I always like my beer on the bitter side. Recently, I discovered the wild variety of plant behind the delicate taste.
On the afternoon of our 79th (combined average) birthday, my wife and I
took a lengthy hike in the Galilee mountains that frame Arrabeh. We used
to walk the same mountain paths, carrying our two children on our
backs, to visit our friends, the two monks who chose the highest peak in
our range to recreate early monastic life in Palestine.
This was before the Ariel Sharon-led assault on the Galilee, with all
the Jewish-only, mountain-top settlements justified as being needed to
protect our land from us.
My wife and I gingerly supported our sagging frames with a pair of
walking sticks each. We met our minimum of 10,000 steps on the Fitbit my
wife wears. She is a stickler for precision on matters that I usually
guess at.
That also was the case when it came to identifying the native greenery
on the side of the dirt path: trees, bushes, flowers and grasses, both
edible and poisonous.
At one point, she called my attention to a thin, wheat-like stalk with a
pretty, dangling, heavy head, which she identified as wild hops. I
picked one and carefully wrapped it in a paper towel to show to my
jeweller grandnephew, so that he could recreate it in gold or silver as
an earring or pendant.
The next day, I recalled our hike while reading a news item stating
that a centuries-old mosque in Safed, the birthplace of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, had been converted into a bar and wedding
hall. According to al-Quds al-Arabi, the al-Ahmar Mosque has been
repurposed several times since 1948 - first into a Jewish school, then
an election campaigns centre, then a clothing shop and now a bar and
events hall.
This was not as shocking to me as it might have been to other readers.
For years, when friends have visited from abroad, I've often taken them
to one of my favourite sites: Ein Hod's old mosque. On the way there, I
usually explained the sociocultural miracle that the Romanian new
immigrant Dadaist artist, Marcel Janco, and his followers had wrought.
Parched palate
In the 1950s, they had saved the stone homes of the centuries-old
Palestinian village of Ein Hawd from demolition in order to form an art
colony. In the process, the name of the village was changed from the
Arabic Ein Hawd (meaning "Spring of the Trough") to the Hebrew Ein Hod
(meaning "Spring of Grace").
They offered some of the village's original Palestinian residents -
descendants of the Abu al-Hija clan who had moved to their olive fields
and would eventually establish the new Ein Hawd there - a level of
sustenance as guards, gardeners and housekeepers in their own original
homes, repurposed as art galleries.
I usually alluded to the majority of the Abu al-Hijas, who became refugees in Jenin, and who provided the plot for Mornings in Jenin, the novel that launched my friend Susan Abulhawa as a leading Palestinian fiction writer.
Others have not been as lucky. Witness the unrecognised Bedouin village of al-Araqib, which has been demolished and rebuilt close to 150 times
By this point in my tour-guiding, I usually suffer from a parched palate
because of the emotional impact of the narrative - and, even more,
because, as a writer, I have for years been scrabbling after
Abulhawa's level of literary achievement.
You can imagine how thirst-quenching an ice-cold beer is. After that, we
usually rush back to our bus at the adjoining parking plot, the
asphalt-topped former village cemetery, and head up to the alternative
Ein Hawd that led the struggle for scores of unrecognised Palestinian
villages in Israel. Like a dozen or so other such villages, this one has
finally gained recognition.
Jewish nation's deed
Others have not been as lucky. Witness the unrecognised Bedouin village
of al-Araqib, which has been demolished and rebuilt close to 150 times.
When the court prohibits its chief, Sheikh Sayyah al-Turi, from entering
the village, he seeks shelter in its cemetery.
No wonder his wife and their son served jail terms as well. They lack
the necessary empathy with Holocaust descendants to move out of the way,
enabling Jewish settlers to build a residential paradise in their place
and make the desert bloom. The logic of involved government officials,
including Supreme Court judges, is impeccable: the focus must be on
Jewish settlers reclaiming their homeland.
God, my throat is parched again. Think of all the bars that would have
studded the country, had Israel been more careful. In the aftermath of
the Nakba, in the 1950s alone, the state demolished 1,200 mosques, with their adjacent cemeteries, no doubt.
Israel's representative at the UN has shown the Security Council the Jewish nation's "deed" to the entire Promised Land.
The same deed promised the Jewish nation enough Palestinians to serve as
"choppers of wood and drawers of water". But now we have
imported Chinese, Thai and Sri Lankan manual labourers, obviating the
need for Bedouin servants in this or the next life.
That is why their cemetery will likely go with them to who-knows-where. To hell, if need be.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
