Work begins early at Jabar’s restaurant. At six o’clock AM, six young men arrive to prepare the day’s food. The doors open to the public at 11, and the five hours in between are spent cleaning, preparing, and cooking a massive vat of meat over roaring gas flames. Only two dishes are served here, fahsa and silta, Yemen’s national dishes.

Restaurants like this exist by the hundred across the capital and beyond, and at any crowded market around noon one can invariably observe many small groups of men, all squatting around a sizzling bowl of silta, bread in hands. Jabar’s central location next to the bustling Bab al-Sabah market ensures many eat-in and take-out customers, many of whom have their lunch delivered to them by one of Jabar’s runners.

Silta and fahsa are two variations on a theme: pressure-cooked beef stew in a tomato-based sauce, served sizzling hot in a stone bowl. The only difference between the two is the presence of a variety of cooked vegetables and often rice in silta, whereas fahsa contains just chunks of tender beef in a tomato-onion broth, which often boils off before your eyes. They are both served with hilba, ground fenugreek that has expanded in water until frothy, which is then mixed with salt and finely chopped peppers.

The restaurant is a simple set-up: a raised platform with four massive propane burners alongside the wall leads customers into a small space packed with tables and benches. There is no storeroom, so all ingredients are bought daily. There is no bathroom, just a sink in the corner for customers to wash their hands before and after eating. 20lb propane tanks line the wall by the door, and the constant fires under the vats of meat consume two to four tanks per day.

At six, the crew arrives and starts the work of the day. One employee, Majid, comes from the nearby street market laden with groceries, among them three kilos of potatoes and a kilo of green onions. He squats on the floor with two plastic basins filled with water, scrubbing potatoes in one basin, then dumping them in the second. Nearby, Muhammad chops the scallions, and Saleh fills one of the huge pots with water, and puts it onto the fire. Meanwhile, a kilo of ground fenugreek is sifted into a vat of water until it covers the surface. It is then left to sit undisturbed. By this time it is 7:10.

Once the onions are chopped, they are added to a medium-sized pot and sautéed in oil for fifteen minutes. A large can of tomato paste is added, and then a half-kilo of chopped garlic. The smell of sizzling garlic and onion fills the room, while a boy carrying an alagiya, a glass-carrier, arrives at the door with eight cups of tea. After the onions, garlic, and tomato paste have cooked for ten minutes, they are dumped into the water. Along with hawaj, a Yemeni spice medley, this forms the broth. Silta contains potatoes, peppers, okra, and zucchini, so Muhammad is busy chopping those at one of the tables. When ready, the vegetable mixture, called mushakkal, is put on a burner and cooked with some broth for another fifteen to twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, Majid and Abd al-Aziz wash down the walls, the prep area, the tables, and the benches. Abd al-Aziz throws water on the soapy surfaces, and squeegees the floor with the runoff. By that time, Saleh has returned from the meat market with seven kilos of beef. It is put in a pressure cooker with some broth and left on low heat for more than an hour. By eight o’clock, all the elements are in place: the meat is cooking in the broth, the vegetables are cooking, and the hilba is frothing in the corner. The meat cooks for another hour and a half, and is added to the broth, which has cooked down some.

At 11, the doors open and people start filing in. If it seems like it will be a busy day, Saleh will return to the meat market for more beef, but today it seemed the seven kilos would suffice, so the employees assume their places: Jabar on top of the platform preparing the dishes, Saleh directing the floor staff, Muhammad and Abd al-Aziz serving the sizzling dishes to the customers, and Majid washing up. Voices are raised, as the roar of the gas creates a din inside the dimly-lit restaurant. From time to time, Muhammad or Abd al-Aziz will leave to deliver a large pot to a customer in the market. Sometimes customers will ask for customizations: eggs or tuna in their silta, no hilba, etc. and Jabar has a small stockpile of supplies for such requests. A hole is cut in the wall behind his platform to provide a way to pass drinks between the restaurant and the adjacent juice stand.

By two, the lunch rush is over. The crew starts breaking down the day’s work: cleaning the vats, the stone pots, the tables. This crew wakes early and works hard in a fast-paced, hot environment, and by three they are ready to go home. Qat may be chewed or naps taken, for in the morning, it all starts again.

There is no set recipe for silta or fahsa. It is not an exact science. However, it is a well known fact in Yemen that, though silta is available at catch-all restaurants with long menus, only a sucker would order it there. Silta is best at restaurants that serve nothing but silta. Jabar has been in the game for more than 30 years, and his 11-year-old son Ali now works as a runner at his father’s joint.

If you are abroad and would like to try this, a rough recipe follows. If you are in Yemen, just visit Jabar and let the experts take care of it.

All photos are by Rachael Strecher.

Silta Recipe

Silta contains 4 distinct parts, which come together at the end. This recipe is a scaled-down version of Jabar’s, and should serve between 4-8 people.

The 26^th Annual Sana’a International Book Fair started this week, showcasing more than 250 publishers and book dealers from around the Middle East. The exhibition is taking place in the Apollo Expo conference center, located past CityMax on Siteen St, and will run from October 22^nd to November 2^nd. I’ve been looking forward to this event for months, as it is a great chance to snag awesome books at super cheap prices.

The vast majority of the books are of a religious nature, but there are many publishing houses selling books of a political or cultural nature, as well. For example, Ali Shafiq from the Egypt-based Dar al-Thaqafa publishing house, whose stall was stacked with volumes of Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani, and Nabil Yassin’s collections of poetry. Many stalls also were selling collections of Arabic calligraphy, the history of Islamic art, and collections of photographs of notable Islamic architectural monuments throughout the world. There was a booth from Turkey, and when I started asking for books in Turkish, they sort of gathered around me and took turns asking questions, apparently puzzled by this white dude in Yemen who happened to speak Turkish.

For students of Arabic, the Book Fair is a gold mine. The stalls are packed with valuable materials to fill your shelves. From children’s books to short stories, there is a vast selection of books to help you along the way. If you’re looking for something relatively easy in language and length, collections of fatwas, or Islamic legal Q&A texts, are both abundant and easy to read. In addition, many booksellers offer specialist dictionaries and Arabic grammar texts, which are sold for much cheaper than they would be abroad. I myself purchased a dictionary of diplomatic terms and a guidebook to common grammatical mistakes. I passed on, for space concerns, dictionaries of literary terms, economics, proverbs, medical terminology, a book of verb conjugations, and many other drool-worthy books to provide a fix for the Arabic student’s habit.

The crowd that attended the fair was surprisingly diverse. While there were, of course, many Yemenis, the fair was also attended by Arabs from throughout the Middle East, scouting for good deals to bring home, as well as a large number of Indonesian and Malaysian students. East Africans were also out in force, with small clusters of young men towering a head over the rest. While most attendees came from the greater Islamic world, there were also a fair number of Germans and assorted Europeans milling about as well.

While most booths were run by individual private publishing houses, many booths were set up by the Ministry of Tourism or Development of particular countries. I visited the Oman booth and spoke with the people there for some time, and they presented me with a very beautiful book about the history and cultural geography of Oman, free of charge. The first booth upon entering the main showroom is run by the Saudi government, and I picked up a nicely bound Qur’an, with English translation, also free of charge.

The book fair is an event I’ve looked forward to for months, after first going in 2007. It is a wonderful show of culture and literacy, and a chance for Yemen to have access to the literary wealth of the entire Arab world and beyond.

All photographs by Rachael Strecher

While many foreigners, perhaps used to a more fast-paced city, may decry the lack of a serious nightlife in Sana’a, I would argue that a vibrant night culture does in fact exist, just at a more subdued and chilled-out pace. Yemenis take their tea seriously, and while Yemen may be the birthplace of coffee, it is tea that reigns king amongst hot beverages here. Drinking tea in Sana’a is more than just getting a caffeine fix. It is a way to watch the world go by, see friends socially, and let go after a long day spent chewing qat and seeing friends socially. No one takes their tea to go, because the tea is just a medium: the real reason for the teahouse is the social network of friends and co-sippers one can only experience at the café. These are a few of my favorite spots around the city.

Café Exquisite aka Café Paradiso

The name of this café is not Café Exquisite nor is it Café Paradiso. These names were given to it by the staff of the Yemen Language Center in 2008. In reality, it has no name. It is beyond names. It exists by raving word of mouth alone, and business is booming. A call to rendez-vous at Café Exquisite usually goes something like, “Ok, you know the Silaa? There’s a tea place on the…oh you know it already. See you there, then.” However, for those who have not experienced the wonder that is Café Exquisite, it is located in front of the Qubat al-Mahdi mosque, a short jaunt from Bab al-Sabah. The tea is perhaps the tastiest in Sana’a, due to the ratio of sweetened condensed milk to tea being vastly higher in favor of the milk than in most cases. If the owner likes you, he’ll give you a quarter-cup of overflow while you wait for your order to be filled.

However, the trick about Café Exquisite is brevity when ordering. Get in, get out. Don’t try and chat the guy up, you’ll end up getting screamed at. The owner goes by many a pseudonym among the foreign crowd, most notably the Tea Nazi. In reality, his name is Ali al-Amrany. The café does, however, retain many similarities to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld: amazing, delicious product, terrifying and dictatorial owner. Despite his comparatively high price (100 Riyals a cup), the end result is most assuredly worth every qursh. The busy time is from eight to ten PM and the place is jumping the whole time, often with a line out the door. He is open well into the night, and seating space is limited.

The Boy’s Club aka Kursi-Shay

This is more of an archetype than a particular location, as spots like this exist throughout Sana’a and beyond. The Club that I choose to frequent is just off of Tahrir Square, three doors down from Al-Jazeera restaurant which is next to the Tahrir bus depot, and was named al-Rahab. The Boy’s Club is just that: a place for men to sit, chew, sip tea, smoke shisha and mida’a, and reminisce about the good ol’ days before they had wives and children, presumably. Given the fact that whenever I come here I am greeted by the same friendly, qat-addled faces I assume that Kursi-Shay (so-named for the two things they provide- Chair & Tea) is a regular night-time hangout for hundreds of men throughout the capital, in its various manifestations.

The Boy’s Club is a relatively simple set up: bedframes and mattresses fill the space, each with rectangular diwan pillows to lean against (it is said that qat is best chewed while leaning), and a TV playing the latest MBC Action movie marathon. You can order apple shisha or mida’a, the Grizzly Adams Yemeni version of shisha that makes its Egyptian cousin look like a pathetic little toy. Discarded qat leaves cover the ground, and neighbors offer you sprigs from their personal supply, and often peer into your bag of qat to judge your qat-purchasing ability. Usually the conclusion is that foreigners are lousy qat buyers. A tea and a shisha will run you 200 riyals ($1).

The Enclave at Souq al-Enab aka Shumaina

In the Old City, few teahouses compare to the Enclave. Set in a former hotel (from the days before cars, so there’s a horse hotel on the ground floor), the atmosphere and surroundings here is so uniquely Sana’ani that it had to be included on this list. It may be the Old City’s best kept secret, and long are the hours I’ve spent retracing my steps trying to find it a second time. It is sort of like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter: when you really need a great teahouse, just pace back and forth three times near the Great Mosque while thinking of delicious tea, and the Enclave will appear for you. It is located adjacent to the Great Mosque, at Souq al-Enab. Benches line the space, and there is a definite communal feeling to drinking tea here. Says Murad, who comes daily, “It’s the best in town.”

As with the previously-mentioned teahouses, they offer one kind of tea prepared two ways: Al-Kaboos with milk, Al-Kaboos without milk. There are also several restaurants in the area that will bring take-out to the Enclave around meal times, so you can sit and eat a sizzling bowl of silta while drinking your tea, if that strikes your fancy. The Enclave provides the perfect pit stop for weary legs when browsing in Souq al-Milh.

Mokha Bunn

Ok, so everyone who has been in Sana’a for any length of time is well aware of Coffee Trader. Supposedly, it is the only place in Sana’a to offer espresso, wireless internet, biscotti, and all the other trappings of a more Western-style café. Well, I present you with Mokha Bunn, a brand-new café that offers all of the above, but with crepes, apple pies, and a variety of tea flavors as well! Their espressos and cappuccinos could be direct from Turin, and the apple pies straight out of Iowa. While not exactly like the three teahouses that precede it, it is a cut above the rest. This is no Boys Club. This is a classy joint, so leave your AK-47 at home. No, seriously. A sign on the door warns, “Qat and Weapons Forbidden. Thank you.” It is around the corner from the Korean restaurant, which may or may not be Korean or a restaurant.

Mokha Bunn is a coffee-drinkers establishment, which essentially means it is a purveyor of Western drinks, of the non-alcoholic variety. The tea they offer is Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Green Tea, and the like. I’m not even aware if they serve Al-Kaboos, the Yemeni standard. If you’re bored with the norm, and looking to get away from Coffee Trader’s muzak hymns, Mokha Bunn is the place for you. Also, decent baked goods are a highly rare commodity in this fine city, so if you’re looking for some marbled coffee cake, carrot cake, or cinnamon apple crumble, look no further.

