sha3bawi

sunday morning, i got up early and put on a shirt that reminds me a lot of my dad. it's chocolate brown and has the little button flaps on the shoulders and two pockets that button on the chest. my dad loves those shirts.


i was heading home.


i went to sha'ab once as a kid.


My family's village was always a mythical place painted in my mind by my dad's second-hand stories. I remember three things from my visit to sha'ab with my mom and deena almost 12 years ago -


1. the dust from the streets which i kicked up onto my shoes and my chubby ankles and calves.

2. distant members of baba's family feuding over where we would eat lunch.

3. a simple, boring rock that i picked up and put in a red velvet jewelry box which wouldn't close as a way of actualizing baba's myth.


when our bus pulled up to the bottom of sha'ab's hill (bus 68), the village was instantly different than i remembered it to be. i remembered walking in on a flat, grimy road and thinking..."psh. this is it?"


this time, i climbed the windy road to the top, curving around half finished homes and closed convenience shops. For the first few minutes, I wasn't actually sure I was in sha'ab as i looked around at the buildings, the new construction underway..."where is this place," i kept thinking to myself.


soon, though, i started to look around and feel a sort of familiarity with the people. a lot of the kids playing in the street had colored eyes and hair that was more brown than black, lawyers and engineers' names were proudly displayed: faour, el-khatib, and khaled - names i had recognized all my life as my townspeople; i soon saw a sign in arabic assuring me i had scaled the right path:


"مدرسة شعب الابتدائية على اسم الاستاذ كامل سعده" kamel sa'ade sha'ab primary school.


sha'ab is a town of bends and curves, of dust and dirt - of people. quaint is a fittingly kitsch but hardly sufficient description. nonetheless, as i neared the point where the street's upward incline leveled off onto a rocky plateau of construction, i thought to myself, looking over the endless grove of olive trees below, "well. this is it. sha'ab. that didn't take long."


as i pushed on, continuing down the hill, i saw two men in what will from this point forward be referred to as palestinian stance 1(one foot against a wall, second leg slightly bent at the knee, staring into the distance) and decided to test the reality and viability of a family tree.


in the most literal of translations.

"brother, allow me to burden you. where is the home of the el-khatib clan?"

"no. it's no burden in the least! welcome welcome. 1oo welcomes to sha'ab. why do you ask? (welcome.)"

"i'm tarek ziad said ismail el-khatib. i'm from here. from sha'ab. but from america. but from here."

"ahhhhhh! welcome welcome welcome. so you want to see your relatives! who from the house of el-khatib do you want to see?"

"i don't know. just show me some khatibs."

"well there's abu-something-or-other right here, he should be able to tell you. and if he doesn't know, then just follow that street all the way down until you see construction in the road, and that area is all el-khatibs."

"Ok great. Thanks."


And I was off. One of the pair yelled at me while I was walking down the hill, smirking,

"Who leaves America to come to this place anyway?"

"I do!"

"Well, you're an ahbal (a goof.)"

"Thanks."


I went to abu-something-or-others house near the top of the street, but the only person in was a 12 year old boy in a yellow sweatshirt hanging out the window.


"Is abu-something-or-other home?!" I asked him. I slurred the something-or-other part because I wasn't sure at all what the name was.

"No he's not home!"


I walked over to the people sitting on their front porch across the street. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and they were outside chopping the stems off of some type of leaf to cook as palestinians do.


"May God give you health."

"May he increase your health."

"Do you know where the el-khatib neighborhood is?" "Abu-something-or-other across the street is el-khatib."

"I know. His son just told me he's not home."

"YOUR DAD'S NOT IN THE HOUSE?!" he yelled past me at the yellow sweatshirt kid who may have been named something-or-other, given his father's name.

"NO."

"Ah. He's not home," No shit. "Ok...well if you walk down this street to the end, you'll be in the el-khatib neighborhood. You can't miss it."

"Ok, thanks."

"Welcome welcome."


I kept walking down the street. Most of the houses in this area were mere skeletons; construction was the latest fashion trend, as rubble lie everywhere - a productive rubble, not the same as the ramallah rubble with a pile of candy wrappers and falafel sandwich remains attached. As I neared what I thought was the end of the street, I saw and older lady with her hijab halfheartedly tied around her head.


"Good morning. Do you know where the el-khatib neighborhood is?" I fully expected her, at that point, to open her arms and say, "You're standing in it! Ahla o Sahla! Welcome!"


Instead,


" Well...I think there are some down there. Did you try Abu-something-or-other up the road? He knows. Hey, girls!" She called over two teenage girls that were walking back up the way from which I had come. "Take this man up to Abu-something-or-other's house. He's looking for the house of el-Khatib."


Crimony.


Up again we walked, to Abu-s.o.o.'s house. Once again, the only person there - a boy in a yellow sweatshirt hanging his big goofy face out the window.


"Where's your DAD?!" "Not home!"


Just then, a pickup truck drove down the rode, and slowed next to the porch leaf-choppers.


