Sounds of Ramallah

Days are going by in Ramallah and I am slowly getting used to the pace of the city. I normally wake up around 5 a.m. when the first beams of sunlight make their way through the curtains in my window. There is no trafic, no music, no people in the street. The silence of these early hours is true magic.

Half awake and half asleep I listen to the sounds of Ramallah slowly emerging.
The first person in the street is the boy who sells bread. His nasal voice cuts through the silence like a razor blade and wakes up the whole neighbourhood. Very soon, the traffic follows and adds its noise, the rythm of buzzing engines with honking horns setting the beat.

In the street you hear the sizzle of hot oil from the falafel shop, coffee boiling over the flames of a bunsen burner, and the tunes from Arabic songs mixing with an English version of Medina, and one of Aqua's golden oldies. Ramallah. A giant, musical melting pot.

In a few days, the Palestine Festival will begin. I am looking forward to add new sounds to my experiences in Ramallah.

Handala. A little boy with a big message

(Handala on the wall in Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem)

Handala is a ten-year old refugee. He does not show his face to anybody, but only lets people see him from his back. With his hands firmly clasped together on his back he refuses to accept the solution the outside worlds suggest to the solve the conflict in his country. He does not believe in these solutions. He will not face people again, and he will not grow up, until he can return to the homeland he was forced to fled so many years ago.

In 1969, the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Salim al-Ali drew Handala for the first time. Ever since he has been a symbol of resistance towards the occupation, and representing the longing for a free country he has become of a part of the Palestinian identity.
I first heard about him in 2008, when I visited Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Betlehem, one of the many refugee camps that were established from the war that followed the officiel enunciation of the state of Israel.

In the camp is a house for common activities and gatherings. The walls in the never ending stair case leading you up through the narrow, tall building were full of drawings and poems made by the refugees living in Dheisheh.One of these drawings depicted Handala.

The story about Handala is important, but it is so hard to tell. In 1987 Naji Salim al-Ali was assasinated and Handala lost his chance to show his face again, to show his eyes, his identity. The destiny of this little figure is painfully symbolic to the destiny of the Palestinian refugees whose only hope and dream is to return to the home they left when they fled the war. A home that probably no longer exists. It is the story about clinging to hope in a hopeless situation.