The Bedouin to whom Fatmeh and her family belonged, most of whom were conspicuous by their absence, were from the Jahalin tribe. They originally made their home in the Negev, where they lived their nomadic life in tents, raising their goats and occasionally occupying themelves with seasonal agriculture. In 1950 the Israeli army pushed them out and they re-established themselves at the edge of the wilderness, just by Jerusalem, on land that belonged to the Arab village of Abu Dees. They continued living there in their tents, moving eastward in winter to a warmer region, where they stayed until early spring, leaving only after their goats had given birth and the young had grown big enough to move on. But when in 1976 a handful of Israeli families founded the new settlement of Maaleh Adumim, the Jahalin had to be evicted again. They put up a protracted struggle to hold on to the land where they had been living for over two decades. The case went to the Israeli High Court, which, as usual, after taking its time, produced a long, carefully drafted, impressive decision that favoured the state. The policy of surrounding East Jerusalem with Israeli settlements was not subject to review for the sake of a Bedouin tribe. The state was kind enough, after keen media attention, to offer the deposed Bedouins an area near the municipal rubbish dump, from which, years later, they would once again be moved. Some noble objectives have to be realized whatever the human or environmental cost.
As we descended along the canal to Jericho, the valley became wider and more lush. We came upon fields of poppies which were taller and more plentiful than any that grew in the Ramallah wadis. Our path passed across aqueducts that stretched between the two sides of the canyon and which, because of my vertigo, I had great difficulty crossing. I would rather have walked down in the wadi but this would have taken much longer. My fear of heights must have become stronger as I had grown older. Certainly I did not remember having to put up such a struggle during earlier walks in the same area.
But I kept my fear to myself and tried not to let the others suspect what I was going through. If I succumbed I would have to give up the walk and miss the splendour of what was yet to come.
I saw Penny looking at my tomato-red, perspiring face with concern. She knew what I was feeling. I tried my best not to look down at the depths on either side of me. I was filled with dread but kept telling myself I had to conquer my fear, that I must go on. I turned my head up to the blue sky. It always helps to concentrate on the good things, not to indulge oneself in despair or despondency. I thought of the cool air inside the attractive monastery that awaited us on the other side.
Slowly, by sheer strength of will and all the time putting on a brave face, I overcame my fear and made it across. I was wet with sweat and my heart was pounding. But I had done it. As we approached St George's Monastery the landscape became more dramatic, with higher, more raggedy cliffs. The canal straddled the rock walls quite high up the cliff. From my vantage point I could see a cross fixed to the ground at the highest point on the opposite cliff from where we walked, presumably to be visible to travellers on the Jerusalem–Jericho road and assert the holiness of this cursed land. The mystery and attraction of these areas lay in their remoteness and inaccessibility. During earlier walks all that I could see was the empty wilderness. Now the area looked like a construction site as the new roads to the settlements of Maaleh Mikhmas, Kfar Adumim, Mishor Adumim and Mitzpe Jericho were dug in the hills and land was levelled in preparation for building yet more houses there. Once these settlements are complete a wedge will divide the West Bank into a northern and a southern enclave and put an end to the dream of a Palestinian state.
The light was spectacularly clear against the rocks all around us. We walked without talking along the side of the canal in single file, keeping our thoughts to ourselves. There were no more sharp drops, so I could relax. Saba was leading, the Russian doctor was in front of me. She had been silent for most of the walk, reflecting, I presumed, on that distressing episode in the morning. We walked slowly for we were all tired.
In the silence and rhythm of my footsteps, I began to reflect on the course of my life over recent years. As long as I was engaged in the struggle I believed that international law, rationality and decency would ultimately prevail. The Jewish prophet Isaiah, who famously cried in vain in the wilderness, was supposed to have stopped here in this wadi on his way to Egypt. I too have been crying out in a wilderness, to a world that did not hear. Along with other committed Palestinians from the Occupied Territories I addressed the Israeli side and warned that the future would be bleak for all of us if these settlements were not stopped. I also went on speaking tours in the US, alone and with others, Palestinians and Israelis alike, to caution against a disastrous policy that supported and funded the settlement project. Isaiah so despaired that he begged for an end to his life without hope. I hoped I would never know such despair.
As we rounded a bend in the cliff we were no longer directly exposed to the sun. A quieting, relieving coolness came upon us as we walked in the shade. I remembered reading that it was this narrow and deep ravine that inspired the life-affirming words of Psalm 23: 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.'
As we approached the Monastery of St George of Koziba we noticed that the ground had been cleared of stones. The garden had a variety of trees: palm, olive, citrus, oleander and cypress. East of the wadi was a copse of pine and on a lower terrace a gorgeous palm spread its fronds in every direction. The trunks of two of the olive trees opposite the monastery had braided trunks, as though the roots had grown the wrong way, wrapping themselves around the trunk rather than descending into the ground. The unusual trunk echoed the southern cliffs, which were castellated with round knobby columns of similar shape.
It has always struck me how gardens seem to have a life of their own. I could not see anyone working, not at this hot hour of the day. There is something irresistibly attractive about cultivating a garden in the depths of the wilderness.
