Bethlehem Blog
April 14, 2011
Toine van Teeffelen
Permits, permits (1)
Mary says she hopes to get a permit for Jerusalem. During the upcoming Palm Sunday she wants to join the procession which starts at Al-Azzariyeh, the Biblical Bethany. The procession connects her with the people, the community, the land, with God. For the last couple of years she did not receive permits during Easter or Christmas but last year she got one for Christmas.
Bethlehem Blog
May 1, 2011
Toine van Teeffelen
Jerusalem: unbearable lightness of being (2)
Mary went to Jerusalem. She had luck, she got an Easter permit to enter, her sister and mother didn’t got one. In the early morning she nervously checked her shoes. Which would beep in the X-ray? Jara joined her. Although 13 years, and so in principle not in need of a permit (16 years is the borderline) it happened lately that permits were printed out for her class and herself. Nobody understood why. What a permit, I said seeing all the details on the elaborate form. It looked as if it was a birth certificate. I had a special interest. Together with colleagues at the Arab Educational Institute we are working out the idea to prepare a small “exhibit” of permits on the Wall here. The Wall is ugly in preventing people to enter, but also ugly in case you are allowed to pass.
Bethlehem Blog
Toine van Teeffelen
May 11, 2011
Recreating life (3)
Fuad’s brother passed away. A grocery shopkeeper, he was known to everybody in Bethlehem. Why is it that in Bethlehem and perhaps other cities in the West Bank so many people die of the well-known diseases? Much more than in the 1990s, as I remember. I discuss it with an activist who says that there has been interest to do research about that issue, but that such a research – which has to be done well in order to be valid - would be quite expensive, and there are no funds, as there are other priorities.
Bethlehem Blog
Toine van Teeffelen
Cry Freedom
May 2011 (4)
Two weeks ago Mary and I looked up at the rain in amazement and happiness. What a beautiful clouds - exactly like the 17th century Dutch master painters used to create! How beautiful can rain be. Usually we say here that after St George’s Day, May 5, rain stops. But it was good to have the late rain, it cleaned the air from the red desert dust of the previous days, and it is also good for the olive harvest later this year.
Bethlehem Blog
Toine van Teeffelen
July 2011
Tamer lately said that he wanted to be Ben Ten, a popular youth hero with magic powers. He would take over the whole of Palestine. He never wants to loose his computer or play station games, especially not the musaara’ – the wrestling matches, which are now the fashion among youth. I tell him he should not game those matches longer than an hour because it’s disgusting, this throwing of meaty bodies through the air.
Toine van Teeffelen, Bethlehem
This year new metaphors have been applied in relation to the Arab world which significantly change patterns of thinking about the region. Two main examples are the Arab “spring” and Al Jazeera’s Arab “awakening” which provide a very different, more open and evolving meaning to the idea of people-initiated change than the old mechanical metaphors associated with “violence” in Arab countries such as, for instance, “explosion,” or the “boiling over” of emotions.
