The ruins after the rain

I’m in England at the moment. Yesterday I had a beautiful day in Coventry with my friend Sam. I never thought I would write ‘beautiful’ and ‘Coventry’ in the same sentence, but that was before I saw the cathedral, where Sam is volunteering.

Coventry is known as Britain’s Dresden. The cathedral was all but destroyed by bombing during the Second World War (despite the best efforts of the provost, who valiantly stood on the rooftop one night and tried to toss stray bombs onto the street with a pitchfork before they could explode). Only the outer walls and the spire remain. Peering into the cathedral on the morning after the bombs hit, one of the staff noticed that a pair of scorched beams had fallen in the shape of a cross.

The cross in the ruins.

When the war ended, it was decided that the ruins should remain as they were. Wandering through them, I was surprised by their peace. Normally in a place that bears obvious scars of violence I feel more grief than anything, but this place was marked with something more than that. I think it is because of all the love and care that people from Coventry (and much further afield) have put into making it a place for reconciliation. A statue was sent from Dresden, and it now stands near the entrance to the ruin, named simply ‘Survivors’. It is a quiet reminder that the prayer inscribed behind the charred cross – Jesus’ words as he died, ‘Father, forgive’ – was not just for the bomber pilots who discharged their cargo on Coventry but also for pilots who flew in the opposite direction. Nearby is a plaque in honour of people who died on the Home Front, confronting bombs with pitchforks, and one final statue – a couple embracing.

Our tour guide (a volunteer from Germany, whom Sam had roped into the expedition on the grounds that she knows more about the cathedral’s history than he does) explained that the statue’s creator was inspired by a woman who refused to believe that her husband (reported missing, believed dead) really was dead. She set off round Europe on foot to look for him. I don’t know if she ever found him, but the sculptor tried to imagine what their reunion might have looked like and cast it bronze.  Originally titled ‘Reunion’, it was renamed ‘Reconciliation’ when it was donated to the Peace Studies department at Bradford University. Fifty years after the war’s end, several casts were made of the statue. One came to Coventry. Another went to Northern Ireland. A third stands in a park in Hiroshima.

Lifelines

Lifelines is a network of penfriends who support prisoners on America’s Death Row. Last night I happened to see a note from them in the back of one of the magazines I read occasionally. They have a long list of prisoners waiting to receive penfriends and they need more people to join.

I’ve been aware of Lifelines ever since a very memorable religion and ethics class on capital punishment that my class was given when I was fourteen years old. The teacher showed us some material from them, and she also read aloud to us from Sister Helen Prejean’s remarkable book Dead Man Walking. The book chronicles Sr Helen’s time as a chaplain on Death Row and her fight to establish robust and total Catholic opposition to the death penalty. I couldn’t join Lifelines as a penfriend back then, as they only accept people who are over eighteen, but I ‘adopted’ a prisoner to pray for. This was the first political activism I ever did, pretty much.

Sr Helen has written that she was drawn towards this work by recognition of the link between the death penalty and poverty. “It didn’t take long to see that for poor people, especially poor black people, there was a greased track to prison and death row.” Her involvement was cemented by one more thing: “I began to understand that some life is valued and some life is not.” After being present at dozens of executions, she also saw that this disregard for life and dignity extends far beyond the person being killed: “When you witness an execution and watch the toll this process also takes on some of those who are charged with the actual execution—the 12 guards on the strap-down team and the warden—you recognize that part of the moral dilemma of the death penalty is also: who deserves to kill this man?”

All injustice seems to come down to the same idea, whether implied or explicit: some lives don’t matter enough. This is why I’m writing about Death Row on a blog about life in occupied Bethlehem. Perhaps some people reading may want to respond to Lifelines’s request and become a penfriend. Information and FAQ are on the website.