The monastery hangs on a precipice in the north side of the wadi in the manner of other monasteries at the edge of the desert, such as Mar Saba near Bethlehem and Kruntal in Jericho. On either side along the rock wall were numerous caves, some with walls closing their openings, others with ladders which the hermits who had lived in them had once climbed. A small oratory built by five hermits in ad 420–30 was transformed into the Monastery of St George of Koziba by John of Thebes about 480. It was virtually abandoned after the destruction visited on it by the Persians in 614 but was restored by Manuel I Comnenus in 1179. The monks who have lived here over the centuries have succeeded in secluding themselves from the successive waves of conquerors, some more brutal than others. They endured the heat of summer, the inevitable scarcity of provisions during years of conquest and famine, and the fear of attack from marauding armies and bandits. They managed their monastic life and kept their garden going.
After walking beneath the tall cypresses, oleander bushes and citrus orchards growing on both sides of the flowing stream, I was looking forward to going into the monastery, which consisted of a series of cells and a hall supported on vaults. I remembered how dark, quiet and cool was the interior of the church and how awesome were its famous icons. I crossed the bridge over the deep wadi and climbed the long wide stairs with high banisters until I got to the gate. I went up a narrow staircase with wrought-iron railings to a brown metal door that was closed. Most times I have been on this walk the monastery has been closed. Would it also be out of reach this time? I knocked once lightly with the circular metal door knocker. But no one came to the door. I waited then knocked again, harder this time. An old monk, in a brown habit and with a withered face, looked down from the balcony to see who was causing such pandemonium, disturbing the peace of this quiet place.
'Who is this? What do you want?'
I said I wanted to visit the church. He scrutinized my face then, to my relief, opened the door.
'But just for a short while,' he said.
I entered a small porch with stairs to t
he extreme right going up into what looked like private living quarters and another further along going down to a sort of crypt below the ground. The monk led me to the church. I entered the darkened chapel with icons all around and a faint smell of incense. It had an unusual design for a church with a peculiar orientation that followed the direction of the rock escarpment it abutted. The east window, beside the apse was at an angle of 90 degrees. Inside this darkened, twelfth-century chapel, I felt myself entombed by the rock firmly, securely dug in. There was a faded fresco on the wall and mosaic floors that were only half preserved. I walked through a corridor covered with frescoes representing the Last Judgement to a chamber cut out of the rock where a vault containing ancient bones was located. This was the oldest part of the building. I looked at the icons; some were new but some very old. Two that were by the door attracted my attention. One had a holy cow with angel wings. I had never seen a cow memorialized in church in this way. Another was of a deer with a cross between its antlers and a monk looking on in awe. Perhaps a miracle had occurred in this wilderness when it still had deer.
When I left I was struck by the roughness of the exterior compared with the highly decorative inside of the church. There was a solidity and inviolability to this monastery built into rock. Had the monk refused to open the metal door there would have been no way for me to enter. To seek isolation, even in the wilderness, requires good planning and design.
In this land of turbulence and wars there have always been oases of tranquillity and peace where monks have been able to hide themselves away, never bothering with the worldly events taking place outside their door. This perhaps was the only saving grace of religion in the Holy Land. It occurred to me that I too should draw inspiration from this long tradition, and search for a tranquil place where I could take refuge and sit out the bad times, nursing my despair about Israel's unbridled power, until it is healed.
I cannot continue in this state of anger, otherwise it will consume all my energy and I shall waste my life in grumbling and regret. A time comes when one has to accept reality, difficult as that might be, and find ways to live through it without losing one's self-esteem and principles. Was this not what these hermits and monks had been doing over the centuries, keeping their distance from the world, holding on to what was theirs as they waited for the tide to turn, while around them all they held sacred was violated? The time had come for me to dedicate myself to a different project, one I could make work, which no one could take from me. Writing would help sustain me in this next period. But it was only honest and daring writing that would be able to penetrate the depths that enveloped and paralysed me now.
The wilderness behind Jerusalem is now mainly settled and the monks live in an area that has been declared a nature reserve. The changing times offer them yet another challenge among the many tribulations they have had to overcome during their long residence in this lonely valley. This time the transformation is permanent. Whatever the resolution of this intractable political conflict, this area will never return to being the wilderness it once was. Isaiah would not want his life back. As to the resilient monks, I have no doubt that they will survive as they have in the past.
We rested at the monastery garden, ate a few oranges, drank water and continued our walk to Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. In the past it had survived on agriculture and the services it rendered to visitors from the hills who came to enjoy its mild weather and good restaurants. Now with the checkpoints blocking all entrances to the city, desperate unemployed young men living inside have found work helping to build the nearby settlements and working as day labourers in the Israelis' industrial zones. Not only was Israel re-zoning our land, it was determining our society's economic and social life.
At the end of the walk, as we were taking a shared taxi back to Ramallah, I looked out at the blazing mist over the western hills of Jerusalem high above the Ghor and thought to myself: What are you complaining about? Materially I had lost nothing. I still had my law office and my home. I had a happy marriage. I knew I would be able to find ways of dealing with the trauma of defeat. Somehow despite the problems and fears I would continue to walk and to write. At my age my father had successfully survived two catastrophic defeats. I was more fortunate. So far, I have had to deal with only one.
