This face, the face of Diala, is one of the faces, spirits, people I love the most in Phalasteen. I love the way I hear her getting ready for school in the morning, deciding which pants work best with her uniform blouse; the way she plays hard after school, but works on her homework even harder when she’s done; the way she laughs, dances, sings, and falls asleep in some family member’s arms each evening.
Perhaps someone just glancing by this blog would see this photograph of this child and think she’s just like every other first grader around the world, but she’s not. I’ve often wondered what Diala knows about the occupation as a six-year-old. Since the Annexation Wall is a couple of kilometers away she can’t see it up close as she plays in the streets of her refugee camp, but certainly she can see it encroaching on Beit Lahem in the distance. But she has seen it up close when she has visited her brother in prison. Her brother who was taken from her, in front of her, and who she misses desperately. I wonder if having her father and now her brother in prison contributes to her deep sense of loss everytime someone leaves her home. Truly, it seems traumatic for her everytime someone leaves her home. Even if it is her sister merely going to the market to pick up some bread for dinner. Leaving has a different meaning in a refugee camp.
I also wonder if this photo of this angelic sleeping child would be enough to move people–or even get people to question–the psychological effects of the Israeli occupation. These past two weeks have been very intense. I got the feeling of what closure is like, at least a little bit, staying in Deheishe refugee camp and understanding the very small radius people in the area are allowed to move around in. I can understand how it can make one stir crazy. I’m amazed that it hasn’t made more people literally insane.
I’m home now in Amman, but on my last day in Phalasteen I accompanied Sanabel to the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem to her interview for her student visa. We applied for permission from the Israeli army three times this week for Sanabel to leave the Bethlehem area for her interview; she had a legitimate paper from the consulate, but because of the closure upon closure, she was denied each time. The plan was that we’d try crossing the Bethlehem checkpoint anyway at 5 AM. 15 year old girls don’t have huwias so we pretended that she was 15 and was going to be an exchange student. It didn’t work; they weren’t letting anyone through given the suicide bombing in Hadera the previous evening. So we took a taxi to Talita, an area around Beit Jala, still in the Bethlehem area, and crossed over a hill into an Israeli friend’s car who drove us to the consulate. We didn’t get stopped at the other Bethlehem checkpoint, thank God! The interview went well and Sanabel will receive her visa in four days.
I just finished uploading two sets of photographs from my trip this past week and a half. The first page includes olive picking and Haifa and the second one includes photos of checkpoints, the Annexation Wall, and Beit Lahem.
Salam–