"Where is he?" "This is the kid. He's looking for el-Khatibs. He's one of you."


I opened the truck door to find Omar - buzzed head, bright pink and white striped polo shirt, and huge silver chain.


"What's your name?" "Tarek Ziad Said Ismail El-Khatib. My grandfather lived here. Said Ismail. Abu-Ghazi. Ana Sha3bawi."

"You're related to me kid. Jump in."


We drove down to his father's house, where he parked the pickup in the road and ushered for me to walked into the outdoor area - too low to the ground level to be a porch, and too shabby to be a courtyard. He introduced me to his father, Abu-Marwan - a fair skinned man with a blondish mustache who sat alone shuffling 4 decks of cards, and his lips smacked together around his toothless mouth when he explained to me who was related to whom among the el-khatibs.


We never really established how we were related, but within 5 minutes Abu-Marwan (from the sheikh muhammad branch of the el-khatib clan) was insisting that i was family, and that regardless of whether he wanted to host me or not, that he was "majboor - forced" to have me. Because we were family.


His wife, daughter, and grandchildren came out of the woodwork, elated at the prospect of a new cousin. I was equally so. They brought me coke, cucumber, tomato, and za'atar (thyme) bread that they had baked that day, and argued over who i resembled the most among our family.


Soon, they called me inside,


"Tare2, the phone's for you."

I walked in, as they all crowded around the spin-dial phone. Im-Marwan handed me the receiver.


"Hello?" "Yes, Tare2? Tare2 what?" "Tare2 Ziad Said Ismail"

"Ahhh...so your grandfather is Said? Said whom?" "Said Ismail...Abu Ghazi. He left to Lebanon in 1948." "Ah so you have family in Lebanon? Who?" "Um...my Aunt Myassar is there. She's married to Khaled Yunus."

"Myassar is your AUNT?! Hold on we'll be right there."


5 minutes later, Abu Said, Im Said, and Insaf, whom I had spoken to on the phone, pulled up to Abu-Marwan's and hopped out of the car. My dad's sister Myassar had visited them in the early 1980's when she was still able to travel here, and they knew her from then.


Im Said was on the verge of tears. "The people of Sha'ab are coming back. The people of Sha'ab must come back."


She went on, telling me how she didn't know anyone anymore in her village. It was all foreigners - Arabs from other towns that had settled in Sha'ab. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Nakba is not the destruction of homes or the loss of land, but the sheer annihilation of familiar community.


"Where are your father’s sisters and brothers?" I explained proudly, “Well, he has a brother in the UAE, one in California, another in Texas but he was in Saudi for a while, one in Canada, a sister in Lebanon, one in Syria, and another in Turkey..."

Im Said shook her head the whole time.

"Yaaaa haram. What a shame. They belong here. They belong in Sha'ab so I can know them and know their children!"


After thanking Abu-Marwan profusely for his generosity, I was whisked off by Abu-Said and friends to his home in the upper part of town.


"Look over here...look my son..." Im-Said told me pointing west, toward the setting sun..."That's all Sha'ab. All of those olive trees...grove after grove...this is your village my son." And it was.


They quickly zoomed me around the city, showing me an abandoned - yet preserved - church that was over 300 years old, my grandfather's home, and the well from which the villagers used to fill bucket after bucket of water.


At home, Abu-Said told me about himself. He had worked for years in Haifa as the manager of a supermarket, living there and raising his children. Sha'ab had been closed off as an Israeli settlement until 1970, but when the time came to retire, Abu Said told me, he decided to come back home. His sons have followed suit and now live in the three floors above him.


Child upon child piled into the house, each of them with bright green eyes and frizzy hair.


Im-Said and Insaf made molokhiyeh and sumac-spiced chicken, apologizing for having only been able to throw something small together.


I laughed. 4 hours before, I had been ready to turn back to Jerusalem, and now I had an entire family urging me to come back so I could properly see my village. I agreed.


As I walked out Im-Said limped after me, a heavy bag at her side, insisting,


"Take this. Take this I swear it's nothing." I opened the bag - a 3 liter corn-oil bottle - filled with olive oil.


"This is from Sha'ab. Use it to your heart's content, and if you need more - it's your village. Just come back for it."

whatt is yourrr favo rit co loor?

Exactly a month since my last post.

[So much to tell...I will try and release my thoughts/experiences fairly methodically so as to make sure they all get out, and to get myself back on track with the weekly postings.
There will likely be a post every few days for the next week to make up for lost time]

Almost two months ago, I went to the head of UNRWA's Education Department in the West Bank to ask him what opportunities were available to begin teaching/tutoring at an UNRWA school. Frankly, he was taken aback by the prospect - it seems like the idea of an UNRWA staffer spending personal time in our schools was unprecendented, and neither the Education Department nor the principal of the school were sure exactly what to do with my request.