5
AND HOW DID YOU
GET OVER IT?
Janiya, Ras Karkar and Deir Ammar
I had studied the Oslo Agreement well enough to realize it would lead to chaos. So I tried to take measures against what I was sure would be coming. I built my house within the borders of Ramallah, where I considered it would be safe from Israeli expropriation, and proceeded to cultivate my garden and write a book of memoirs, Strangers in the House, that I had long thought about. I was digging my heels in, taking refuge in a stone house and waiting for the tide to change, an honourable tradition in the Holy Land, where over the centuries so many missions, monks, and pockets of religious and ethnic groups founded monasteries, schools or institutions, and confined themselves within their walls, or stood on pillars as they waited out the bad times. In the one dunum of Ramallah land on which Penny and I had built our house, we had an open courtyard in the centre where we also reserved for ourselves a piece of sky. Finding such refuge during bleak times was maybe the only way to preserve one's integrity and way of life. It was no surprise, perhaps a premonition, that when I was a child The Spanish Gardener, a story about a boy whose father wanted him to grow up protected within the confines of a beautiful walled garden and never to be exposed to the ills of the world, was my favourite tale.
Mustafa Barghouti and I had been friends for many years despite our being fundamentally different. He was a doctor and a politician. I, a lawyer and author. We were fond of taking walks in the hills and talking about current events and sharing our political analysis of how things were going. We had started our professional lives at almost the same time, in 1978. He founded the Medical Relief Organization and I the human rights organization Al Haq. For many years we were neighbours and had many opportunities for long talks, as we walked in the hills behind where we lived. We would discuss the role of civil society in resisting the occupation and the establishment of non-governmental organizations such as the ones we had started in the late seventies. Both were pioneering organizations that had played significant roles in their respective fields and had promoted alternative forms of civil struggle against the occupation, especially during the first Intifada, which had broken out at the end of 1987. But since the return of the PLO, and the start of what the Oslo Accords called the Interim Phase, much had changed. Civil affairs were now largely in the hands of the Palestinians themselves and the Israeli military authorities had redeployed, assuming a new role that reduced direct interaction with Palestinian society. Massive international funding poured in, and the rising materialism of a new elite was much in evidence. The spirit of voluntarism was in short supply. The ideals of liberation, both personal and political, seemed further off than ever. But what could be done to stop the erosion of values, Mustafa wondered? And what political role was suitable for someone like him during times as turbulent and unstable as these? We had much to talk about on our walk.
We decided not to start from Ramallah. We got a ride to A'yn Qenya. From the village we were going to walk to Deir Ammar, passing through Janiya and the high village of Ras Karkar. With the exception of the last, which was built on the top of the hill as its name implied (the word ras meaning 'head'), Palestinians built their villages to embrace the hills not to ride them. This policy gave them protection from strong winds and severe weather conditions. The Israelis, with an eye on security and military advantage, took the hilltops. This is why the settlements stand out. One can tell, by looking at the hills, a Jewish settlement from a Palestinian village. The houses in the hastily constructed settlements are like a honeycomb, with the buildings marshalled next to each other in a rigid plan, while the unplanned Palestinian villages have developed slo
wly over a long period of time and blend organically into the land. I knew all this. Still, I was in for a surprise. Over the years I had extensively read and written about the Israeli master plans for the settlements. I knew that Israeli planners worked on strangling our inhabited areas and separating them from each other. Sometimes as I read I felt a shudder of fear about the future: What if these plans were fulfilled right here next to where I lived? What would become of us? But reading is not like seeing. From the distance of Ramallah I could not begin to imagine the extent of the upheaval and havoc that the widespread and accelerated building of settlements now taking place around Ramallah was causing in our hills.
It was a mere seven-minute drive down to A'yn Qenya, where the taxi dropped us. This small village never seemed to grow, despite its proximity to Ramallah. It remained unconnected to the water network. The women and the young continued to make the daily trudge to the spring to fill jerry cans with water, load them on donkeys or swing them on their shoulders, and carry them up to their homes. Around the spring, which has given the town its name, you always saw lines of people waiting their turn to fill up from the nozzle of fresh cool water that on previous walks I had drunk from and washed my face with. But this time we were not stopping at the spring. From the centre of the village, where the taxi dropped us, we walked down to the stream in Wadi Dalb that flowed west. By the edge of the road leading to the valley I could see piles of rubbish discarded by the villagers. There was no garbage collection or any means of disposing of waste here and so it was all thrown out in the open. In the past, before the introduction of synthetic substances like plastic and Styrofoam, nature would take care of the biodegradable refuse; now it piled up, forming unsightly mounds, much of which eventually found its way into the wadi and was carried to other parts of the open fields. As we passed this eyesore I thought that, for walkers like us, the village and the valley are seen as one integral whole, but for those living here only their house and the small area surrounding it were considered their space, to be kept clean.
Palestinian Walks Page 15