Yesterday, soysauce had a diary about Gaza with some wonderful photos showing people living their lives in ways we can identify with.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Maybe my daughter was on the same wavelength because she just put up her blog and it's a little piece of Ramallah life. (Of course, life in Ramallah is easier than life in Gaza. My daughter says that everyone describes it as a "bubble.")
This is another entry in the ongoing diary series I'm publishing based on my daughter's blogs from Ramallah.
Where: Ramallah
Who: The people and other animals who live in or visit Ramallah
The Egyptian band Wust El Balad has us on our feet, clapping and stomping and rocking in time to the guitars and drums that transmit the rhythms of their Cairo streets. Hundreds of people wave tiny Palestinian flags and shout joyful chants towards the illuminated stage, where the singer is yodeling a melody full of lyrics about “Hurriyeh:” Freedom. An orange crescent moon hangs in the balance over the uneven silhouettes of trees and buildings with their backdrop of sunset. I am chilly from the evening breezes blowing across the hilltops and into the stadium seating outside the Ramallah Cultural Palace.
“Ramallah is a bubble;” an oft repeated phrase here, frequently explained to me to illustrate that conditions are not like this anywhere else in the West Bank or Gaza. Despite empty lots full of garbage that burn and billow smoke sometimes, packs of stray dogs that howl and fight at night, and a history of recent destructive invasion by the Israeli army, today there are music and dance festivals here. Literature festivals. Pristine restaurants, bars, and coffee shops complete with blooming gardens and courtyards. A bustling town center full of busy stores and markets. New apartment buildings, new sewage systems, a recent surge of construction that leaves piles of dust and concrete on many of the streets that people do not name, they just know. There is even a resident flock of sheep and their shepherd, always jarring for me to see grazing across from convenience stores and a glossy new building imitating the shape of an English castle.
I meet internationals everywhere I go, and a wide variety of Palestinians from the Diaspora. They stay as long as they can maintain temporary visas; leave the country when their visas expire and pray that the Israeli government will renew them; that they will be able to return for another couple years. They have family in villages up and down the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, in Gaza. They usually speak at least three languages and have jobs working for non-governmental organizations that provide services the occupation and generations of foreign aid without investment have disabled Palestinian infrastructure from administering adequately.
Tonight I return to my friend’s spacious apartment after the post-concert gathering at Beit Aneesa, a popular nightspot. I’ve had a Corona and some pleasant conversation. The wireless internet is not working at home, not uncommon because there is only one phone company and its performance is often shoddy. I will read 100 Years of Solitude and hear the usual sounds of cars grinding too fast down the steep narrow roads, abrupt honks to alert oncoming traffic or to say hello to someone familiar. Dogs are shrieking. The bass conversations of strolling men echo through the open window. If I stay up until 3:30 am, which is very possible, I will fall asleep to the eerie lullaby of the recorded call to prayer magnified from the nearby mosque with its glowing green halo. I will wake up to the song of the man that circles neighborhoods each day, calling from his loudspeaker for used appliances that he will later try to sell from the open bed of his rusty truck.
Diary and photos by the talebearer
I think descriptions like this and like soysauce's diary are important reminders of how much we have in common with people all over the world. When I think of Gaza, I think of the blast of weaponry, of destruction, of war. And that is all true -- but the other side, shown by soysauce, is also true.
When I think of the West Bank, I think of a landlocked people, caught between two countries not their own, oppressed and harried. And my daughter's previous blogs fit that image, describing the struggle of Palestinian families to survive the attempts to destroy their lives. But her description of life in Ramallah does presents another picture -- it describes a place where people's lives are not totally different from our lives here.
Except for the sheep.