Sana’a may not be on par with Los Angeles, London, or Istanbul when it comes to crazy parties till dawn or bumping clubs spitting obnoxious techno music, but if you came to Yemen expecting that, tea may not be your biggest problem right now. For the rest of us, Sana’a is often a welcome change from that lifestyle, even if it only existed on the periphery of our lives before we came here. The teahouses that I’ve mentioned here are really just a sampling of what Sana’a has to offer you in the way of cafés. There are no doubt others which bear mentioning. If what you’re looking for is a place to sit down, relax, perhaps speak to some normal Sana’ani folk, occasionally puff a hookah, then the teahouse is the answer. Now it’s just a question of 7leeb or 3ady- with milk, or normal.

All photographs by Rachael Strecher

Posted in Yemen ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/the-teahouses-of-sanaa/feed/ 3 Josh teanazi2 tea1sm whitesquare boysclub1sm boysclub2sm whitesquare courtyard1sm courtyard2sm whitesquare MB2sm MB1sm white http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/editing-in-yemen/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/editing-in-yemen/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:08:22 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1984 ]]>

From time to time, working as a copy editor at a Yemeni English-language paper has its benefits. For example, when we get sent an article to edit that is absolute gibberish, and requires a re-write, top to bottom. This may not be very fun, but it does provide some comedy. Enjoy the following:

From an article warning of the dangers of sexual stimulants, (the hilarity of this article was increased tenfold by the awkwardness of the subject matter):
“With the invisible of supervision and shy to go to doctor
Death hundred of people, divorce from first day and bride in the hospital Sexual stimulants Attendance randomly killer”

“(Najib Al-tamem) he working in one of the pharmacy in Taiz said
Sexual tonic increase and add they aren’t embarrass from ask to buy
Tonic pill as previous most of them got help from children or beggar
To let them bought for them, but now we find young people came to the
Pharmacy to buy by them self without any shy and the strange things he finds a few of them buy sexual stimulants for the women and some
Want buy Frankincense sexual that he heard it help to seduce girls or Excessive sexual activity.”

“Certain for each drag has symptomatic and damage for the patient who has prescription from the doctor what about others who don’t have.”

“Dangerous of accumulations phenomenon that sexual stimulates were the reason of spoil the honeymoon for both groom & bride for who has take the drag in the first day that make bride has shock result of groom violence, others has bleeding and ministering  to the hospital …
Most of them refuse to back to their groom and want divorce and the other has Oedipus.”

The other has Oedipus?

From an article about tourism:
“A superior points of our destination is that Yemen a unique in natural and historical and cultural components that are not found anywhere else, these uniqueness can be more and more strengthen and widen by creating several themes of uniqueness”

Keyword here: unique.

From an article about the importance of national unity, entitled How Evil Factions Yemen Has:
“In actual fact, our oppositions in Yemen are truly strange and destructive. They plan to damage Yemen and its unity, incite the people badly, even the brothers, to fight with each other trying to divide Yemen into a lot of states, and they endeavor to achieve their personal aims and purposes”

[last sentence]
“If we lose today’s Yemen with its progress and accomplishments, we won’t make it again, like a mother, if she died, she wouldn’t be alive again.”

From an article about swine flu:
“I check the internet and many physicians send their reports confirming that H1N1 can be cured easily and the fact is that this propaganda on such disease is done for benefit factors to some medicine companies”

“During the past Eid, people who put face masks became a common sense  especially near parks and markets.”

From an article about the dangers of the Balkanization of Yemen:
“Yemeni state has aggravated this hazard when it made used tribal and sectarian (and recently the fundamentalist) cards itself as a means to establish its existence.”

[last sentence]
“But despite all of this, there is an even greater calamity that is beneath, not above the lands of Yemen.”

Do we get to find out what that could be?

From an article about Yemen turning into another Somalia:
“Unfortunately, such thing never happened and what makes it even worse is the revenge tradition that is always found in any tribal society, which was the problem of Somalia that is downing it now.”

“In the name of Islam, the waiting for the calling turning into waiting for death and body-tearing bullets or missiles accompanied with the call “Allah is the greatest”!”

From an article about…. I’m not entirely sure what:
“Imagine that the neglect of our experts of the development sector causing a lack of local expertise in carrying out surveys of individual and social focal questions and preparing questionnaires in social, economic and professional style convincingly despite the presence of tens of thousands of graduates and dozens of academics in sociology and there in the field to apply the criteria and standard procedures when carrying out evaluation or statistics of the selected communities as there aren’t members of the media companies who can produce document film foundations of photography.”

“The press, with the absence of specialized libraries, research and questionnaires in the country, through the published articles and criticisms of the elite and one of the most important sources of information should be directed mostly at the Olney beam components of the broad community development in order to assess and analyze related events and engage deeply to examine the causes and bring out proposals for solutions supported by the evidence of realism.”

In the year 632 AD the prophet of Islam, Muhammad bin Abdullah, died. This event threw the fledgling Muslim community into a crisis: the revelation was complete, and at the time it existed only in a fragmented and scattered collection of palm leaves, bones, tablets, and in the minds of the believers. The Prophet’s death created a need to collect, codify, and standardize the revelation. An order needed to be agreed upon, and a standardized script needed to be chosen. The personal scribe of the Prophet, Zaid bin Thabit was charged with this task. It took, however, twelve years, until the reign of the third Caliph, Uthman bin Affan, for this to happen. By that time the Muslim world extended throughout the Arabian Peninsula, across North Africa, and into Central Asia, and yet there was still no standardized Quran for the new Muslim communities to use. Uthman assembled a team, and Zaid wrote out copies of the new, standardized Quran to be sent to major cities of the new Islamic empire. Upon arrival, the people were told to burn any copies they had previously, to prevent strife within the Muslim community. Only a very few of these Qurans still exist.

Prior to Islam, the Arabic language did indeed have a script, but it was markedly different from the one we know today. Many of the letters did not connect in a cursive fashion, nor were diacritical marks typically used to distinguish one sound from another. So the sounds Ba, Ta, Tha, and Na all appeared as a short tooth, and it would have to be inferred from context which sound was correct. In fact, to use diacriticals in a letter was to insult the reader; it would imply he could not understand the meaning from context, and needed to be coddled like a child in school.

Obviously, when dealing with the word of God, there could not be such confusion, hence the use of diacriticals in all written material following the proliferation of Islam and the more widespread use of Arabic.

However, it wasn’t until nearly two hundred years later, in the early 10^th century, that the Arabic language was codified in its written form. It took the work of one man, a mathematical genius from Baghdad named Ali Ibn Muqlah, and it changed how the Arabic script is written forever.

Ibn Muqlah, whose name translates as son of an eyeball, devised a way to write the Arabic script in such a way that, regardless of the size of the pen the scribe uses, each letter will be proportionate to both itself and every other letter. He simply related every letter to the rhomboid dot drawn by the pen being used. Each letter has a set of predetermined size rules based around these rhomboid dots.

Now, when a calligrapher is learning a script, the first task is to write each letter out quite literally hundreds of times, and measure them according to Ibn Muqlah’s rules.

These practice sheets can indeed become works of art in their own right, as shown by Mehmet Ozcay’s work above.

These are a few examples of letters I wrote out, according to the rules of Ibn Muqlah.

Possibly the most distinctive decorative feature of Yemeni architecture is the qamariya, the multicolored stained-glass windows that grace Yemen’s buildings. The geometric patterns formed with colored glass sit above the windows and cast their patterns on the room. It is the symbol of Yemeni architectural culture, and adds a great beauty to Sana’a’s distinctive gingerbread skyline. All those who have walked through the Old City’s streets at dusk can testify to the fairy-tale beauty given by hundreds of illuminated qamariya to the city itself. Inside, the whitewashed walls are sprinkled with dots of colored light that creep down the walls as the sun falls in the sky.

In Arab culture, the moon is equated with beauty. The qamariya, which comes from the word qamar, meaning moon, is said to let light reminiscent of the moon’s beauty into the house. In one form or another, these patterned windows have have been a feature of Yemeni architectural embellishment since pre-Islamic times. Then, as today, windows consisted of two parts, the main window which could open to let air in, and then a secondary, patterned pane set above the window and separated by a lintel. The bottom part of the window often was covered by a shubaq, a wooden screen that allowed women to look to the street without being seen by strangers. This is still present today. The original style of patterned window that eventually evolved into the qamariya was made with thin, circular panes of translucent alabaster that had been hewn down to a thickness that allowed light to penetrate. This way, rooms could be lit by natural light but still retained an opacity that prevented strangers from seeing into the house. These alabaster windows can still be seen around Sana’a and in the Hadramawt, but the practice has faded from popular usage.

The process of creating a single qamariya takes the craftsmen just two days from start to finish. At the shop of Yahya Abu Ali in the neighborhood of Sa’awan in Sana’a, four craftsmen (all his sons) work daily on qamariya production, and the building boom that Sana’a is experiencing as people move out of their villages to the city ensures that Yahya and his crew’s work is in high demand. He has been in the qamariya business for more than 30 years, learning the trade from his father, who in turn learned it from his father. He has been in his current location on Sheraton Street for more than 15 years. He sells an average of 30 windows per week to both private individuals and corporate contracts who buy in bulk, and has a large stock of qamariya skeletons that are waiting for customers to decide their final colors. He also has a pattern book that allows his clients to custom-choose their qamariya, and can easily retrofit or custom-make a qamariya to the specific desires of his clients. A large, intricate qamariya costs between five and six thousand riyals, while a smaller, square one goes for around three thousand. Small, porthole-style windows cost a thousand riyals. In addition to windows, Yahya and his sons also make intricate gypsum moldings that adorn sitting rooms and receiving areas in traditional Yemeni homes.

The qamariya, also known as takhrim, ‘lace-work’ from the verb kharrama meaning to pierce, or make lace, is made by simple four-step technique that takes a trained craftsmen just a few hours, divided over two days. First, gypsum plaster is poured onto a wooden board and smoothed out to a thickness of 3 to 8 centimeters. It is allowed to partially dry, until it can be cut but retain its integrity and shape. Designs are then cut into the plaster with the help of stencils, and the cut edges polished with sandpaper. The cut plaster is removed from the wood and placed in the sun to fully dry.

The following day, glass sections are cut to match the spaces in the plaster, and laid out in place on the floor. A second layer of plaster is then poured over the back of the qamariya, securing the glass in place. When that layer dries, the plaster that covers glass areas that are meant to let light in is scraped off, and the qamariya is ready for use. When installed, it is customary for the windows to sit double-pane. Often a light bulb will be installed between them, illuminating the room at night time with soft colored light.

The rise of the stained-glass qamariya began on a small scale during the Ottoman period, with traders bringing patterns and craft styles to Yemen from throughout the Islamic world, particularly Syria. Ottoman authorities encouraged traders to introduce colored glass to Yemeni architects. The practice of embellishing a diwan, or sitting room, with colored light started in Sana’a and then moved to other parts of Yemen. Today, the qamariya can be found in every city and village in Yemen. Even modern buildings that retain no other traditional features of Yemeni architecture include qamariya windows. All qamariyas are hand-made; there are no qamariya factories. The majority of qamariya production is done at small, family-run operations like Yahya’s.

In Western Europe during the medieval period, light was seen as an allegory to God’s presence. Therefore, colored light was an even fuller and more glorious depiction of the magnificence of God, hence the prevalence of stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals. If we can make a cultural parallel, then Sana’ani architecture is an entire city devoted to glorifying the greatness of God through colored light. In a city of more than 300 mosques from which the faithful broadcast supplications throughout the day and night, it only makes sense that the glory of God should be manifested physically in the very composition of the city. Sana’a is a strikingly gorgeous city, and the ubiquity of the qamariya only intensifies and completes that beauty.

All photographs by Rachael Strecher

The date market at Souq al-Milh, near Bab al-Yemen. Most of the dates come from Saudi Arabia; the sweetest and softest come from Medina.

Photos by Rachael Strecher.

On Wednesday the 16th of September we left Istanbul and flew to Sana’a via Dubai, arriving the following morning. I have to admit, I was very apprehensive about coming back, not simply because of the current political climate and the war in the north, but because the last time I was in Yemen I left with a very bad taste in my mouth. There are certain aspects of Yemeni society and the Yemeni mindset I find frustrating. That frustration can range from mild confusion that makes me laugh to myself, to full-on apoplectic fury.

However, upon my return and seeing the Old City’s gingerbread skyline come into view, I was filled with a giddiness and sense of elation that I haven’t felt in a long time, and made me reconsider my misplaced anti-Yemenism. I am very much looking forward to re-learning the city and its wonderful and kind people.

We are living in the top floor of an Old City castle that once belonged to the former Prime Minister of Yemen. The walls are three-foot thick solid stone, and from the roof you have a 360-degree view of the valley in which Sana’a sits. It is a gorgeous house set in a perfect neighborhood, an easy walk westward to Tahrir Square and the restaurants there, and eastward to Souq al-Milh and Bab al-Yemen.

