Walking in Ramallah

Blue skies, warm sunshine, throwing beautiful light on the cream-coloured stone houses

Litter galore on the broken pavements and patches of green between roads and buildings

Wadis (valleys) dotted with rocks, rusty cans and olive trees

Hills

Half-finished houses and burnt out cars

Stone steps down to the wadi and back up again

Donkeys and wild dogs

Quaint little houses with overgrowing grape vines and sofas in the yard

A show of force from the Manara square (centre of town) – some Katay’ab* members hanging out of jeeps,

Brandishing snarls and serious guns,

While coffee-drinkers look down from the first floor

“Stars & Bucks” Café

(Does the entrepreneur owner know that the management of the famous chain he’s imitating is Zionist?)

The Katay’ab guys have a megaphone:

They deny responsibility for

A burnt out shop owned by a Hamas supporter – torched some days ago

Women – veiled and unveiled - with children in tow, carry their shopping home

The Muqa’ta - the president’s compound, where Arafat was once under house arrest - under construction and under guard

Green uniforms, bored looks and red berets

The arid botanic garden

The air is pregnant with invisible spies and collaborators, lurking undercover

Pirate DVD heaven

Cries of “Taxi, taxi, taxi?”

Cries of the fruit sellers

Peasant women in traditional dress sitting on upturned plastic buckets and selling

Herbs, figs, pomegranates

A bodybuilders’ emporium and umpteen money changers/ jewellery shops

More guns – small guns, big guns, bigger guns, toy guns, guns with bullets, guns without

Guns on posters, cradled in the arms of martyrs

”Palestine over all” placards on the roundabout

This the idea of some brave local women –

“We want to scream NO to the infighting. This is not what Palestine is about!”

Sha’bab** everywhere – walking, smoking, observing

Drinking Nescafé in plastic cups from street vendors

No jobs, no wife, no life, no future

Jesus wept and Mohammed prayed

Old kuffiya-clad men smoke hookah and play shesh-besh (backgammon)

Beside the hi-tech shop with the plasma screen TVs

And stores selling grain and nuts and strange powdery white rocks kept in white buckets

Looks like chalk,

Tastes like yoghurt

Oh Ramallah!





*Katay’ab is the Arabic term for the Al Aqsa martyrs’ brigades – armed wing of Fateh

**Sha’bab is Arabic term for youth