Fishing for Culture. Finding Politics. March 22, 2003.
I’ve been obsessed with trying to find displays of Palestinian culture. I try to go to the cinema and see locally-made or produced films. I walked out at the end of one film crying at the grim future expressed by the kids in the film. At the end of the second film, my friend was crying at the sights of destruction from last year’s bombings. I saw a play a few weeks ago. I was sad afterwards, although I had found the mockery of the Israeli soldiers funny. I found a museum close to Ramallah but when I left I found it difficult to describe it as a museum, instead a random, poor collection of pottery, embroidered dresses and old ID cards from the British Mandate period. I’ve found a few stores that sell Palestinian paraphernalia and souvenirs – not including the tourist traps in the Old City of Jerusalem – and I wonder how much of the embroidery is locally produced. I ask people about their ways of culturally expressing themselves and I usually get responses about Occupation, death, imprisonment, a wish to escape, immigrate or die. Sometimes I don’t ask, but I just hang out with them long enough to observe their daily routines. I listen to conversations, I observe.
When I first arrived, I wanted to make a film about the Old City of Jerusalem.
I wanted to interview religious leaders, film the religious rituals of the three
monotheistic religions, catch people in the old markets, try to portray how
small the Old City is, how full of history it is. I found it increasingly difficult
to so. There were logistical issues to be dealt with. Because of the conflict
I wasn’t allowed to go to the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque
– arguably the two most important Muslim sights in Jerusalem. In order
to get to the Wailing Wall I had to get hassled through security checks. When
I tried to film there, soldiers kept walking in front of my camera. I felt like
I was filming a military installation, not the most important Jewish religious
site. Perhaps the only place I didn’t encounter problems were the Christian
sites – the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the various monasteries and
churches. But I didn’t want to make a film about Christians only. I wanted
to show the multi-dimensionality of the religious claims over Jerusalem. I wondered
how I would show how small and tight-knit the Old City is. I thought about filming
from over the ramparts, or over the roofs – which used to be popular tourist
destinations. I wanted to film from Mt. Zion and the Mount of Olives, on the
outside of the Old City with spectacular views. The ramparts were closed off,
the Israeli military standing by the entrances. On the roofs I was welcomed
by Israeli police. At Mt. Zion and the Mount of Olives I was welcomed by police
and military Jeeps wanting to know what I was doing with a video camera. When
I managed to convince a friend of mine to go with me to the Al Aqsa mosque and
pass as Muslims, I wasn’t allowed to take a camera in with me. I thought
that my desire to leave politics aside was ridiculous. I’d perhaps be
more successful at making a film about the Israeli military and police presence
in every nook and cranny of the Old City. Maybe I could film the Israeli flags
flying over previously famous Arab buildings, or film Israeli soldiers giving
a local merchant a hard time because he was selling t-shirts that said “Palestine”
on them. I gave up making a film about Jerusalem. It was too impossible to film,
it was too oppressing to be faced with military every where I go, to notice
the video cameras installed in the markets watching my every move, to see the
soldiers ambushed on top of each entrance to the Old City. Besides to make a
film about the multi-religious claims over Jerusalem would be a lie; for Jerusalem
looks more like a militarily-protected zone than a religious haven.
I went to part of a wedding ceremony last week. The wedding takes place over
the course of three days. I was there when the groom and his family came to
pick up the bride and take her back with them. So I thought about writing a
report about the wedding. Describing the beautifully colored garments the women
were wearing, how they were dancing in a circle singing, how the mother of the
groom took center stage in the dancing ceremony, how the father came to escort
the bride away while the men stood outside watching, how the beat of hand held
drum filled the room with a heart-beating like sound…
But the whole thing lasted no more than half an hour. Of course I came with
the groom’s family, so I can’t say for how long the bride’s
family had been singing and dancing. You would think that I only spent half
an hour with them, but that wasn’t the case. I spent over six hours. Only
most of that time was spent in a taxi trying to get to the bride’s village,
which is exactly 9 kilometers away from the groom’s, and back again.
Earlier that day I was with the taxi driver. We stood on a hill overlooking
the sights around and he pointed to a village and said “that’s where
the bride is.” It didn’t seem far. So when he asked me if I wanted
to come along, I said yes thinking that it would take no more than 20 minutes
to get there. Maybe a little bit longer, because we had to backtrack to the
refugee camp to pick up the groom’s family and then drive over to the
bride’s house. We reached the camp, the men (father, uncles, brothers
of the groom) getting into the taxi one by one. We were about to leave when
one of them screamed out the window to a kid to get him a bottle of water. “The
road is long and it’s a warm day.” I didn’t make much of the
statement at the time. We headed out, and I began to wonder why we were heading
North when the village was to the South of us.
We went through seven villages before reaching an unpaved road which passes
underneath one of the main highways connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. From
the hills I could see Tel Aviv through the smog. We had traveled perhaps 30
kilometers North-West before we began to turn around and head towards the village.
The unpaved road was a disaster. The men in the taxi happy that it was not a
rainy day, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to make it. The sights
were beautiful. The rocks poking out like veins along the ridges. The olive
trees and shrubbery on the mountains. The clear blue sky above. The occasional
shepherd and his flock. A lot of the times the sights were of settlements, looking
out of place with their fences, walls and modern style cookie-cutter architecture
on top of nearby hills. The entire journey – lasting two and a half hours
one way – was tense, the driver, the men and myself looking out the window
to see if there were any military Jeeps or tanks around. At one point I fell
asleep, exhausted at the bumpiness of the road of the never-ending journey.
I woke up to the repeated phrase “there’s the military.” I
opened my eyes and saw a Jeep passing by us in the opposite direction, but we
had already reached the village. There was no way for the soldiers to know that
we had “illegally” traveled all the way from the Northern outskirts
of Jerusalem to get here. In a couple of minutes we reached the bride’s
house. The men got out of the cab, stretched and had their cigarettes.
I went in to the house, to the room where the women were celebrating. I was
taken away by the sound of the drum and singing. I was in awe of the colors
of their dresses (the traditional Palestinian embroidered dresses). The bride
was beautiful, sitting in chair below a large Palestinian flag. The kids flocked
around, wondering who I was. The women danced and sang and soon after the father
came in, placed a black cape with a golden rim around the bride and walked her
down the stairs, the women following still singing. The bride was escorted into
the car along with her mother-in-law. The doors closed, the women standing outside
still singing. The taxi driver signaled to me that it was time to go. I got
into the taxi again and in another two hours we reached the restaurant where
the festivities continued. The ride back was uneventful, more unpaved dirt paths
and by-passes off the main streets. At one point I thought we’d fall over
the ridge of the mountain and no one would know that we’d disappeared.
We made it back. I felt exhausted, although I had been sitting for over four
hours.
My memory of the wedding ceremony is taken over by the political situation of
our journey there. I cannot write a report about a wedding without having to
deal with the reality of by-passing checkpoints, taking unpaved roads, passing
villages with posters of martyrs, without repeating that a ride to a village
only 9 kilometers away takes upwards of two hours to reach.
I think about my obsession in trying to find cultural expression. I increasingly
feel like it’s a ridiculous hunt, for all I come up with is the reality
of political oppression. I try to find a Palestinian song that doesn’t
deal with death, rape of land, or blood. I try to find a Palestinian film that
doesn’t deal with a demolished house, a martyr, a tear, or a checkpoint.
I can’t find any. I wonder to myself what Palestinian culture is about
these days. It’s about politics. The politics of Occupation, apartheid,
oppression, death, extinction, exile…