We arrived three days before Ramadan ended, and the build-up to Eid was in full swing. It is traditional to give gifts for Eid and buy new clothes, and the streets of Souq al-Milh were absolutely covered in wrappers, bags, and flattened boxes, as stores were going through their stock faster than the garbage could be collected.

Yemen during Ramadan is an amazing place. Stores are closed most of the day but stay open until sunrise. Loudspeakers on minarets broadcast constant supplications and prayers, which reverberate through the valley. Restaurants are absolute madhouses right at sundown, but by the time dark has come they are deserted, and some even have no more food left. The streets at 3 am are mobbed and the city is as bustling as New York at noon. And then, come Eid, the city and its people switch themselves out of this time cycle and back to their normal Qat-addled day.

Our plan is to stay here three and a half months, during which time Rachael will be splitting her time between working and studying Arabic with a private tutor (our apartment has a room for Arabic study, complete with textbooks, dictionaries, a whiteboard, and other accoutrements of a classroom) and I will be working full-time, either teaching English, or copyediting at one of the two English-language newspapers printed here.

All photographs by Rachael Strecher except the last two.

We took a ferry from the port at Kabataş to Burgazadı, the third largest of the Princes Islands, a small archipelago in the Sea of Marmara, and a popular summer retreat for Istanbulites.

We found there a sheltered cove filled with mussel-covered rocks. We decided to take some home and make a curry with them, as a send-off to Turkey. We leave tomorrow for Yemen.

This is not a food blog. Nor will it ever be! But these mussels were so delicious that we had to tell you about how awesome they were. Now, I only recently started eating shellfish again. I had kept moderate Kosher for around 12 years, and the seafood finally broke through that dam. In retrospect, I wish I had broken my Kashrut when I lived in Seattle, because their seafood is world-famous. I still don’t eat swine though. That just sounds disgusting.

We packed a lunch with us, befriended a very happy and friendly dog on the way to the beach, and then swam around until we found a nice rock sticking up from the water, covered in mussels. Whenever a cargo ship would pass by on its way into the Bosphorus, huge waves would come and knock us off the rocks.

We picked two small bags of them and then lounged around on the shore for a while, hanging with Mr. Dog. The island is a perfect place for dogs; there are no cars, only horse-drawn buggies, and plenty of places to explore and cats to chase.

We took the ferry back, and sat next to a young Iranian couple from Mashad. I noticed they, too, had a bag of mussels. We started speaking, very slowly and with much gesticulation, as the guy’s English was pretty rudimentary and my Farsi is barely existent. Pleasantries, the numbers etc.  It was funny, because it was clear that his wife spoke English well, but she never spoke to me at all, only whispered in his ear. At first he said, “You [point, point] country??” whisperwhisperwhisper, and then “Where are you from?” We spoke/mimed for a bit, then I said “Ahmedinejad [left thumbs up] or Moussavi [right thumbs up]?” He says “Moussavi! Citizen Iran Ahmedinejad NOOOO. [fierce finger-wagging back and forth]” I replied, “Baleh [yes], I see [two fingers point to eyes] on television [box drawn with fingers] that Ahmedinejad [mime ballot being put into box] take [mime stealing, putting hand into pocket.]“  To which he vigorously nodded, and made the ’switch’ motion with his hand, as though he was unscrewing the lid of something. I nodded. I like Iranians.

We scrubbed the mussels till they were free of all the sea-junk they accumulated, which took a while. Then we cooked them in coconut milk, green curry, lime, sauteed onions, red bell peppers, garlic, and ginger. It was freaking awesome.

Next stop, Yemen.

All photos by Rachael Strecher!

Posted in Turkey ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/harvesting-mussels-off-the-princes-islands/feed/ 4 Josh boat awsm mussels2sm mussels4sm mussel3sm musselshomesm musselscleansm awyeahsm http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/irbil-the-citadel/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/irbil-the-citadel/#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:00:28 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1851 ]]>

The city of Irbil has been around for a long time. At 8000 years old, it is among the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world, after Damascus, Jericho and the like. And interestingly, its name has remained essentially the same through Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Sassanian, and finally Arab rule over it: Erbila, Urbilum, Erbilim, Erba-Ela, Arabaelo, Arbail, Arbela, Erbl, Irbil. It is known in Kurdish as Hewlar.

We got in late at night from the border. We only have a few requirements for a hotel: cheap, no visible bugs, sit-down toilet. We don’t need turn down service and a mint on the pillow. The first hotel we went to flunked the last requirement so we went to the Jabbar Palace next door. Haitham, our Iraqi friend from the train, had recommended it, and by the lobby it fancies itself a five-star joint. We stayed a night, then moved to the much more pleasant, much less ostentatious Hotel Shahan, a no-frills nice-enough place that was walking distance from the Citadel.

The thing that strikes me first and hardest is the language issue.  Since 1991, when Kurdistan gained internal autonomy, the Arabic language has not been taught in schools. All newspapers, radio, and books are in Sorani Kurdish. The older generation learned Arabic, but the younger did not. What that means on a practical level is that anyone under 30 doesn’t speak Arabic. Some young people I met understand it but can’t really reply. However, a plus-side of this is that the Arabic-speakers we did meet were also speaking a second language, so they spoke in clear, short sentences of Classical Arabic. The fact that we spoke only with the older generation made for an odd reversal of practice for me; usually I avoid talking to old people in a foreign language because they’re typically the toughest to understand. This often is exacerbated by a lack of teeth.

The city is a series of concentric circles radiating out from the Citadel. Built on top layers of previous settlements, it rises up from the surrounding sprawl. It has 500 houses inside the walls, but the residents were evacuated in 2006 because houses were collapsing. Now, only one family remains. We walked through the Citadel in the early hours of the morning and found it eerie, an ancient ghost town. That morning, one of the members of the last family came out to have a chat with some of the soldiers who were milling around the main street.

The last resident of one of the oldest human settlements in the world.

As we walked around, we came upon 3 men sitting on a wall. We spoke for a few minutes with the older guy (who spoke Arabic) and then I noticed the other two speaking Turkish to each other, so we switched to Turkish. They took us inside one of the reconstruction projects currently going on, a refurbishing of the former houses of Irbil’s noble class. Once completed, they will be a museum.

After speaking for a quarter-hour, a gang of 20-odd young men showed up in work clothes. They filed into a burnt-out husk of a huge former home, and started the days work: cleaning out what was destroyed by the fire, so that the house can be turned back into something beautiful.

For me, the city feels very much like Sana’a. It is an ancient city that pulses with life, yet is a bubble of calm and normality among a great vastness of chaos surrounding it. The lack of any real tourist business means a lack of touristy shops in the market; everything is utilitarian.

Having lived in Arab, Israeli, and Turkish societies, I can honestly say that I have never experienced a culture as kind, warm, welcoming, and genuinely hospitable as Kurdish culture, as represented on both sides of the border. From the cab driver who refuses to accept any payment from us, to Karzan, a bookstore owner and student of English who refuses to charge me for the map of Kurdistan, to Sherwan, an Iraqi Kurd who has lived in Kentucky for the past 18 years, to the dozens of smiling shopkeepers and pedestrians offering us welcome, Kurdish people surprised us again and again with their warmth and generosity.

For those wishing to go to Iraqi Kurdistan, I highly recommend it. For more information, have a look at the blog Backpacking Iraqi Kurdistan. All of the information was spot-on, and very helpful.

All photos (except the top one) by Rachael Strecher.

The bus from Diyarbakır takes us to a small podunk town on the border called Silopi, which straddles the Tigris. One of the other passengers, an English teacher named Abd al-Rahman with a giddy, giggling demeanor befriends us and offers to find us an ‘honorable’ taxi driver to take us to the border.  He is from Silopi, but teaches in Diyarbakır where he went to university. He tells us he recently went to Istanbul “just to see it,” but felt very uncomfortable on Istiklal because of the state of undress in which many women find themselves.

We say goodbye, and our honorable driver makes for the border. On the way, he stops to pick up another passenger, Ayub Raja, an Iraqi Kurd from Zakho with family on the Turkish side.

We drive to the border crossing, past trucks upon trucks waiting to get in. Our driver fills out the required paperwork, going back and forth between windows. Ayub helped us greatly, vouching for us on the Iraqi side, putting down his address and phone number as contact information for us. My American passport has six full pages of Israeli stamps, including one embassy-issued full-page student visa. The official did a double take, shook his head, and stamped.

Welcome to Kurdistan.

At 9, we leave the border station and drive to Ayub’s house in Zakho. We stay for a few minutes, meeting his family, saying our goodbyes and effusive thanks for his help at the border.  His brother goes out to talk to our driver, telling him not to go via Mosul (outside of Kurdish-controlled territory). He comes back and tells me not to sleep, and make sure the driver stays awake. He says to Rachael, “Sleep for you, ok.”

We’re in Irbil by 11:30.

Diyarbakır is the last stop before the frontier. The unofficial capital of Turkish Kurdistan, army bases surround it, and the police presence is heavy. Red and green (Kurdish national colors) are ubiquitous, and are present in everything from store signs to flags flying.

People tell us the people in Diyarbakır are mean, nasty. Kids throw stones. We arrive and people come up to us to offer help, directions, suggestions. When we walk down the street they stop in their tracks to say “Hello.” Just hello. Shopkeepers stand in their doorways, grin and bow, hands over hearts. Maybe this is a different Diyarbakır than the one described to me.

At the makeshift bus stop, a dusty parking lot with low, square seats around the walls, a boy has a box of pigeons. He is binding their wings with Scotch tape, then stuffing them back in the box. “Those are for eat?” I ask. “Yup.” “They are good?” “Delicious.”

All photos by Rachael Strecher.

We decided to go to Iraq overland from Istanbul.

The route was like this: a three-night sleeper train from Istanbul to Diyarbakir, a bus from Diyarbakir to a border town called Silopi, and from there across the border into Iraqi Kurdistan, to Irbil.

The train we took was called the Güney Ekspres, and leaves every other night at 10:55 PM from Haydarpaşa station, a ten-minute walk from the Kadiköy ferry stop on the Anatolian side of Istanbul.

We got to the train early, and the only other people on it were an Iraqi family from Mosul. The father, Haitham, spoke to me in high FusHa (Classical Arabic), articulating every syllable with the utmost clarity. He had been an English teacher under Saddam, but recently his father had gotten sick so he had to take over the family textile import business.  He had been to Istanbul six times, but never with his family, and never overland. He said they were returning overland because 8 plane tickets (him, his wife, his two sisters, and four young children) would have been more than 1500 dollars. Over the coming days, Haitham and I spoke often, and Rachael and I shared food and tea with him and his family many times.

Our bunk was shared by a family of three, and a young man from Kayseri who had been in Istanbul for a month visiting his older brothers. He said he was in high school, and I asked how many years he had left. He replied, saying he was going into his senior year. “And after?” I asked, to which he answered with a salute. Military service is mandatory here.  “But!” he said, and placed two fingers on his shoulder. He explained that he had done a high school pre-army training program similar to the JrROTC, and he would enter as a junior officer. He said he was looking forward to it.

The train pulled into Eskişehir around four AM, and the family who shared our cabin got out and was replaced by two young guys on their way home to Batman, in eastern Turkey. I was drifting in and out of sleep, listening to the conversation between them and the young soon-to-be recruit. He asked, “Did you study foreign languages?” They replied, good-naturedly, “Well, Turkish is a foreign language for us.”

The morning came, and people filtered out of their cabins into the hall to watch the countryside pass by. I was approached by a twenty-something guy from Istanbul who spoke idiomatic English, and we talked for a while over a cup of tea. He studied hotel management and said he worked at a five-star hotel in Istanbul, and that meeting and speaking with tourists was his favorite thing, because it gave him a glimpse of a world beyond Turkey. He declared that he hates being Turkish, and said he would rather have been born a dog. He asked me about Texas, “Is it like in the movies, with the big hats? Guns, gambling, horses…and jeans?” When I said it probably was, in some places, he sighed a long sigh, saying, “They don’t have no problems there.” It occured to me, then, that the desire to flee is so innate to the human experience that it manifests in all places, all walks of life, no matter how privileged. For me, Istanbul is a wonderful, incredible city. For those who were born within it, it is just home, and somewhere else is undoubtedly better. He tells me that by sixteen he had memorized the map of Manhattan (which he pronounced MANatin, to rhyme with manatee), and could tell you what to see anywhere in the city.

By noon, our co-cabinists were asleep, so Rach and I put the top bunk up and had a picnic on the middle one. Tuna sandwiches, pumpkin seeds, nutella filled crepes.

We pass through countrysides of rolling hills, small villages with a single minaret, and burnt meadows.

When you look out the window of the train, the heads and elbows of the other passengers are there with you, watching the countryside pass by.

After we passed Kayseri, I was speaking to a boistrous older Kurdish man sporting a Stalin moustache. He gestured out the window with a karate-chop motion. “Here,” he said, “Kurdistan begins.”

