the green intifada
Monday, December 15th, 2008
Friday. I take the 7:44am train to Jerusalem. I’m tired. I snooze on my sleeping bag. In the wakeful interims I register an uphill motion at a speed little faster than running.
I get there at 9:35. at the station, I wait.
I take a picture of the drain. there’s a coat-hanger resting on top of it.
the drain
it’s cold in the shade and warm in the sun. cold-warm weather. December. I never know what to wear.
I continue to wait.
I take a picture of the phone booth.
the public phone
it looks kinda sad, just standing there. sad, but primed. like the soldiers outside Buckingham Palace. or maybe they’re not technically soldiers.
there was an advertising campaign in London at one point, these posters on phone booths that said something like “forgot it at home? [picture of a mobile phone] step inside!”.
second-place-taking taken to a whole new level. this one however would not have suffered such insolence - it will stand in pride whether used or not, catching the eye of passerbys in a flash of hot orange. “give thyselves brain cancer, see if I care!”
the car arrives.
we drive for about 5 minutes. the path to Abed’s farm is just past the army checkpoint at the foot of the Biblical Zoo. what can be so Biblical about a zoo, you might ask. it isn’t something I wish to elaborate on (nor, judging from the volume of the megaphones their guides use, ever visit).
Abed is a Palestinian refugee living in a small camp nearby and in his cave on the land. his land, 30 dunams on a small hill called Wallaje at the foot of the Jewish Malcha neighburhood, was left to him by his father. in recent years, Israeli real estate sharks in league with the IDF have attempted to either buy or scare Abed out of there in numerous ways, some violent. he began holding All Nation Cafe events in his home, and a network of Israeli, Palestinian and international volunteers was established with the goal of transforming Abed’s land into a fruitful and sustainable ecological farm.
banter in different languages fills the air. Arabic, Hebrew, English, German, Spanish, Dutch. I don’t know what any of the tools are called, in any language. but I glove my hands and give it my best shot. our main job over the weekend is digging channels and cisterns for storing rainwater, as at the moment all drinking water comes from a fountain 2 kilometers away. I volunteer to help bring water over in a car. the trickle is very slow. my Israeli friend who drives the car uses the time to get some goat milk from a group of young herdsmen, for a baby donkey on the farm whose mother died after giving it birth. she speaks fluent Arabic, which is not common for Jewish people in Israel to do, even in the radical/feminist/humanist/academic/activist circles I am familiar with in Tel Aviv.
the trickle
back at the farm, we commence working on a ditch.
last time I did this much iron-pumping was wrestling with a guy in a nightclub. “ah! so you work out,” he said, surprised I managed to pin him to the wall. he was buff, I was not. “well, only on my laptop,” I said, which was the honest truth. but that’s a whole different blog isn’t it.
nearing lunch (and nearing exhaustion) on the second day, I find myself hauling small rocks into a wheelbarrow, to be used for fortifying swells. mom calls me on the mobile.
“darling! how are you getting on?”
“um, yeah - I’m just, you know, throwing rocks right now.”
“throwing rocks? oh dear. are you starting another intifada over there?”
“yeah, maybe. but you know, this time it’s gonna be a Green intifada.”
abedland
to learn more about Abed and the All Nations Cafe, visit the link in my blogroll.
volunteers are always welcome.
