But what is Ramallah? I pictured a dust town of cinder block barrios, because destruction and cheap construction seem to be the only images we are provided by the MSM in the telling of the region's story. But it's a modest modern city worth getting a true picture about before reading the stories. A quick glimpse is provided by LivingBobby at YouTube. Palestinians are not dust monkeys, as is suggested by some MSM accounts, but vibrant and as materialistic as the rest of us. They've tasted of the sugar, and want more. Israel says to them, you can have more sugar, but first, kow-tow.
But, as Maya Abu Al-Hayat, reminds us in the introduction to The Book of Ramallah, ancient frictions act as a frisson to affairs there:
A place of tension as well as excitement, with its many tower blocks and mosques, churches and bars, and where gunfire can always be heard in the distance, resounding to a backdrop of curfews, arrests, sieges, strikes and martyrs.
It's a quiet book, but there's tomfoolery afoot in the background that brings ominous disquiet.
The first thing that struck me about the stories is their relative narrative simplicity; there are few lyrical flourishes that amaze, although there are certainly plenty of spirited flashes of imagination, inclusions on the whole are stoical -- we are dealing with ordinary people, with limited material wealth who are dealing with the everyday stress of the Israeli occupation of their homeland, and this subjugation comes across in their often subdued utterances.
In the opening story, "Love in Ramallah," a bus and several cars are held at the Uyoun al-Haramiya checkpoint, and the passengers are forced to get out of their vehicles. While they wait for the slow and deliberate wheels of bureaucracy to slog them through, an Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldier decides to have some sadistic fun. He tells the passengers that nobody gets through the checkpoint until a young Palestinian boy kisses a young girl, a violation of their cultural norms:
In front of the checkpoint, the soldiers were giggling to themselves. Rummaging for change in their pockets and passing it around, they began placing bets on whether he would kiss her or not.
Amusement and humiliation. Fascist delight and schadenfreude. All that's missing is a bitter lemonade stand, glasses raised, L'chaim.
When Na'eem, the boy, refuses, the IDF soldier beats him --
the rifle butt struck his thigh. Everyone heard the thud on his femur before he fell to the ground, only for the soldier's jackboot to follow up...
To prevent further bloodshed, the young lass runs to the boy and tells him to kiss her; he does, and the ordeal is almost over. They are free now to cross the checkpoint. But on the bus,
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