All photos by Rachael Strecher.

Another piece I did recently. It reads:

كن فيكون

Happy Birthday Mom!

Uğur Derman is a legend. He is quite possibly the foremost historian of Islamic calligraphy in the world, and has been studying calligraphy’s history, practice, and culture for more than half a century.

He went to school for pharmacology, and in fact there is a pharmacy in Beyoğlu called Derman Eczanesi (Derman Pharmacy), but in 1955 he discovered Ottoman calligraphy and it began a lifelong passion which has become his legacy to the world.

Last Wednesday, I met Mr Derman in Ortaköy at the Turkpetrol Vakfi Müzesi (Turkpetrol Foundation Museum), a collection he has put together over the past several years showcasing an incredible gallery of calligraphy, implements, books, and book art tools. It was among the most impressive collections I have ever seen, and in my opinion even surpassed the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Sultanahmet. Most of the calligraphy was from twentieth-century calligraphers, some living, some dead. All of it was spectacular.

He studied for his Icazet (calligraphy diploma) with the famous Ottoman calligrapher Necmeddin Ökyay (1883-1976), based out of Üsküdar, and earned his Icazet in 1960. He has taught traditional book arts and calligraphy at Marmara University, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, and at the Institute of Turkish Studies since 1961.

Leather embossing stamps for book covers.

In addition to calligraphy, Mr Derman is also an expert on the history and practice of Turkish and Ottoman book arts, marbling (ebru), inlay work, and other traditional Islamic arts. He has curated dozens of exhibits around the world, among them in Cairo (1976), Jeddah (1980) Chicago (1987) Baghdad (1988), Kuwait (1992), Islamabad (1994), again in Cairo (1997) and Tunisia (1997). He has sat on the judging panel of IRCICA (Research Center for Islamic Art, History, and Culture) for several years.

He has more than 247 publications to his name, and a book commemorating his 65^th birthday and the contributions he has made to the field was published in 2000, with articles by some of the most major names in the field of Arabic and Islamic arts contributing articles.

All photos by Rachael Strecher.

This is the first time I’ve used Ebru, or Turkish marbled paper, as a way of illuminating a piece of calligraphy. It would be better if the paper were more cream-colored, but I haven’t found decent paper like that.

Right before I moved to Turkey, I was contacted via this blog by an Argentinian guy called Javier Pasquale. He designs custom-made guitars, building them from start to finish, complete with inlay work. You can see pictures of his amazing work at his blog, here. He wanted some Arabic calligraphy of the phrase “The world is yours” to be inlaid in mother of pearl into the neck of a guitar he is building for himself.

I designed this piece and sent it off about three weeks ago, and today I got the following gorgeous picture in the mail:

I also designed his name, for the head of the guitar:

The Java reed has got to be one of the most elusive writing instruments I’ve ever encountered. It was first mentioned to me by Ben Bahman, the Iranian calligrapher I met at the UW Islamic Art show I organized who became my first teacher. Massoud Valipour, also Iranian, mentioned it when I was hanging out with him at his store in Los Angeles. Neither of them had any idea how to get a hold of one.

I finally found them for sale in the Sahaflar Carşisi here in Istanbul. It is essentially a very thin piece of hard wood that is famous for retaining its integrity and sharpness through rigorous usage. It is said that one calligrapher was able to write an entire Quran with a single cut of his Java reed. Most bamboo pens require that they be re-sharpened after about a page of writing, and regular reeds must be recut every few lines.

The reed is cut like a normal calligraphy reed, and then the tip (about the last 3 inches of the reed) is broken or cut off, and then snugly stuck into a piece of bamboo, which acts as a holder.

Of course, after I found this incredibly rare and elusive reed, I found a Turkish website offering them for sale. It’s actually a pretty decent website for Islamic art supplies.

In Üsküdar, on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, there is a large compound set up to teach the traditional Turkish arts of calligraphy, ebru (paper marbling), miniature painting, leather embossing and bookbinding, inlay, papercutting, and Tezhib (illumination). The center is called the KTSV, or Klasik Türk Sanatları Vakfı and is located at 82 Doğancılar street, a 10 minute walk from the Üsküdar ferry station.

They offer classes taught by the most famous and respected calligraphers in Turkey: Uğur Derman, Hasan Çelebi, Mehmet and Osman Özçay, Davut Bektaş, and Mehmet Memiş. The Foundation is heavily subsidized by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, which is interested in fostering a new interest in the traditional arts of Turkey, which judging by the number of young (women mostly) who attend the classes and show in exhibitions, is working.

Inside, the building has beautiful examples of the arts they teach.

The Foundation has an excellent art supply store for Turkish craft work, selling supplies for calligraphy, illumination, marbling, and books on all of those subjects.

I came away from it with a few pieces of ebru paper, a book of Thuluth calligraphy practice pages, some pre-illuminated papers for calligraphy, and some cool gold-transfer designs I have some plans for.

Şevki Efendi (Shawki Efendi in Arabic)’s pratice pages for Nesih (Naskh) and Sülüs (Thuluth).

I mentioned earlier that they teach Ottoman Turkish classes as well. Ottoman, the literary language of the Ottoman Empire is so different from modern Turkish that a native speaker of Turkish cannot read or understand it without training. Besides being written in Arabic script, the language borrows so heavily from Arabic and Persian that the modern Turkish language bears very little grammatical similarity to Ottoman. As such, if you are a Turkish historian or just interested in reading a book written prior to the 1920s you must take language courses, just to do research in your own language. I can think of no other situation where the (indigenous) inhabitants of a country speak a different language than their great-grandparents.

I’ve always been amazed how a city’s character can change in just a few short blocks. In Los Angeles, a few miles of Third Street will take you from Hancock Park, where only the super-rich can dwell, to Hacienda Heights, an East LA slum that has been a gangland battleground for years.

In Istanbul, the affluence and European chic of Cihangir can change to a Kurdish slum in 3 short blocks. Cross Istiklal Caddesi, go down the Balik Pazarı, and cross into Tarlabaşı. The journey takes less than ten minutes on foot and in those ten minutes you can witness the difference between old-money Kemalist Istanbul secularism and Eastern Turkish traditional Kurdish life caught in the crossfire of modernity.

A police tank with a turret-mounted water cannon is parked on the sidewalk at the entrance to the neighborhood, as a reminder of who is in charge. Undercover and uniformed cops are ubiquitous in the streets, this being evidenced to me when a guy standing on a corner in a soccer jersey adjusted his shirt a bit to reveal the 9mm pistol stuck in the back of his pants.

A Turkish flag has been stenciled on a wall, and then subsequently crossed out with a black marker, more subtle reminders of the tension that ripples through the country, kept under wraps in Istanbul by a police force ready and willing to get messy.

On Sunday (Pazar Günü in Turkish, meaning Bazaar Day) there is a massive, never-ending incredible street market in Tarlabaşı. The market is mostly run by Kurds, transplants from Eastern Turkey, but is frequented by the flotsam and jetsam of the world that has ended up in Istanbul: Arabs, Europeans, Africans, Central Asians, and random Korean people.

The market lasts forever, it turns several times, and boasts everything from fresh vegetables (we even found avocado!) to kitchen wares, to clothing, to fish, and the freshest most tasty bread I’ve had in a long time. All for cheaper than anywhere else I’ve seen in Istanbul.

Last night, the power in our building went out. I put my head out the window to see if it was just our building or the whole block. I saw about 6 other heads poking out of their windows to find out the same thing, and the whole block was out. So we went for a walk.

It wasn’t just our block, but at least all of Beyoğlu, and perhaps more. It was bizarre walking down Istiklal without all the lights and sounds of music coming from the shops. Many stores had generators (as brownouts are pretty common in the hotter months here) but for the most part it gave the city a very subdued tone, and provided some very beautiful scenes.

All photos by Rachael Strecher.

In Karaköy, near the entrance to the Tünel train line, there is an extrodinary exhibit of graffiti. I caught it at the very end of its run, as it ends today. It is housed in an abandoned building on Bankar Sokak, across from Saint George Hospital. There is little or no indication from the outside that an exhibit is taking place; it simply looks like a dilapidated old building, the windows shattered, the door wide open. Once you go inside the walls are filled with art, in all directions, almost every surface has been used for something. Many of the pieces interact with their environs in awesome, creative ways.

There were a few other people there when we went, all young and hipstery folk, all sort of doing their own thing off in some corner. There was ambient music coming out of some speakers in one of the rooms, a bizarre moaning and ambient space sounds. If there were a few fires burning it could easily have been a Terry Gilliam set.

This is the first floor. The building is five floors, plus a roof. In the first pic, on the left, the phrase reads “çocuk pornosu yetmedi mi?” This isn’t child porn yet, is it? The second picture reads “benim olduğum yerde sansür vardir” I have a censor in place.

The second floor. There were many instances of photographs printed out and wheat-pasted onto the wall.

Third floor

Look at these Turkish hipsters.

Probably the best piece in the show.

Last one reads, in Arabic, You have the choice.

Fourth floor. Fifth floor had nothing on it. The roof was awesome. Check it out:

Eeep! Scary!

The Galata Bridge from the roof.

My favorite piece in the show. Its a sultan!

Posted in Graffiti, Stencils, Turkey ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/street-art-istanbul/feed/ 1 Josh DSCF0084 4 2 6 9 8 7 10 13 14 15 19 18 26a 26 27 23 24 28 29 32 30 33 35 34 36 39 40 41 38 http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/istanbul-again/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/istanbul-again/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:33:26 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1670 ]]>

I’m back in one of my favorite cities in the world. I really can’t express how wonderful being here is, so full of life, culture, vibrancy and beauty. Living in Beer Sheva, bustling metropolitan cultural hub that it is, really made me miss being in a city, a real city, with real life happening.  In Beer Sheva I felt like the old gomer sitting on his rocking chair as the tumbleweeds roll by. Only by tumbleweeds I mean old Russians who were beginning to resemble potatoes.

Either way, I am very happy to be gone, and have returned to Istanbul for an extended stay, and what will be the first leg of a year-long multiple-country sojourn. In Istanbul I will be learning and practicing Arabic calligraphy, as this city is the capital of the calligraphy world, and has been for several centuries. I will also be re-learning the Turkish I have spent the past 4 years forgetting.

My apartment is in Cihangar, one of my favorite Istanbul neighborhoods, and has a gorgeous rooftop terrace with a view of the Sea of Marmara.

In Jerusalem, and in fact all over Israel, racist scumbags spraypaint out the Arabic on street signs, or cover it over with political stickers. The message is clear: this is not your country, we don’t even want to see a trace of your heritage on our streets.

Friends of mine in Jerusalem, Ilana and Romy, started an amazing project: Re-Facing Jerusalem. They made a list of streets around Jerusalem that had been defaced, and set about putting the Arabic back.

I was lucky enough to have a small role in this project over the past weekend.

I wrote 25 street signs out in Arabic calligraphy, and on Thursday and Saturday nights we drove around and stuck them back up. None of us are Arab or Muslim, but we all recognize the importance of shared existence, and are committed to the principle and reality of Jerusalem as a shared city.

The response of the general public was interesting. While Romy and Ilana said that others engaged them in conversation during other outings in the past, of the 25 signs we re-faced only about 5 people spoke to us while we were doing it. Many people were around us as we put the signs up, but few of them said anything. One was a block from the intersection of King George and Ben Yehuda, arguably the busiest intersection of the city, and the streets were packed as we walked through the crowd with a ladder and climbed up to the sign. No one said a word. Another was across the street from the Jerusalem Theater in Rehavia, and a show had just let out when we set up the ladder, and a steady stream of middle-aged Ashkenazi Israelis walked past as we were refacing Rechov Marcus, and none said a thing to us. And it’s not as though we were a threatening group of punks spraying graffiti; we’re three dorky artist-types.

General Pierre Koenig, Emek Refaim

Raban Yochanan Ben Zakai, same corner as above.

Marcus St, Rehavia.

Marcus St, further down the road.

Haim Bajayo, Emek Refaim.

My favorite comment from the public was while putting up this sign. Two twenty-something guys with goatees and long hair walked past while Romy was up on the ladder sticking the sign on. One asked what we were doing, and I explained the project, saying that we had re-written the name of the street in Arabic because the original had been vandalized. The other said, “Yeah, anashim zevel do that.” That translates literally as ‘garbage people,’ and is my new favorite phrase.

Jabotinsky St, Rehavia

Shalom Hartman Institute, Rehavia.

Ilana and Romy had replaced this sign before, and the replacement got ripped down a few days later. You can see the remnants of the original, and it currently looks like a battleground.

Keren Kayemet St, center of town.

King George, center of town.

Mitla Pass St, Ramat Eshkol

Yaaqov (Sharl) Neter St, Ramat Eskhol. We thought it was Karl Neter.

Reuven St, Emek Refaim.

SHaH”L St, Givat Mordecai

Shmuel HaNagid,center of town.

Shmuel haNabi, Sanhedria.

Zalman Shneur, Navot

Talpiot Hwy Sign, center of town.

