From Sweet to Bitter

I started today in a semi-leisurely way, having only one errand to fulfill before a 10:30 appointment. While out, I also bought a bottle of water, the English language newspaper, and some more cookies - my defense against possibly missing a meal. When I got back to the hotel, Dyala was there, chatting with Doris. Dyala invited us to go have a special treat at a tiny place that bakes sweets to order. Of course we accepted, and were soon devouring gooey pastry filled with either cheese or walnuts and soaked in syrup-"mutabak". The setting was special too, being under the arched and plastered walls of the Old City, where humidity triumphs over all efforts to keep the plaster afixed to the stone walls. At one end of the shop were a few tables where we sat, ate and talked; at the other end was the table where the baker tossed the dough til it was paper thin, then spread it with the fillings and baked it in the oven behind him.
Dyala filled us in on more details about the situation in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah which I wrote about yesterday. For example, one of the first families to be evicted from her home so a settler could move in, has just returned from a trip to Jordan with her lawyers to recover the original deeds to the lands that the settlers claim are theirs. With these deeds in hand, she feels 90% sure that she and the other 3 families will be returned to their homes and the rest of that group of threatened homes will be safe. Of course, adds Dyala, there is the other 10% chance that Israel will disregard the deeds and give the homes to the settlers. This will be decided in court maybe as early as this week.
Now I turned my attention to Dyala herself, since I really didn't know her except that she lives in Sheik Jarrah and is involved in the struggle there to ward off the settler take-over. Dyala, 69, retired from teaching art in refugee camp schools, has helped to found a community center for kids in the Old City of Jerusalem. After graduating from American University in Beirut, she went to the Art Students League school in Manhattan. She is married and has 4 children, one of whom is a Senior at Smith College in Northampton, MA. (After learning about this daughter, Zeina, I looked her up last year.) So, I assume Dyala is a woman of some means, who has dedicated a huge amount of energy, time and money to create the Burs al-Auqluq Center for children where she has volunteered for the last 15 years. She took us there when we couldn't eat another bit of sweets.
(I say "us" because my co-hort, Doris, is traveling with me on this trip, collecting material for her radio station in Tampa Bay, Florida.)
The Center is located on 2 acres of open land inside the Old City --two acres which are being eyed hungrily by an adjacent Jewish settlement. Wouldn't those 2 acres make a wonderful site for new Jewish homes! But now they contain a large courtyard with brightly painted walls, a kindergarten for neighborhood 3-4 year olds, a library and computer lab for after-school use, and -marvel of marvels, a soccer field and basket ball courts for boys and girls teams. The sports program is a lure for kids who drop out of school, which is a growing problem due to the occupation. Kids and parents are beginning to give up on education since there are few jobs for college graduates. "Jerusalem used to pride itself in its pursuit of education," says Dyala, so this is a sad development. Anyway, the Center tries to get the kids interested in school through sports, offers tutoring to all who need it, and tries to empower the children through art, counseling, theater, and pure determination.
We had to drag ourselves away from the Center in order to meet up with Jeff Halper at his office, but that segment of the day will wait for a different report. After grabbing a sandwich at 5:00 p.m., we hopped on a bus and joined the rush hour traffic towards the village of Anata to catch the opening of an exhibit of children's mosaic artwork and women's embroidery, which was organized by Amal, the woman I wrote about yesterday. The opening was over in less than an hour, and we were invited to have coffee at the home of one of the women whohad created beautiful embroidered dresses, handbags and pillow covers. Her name is Im Yahiy.a. She led us a short way down the road to her home, and then down over a construction site where she was adding on to her house. (As the house is in the West Bank, she can build without an Israeli permit.) Though it was very dark, we picked our way carefully in order to get to where she could show us where the Separation Wall was built on her land, about 50 feet from her house, and confiscating 3/4 of her property. The Wall is down in a very deep ditch, which dropped off from where we were standing. She said a sheep had already fallen into the ditch and died, due to the distance of its fall. The danger to small children is obvious, but not of concern to the architects of the Wall.
We then went inside of Im Yahiya's nicely appointed living room for tea, followed by a cup of bitter coffee.