February 9, 2002
Our plans to go to Haifa were put on hold - our friend couldn't travel without the permission papers form the Vatican's Jerusalem office. Soon...
Friend of Nature: in recognition of service on behalf of nature in Palestine.
In the morning, Elizabeth handed out a certificate of appreciation (dubbing the recipient "Friend of Nature") to one of her students from the picnic. She had wanted to help encourage some sense of environmental stewardship, which seems most obvious here around the issue of trash disposal. In many ways, it's like it was in the States forty years ago - picnics end with trash being strewn around the hills. We've tried to link the kids' love of the land to their need to keep it clean. This one student helped the most, of all the kids picking up litter, to clean up the hill where we went yesterday.
After school, we headed out together through Jenin, thanks to Abuna Aktham's generous car loaning policy. We had to brave the chaotic roads along the way - main roads have been cut, and the settlers' bypass road we used to take back in the days of vehicle-owning is now closed to all but settlers and soldiers. Not even the Arab-American University's hard-earned goodwill can get their international faculty on the road. Kind of ironic since it's American tax dollars paving them...
We made it down through Qabatia, but not without scratching up the car. The road that has become the main road has to accomodate trucks, cars, you name it. Usually, it barely can hold one car - as we discovered as a truck met us coming up. We had to pull off the road quickly, into a giant pothole, and the car made a hideous noise. We pulled over as far as we could and Elizabeth hopped out to see if we had a flat. Thankfully, we only detached the bumper and the mudflap.
As Elizabeth was inspecting the car, another truck coming the other way stopped to help. Two Palestinian men got out and greeted us in Hebrew, "Shalom." Apparently the yellow Israeli license plate threw them off, despite the two kaffiyes, the Palestinian flag, and the giant cross hanging around Marthame's neck. And the fact that we were in the middle of Qabatia, a city with a reputation of toughness built up in the first Intifada, and a place where no Israeli, at least no Jewish Israeli, would possibly be now.
As the guys helped to pull the mud flap out and straighten the bumper, we explained to them in Arabic that we didn't know Hebrew. Marthame explained what we were doing here, and they switched to Arabic. Remarkable, though, with all the tension that people would stop to help someone they thought was Israeli. The car moves, but is a little scratched up.
The soldier working the edge of Jenin was the same one who was there when we entered yesterday. "Chicago," he said as we passed.
A friend’s parrot likes his belly rubbed.
We went up to drop off some papers for Msgr. Marcuzzo, the Latin Bishop of Nazareth (the one who's car was shot at by Israeli soldiers last year when he approached Zababdeh), before meeting up with friends in Jaffa-Nazareth for some good food, relaxation, and fellowship. Not to mention their parrot, who likes to have his tummy rubbed...!?