Old City Hwy Sign, Rehavia.

While putting up this sign (a block down the street from the Prime Minister’s house) a security guard carrying a massive automatic rifle came running at us. He asked the rhetorical “do you have permission to do that?” and then demanded our IDs. Ilana was in the car and I left mine at home on purpose, so Romy (who is Israeli, and thus did all the talking) gave the guard his ID, who then radioed back to base explaining that he had just found some miscreants. He looked at the Arabic phrases we had just stuck up, and said, “What is written there?” and Romy replied, “The Old City, in Arabic.” “What was there before?” “Vandalism obscuring the words.” And at this point there was this momentary pause when, I think, he realized he was talking to the good guys, as Ilana put it. But he couldn’t back down from his bully demeanor, so he said sarcastically to Romy, “Oh, so you’re the hero!” to which Romy politely declined. A few words were exchanged and then he handed Romy back his ID and then gave us a few stern sentences about how no one should take the law into his own hands.

Tel Aviv Hwy Sign, Rehavia.

Trumpledor, Center of Town

Yehoash, Emek Refaim

Yehoshefat, Emek Refaim

Forgot to get the before shot on these:

Arlozoroff, Rehavia. Fun word to write.

Harav Avida, Center of town.

Mordechai Hillel. Right in the middle of town, by Ben Yehuda.

I can’t believe it’s over. My 10-month Shatil Social Justice Fellowship has come to an end, and it is now time for me to move on. I spent the year working at the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages, the elected representatives of the 76,000 Bedouin living in 45 unrecognized villages.

I had an amazing, fun, interesting, and challenging year, and I won’t forget the friendships I made within the Bedouin community, nor the things I learned from them.

Suleiman, Ye’ela, Atwa, Ali, Faisal, Said, Hussein, and Ibrahim, I will really miss you guys, and I wish you nothing but the best. B’Tawfiq.

On my last day, Suleiman and Ye’ela organized a picnic barbeque out in the woods at a beautiful spot overlooking Rahat and Beer Sheva. It was a perfect send off, and really made me sad to be leaving.

Hussein al-Rafaya (former president of the council), Ali Abu Sheheita (at whose home I taught English), and Atia al-Athameen (from the village of Khashm Zanna).

Atia.

Salman Bin Hmed (At whose home I also taught English) and Atwa Abu Freih (general director of the council)

Suleiman Abu Obeid.

Hussein, Atia, and Ye’ela Raanan (public affairs spokewoman for the council)

I’ll miss you guys, ya ashabi.

Last night, in another secret operation, sixteen Yemenite Jews arrived in Israel. And, like before, they are now staying in my building in Beer Sheva, the Merkez Klita Yeelim. They comprise members of the Jaradi, Nahari, and Hamdi clans.

The Jewish Agency threw them a small party in the building, full of Yemenite food. Many relatives came in to greet them, mostly from Rehovot.

I didn’t take any pictures. Instead, I let the kids pass my camera around and take pictures. Not surprisingly, almost all the pictures were blurry, save a few.

The girl on the right is Saadia ben Yisrael’s daughter Leah. She arrived in February. She’s sitting next to Aharon Nahari, from the family of Moshe Nahari, the Jew who was gunned down in December, sparking this exodus. She spent the time explaining to him the differences between Yemeni Judeo-Arabic (their native language) and Hebrew, which she now speaks fluently. She started with the food. “Bisbas. Ze harif b’ebrit.” Hot sauce. It’s harif in Hebrew.

Aharon Nahari. I gave him the camera and he took a lot of pictures. He was really excited to talk about their trip (which he technically isn’t allowed to do). I’m not going to give any details, suffice to say that he was really jazzed about the airplanes.

More Naharis.

Not bad photos for nine-year-olds.

Notice the bulge in the guy’s cheek: there was gat aplenty, in addition to the food.

This is Dawood (David), from Sa’ada. He arrived with Saadia in February, and according to Saadia, does nothing but chew gat all day long. He always has this deer-in-headlights look that you see now.

The guy on the right, Ezra, has been in Israel since the early 90s. He’s originally from Sa’ada, but spent time in New York working in the jewelery industry. He now lives in Rehovot. He also was the only one who spoke fluent FusHa (Modern Standard) Arabic, as opposed to just the local dialect. When he mentioned jewelery, my ears perked up. He learned filigree work from his father and grandfather. I got his contact information and he invited me to visit him in Rehovot.

In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Today I have collected a few pictures of absolute disasters of tattoos. I guess the thought process goes something like: “Ooh, Arabic writing is so pretty, I want something deep and meaningful tattooed on me. I’m going to send an email asking for a translation, and then tattoo whatever comes back on my body. Should I check with an actual Arabic speaker before getting the tattoo? Nah, why bother.”

These gems are the result. If you are the owner of one of these atrocities, I am so, so sorry for you. I really am. But you’re a moron for not checking.

Most Arabic tattoos use the equivalent of Ariel font, which in my opinion looks incredibly stale and boring, as opposed to an actual calligraphic work, which was done by a human being. I know I’m biased, but still. You want to do your entire forearm with your first name, like you might forget it or something, fine. But at least make it look nice.  Unlike this guy, who I assume is called Michael:

The reason it comes out like that is because this is the (only) font that most computers use for Arabic, unless they’re told otherwise, and since most Americans don’t have Arabic fonts on their computers, there isn’t an option.

As far as I can tell, these train wrecks come in two types: the kinds that look like a four-year old wrote them, but are technically correct, just hideous, and then the absolutely unforgivable mistakes that were ruined by computers.

See, when computers that don’t have Arabic language support get an Arabic word they break the letters into their individual forms. Most Arabic letters have up to four forms: alone, in the beginning of a word, in the middle of the word, and at the end. Here’s an example, with the letter Ha. The following reads, “ha hahaha”

But on a computer that didn’t recognize Arabic fonts, it would all show up like the first, unconnected letter, the one that looks like an O. On top of this, for some bizarre reason these computers also take the word and reverse the letter order. So “order” becomes “redro,” with all the letters written as their unconnected forms. In other words, total gibberish.

Lets have a look at the first group, the ones that are written correctly, just butt-ugly:

This says “without hardship there is no ease,” and looks like Stevie Wonder wrote it, on a dune buggy.

Ok. I’m going to ignore the butterflies in a trail of fairy-dust and focus on the Arabic, which I imagine this chick wanted to say “Big Mamma,” but since idiomatic expressions don’t really translate (huge surprise there, homeslice), it now says “The Large Mother” across her foot. Nice.

The thing about this one is, the geometric pattern in the background is pretty cool, and would have been a nice tattoo if he’d just have let well enough alone. The Arabic (usraty, my family) just runs through it like the fat kid streaking at prom.

Now on to the computer-addled fuckups.

Here is an example I’ve drawn up to illustrate what I mentioned earlier. The top word here says al-salaam (peace) and the bottom says mim, alif, lam, sin, lam, alif. It isn’t a word, its a few letters in a row. This is what happens if I tried to send al-salaam to a computer that doesn’t have Arabic language support. Incidentally, I saw a picture of some moron with that tattooed on him, in huge letters across his forearm. Poor guy.

Most tattoo disasters fall into this category, and that is a mistake that is 100% preventable. Go find an Arab, show him the printout you’re taking to the tattoo parlor and ask what it means. When he says ‘Nothing at all,’ you know you have a problem.

I’m going to try and decipher this. Beloved wife, princess protects, this is me soft (transliterated from English) I will protect. Pure poetry, even once you put the letters back together and reorder them.

Princess, backwards and unconnected.

Queen, unconnected.

The person claimed this meant “unashamed.” I cant figure that out. Either way, its wrong.

This one is so screwed up it’s not even funny. I don’t know where to start with this, so I won’t. Ecchh.

More backwards gibberish, I don’t even have the energy to try and decipher it at this point. All I know is that in addition to having to look at your awful tattoo, I don’t want to have to look at your ass crack to boot.

Wow! Backwards, unconnected, and ugly! You’re so deep and inspiring…

“This says Michael in Arabic.” No it doesnt. F-

And now! The pièce de résistance, this monstrosity. According to the website I found it on, it says “Serenity, Strength, Courage.” All I can say is, no, not even close. You poor, poor hipster fuck. I feel no pity for you at all. HA! Every time I see this atrocity I have to laugh!

Basically what I’m saying here is this: tattoos are forever, so don’t be impulsive with your decision. If you really want a tattoo in Arabic, go through a native-speaking translator if it’s more than a few words, and through a calligrapher for the art work itself. If you are serious about wanting an Arabic tattoo, leave a comment on this post and we talk about details and design. A couple of tattoos I’ve designed can be seen here and here.

This is Hazem abu Gwedar. I first met Hazem hitchhiking back to Beer Sheva from the village of Al-Zarnouq; he gave me a lift. A few weeks later, I was in Al-Zarnouq again and met Hazem’s brother, Muhammad. We subsequently became friends and it wasn’t till a few weeks later that I realized that Hazem was Muhammad’s brother. Since then, I’ve become friends with their entire extended family, and they are one of the reasons why Al-Zarnouq is my favorite village in Israel, and I consider the abu Gwedar clan to be the warmest and most kind people I’ve met.

Hazem abu Gwedar is the only Bedouin with a certified teacher-level black belt in Shotokan Karate. He makes his living driving a bulldozer, and teaching in a dojo in Ashkelon to Jewish Israeli students, but started a small Karate club in his village to teach the kids Karate.  They were featured in a documentary about the village, which I have digitized and put online here. In it, the kids talk about the ways in which the experience of learning Karate has changed their lives, made them see the world differently, allowed them to connect to each other in ways they would not have been able to otherwise. There are subtitles in Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic, but not English. 

One time I asked him if he’s ever had to use Karate out of the dojo. He sort of looked away for a moment and said, “…once. In Akko.” I asked what happened and he said, “This group of fellahin [non-Bedouin Northern Arabs] came up to me and a few friends near the beach. They had been drinking. They started to give us trouble and I straightened them out.”

A few years ago, Blackalicious put out a song called Alphabet Aerobics, where Gift of Gab goes through each letter of the alphabet with some alliterated lyrics for each letter. Peep a video here.

Enter Dam, Palestine’s most notable and well-known hip-hop group who have been burning shit up for a while now. They took the same idea and made two songs, one starting with Alef and working its way through to Yaa, and another starting backwards, at Yaa and going back to Alef. Check em out.

Alef to Yaa:

Yaa to Alef:

A couple of days ago my friend Mahmoud abu Jarabeya, who built the straw bale mosque in Wadi al-Na’am, got married. It was the first Bedouin wedding I’ve been to.

There was one long tent, divided in half, one for the men, one for the women, and rows of carpets and cushions to lean on. The women had dancing, singing, music, and general wedding festivities. We had a stern-looking mullah give a sermon on the blessing of marriage and the dangers of watching Turkish soap operas. No, seriously.

We sat and talked until a huge procession of men carrying plates of mansaf arrived, plunked them down in front of every third person, we huddled up and started eating, left hand behind the back, right hand acting as a scoop.

This little dude sat next to me, and told me all about the different types of scary movies he had seen in his 8-year-old life. “They are alive but look like dead people and you can’t kill them easily,” he said. I thought for a minute and then said, “Zombies!”

The only other white guy there was sitting a few dudes down from me (top left corner of the picture). We gave each other the “what-are-you-doing-here” stare and I asked my friend Suleiman who was sitting next to me who he was. He looked over and turned back to me, saying “Dudik Shoshani.” The former director of the “Authority for the Advancement of the Bedouin,” the government agency charged with dealing with the Bedouin. Arguably one of the most influential individuals in Israel when it comes to dealing with the Unrecognized Villages. We spoke for a bit, in Arabic. He speaks well.

We miss you, Saba.

A little while ago I returned with Rachael to the Separation Wall at Qalandia and put a new poem up.

This one was written by Abu Firas al-Hamdani (d. 968).
It reads:

وألحظ أحوال الزمان بمقلة

بها الصدق صدق والكذاب كذاب

بمن يثق الإنسان فيما ينوبه

ومن أين للحر الكريم صحاب

وقد صار هذا الناس إلا أقلهم

ذائبا على أجسادهن ثياب

English translation, by Walid Khazendar:

I glance at time’s conditions with an eye
Which sees truth is truth and lying is lying.
Whom can one trust with one’s afflictions?
And where can the pure and noble find friends
When people, save a few,
Have become wolves wearing clothes?

Photos by Rachael Strecher.

This is an amazing ad campaign in Lebanon, designed to integrate women into the public discourse by changing the way people look at the Arabic language.

This past Friday was Good Friday for Catholics (Orthodox and Armenian Christians celebrate it in a week), and every year there is a Passion Play through the streets of Jerusalem, from the Lion’s Gate (next to the Garden of Gethsemane) to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, supposedly built on Golgotha, the hill upon which Jesus was crucified. A Passion Play (this was the first one I’ve ever seen) apparently consists of re-enacting Jesus’s walk along the Via Doloroso to the hill of Golgotha, where he was crucified, accompanied by Roman soldiers and a bevy of ‘women of Jerusalem’ who beg him not to go.