Nevertheless, they were excited at the idea, and Ros and I went down to the Amaari Girls School one Saturday afternoon in mid-February to meet with the principal and discuss what we would do. We agreed that we would come down to the Ramallah camp the following Saturday, and every saturday thereafter, and teach conversational English to a class of 4th grade girls. Arwa, the principal, warned us at the outset.

"There are 46 girls in one class," she said. "You're not going to be able to deal with them. They're crazy."

Each class in al-Amaari Girls' School, which serves as the main primary/middle school for al-Amaari's nearly 15,000 residents, has no less than 40 students. (Each grade has two/three classes.) The teachers are spread painfully thin, and the English teacher, upon meeting Ros, did her darndest to avoid speaking the language that she avowedly teaches.

Suffice it to say, the girls were crazy. Maybe not all of them - but two or three were crazy enough the next Saturday to rile up the rest of their classmates. Ros and I, armed with eight 1/2 shekel Cadbury candy bars and our UNRWA IDs dangling at the neck, walked into the jungle that is any 4th grade classroom anywhere in the world. The room, roughly 1/2 the size of a football field, had an old, beaten chalkboard at the front, carpeted flooring with no chairs, and 5 overly inflated bright orange basketballs. The girls, all smiles, were standing in a blob near the front of the class waiting for instructions.

I tried the classic teacher call and response. (You know the one...say something and then say "i can't hear you!")

"Good morning class!" I yelled over their hubbub.
"GO-OD MOR-NING...," they yelled back, rhythmically in unison...already impressively loud.

"I said good morning class!" I interrupted them, urging them to raise their voices.
"GO-OD MOR-NING!..." Christ, they were loud, but I cut them off again.

"GOOD MORNING CLASS!"
"GO-OD MOR-NING TEA-CHAIR"

I was impressed. Wow, these guys were ready to speak some ENGLISH! Aright!

My confidence was quickly dashed. "Ok today we are going to have some conversations! Can we get in pairs?" I wiggled two fingers at them...

"Aish? Ya3ni sho bta7kish 3arabi? Tarjimilna yallah..."
"What? So you don't speak Arabic? Translate for us come on..."

I refused. "No I don't speak Arabic. Only English." They weren't buying it - they knew my name was Tarek. And they know that's a name in Arabic. We kept trying to give them instructions, and they kept demanding that we translate. We gave an example:

"What is your name?"
"My name is Tarek."
"Where do you live?"
"I live in Jerusalem."

"Now you try!"

After struggling to put them in pairs, we got finally got them to ask each other...

"What is your name?"
"My name is Maram"
"Where do you live?"
"I live in Jerusalem."

WALLIK YOU CAN'T EVEN GO TO JERUSALEM! From there, the class broke down. We tried a game of "Tarek Says..." but all they understood was "Tarek says jump." and they would jump. Most of their distraction was owing to a whole bunch of girls running around the back throwing EXTREMELY bouncy basketballs at one another.

By the end of the lesson, it was nothing short of mayhem. The girls, struggling to understand our English, encircled me. They really did want to know what was happening (some of them), but our refusal to speak any Arabic wasn't helping the case...

They were used to their English teacher translating everything for them into Arabic or hand motions. While we were asking them how old they were, we were trying to teach them "I am nine." They didn't completely understand, and their English teacher walked in. She pointed to her head, and swiftly moved her finger downward. "Ahhhhhhh 'I am' the class said..." That's not how English is taught.

"Minshan Allah tarjim ya Tare2...bidna nifham...mna3rif inno bta7ki 3arabi.."
"For God's sake translate for us Tarek...we want to understand...we know you speak Arabic."

"La2 Ba7kish!"
"No I don't speak."

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Bya7ki 3arabi! Bya7-ki 3ara-bi."
"Ooooooooooooooooo he speaks Arabic! They started chanting: He speaks Ara-bic. He speaks Ara-bic."

I blew my cover. And then the bell rang.

We agreed with the principal after that period that we would have a smaller class on our hands next time, and allow it to grow if we could handle more kids.

The next week, and the few weeks thereafter, have been awesome. Slowly but surely, I'm trying to teach them how to pronounce certain phrases, and we've been using "question words" - Who, What, When, and Where. They've been far more tame and are super interested in learning what we teach them.

We taught them..."What is your favorite color?" and it resulted in this...

"Whatt iz yoor favo-rit colooor?"
"My favo-rit coloor is oRANJ."
"What is somefing oRANJ?"
"An orANJ!"

I asked them "Who is the president of Palestine?" and it resulted in this...

"Who is the President of Palestine?"
"The bresident of balestine he is Abu Mazen yil3an abo."

We played pictionary. I taught them "cucumber" and "onion" and "pants" - which they called trousers. I corrected them.

It's been great so far. While we are teaching them, little by little, how to actively use the English language - I'm still looking for ways to get it to STICK. I might try and start teaching one more day during the week. We have the long-term, lofty goal of performing a short play by the end of class. A play that will be broudly broduced in balestine.

Wish us luck.