August 20, 2003

The Surda roadblock is back.

We needed to go to Ramallah again to do some errands. After the bombing yesterday, nobody was sure what the situation might be like there. We talked to some friends who said all was as normal in town, but that the Surda checkpoint, recently reopened with such fanfare, was closed again. We, along with a small trickle of people, made our way to see if we could get through. Indeed, the stretch of road had been re-bulldozed, with three huge blockades stopping traffic, but allowing pedestrians to make the dusty journey to and from the edge of Ramallah, like so many ants following one another in line up the hill.

Palestinians making the trek past the Surda roadblock/s.

Once on the other side, we caught a taxi. The driver told us that morning he'd brought a car of people to Ramallah from Nablus, his hometown. But after he arrived in Ramallah, Surda (his only exit) was closed. So now he's trapped with his taxi in Ramallah.

After a few errands, we had lunch at a relatively new restaurant with pretty good fried chicken. The proprietor lived in Houston for several years, but moved back partly because of his kids. He felt better about raising him in Ramallah (in spite of the ongoing violence) than in the States. "Too many drugs and gangs and that stuff, you know," he said. He too was angry and frustrated by the suicide bombings. "It's wrong and stupid," he said. His business suffers deeply when Ramallah is cut off from the surrounding villages. "People who live in Ramallah eat at home. It's the ones who come in from outside who eat in the restaurants. It's one o'clock - my shop should be full." We took a look around the empty place. He took the opportunity to complain also about the business taxes he has to pay, coming to sixty percent of his gross. But still he seems to be sticking it out. It takes a special breed to be a Palestinian entrepreneur these days.

In the evening we went to the home of a fellow Birzeit student from two years ago. She's from Belgium, married to a West Banker. She and their two children had recently returned from vacation in Belgium, and she was eager to share horror stories of trying over the years to get permissions for her kids to leave (although they are Belgian citizens, they are also Palestinian, and are treated by the IDF as such) and then her own visa to return (she's never been granted a Palestinian ID even though she's been married for many years). Travel seemed more trouble than it could possibly be worth.

After a lovely dinner and catching up, we left our friends to meet some of Marthame's buddies from 1993, when he came to help renovate the Quaker Friend's school. We met up at Sangria's, one of the trendy spots in town. Halfway through our beers, our friend got a call telling him that the IDF was massing tanks at the edge of town, and that there might be an incursion tonight. Not wanting to be stuck in curfew, and really really not wanting to miss our flight on Saturday, we decided to call it a night and head back to Star Mountain.

Walking across Surda in the dark and nighttime fog (which Ramallah is high enough to get almost every night) was eerie and otherworldly.