Mike, Linderbee and anyone interested - here's today's blog post for a taste. btw, wordpress is not photo-friendly, but it'll do.
http://azzenny.wordpress.com/
Nablus - Third World with Cardamom.
Sept 7
Today I was going to get a couple-hour run to the West Bank Palestinian city of Ramallah, headquarters to the new Palestinian Authority, with an Arab-Israeli guide, so I could get a feel for a ‘real’ Palestinian city. My guide, Sa’id, was arranged by my friend the uber-guide Jeff Abel. Now let me get some housekeeping out of the way:
1) my best friend David made me promise that under no circumstances would I go to Nablus. Nablus is a notorious hot-spot, and historically had been long before the Israelis ever held the West Bank. The Jordanians had trouble with Nablus when they held the territory.
2) Gilles cautioned me that while Israelis might be unhappy if you accept their hospitality and then diss them, they know that’s your right. However, if Arabs offer hospitality and you later say something unfavorable, you have committed a grave, perhaps even dangerous, offense. It is why very few journalists get an inside track with the Palestinians and then provide balanced reporting. It’s not a matter of just burning your sources…it could be burning your car.
So as we sailed by the Ramallah turn off and Sa’id told me we were going to visit his family in Nablus, those little hairs on the back of my neck prickled big time. And I did accept Palestinian hospitality today, but so be it. I sort of doubt I’ll be heading back.
Sa’id seemed oddly uneasy at the crossing into Nablus, where Israeli security ends. Nobody checks your papers going in, however. He was a bit jumpy, in fact, for the first 45 minutes or so, until we connected with his brother-in-law, a mid-fiftyish merchant who hadn’t bothered to open his store for the day, and whose upstairs showroom resembled someone’s attic or garage. I think he sells textiles, but not clear. In any case, he very kindly led Sa’id and me on a walking tour of the old city of Nablus that lasted hours.
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Nablus stretches out of sight and just as far the other direction and up both hillsides. There is a lot of middle-class and significant wealth. When a dozen Israeli commandos enter ‘the West Bank town of Nablus’ to seize a bomb-builder, it helps to remember the urban scope and density when you decide who’s the underdog in that fight. Nablus is not a sleepy Palestinian village. (In fact Nablus taxi drivers are all reincarnated Kamikaze pilots.)
I saw numerous mosques, an Ottoman Turkish bath about 500 years old, a Sumerian bath ( that’s what they said!) a thousand years old that had a bright orange sign on the wall blaming the Palestinians for the neglect and destruction of such cultural treasures, an ancient soap-making center, a wonderful old wholesale herb and spice shop (including the ‘back room’ with antiquated coffee roasting and spice grinding equipment, and all I could imagine was David shrieking at me to stop, as I went down the steps into the gloom.) They insisted on showing me the one functioning Christian church (the others have been commandeered for schools) and the visit was timed for prayers – in case I wanted to pray (they were very taken aback when I laughed out loud). I suddenly understood I was being taken on the tour of what’s historical and still somewhat intact in old Nablus; a reputation-scrubbing tour.
We walked through various open and covered markets redolent with cardamom, sage, garlic, fresh bread, and as we left one, Sa’id muttered that this particular shuk was known for “always wanting to fight the Jews. They hate the Jews.” It hit me about then that my ‘kelp green’ LL Bean cargo pants were a dead ringer for Israeli Army fatigues green. I think the orange T-shirt compensated, but I really got scrutinized in that shuk, and the air was a combustible mix of oxygen and seething resentment.
Sa’id dutifully pointed out this place and that where the Jewish soldiers (he was fairly careful in his wording) had destroyed buildings (the homes of suicide bombers are destroyed as a deterrent and to counteract the $20,000 rewards the family gets from the Saudis) or had killed men in firefights. Like the one where they had evacuated all the other civilian residents of a building except the one man they accused of being a terrorist, and when he wouldn’t surrender, they blew him up. I recalled there is no word for irony in Arabic, as he told me this quite earnestly. Me, I just looked grimly and generically concerned, and didn’t say a word.
I realized pretty quickly that the posters of unsmiling young men covering every available outdoor surface were not movie posters or broadsides advertising upcoming concerts. These were all local ‘martyrs,’ as Sa’id later confirmed. A few looked very, very young, or somewhat challenged, but most looked flat-out implacable. Arafat posters still festooned the alleys here and there.
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The women are 95% in long robes or dress-coats, slacks, and head scarves, usually black. Only a small number wear veils, and the really extreme ones wear black gloves — this is in 90 degree heat. I did see one young woman wearing a lime green sequined bustier over her short black robe, and a lime green mini skirt over her dark jeans, and no one paid too much attention. Women are out solo or in small groups, and most wear eye makeup.
Most middle-aged men wear slacks and short-sleeve shirts, but I saw a scattered half dozen or so paunchy 60-ish men with Amish-style beards wearing identical ‘Castro suits’ — gray-green army slacks with a matching untucked shirt - the Khalid Mesha’al Hamas look? Or are the Shia slipping in, as Jeff later wondered? There were innumerable slicked-up young men in weirdly hybridized Euro-metro-sexual and greaser-punk attire. There were ice-eyed men who watched unblinking as we passed, occasionally reorienting our course
with a barely visible gesture — including a few who turned up at different points in our several-hour stroll. There was just one moment of more than low-grade rumbling paranoia, when a young man leaped up from a bench at the side of the narrow alley. I saw him palming a good-sized hunting knife as he crossed close behind us.
We visited with Sa’id’s wealthy young niece and her goldsmith husband, genuinely charming people. Although it is Ramadan, and food and drink are forbidden from dawn to dark, they were very kind and gave me a drink of iced pomegranate juice, desperately needed by then. We also stopped by to see his sister, her two watchful young daughters, a sister-in-law, and her mother-in-law, who was a caricature of a histrionic fat grandmotherly smoocher — until she uncoiled. I don’t know Arabic at all, but I know Yehudi (Jew) and I think I know Hamas, and I know the stink and hiss of fanaticism.
So I continue to break all the rules and thus far, other than a bit worn out from the heat and persisting dehydration, doing great. Tomorrow to Tel Aviv and then Herzliya, for the International Counter-Terror Conference. Visiting Nablus was a good warm-up.
