestine. The stream, which is strongest in winter, starts at A'yn Fawwar and empties into the River Jordan. When King Herod needed water for his winter palace in Jericho, he built the first aqueduct from A'yn Fawwar to Wadi Qelt. During Jordanian rule a new aqueduct was built along the same route. Because of the availability of water, pilgrims and would-be conquerors have used the valley as a route to Jerusalem, Damascus and even faraway Baghdad.

  The better start for the Wadi Qelt walk, the spectacular ravine that cuts down to Jericho from the eastern Jerusalem hills, is at A'yn Faraa, one of the main springs that feeds into the wadi. But the last time I was able to begin the walk from there was in 1993. It was still possible then for Penny and me to drive through the hills around Jerusalem until we reached the Jewish settlement of Almon, which had been established at the foot of the spring, not far from the Palestinian village of Hizma on the Ramallah–Jericho road, eight kilometres north-east of Jerusalem. We would park the car at the settlement, lock it and without fear of being shot at begin the walk in upper Wadi Qelt. Indeed, a nature sign still points the way to the settlement's car park – but no Palestinian would now be allowed t
o approach its barricaded entrance. The route along this path through the wadi descends from 640 metres to about 100 metres below sea level at St George's monastery and ultimately to minus 258 at Jericho. It crosses three ecosystems. Because of the constant flow of water from the three springs, Faraa, Fawwar and Qelt, the valley is home to a great variety of wildlife including foxes, rock hyrax, lizards, porcupines and a great variety of birds: herons, falcons, kingfishers, eagles and ravens. The water in the wadi stream has frogs, crabs and fish.

  We had no trouble finding the path. Once in the canyon we visited the remains of what is claimed to be the first monastery in the Jerusalem wilderness, founded by the third-century hermit St Chariton. In 275 Chariton was on a pilgrimage from Jerusalem when he was abducted by bandits and brought to a cave in the Farra Valley. According to tradition the bandits were killed by drinking wine poisoned by a snake. After the miraculous death of his abductors, Chariton decided to stay in the cave as a hermit and was later buried nearby. Following a brief visit to the ruins we followed an old road to the British Mandate pumping station, surrounded by eucalyptus trees. Here was the beginning of the first-century bc aqueduct built by Herod which took water to the next spring, A'yn Fawwar, and from there to A'yn Qelt and on to the outskirts of Jericho.

  The short walk down that meandering road brought us to the powerful A'yn Faraa spring. In the desert the contrast between the aridity of the surrounding area and the greenery in the Faraa Valley was striking, a reminder of the transformative power of water. It is at its most lush in late winter and early spring. By the middle of spring the wild flowers begin to dry up, much earlier than in the Ramallah hills, which are significantly higher.