It’s a different person portraying Jesus every year, and I’m sure considered a huge honor to be chosen, but I was more than a little disappointed by the pasty and slightly pudgy American guy they chose this year.

2000 years ago, the city’s walls were in a different position, comprising mostly the modern-day neighborhood of Silwan (today outside the city walls), and Golgotha was a hill to the west of the city. The Roman emperor Hadrian expanded the city walls to include Golgotha, and so the Church of the Holy Sepulcher today sits inside the old city walls.

The actors in the play were surrounded by a dispatch of Israeli soldiers to keep onlookers back, and around the ring of soldiers was a ring of press photographers who were clamoring and pushing for the shot with the fewest other photographers, tourists, soldiers, and other distractions. In the old city’s narrow streets, the pushing got pretty intense. I thank Ed Ou for these photos. 

I can’t help but imagine that if this event were to go down today, it would look much the same, with the swarm of journalists and photographers hovering. “Controversial Rabbi Sentenced to Death in Jerusalem.”

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the holiday commemorating the triumphant return of Jesus to Jerusalem, prior to his crucifixion and martyrdom. The tradition states that when he rode into Jerusalem the people layed down their cloaks and palm fronts in front of him, as a sign of respect.

Today, Palm Sunday attracts thousands of pilgrims from all over the world to reenact Jesus’s walk into Jerusalem. The procession starts on the Mount of Olives and proceeds down into the Kidron Valley, past the Garden of Gethsemane, and into Jerusalem via the Lion’s Gate.

There were dispatches from all of the city’s various Arab Christian denominations and monasteries leading the parade.

We followed the parade into the Old City and into the various important Christians sites (the birthplace of Mary etc) and then the parade dissipated and we went home.

All photos by Aline Khoury.

I’m housesitting for Clinton Bailey, who has an amazing home in Rehavia, my favorite Jerusalem neighborhood. It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to use an oven in 7 months, so we celebrated with home-made Challah and roasted chicken and vegetables. Delicious.

Dr Bailey has an amazing personal library, of particular interest to Arabic nerds.

Here are some gems:

Lane’s Lexicon

Dialect dictionaries

Specialist Dictionaries

Poetry books

On the way into Jerusalem from the western direction one can see an abandoned Palestinian village on the hillside, left the way it was when it ceased to be inhabited in 1948. The name of the town is Lifta, and it has an interesting history. Lifta was one of the most affluent villages in the Jerusalem district prior to the founding of the state of Israel. During the war of 1948, the village reached an agreement with the Irgun to remain in place, and the people planned to stay and wait out the fighting, unlike many Palestinian communities who chose to flee to neighboring countries. However, Deir Yassin happened and rumors of a massacre spread to Lifta and, like dozens of other towns, the villagers panicked and, fearing their safety, fled to Jordan.

This story could apply to dozens of communities in Palestine, but Lifta is almost unique in that the village itself remains. In most cases, the homes were destroyed, incorporated into new Israeli cities, and many had Keren Kayemet forests planted over top of their ruins to hide any evidence of their very existence.  But Lifta remains. It’s unclear why Israel chose to leave it in place and intact, but it is. It has become a weekend hangout and picnic spot for Jerusalem families, and many of the abandoned houses now house homeless junkies, or broke hippies.

I went there with my friends Ed, Rachael, and Aline. The insides of the houses were covered with graffiti, and old books pile in the corners.

Aline with the city rising behind her. Photo by Edword.

There is an underground spring that runs from a well to a pool at the entrance of the village. There is a long underground corridor and tunnel that you can walk in, that goes very deep inside.

I would have been scared to go in, had I not seen a three-year-old girl come out before we went in.

Palestineremembered.com has several photos of the village from before 1948, and you can see the emptiness of the surrounding hillsides.

Posted in Israel, Palestine ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/lifta/feed/ 1 Josh 3sm 6sm 5 2 8sm 5sm 7sm old1 old2 old3 http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/varouj/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/varouj/#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:50:52 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1433 ]]>

In the old city of Jerusalem there sits a small shop in the Armenian quarter, selling antique photographs of Jerusalem and the Orient. The proprietor is one Varouj Ishkenian, and he has been a fixture of Old City life for almost half a century. Anyone who has wandered the streets for any length of time will have encountered him, and will likely have been drawn into to sit and hear his stories. His shop has been in the same location since 1964, and he is the former court photographer to the Jordanian royal family. He speaks Armenian, Arabic, English, French, Turkish, and some Hebrew.

His family has a long history with photography. His father was a photographer, as was his grandfather, and many of the photographs he sells were originally taken by his grandfather, when Jerusalem was a completely different city. His sons, too, are photographers, but apparently prefer the medium of video more. Varouj has lived through British, Jordanian, and finally Israeli rule of the city, and has watched as the world outside the city walls has changed beyond recognition. He laments the passing of an earlier time, when all the shops on his street were owned by Armenians. Long are the hours I’ve spent sitting and sipping tea, discussing this and that, with pauses in the conversation as tourists filter in and out.

On August 10th, 2007, a man from East Jerusalem bent on wreaking havoc grabbed a gun from a security guard and started firing randomly into the crowds of the Old City streets, wounding ten people before being shot by another guard. Among those ten was Sarkis Iskhanian, Varouj’s son. He was shot in the leg while walking with his wife and daughters. A former cameraman for the Armenian news channel, he has been out of work since the attack, as the injury still causes pain when he stands holding the heavy camera.

Many people have noted their meetings with Varouj. Among them: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

All photos by Rachael Strecher.

I realize I’ve been here almost seven months now, and I haven’t really written about the Unrecognized Villages yet.

There are 45 villages in the Negev that the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages considers unrecognized by the state. There are dozens of small encampments that do not show up on the map and are not counted among the 45, because their population is fewer than 500, the minimum population for recognition under Israeli law. 

These villages are home to between 500 and 7000 residents each, for a combined population of 76,000 people, all citizens of Israel. They receive no basic services from the state, such as water, electricity, roads, garbage collection, sewage removal, or any other infrastructure that one would expect from an industrialized state such as Israel. Electricity is provided by generators that run usually 3 hours a day, and costs more per month than the 24-hour electricity residents of recognized towns and cities receive. As a result, those who are in need of 24-hour electricity for medical reasons (many medications, including insulin, need 24-hour refrigeration) cannot meet those needs, and suffer needlessly. Read about one such ongoing case here: Baby Girl’s Power Struggle With Israel.

The national electric grid runs through the villages in the form of high tension wires, in fact there is even a major electric plant smack in the center of one of the largest villages, but the residents do not have access to any of it. In the Negev, a desert home to intense temperatures in both summer and winter, the lack of electricity is exremely harmful, and every year people die due to lack of heating during the bitter cold of winter nights, and intense summer heat.

The residents of the Unrecognized Villages have little or no access to the national water grid, despite living alongside the main pipes used to transport drinking and irrigation water through the Negev. In cases where the government has granted access to the grid, the access is through a one-inch diameter access point, which is equipped with a turn-off valve to prevent too much water from going through the pipe at any one time. From there, above-ground hoses connect the houses in the village. However, if one does not live close to the access point, there is still no water connection, as the water pressure is not great enough to carry the water to houses outside the limited radius of water pressure allowed by the pressure valve.

If, however, one does not live in a village with this connection, or one lives far away from the pump, large water tanks must be used to transport water to the house. In cases such as this, the residents must go to a house close to a water access point, and another resident must fill these tanks up once or twice a week. This process takes two hours to fill the tank. So, if one arrives on the designated filling day to find 2 or 3 other people in line ahead of him, simply procuring water for the week can take all day. In addition, these tanks are often rusted out and extremely unhygienic, further exacerbating the already-dire health situation in the villages.

The residents of these villages have no official address, which precludes them from municipal elections of any kind. Some of these villages have been in the same location since the Ottoman times, others were created in the wake of the creation of the State of Israel. Following Israel’s victory in 1948, the Bedouin settlements in the western Negev were destroyed, their residents expelled to a triangular region known as the Siyaj (’fence’ in Arabic), with the cities of Beer Sheva, Yeruham, and Arad forming the points of this triangle. 

The Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages was created in 1997 by more than fifty leaders from across the Negev, tired of being denied access to the political process. Among the prominent leaders of this group were the following nine individuals:

• Hussein al-Rafay’a from Bir Hammam, current president of the RCUV,
• Lubad abu Afash from Wadi al-Na’am, 
• Salman al-Asam from Khirbat al-Watan, 
• Hussein al-Atrash from al-Mkaimin, 
• Saaed al-Uqby from al-Qrein, 
• Ali al-Kashakhr from Tel Arad, 
• Ibrahim al-Waqily from Bir al-Mashash, 
• Attiyah al-Asam from Abu Tlul, 
• Jabr abu Kaf from Um Batin.

However, these nine would not have succeeded had it not been for the support of dozens of others, among them Dr Amir al-Wuzail, Khalil al-Ammur and others. Attiyah al-A’sam was the first head of the council. He is currently the point man for the Forty Committee in the Negev. Jabr Abu Kaf was the second head elected for the council. Hussein Al–Rafay’a is the current head of the regional council.

They started by forming 45 committees, one in each of the unrecognized villages, which were then assembled into a council, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages. The work of the RCUV expanded, as did our reputation on both sides of the political fence, until the RCUV became recognized as a legitimate political action body, and one that was created by the new generation to meet the needs of a changed world.

Nun: By the Pen and What They Write

ن – والقلم وما يسطرون

From the 68th surah of the Quran, surah al-Qalam.

Posted in Arabic, Calligraphy, Islamic Art ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/by-the-pen-and-what-they-write/feed/ 5 Josh bilqalm bilqalm2 http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/the-facade-shell/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/the-facade-shell/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2009 07:37:18 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1030 ]]>

In Jerusalem there is an interesting construction project underway. The city plans to build a new hotel, a Waldorf-Astoria, inside the husk of the former Jerusalem Palace hotel on the corner of King David and Agron St. The new hotel will boast 220 rooms and 30 residential apartments, and will give the King David Hotel a run for its money in terms of popularity among visiting dignitaries. They essentially ripped out the guts of the old building, leaving nothing but the facade.

From Jerusalemite:

The old Palace Hotel, constructed in 1928-29 under the order of Jerusalem’s Supreme Muslim Council and supervised by the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, was completed after just 11 months, by over 500 Arab workers, supervised by one Jewish engineer named Baruch Katinka. Since Katinka was secretly working for pre-state Jewish military organization the Hagana, the Palace was a tricky project to say the least. Upon opening, the hotel was the most luxurious in the Middle East, with elevators, a central heating system and even private bathrooms – practically unheard-of at the time.

Due to a hardcore rivalry, much deceit (during the excavation, it was revealed that the site was an old Muslim cemetery – the Mufti covered this up) and a dash of sabotage between the British-appointed Arab mayor and the Mufti, the hotel was destined to fail. Management of the hotel was handed over to a local corrupt hotelier, but it was eventually forced to close its doors once the King David opened down the block.

The British Mandate went on to use the building as military and administrative offices, and when the State of Israel was born in 1948, the Ministry of Trade took up residence. Then, five years ago, the building was abandoned, the government-caused void ironically filled by the community of addicts, homeless folk and squatters featured in David Grossman’s Someone to Run With.

About three years ago, the Reichman magnates purchased the structure from the Israeli government, which should be ashamed for letting such a beautiful building fall into these depths of disrepair – not to mention that the sale reportedly went for a $20 million price tag, a paltry sum for historical value, central location and sheer property size such as this.

The Reichmans closed a management deal with Hilton hotels, and together, they will be investing over $100 million in the development and branding of the refurbished hotel, destined to be the latest branch of the Waldorf-Astoria chain. The 220-room facility, due to open in 2010, should eventually house five additional floors, several restaurants, a swimming pool and hundreds of well-to-do tourists.

On Thursday, February 26th, my friend Haneen Ahmad had her second fashion show in Seattle, showcasing the amazing line of clothing she has been working on for the past few months. Her website can be seen here.

Among the works she was showing were t-shirts with a Mahmoud Darwish quote I designed for her.

Haneen is second from the right.

Hipsters rocking my calligraphy!

It says “Record! I am Arab!” and is taken from the first lines of Darwish’s famous poem “Identity Card“.

She works with kuffiyas (also known as hatta, shemagh, or mandil), traditionally patterned scarves worn in Arab countries, and fashions them into jackets, ties, skirts, and shirts. It is often difficult to find anything but red-and-white checked or black-and-white checked kuffiyas, except in Yemen, where one can find every color combination possible.  When coming back from Yemen, I brought her a whopping 200 kuffiyas with me. Before I came home, I layed them out on the floor of our mufraj. It was a sight to behold.

In June, I went up to visit Seattle and Haneen and we put the Mahmoud Darwish quote onto a silk-screen together.

Amazing work Haneen, I’m rooting for you all the way from here!