Finding Bethlehem in East London: a Christmas journey

I’m not a London sort of person. Before I left for Palestine I lived in a remote Northumberland hamlet (population three people and a sheep) with a mile-long walk across the fields to reach the nearest bus stop. London has an awful lot of people and no sheep, and I have several grievances against it. It always seems so easy to navigate when you look at the Monopoly board, but when you actually get there nothing is arranged in orderly squares and you’re lost before you even know where you are.

Last year, one late December day, I alighted at Euston Station and caught the Tube into the East End. I was introduced to this part of the capital through Rachel Liechtenstein’s book Rodinsky’s Room, a semi-autobiographical work that tries to solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of David Rodinsky, a reclusive man who lived above the old synagogue on Princelet Street. My present-day destination was a flat on the thirteenth floor of a tower block in a densely populated housing estate.

Just a thought

Earlier today this picture appeared on the Facebook page of the Israeli Embassy in Ireland. It is an image of the Sacred and Immaculate Heart, with the festive caption, “A thought for Christmas…If Jesus and mother Mary were alive today, they would, as Jews without security, probably end up being lynched in Bethlehem by hostile Palestinians. Just a thought…”

My initial reaction was, “Smooth move, directing this picture and caption at a country where the population is a.) predominantly Catholic and b.) generally sympathetic to Palestine. PR skillz, u no have any.” Then I thought of something else.

This image of the Holy Hearts is hanging on the wall of my host family’s house in Bethlehem (only ours is kitschier and better). When I saw the embassy’s Christmas message, I thought of the family’s experiences during the Intifada, when the house was constantly being requisitioned by Israeli troops. They used to corral everyone into one corner, and my landlady was never allowed to be the one to wake her children: the soldiers pulled them out of bed at gunpoint. When the soldiers got thirsty my landlady used to give them water. Occasionally some of them became distressed and she and her husband would try to comfort them. There were times when the curfew lasted so long that the family ran out of food. Soldiers would bring their own meals into the house (sometimes hot pizza, with its appetising smell) and the kids just had to sit there and try to bear the hunger until such time as curfew was lifted and they could go to the shop.

Last year I ended up bringing an Israeli friend who was then performing his own military service into the house. (He was off-duty at the time, obviously, and before you ask – it’s a long story. I may tell it some day.) I was worried about how the family would react to him. Sure enough, my landlady wasn’t best pleased – but not because he was an Israeli Jew and a soldier to boot, but because, “If the army find out he has been here they can hurt him. You need to look after your friends, Vicky, he is a good boy.” She sat in the living room and talked with him, underneath the Holy Hearts image and the equally kitschy representation of the Last Supper.

That picture on the wall of one Bethlehem family home has witnessed a lot of things, but never hate of the sort that was exhibited by the embassy this afternoon. Just a thought.

Abraham’s Tent

Lee Weissman is one of several extraordinary people whom I’ve ‘met’ courtesy of Twitter. (If you’re ever feeling a bit peaky about life, Twitter is an excellent restorative of faith in humanity.) He goes by the Twitter handle of Jihadi Jew and he keeps a blog of the same eyebrow-and-curiosity-raising name, which is always a humbling and richly rewarding read. A chasidic Jew of the Bratslav school who is a high school teacher by profession, his big interest is in creating understanding between Jews and Muslims. He seems to have quite a knack for that. One of my favourite posts on his blog is a contribution from a Christian friend who came to observe his Talmud class, because it demonstrates two things clearly: he teaches well, and he listens even better than he teaches.

From Bethlehem to Rwanda

Just after Christmas I started to feel restless. I was dissatisfied with how things were going with the youth group. Late last year we lost our youth house in Bethlehem (one of three premises) because we couldn’t afford the rent and upkeep, and now the youth have to squash themselves into what was originally an office and practically sit on each other’s laps when they want to meet. I decided that they needed something to perk them up a bit. A field trip seemed in order.

The writing on the wall

If you are a tourist or pilgrim who arrives in Bethlehem via Checkpoint 300, the first thing you will see as you turn into the street is the concrete barrier that slices it in half, severing the neighbourhood from Rachel’s Tomb and the military base that lies adjacent to the holy site. Get closer to the wall and you will find the women of the neighbourhood waiting to meet you.

