The Tent of Nations

This week Elana taught a poetry workshop in the village of Nahaleen in the West Bank, and about thirty women took part (plus kids).

The enthusiasm and the courage of the women writers was infectious. Their poems were translated from Arabic to English and vice-versa, giving voice to dreams of freedom, memories of childhood, and the smells of Mama's kitchen.

Al Quds, I wish for my children to go to Al Quds without obstacle.

The Workshop was organized by Jihan and Daud Nassar of the Tent of Nations. 

Their vision of active and peaceful resistance incorporates reaching out to local Bethlehem communities and nurturing the ancestral land. To learn more about their mission and the activities of the Nasser Farm click here.

Two Images from the Old City

Quote: We are connected by our rooftops...

And divided by our inhabitants (Felines courtesy Elana Bell)

James Brown in Jerusalem

I cannot get over the notion that the spirit of James Brown infuses the city of Jerusalem. Now I don't believe The Hardest Working Man in Show Business ever performed in the holy city, but something tells me he left his mark.

Consider first how time is accelerated here. True to its own law of general relativity, space-time warps around the walled city like a bear hug that squeezes every drop of inertia out of a body. This effect may be tied to the question of home Security. The first time I spoke what little Arabic I know and a guard asked in English Gun? and I shook my head No and every time since I've gone through a metal detector, a checkpoint, been frisked my body-clock is 'red-shifted' just a little more i.e. accelerated towards a light I do not know, have not become.

In the Godfather's concerts, when he danced with his back to the audience, shooting hand signals to those band members who were half-a-second-late, because that's all you needed for the beat to unravel, become a divisible thing, he was defining his own theory of gravitational attraction, as Jerusalem has done for five thousand years, inviting  pilgrims and spinning them like a dradle for the pleasure of a dance.

What a Gatekeeper Wants

I come into Tel Aviv before Shabbat ends on a cold February day. Mostly-shaven, borderline-presentable, I’ve escaped the airport security questions many have warned about. This tests a luck for perspective: having been described as vaguely Islamic and also as sort of Yemenite Jewish.

Finally, the woman at the exit gate takes a stand. She’s maybe-twenty-one in army issue, red-hair tight into a bun, right ear noticeably smaller than the left.

Why have you come to this country? She asks.

Tourism, I mumble. Then: Jerusalem—beautiful, no?

I see you’re going to Egypt also. Why?

Pyramids, I respond. Beautiful also.

We barter. When she’s incredulous, ready to disbelieve everything, she asks:

Do you know anyone in Jerusalem?

My wife, I say. Then with more force: She’s Jewish. She’s come on a research grant to write poetry.

Worse I continue: Her grandmother lived through pogroms, uprisings, Auschwitz.

This takes me to the first sutra of the Magnetic Travel-for-Poetry Kit:

What a gatekeeper wants—the price of your passage—to acknowledge that you do really belong. You may disrupt only if you also, at-once, continue.

So shapes my first key to the Holy Land. The woman I love is also a seeker.

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When Elana surprises me at the airport, she’s come with Shaadi a Palestinian Priest and a friend from Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salaam (an intentional community where Palestinians and Israelis live/ make community).

Since it’s Shabbat, there’s few cars. Even then, Shaadi takes the long quiet road. He carries the heaviness of peace-workers who’ve suffered setbacks, who refuse to quit.

Along the way to Jerusalem / Yerushalayim / Al Quds he points out settlements and Arab villages. Many of the settlements are newly built. Walls spring up on both sides of the road. From one vantage point, the walls are without character, the same peach-white as the stones of the mountains around us. As we rise into the steppes: an occasional glimpse of a soldier at a checkpoint, a powerline, two children in kipas jumping on an old well.

In a few places, Shaadi mentions, the Wall is enlivened. In Ramallah graffiti speaks between stones. At one crossroads, a sliver of Tibetan prayer flags lull. Call.

Even Jerusalem, as we drive through the Old City, recognizes us first through its ramparts, towering fortress walls throughout history destroyed, re-imagined again.

As we come upon Damascus Gate, where a boy is waving a tee shirt for sale—Visit Palestine, Free Palestine it says—I can appreciate what the Gatekeeper whispers in my ear. He wants what I want. He knows I’d rather have my brew hot, but not scalding.

Sutra Dos:
The City will ask you to forget the graves under your house.

In exchange, the Gatekeeper will offer beauty, and why should you not take it, and why should you refuse such human gold as what the City’s memory wills to forget?