About a week ago Rachael and I went back to the Qalandia checkpoint, the checkpoint separating Jerusalem and Ramallah. The Palestinian side of the barrier is covered with graffiti as far as one can see, and so we thought we’d add something to it. Most of the graffiti is the most cliche, boring crap you would expect: “This wall will fall!” “Frei Palestina!” “Miener Schlieben Mit Gevünktenlinmustrassers Berlin!” and so on. I wanted to put something up that had no relationship to the wall, the situation, occupation, Berlin, South Africa or anything else. I chose a piece of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish (which was the most political aspect of the whole project, given he’s the Palestinian poet laureate) and some stencils for a background. I also chose not to put an English translation anywhere. The poem I chose reads:

القصيدة تبعد عني,

وتدخل ميناء بحارة يعشقون النبيذ

ولا يرجعون إلى امرأة مرتين,

ولا يحملون حنينا إلى أي شيء

ولا شجنا

محمود درويش

“The poem drifts away from me
It enters a port of sailors who love wine,
And never return to the same woman twice,
And feel nostalgia for nothing,
Nor sorrow, either.”

All photos are by Rachael Strecher.

First, I wrote the poem out with a reed pen and China ink, and then cut the words out of the paper:

Then I primed the wall with gesso:

First layer of stencil in beige:

Second layer in red:

Border with square stencil:

Done spraying:

Time to add the words. I brush a layer of clear gel sealant onto the wall, put the word on, and then paint a second layer of sealant over top of it.

Add the dots:

Done!

In October of 2007 I had the opportunity to visit Raida, the last village in Yemen with an indigenous Jewish population. There were at the time roughly 280 Jews living there, 2 synagogues, a Jewish school, and a Jewish quarter in the village. Many of the tall metal gates that surround the courtyards of houses had Hebrew Bruchim ha-Bayim, Welcome, inscribed upon them, instead of the usual Arabic Ahlan wa-Sahlan. Raida is an incredible time capsule of Jewish life in the Middle East, a way of life that has almost completely vanished in the wake of Israel’s creation. I wrote about my experiences in the village here.

I stayed with Said Bin Israil (Saadia Ben Yisrael) and his family while there. He was one of the leaders of the Raida community and a teacher in the school, his sincerity and hospitality made my visits to Raida the most memorable and incredible experiences of my life to date.

In early December, events began in Raida that will eventually mean the end of the community there. I wrote about this several posts back, stating that these acts of violence will finally break the camel’s back, and force the emigration of the last Jews of Yemen.

Sure enough, the first family to leave Yemen arrived in Israel 4 days ago, in a secret operation carried out by the Jewish Agency. And sure enough, that family is the very same Ben Yisraels I stayed with while in Raida. As if that coincidence was not enough, it turns out that they are living, at least temporarily, in the apartment building I live in. Right down the hall from me.

So a couple nights ago Rachael and I paid them a visit. It was really amazing to see him again, and wearing a suit and pants, as opposed to a thoub! Right away I started asking about his trip, did he go through Jordan, was it direct, etc, and he gave me this embarassed smile and said he couldn’t say, he was sworn to secrecy.

I brought with me Saadia Gaon’s Siddur, which has large sections of Judeo-Arabic commentary; I thought he might like to have a look. He did, and we spent a while pouring over it, checking out the different sections. Jewish books are hard to come by in Yemen, and they depend on whatever books they can get from New York or Jerusalem from time to time, and those books rarely have Judeo-Arabic, Saadia’s native language, written in them.

His kids are about the cutest thing in the world.

He told me that in the weeks before they left Yemen, there were representatives of the Jewish Agency in Raida, trying to help them to come to Israel, and representatives of the Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist Hasidic sect, trying to get them to stay in Yemen or come to New York. It was as though a covert war of words and ideologies was raging over the last Jews of the Arab diaspora, in a tiny village in a forsaken corner of the Middle East.

All photos by Rachael Strecher, except this one, courtesy Reuters:

Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet one of the pre-eminent scholars of Bedouin culture of our times. Originally from Buffalo, Clinton Bailey has lived in Israel since 1958 and been actively involved in the Bedouin community since the 1970s. He has published two monumental works on Bedouin oral culture, A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs from Sinai and the Negev and Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture. Both have been extremely useful in my calligraphy.

The second book is particularly important as it records and transcribes a cultural phenomenon that is disappearing. The younger generation of Bedouin do not memorize the poetry of their forefathers as the older generation did. Renowned throughout the Arab world and beyond as the most eloquent, most poetic strata of Arab society, the loss of the Bedouin poetic tradition in Israel is a cultural tragedy, and this work is crucial for recording that tradition before it is extinct. He is currently working on a third book, in its final stages before publication, on Bedouin law.

Photos by Rachael Strecher

As part of the fellowship I’m doing here, we meet once a month with the other fellows (there are 5 of us) and see what kind of work they’re doing at their respective organizations. One of the fellows, Kevin Dwarka, is working at an organization called Adam, Teva, ve Din [Man, Nature, and Law], an environmentally-conscious lobby group consisting of lawyers, planners, and experts on environmental issues.

On Thursday, with Kevin and some of the staff of Adam, Teva, ve Din we took a tour of a site called Khiria, just on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv. A garbage dump that handles 25 percent of all garbage produced in Israel, Khiria is also home to a center for environmental projects and forward-thinking planning. They are in the process of turning the area around Khiria into a public park with trails, picnic areas, and an open-air theater. The massive mound of garbage, known by Tel Avivis as ‘Shit Mountain’ also is being used to collect biofuel by harnessing the gases produced by the decaying garbage, and it is planned that the lights that will light the park will be powered by this biofuel.  The park borders the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv, once infamous for its bad-ass Mizrachi ghetto reputation.

The park and the projects surrounding it are a beacon of light and consciousness, an example for us all to follow.

Khiria is built upon the site of a former Palestinian village called al-Hiriya, depopulated in 1948 and turned 4 years later into a garbage dump for Tel Aviv. For me, Khiria therefore represents the duality of the Israeli reality. On one hand, you have incredible ingenuity, brilliant science, and a serious commitment to environmental justice. On the other, a dark past and the history of an ethnically cleansed population which still remains. The vibrant cultural and creative life of Tel Aviv is a world away from the bombing campaign against Gaza, but only a few kilometers separate the worlds.

I have found a world filled with carob trees

As my parents planted, so shall I plant

For my children.

-Babylonian Talmud

Pen and ink on paper, digitally composed.

Posted in Calligraphy, Design, Islamic Art, Poetry ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/a-world-of-carob-trees/feed/ 0 Josh bustan desk1 http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/the-last-exodus-of-the-yemenite-jews/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/the-last-exodus-of-the-yemenite-jews/#comments Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:47:07 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1304 ]]>

On Thursday, December 11th, 2008, Moshe Yaish Nahari was gunned down on the street in Raida, Yemen. This event will be the catalyst that provokes the final exodus of Yemenite Jewry, the oldest Jewish community in the world, and it will be gone forever, lost to the sands of time.

His killer, an mentally unstable former Yemeni Air Force pilot, called upon him to accept Islam, and when he refused he opened fire with his Kalishnikov (which non-Jews in Raida carry like a fashion accessory) and shot Moshe 5 times. The man, Abd al-Aziz al-Abadi, had killed his wife two years prior and managed to escape jail time by paying off his late wife’s family.

The judge in the case was originally pushing the death sentence, but when the Sheikh of al-Abadi’s tribe vowed to execute every last Jew in Raida, the judge apparently has backed down. The entire Jewish community has received death threats. Saadia Hala, the man I stayed with when in the village, had his house firebombed, and a grenade lobbed at his door.

The Forward has an excellent article about the murder here.

This is the straw that will finally break the camel’s back. The Jews are currently in the process of selling their homes, and moving to Sana’a to await the next move, out of the country. Many will come to Israel, because they will recieve support and assistance, others will go to Jewish communities in America or the UK.

I have wanted, for some time now, to return to the village and do a major project of oral history and story recording within the community, it seems that perhaps that the boat has sailed and I have missed my window. The nature of the project, therefore, is changing. Now there is a potential for a great project documenting their new lives here in Israel, almost 60 years after the vast majority of their coreligionist countrymen arrived on Israeli soil.

This is Avigdor Lieberman.  He is the head of the Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) party, one of the most far-right parties in Israel, the new manifestation of Kahane’s dream. They are hardline anti-Arab, and that includes Arab citizens of Israel.

It’s election season in Israel, and political billboards fill Tel Aviv’s streets. This one reads:

No Citizenship Without Loyalty

It is the policy of Yisrael Beiteinu that all Arab citizens of Israel must take a test of loyalty to the State in order to remain citizens. Those who refused would be stripped of their citizenship, but allowed to remain in Israel as permanent residents.

Lieberman himself was born in Moldova in 1958 and came to Israel at age 20, and therefore finds it appropriate to make policy regarding the civil rights of those whose roots on this land extend back a thousand years or more.

Yesterday, Nomad Out of Time turned one.

The last few days have seen rockets hitting Be’er Sheva for the first time in its history. The first one hit Tuesday night.  I was standing in my kitchen eating peanut butter in my underwear when the air-raid siren starts blaring, and I booked it to the shelter. After that first initial adrenaline-filled incident, the other times the siren has sounded have been comparatively tame. The siren is followed by this wonderfully awful gut-clenching waiting period of roughly sixty seconds. The sound of the explosion is like a pressure valve, and as the tension felt during the siren’s wail subsides, a giddiness follows in its place. I laugh and giggle stupidly, and listen to my heart thumping.

This is, of course, all petty and silly ado about almost nothing compared with the destruction and death and suffering felt in Gaza this past week. As many as 460 Palestinians have died at the time of this post, and thousands have been wounded, with more promised to come. For this reason, writing about the difficulties or stressfulness of ‘life under Qassams’ is, in my opinion, so trivial, so insignificant as to be almost insulting. Yes, Qassams fall in our cities. Yes, it is very stressful to live in Sderot, no doubt.  Do Qassams cause even a fraction of the damage to human life and infrastructure as aerial bombardment by F-15s? No. And yes, it is that simple.

I’ve written about the Straw Bale Mosque in the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Naam several times.  On November 22nd, I wrote,

“The demolition team never came.

This doesn’t mean we won. It means they didn’t want to destroy it in front of everyone, so they’ll probably come back next week and destroy it when no one’s there to document it.”

I am extremely sad to report that this morning at five o’clock AM Israeli forces arrived at the mosque and razed it to the ground. The builder and director of the project, Mahmoud Jarbeau, was sleeping in the mosque when he heard the rumble of bulldozers, and awoke to find a demolition team at his door.

He served for 9 years in the Israeli Defense Forces, ending his career as an officer in the Paratrooper Corps, and has poured more than 40,000 US dollars of his own savings into the project over the past 6 months.

We called an emergency meeting to discuss our response, and have decided to begin rebuilding the mosque immediately, and are actively soliciting financial support from the community to help in the rebuilding process. God willing, it will be rebuilt soon, and will serve as a testament to the will of the people to persevere in the face of enormous adversity. If you would like to make a donation to the rebuilding process, you can send money through PayPal to yallylivnat@gmail.com, putting “Wadi Naam Mosque” in the note.

Today Be’er Sheva was swept with Eastern winds, the Shargiya. The Bedouin say it is a dusty, dirty, harsh desert wind.

The city has been hazy all day.

This line of poetry was told to me by Ibrahim Abu Afash:

شرقية تقهر التوبة

تلوي بعشيب الريظاني

“Easterlies crush redemption,

Twist the grass of mountain valleys.”

Posted in Arabic, Bedouin, Poetry ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/east-wind-blowing/feed/ 0 Josh hazybs sharqiyah http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/entire-bedouin-village-demolished/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/entire-bedouin-village-demolished/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:11:50 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1260 ]]>

At five o’clock this morning more than 200 police and green patrol descended upon the Bedouin encampment of Abdallah al-Atrash, in the area of Rahat. Over the following 6 hours, they proceeded to demolish the entire village and forcibly expel all 20 families living there. Not a single structure was left standing, and all men, women, and children were pushed off their land.

The court case had been in the courts since 2000, but 4 days ago the demolition and evacuation order was served in the village. The government had ordered them to vacate the land immediately, but provided no alternative location to go to. No solution was given, nor were any suggestions made; they were simply told ‘go.’

They had been living in the same location for close to 20 years, after having been expelled from their previous homes farther to the west. The people belong to the Atrash tribe, and are likely to go live with relatives near Hura, in an unrecognized village of the Atrash. Some will stay on this land, and told me they plan to sleep amongst the rubble of their demolished homes tonight, until new tents can be erected on the land.

This expulsion comes days after the publication of the Goldberg Commission’s recommendations, which advocate recognition for Bedouin villages to the east of Route 40. Abdallah al-Atrash lies to the west.

Today is Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, in the Islamic calendar. It commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. So, as a reminder of that, it is traditional to sacrifice a sheep on Eid. According to the Sunna, or tradition of the Prophet, it is also tradition to visit family.