One of the simplest but most important aspects of my organisation’s work is providing a space where people can tell their stories. One day Toine had an idea: why not turn the wall itself into that space? We could collect short vignettes from the women who use the centre and hang them on the concrete. The stories would be like windows: tourists on their way to see Nativity Church or eat dinner at the optimistically named Bahamas Fish Restaurant would be able to catch a glimpse of Palestinian life.

Syrian snacks, disability rights, and a simple act of kindness: what I’ve read this week

I’ve decided to create a weekly round-up post of the most interesting, thought-provoking, and urgent things I’ve come across during the week, especially if they haven’t received much attention in the blogosphere. All of the links will be relevant to peace and justice work in some way, although not always specifically to Palestine. Feel free to add your own reading suggestions.

A death in the refugee camp

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The only veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place

It was late afternoon. I was out on the roof of the house, puzzling over Arabic grammar and taking some relief from the soft breeze that had started to whisper in the street. (Our house, like most Palestinian homes, has no air conditioning – given the unreliability of the electricity supply, not to mention its price, few people invest in an AC unit. In high summer I feel like a forgotten pitta bread slowly crumbling to charcoal in an oven.) As I made my notes, I kept pausing to press an icy can of Diet Coke against my neck and face. Passive participles are created using the pattern ‘maf’ul’. Something broken = maksur. Something drunk = mashrub. Something…

My phone began to shrill out. Irritated at the interruption, I flipped it open. “Yes?”

Wrong on the Internet

The Internet is a terrific invention. Without it, I would never have found myself living on top of a pizza shop in Newcastle with my close friend Danni and a wheezy arthritic old cat, having to wear heavy-duty earplugs to block out the cheerful karaoke coming from the pub next door. (‘Mr Blue Sky’ and ‘I Am the One and Only’ were popular numbers, sung very loudly and with Geordie accents.) Without the Internet, I would never have found myself being force-fed vast quantities of dubious makloubeh by a Palestinian girl from Gaza in a kitchen in northern England. I would never have made the acquaintance of Shai (who has been quite invaluable in helping me with colloquial Hebrew – now I can even ask for a drug dealer and a wide selection of other things that I am unlikely to want). Without the Internet, I doubt that I would ever have smuggled an off-duty Israeli soldier into Bethlehem and sent him home wearing a kuffiyeh. (That story has yet to be told on this blog – I’ll get to it.)

Danni and I met on a forum for disabled teenagers, which was my intro to the power of the Internet in bringing about change for the better. That forum gave me some of my best friends. It provided advice for teenagers who were struggling to cope with their condition. It even saved a few lives (literally). When Britain’s coalition government began to draft in an unjust and dangerous series of welfare reform policies, disabled and chronically ill people took to the Internet to launch a counter campaign. Many of the participants couldn’t leave their houses – some even struggled to get out of bed – but they turned to their keyboards. I was particularly moved by people’s response to Ali, a severely ill woman who shared on her personal blog that suicide would be her only choice if her benefits were revoked. She had lived on the streets once, she wrote, and she would never go back there again. Within hours, a group of disabled people had conceived of ’5 Quid for Life’. Donors contribute five pounds per month to the organisation, and the money will be distributed to people facing Ali’s trouble.

For something that has accomplished so much good in my life, the Internet is also a terrible headache. I read and comment on a variety of blogs – about Palestine/Israel, about disability, about feminism, special needs education, mental health, ecology, veganism, theology, and so on. Sometimes the comment threads dissolve into a cesspool of petty spite. The topic of discussion is abandoned in favour of having the last word or taking another commenter down a peg or two. When the topic of discussion is a family who has lost their home or a prisoner who is dying, this absence of compassion is inexcusable, and I find myself asking why I am joining in with these conversations. What does it achieve?