September 21, 2002

Marthame is taking advantage of no classes on Saturdays to take care of non-school-related business. Next semester, he expects to be teaching a college-level course in Church History in Ibillin at the newly-opened Mar Elias Theological Institute, so now is intense preparation time. Meanwhile, at the school, the seniors are busy preparing themselves for college. Most of them will probably end up at the Arab-American University of Jenin (for convenience more than anything else), though a handful will probably go to Birzeit (near Ramallah), An-Najah (in Nablus), and the Jenin campus of Jerusalem Open University, although it doesn't look promising for any of those institutions to have a regular school year any time soon. Some might go overseas to continue education, but those who have tried recently have repeatedly found visa troubles. After 9/11, many Western countries are increasingly unwilling to give visas (student, work, tourist) to Arabs. And even those with valid visas often face a new process of interrogation, fingerprinting, and profiling at American points of entry. Marthame is also preparing the Christian students for an application to North Park University in Chicago which provides a scholarship every year for a Palestinian Christian student. All are eager to succeed - we're eager, too, but there are many of them and only one scholarship. After school we rode the school bus up to Jenin. We wanted to pay a long-overdue visit to friends from the Christian community there, and the only way to do that these days is to make a weekend out of it. When we arrived, Jenin was technically under curfew. Curfews can be strict (as we've seen in Hebron and heard about recently in Nablus) or loosely enforced. Right now in Jenin, there are not enough Israeli soldiers to enforce a strict curfew, so when there are no tanks coming and going, people tentatively go out - to work, to market - always ready to get off the street at the approach of the IDF. The last time we rode the Jenin school bus it was because of tanks on the road, in order to assure an "international presence" for the children. This year, there are usually tanks around, and our bus drivers take all sorts of circuitous routes to avoid them. Yet, our presence is no longer requested - Ta'wadna - "we are used to it." People say that a lot these days. After a thankfully uneventful bus ride into a deserted Jenin, we shared a late lunch and an even later dinner with our friends. In the cool of the evening, we enjoyed chatting with them in their courtyard, complimenting their new garden and fountain (complete with water-spewing dolphins and brass waterwheel) which our host had just finished building. For a place that has known a lot of chaos recently, Jenin seems quiet - periodic shooting, the distant rumble of tanks - nothing too unusual.