The previous evening, I learned that steel wool lit on fire can double as fireworks if you swing it around.

I spent the night in the unrecognized village of Al-Graen, with the family of Ali Abu Sheita. In the morning Ahmed, Ali’s brother, slaughtered two sheep: one for his family and one for Ali’s.

“They must be sharp!”

“In the name of God the Beneficent, the Merciful”

Skinned and washed, now Ali and his sons remove the guts, take a massive machete and turn it into cookable portions.

A handprint on the door is supposed to protect the home.

And finally:

Posted in Bedouin, Israel, Palestine ]]> http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/eid-al-adha-in-the-village-of-al-graen/feed/ 3 Josh fireworks 2 1 3 4 6 9 7 8 15 18 17 10 11 12 13 14 191 http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/south-west-iran-pens/ http://joshberer.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/south-west-iran-pens/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:19:39 +0000 Josh http://joshberer.wordpress.com/?p=1228 ]]>

These are calligraphy reeds from the Bandar-i Bushehr region of Iran, located in the southwest, on the gulf. They are the best kind of calligraphy pen available today, and very hard to find. They are made of bamboo that has been treated in a special process that I’m told takes over a year.

I got the five on the right in Istanbul, the middle two from my first calligraphy teacher Ben Bahman, from Tabriz, and the last one from Massoud Valipour in Los Angeles. He sells them at his shop Ketabsara on Westwood blvd.

I saw this stencil on a wall in Istanbul.

Nasreddin Hoca/Hoja/Hodja/Joha is a mythic folkloric figure in the Islamic world. He is at once a fool and a wise man, and his anecdotes teach lessons through the complexity and wisdom of his seemingly simple actions. He has many names, depending on the country, and many cultures claim him as their own, particularly the Turks, Persians, and Afghans. Children all over the Islamic world hear his stories and are taught by the wisdom of his ways. Often he is represented riding backwards on his donkey, with whom he shares many stories.

Much of Nasreddin’s actions can be described as illogical yet logical, rational yet irrational, bizarre yet normal, foolish yet sharp, and simple yet profound. What adds even further to his uniqueness is the way he gets across his messages in unconventional yet very effective methods in a profound simplicity. (From wiki)

When I was teaching in Yemen I would use Hoca stories, translated to English, while teaching English. All my students knew dozens of stories about him, and would bend over backwards trying to tell the tale in English.

My favorite Hoca story is like this: Hoca, his grandson, and his donkey are making the long walk home from town. The child is on the donkey and Hoca is walking alongside when they pass a group of people. He hears one say, “That poor old man! This child rides while he walks in this heat? My dear…” So the kid gets down and Hoca rides for a bit. A little later, they meet another group, and he again hears someone say, “That poor kid, made to walk while the grown-up rides!? My dear…” So he takes the kid and they both ride. Again, a group comes and he overhears, “That poor donkey!” So they both walk, and the donkey carries nothing. Later he hears someone laughing, and sees a group of men under a tree laughing at the two fools who chose to walk, even though they have a perfectly good donkey. Finally, they decide to carry the donkey. The moral of the story is that you can’t please everybody all the time.

There’s a saying that goes, ‘the Quran was revealed in Mecca, recited in Egypt, and written in Istanbul.’ This is 100% accurate. Ottoman calligraphers were the cream of the calligraphy crop, and their legacy lives on today. Schools of art in Istanbul often have a calligraphy faculty, and there exist several master calligraphers in the city who received their Icazets (calligraphy degrees) from the last generation of Ottoman masters, so their teaching creates an unbroken link back to the most famous masters in the history of Islamic art.

Stores like this exist all over the city, selling calligraphy and leaves out of illuminated manuscripts. In the covered market, since most of it caters to stupid tourists, the calligraphy is usually total crap, created by people who didn’t have an Icazet. But in the Sahaflar Carsisi, outside the covered market, there are several professional stores which sell not only framed calligraphy but professional reeds from south-west Iran, professional ink, papers, and calligraphy supplies.

I went there 3 days in a row because I made friends with the owner of one the shops, Ali, who studied for his Icazet from Davut Bektas, one of the best calligraphers in Turkey. The store is like a little secret hideout for all the calligraphers, students and teachers, of Istanbul and from abroad. In the course of the 3 days I was there I met an Iraqi calligrapher from Baghdad named Tariq and a Syrian named Anas, a calligrapher who received his Icazet from Hasan Celebi, the best and most renowned calligrapher in the world, as well as a dozen or so Turks, all studying for their Icazets. It seems calligraphy has been experiencing a renaissance in Turkey, as the second generation of non-Ottomans comes of age.

Happy Birthday Aunt Sue!

I went to a museum opening here in Istanbul last night of a show called The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting. It was a gorgeous show, and I especially loved it since I have a minor obsession with orientalists and their dress-up ways, but I was really surprised to find the following painting, it’s called Edfou, Upper Egypt, and was painted by John Fredrick Lewis in 1860, and it’s half the header of my blog.

The Millet Library is home to an unbelievable collection of Ottoman manuscripts and documents. Many of them contain miniature paintings, amazing calligraphy, gold leaf, and beautiful illumination. I went there Wednesday and met the board of directors, who showed me some absolutely stunning examples from their archives.

These are Divans, poetry collections from the Ottoman empire, written in Nesih/Naskh or Taaliq/Faarisi calligraphy of the Ottoman Turkish language.

This is the archive. There are 31,000 volumes of hand-written books, 12,000 of which have been digitized. This is an unbelievable step towards the digitization of Ottoman libraries.

This is among the greatest cities in the world. I am so happy to be here, it is a much needed break from Beer Sheva and the unrecognized villages. Not that I don’t love my life, but sometimes screaming at the top of your lungs about something you personally can do nothing about needs to take a back seat to a cold glass of raki and some batter-fried fish. This is also the calligraphy capital of the world, and has been for 200 years, so that also provides a nice change from the cultural wasteland that is Beer Sheva.

I’m meeting some very interesting people, despite the fact that 3 years of not speaking what little I knew has taken a serious toll on my Turkish. I am finding that it comes back relatively quickly. It’s a wonderfully easy language to learn, and Turks are among the warmest people in the world. Did I mention I love it here?

On Monday morning my boss Ye’ela called me, telling me that the straw bale mosque I wrote about a few posts back was to be demolished this week, we didn’t know when, but they informed the owner, Mahmoud (he wants his last name withheld), that it would take place. So on Monday night I went out to the mosque in Wadi Naam and spent the night there with some other international people as a sit-in, in case they came in the morning. We were under strict instructions, both from Mahmoud and Ye’ela, that should they come we were not to chain ourselves to the doors, or lay in front of the bulldozers, or throw rocks, or hit the soldiers back when they hit us. We were simply to photograph and record the demolition, should it occur. Jewish Israelis, on the other hand, could sit in the mosque and refuse to leave, or lay in front of the bulldozers because they would just be arrested and released later that day, but we as foreigners would be deported for interfering with army operations.

They didn’t come Tuesday morning, and they didn’t come Wednesday. However, Mahmoud received word from the court that demolition was assured, and the bulldozers were going to be there on Thursday. So we kicked it into high gear and together with Bustan got as many people as could be there as we could, and planned a big sit in from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon.

And plenty of people showed up! Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, Channel 3 news, ActiveStills, the Associated Press all had representatives there, and there were quite a few volunteers and foreign types who showed up, and showing up is not easy, its a real schlep out there.

Around 9 two plain-clothes officers of the Shabak, the Israeli domestic security/intelligence agency, Negev division, showed up. They had a talk with Mahmoud and spoke for a while about what was going to happen. The details of the conversation we don’t, or may ever, know. In any case they saw all the people there, and were very aware of the fact that many people were taking their photograph. Afterwards Mahmoud left for Beer Sheva, he said he had to deal with some last details in the court.

Around 11, he called to tell us that one of his “eyes” had called him to say that a demolition team (100-200 soldiers, plus 20-30 paramilitary Green Patrol soldiers, a bulldozer, and military vehicles) had been spotted on the road. We all scrambled on our cell phones, but my co-worker Suleiman from the RCUV called us 15 minutes later to say that the team turned east, toward Arad, and that there was another demolition they were going to do near there, but don’t get comfortable because they usually do more than one when they come out.

Mahmoud told us to start working on the mosque, so that if they show up they’ll see that it is an international project and it really engages the community. So we mixed two types of dirt with straw and water, stomped around till it was all mixed in, and then started throwing it on the wall, literally. You take a small handful and throw it at the wall so it splats on, then you smooth all the splats out.

The demolition team never came.

This doesn’t mean we won. It means they didn’t want to destroy it in front of everyone, so they’ll probably come back next week and destroy it when no one’s there to document it. It won’t be a story because we’ve played our card and the press showed up, but they’re not going to schlep out there twice. Also, Mahmoud is going on pilgrimage to Mecca on Sunday, so he won’t even be around to let us know if they do show up.

All in all, it was a really interesting experience, and a lot of fun, to be honest. Obviously, I’m glad that they didn’t come, but very afraid that they’ll just show up one morning and knock it down.

Mahmoud is a pretty amazing guy. He’s 43 now, and was in the army for 9 years, 18-27, ending as an officer in the paratrooper corps, and serving two tours of combat duty in Lebanon. Ironically, the day he received notice that his mosque was to be destroyed, he had just gotten back from his reserve duty. He decided to build the mosque in May, and just started doing it. He’d never built a structure like this in his life, and at first he was the only person building it, the other villagers thought he was a little bit nuts for doing it, but once it started to take shape they really rallied around him, and a lot of them show up every day to volunteer and throw mud. Every penny that has gone into it has been from Mahmoud’s own pocket, and to this day its upwards of 140,000 shekels, or around 40,000 dollars.

You can read more here:

http://www.jewlicious.com

http://jvoices.com

http://jewschool.com

http://www.wrmea.com

http://www.jpost.com

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been teaching English to a group of 10 kids in the recently-recognized village of Bir Haddaj, located around 40 minutes southwest of Beer Sheva, and not far from the Gaza border. In the Arab school system in Israel, the kids learn Hebrew as a second language and English as a third language. Most of the focus is on the more immediate need of Hebrew, so the English curriculum is pretty lax. That is to say they don’t really learn it. The upside of that is that I can practice my Bedouin with them, since they also don’t speak much Standard Arabic. I teach at a guy’s home, but I visited the elementary school in Bir Haddaj, and spent the day with the English teacher, a rather severe northerner (not Bedouin) named Fatima. The students don’t learn grammar until 11th or 12th grade, meaning they don’t learn how to construct an English sentence until then. The entire curriculum until that time is teaching them scattered random vocabulary: the vegetables, the colors, animals, school supplies etc.

So, in an attempt to remedy that situation a little, in the classes I’ve been teaching (essentially additional tutoring for students who either need improvement, or had nothing better to do that day) I’ve been starting at the ground level. “I want tea.” “We go to school in a bus.” “He likes soccer.” “They pray in a mosque.” This has been a slow process; they only got chairs and desks this week, and we still don’t have a blackboard. But the kids are cute, even if they are little bastards behaviorally-speaking.

Even a great muggle such as yourself should rejoice on this happy, happy day! For you-know-who has gone at last!

Saw this on a wall in Jerusalem yesterday.

Die Lucky Bush = די לכבוש = Dai l’Kibush = End the Occupation

Thursday in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Khashm Zanna the home of Bassam abu Gwedar, a father of three young girls, and his wife, all citizens of the State of Israel, was demolished. The reason given by the Israeli authorities was that the structure was a new structure and had been built without a permit, which for all residents of the unrecognized villages is unattainable. The home had been built a year ago replacing the tin hut in which they had lived, and the demolition order was posted almost immediately. The family took the case to the local courts, which refused to offer any respite from their predicament. The situation is that of a catch 22: there is no method of attaining a building permit, but without a building permit the home is illegal and must therefore be destroyed, so Bassam and his family were left homeless. The bulldozers arrived at nine o’clock in the morning accompanied by 150 soldiers and 20 members of the paramilitary Green Patrol.

The season chosen for the demolition was not lost on the family. The recent rains and cold make the homelessness that much harder.

“We have nowhere left.” He told members of the RCUV Thursday.

Khashm Zanna is an unrecognized village of more than 2000 people living roughly 15 kilometers south of Beer Sheva in the Negev desert, and has been in the same location for more than 200 years. They have no access to electricity, water, sewage, paved roads, or medical services from the Israeli government. They are constantly under the threat of home demolition, as all houses in the village have been deemed illegal. This demolition is not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of co-ordinated operations designed to make life in the villages as unbearable as possible, so as to force the residents to abandon their lands.

Also Thursday, the village of Tweil abu Jarwal was completely destroyed for close to the 20th time. The night prior to this demolition, six young men of the village were arrested and kept overnight in the police holding cells in Beer Sheva. They were arrested in the village on charges of trespassing on their own land, held overnight and then released on the sole condition that they refrain from returning to their homes for two weeks.