The other side

Israel is a paradise

It is Friday. Sama and I are going to visit a group of refugees who have just arrived from the Ivory Coast and are living in our bomb shelter. Yesterday Sama went to visit the refugees by herself when she heard that they were there and didn't have anything - food, clean clothes or a place to wash. When we arrive, most are outside, some playing football, others just sitting in the cold winter sun.

The shelter, two underground rooms with no heat or shower, has been home to 25 men since Monday. Some speak English, some Arabic, some French. We ask what they need - rice, sugar and soap - and get it from a local shop. I explain to the shopkeeper what the food is for. He says: 'There are Palestinian refugees who don't have anything - and no one helps them,' but he gives us extra rice for free.

Then I talk to Kourouma, who is 22. 'We left everything behind because of the war,' he says. 'We have lost all our families - some are dead, the rest have disappeared.

'We came through six countries to get here. It took us four years. First Guinea, then Mali, Niger, Algeria, Lybia and Egypt. In each place we were clandestine, working until we could move on to the next, until we got to Israel, when the army took us at the border and brought us here. This is the first country to accept us.

'Israel is a paradise. Nobody can do bad to us here.'

Please help the refugees. If you live locally and can offer food, clothing or any other assistance, please email me (link above).

A new language for Israel

Graffitti in Yefet St, Jaffa, by art group Parhessia (Aramaic for 'public space'). The text reads: tiredness, freedom, justice, sealed - in Arabic, with transliteration and translation into Hebrew beneath

'Parhessia ... is raising something of a stir in Israel. It was founded two years ago by Israeli writers, artists and teachers with the objective of establishing a new language for the Israeli public sector, throwing a critical light on the ethnic, religious and social complexity of the country's society.'

Silent

It is Shabbat. Jaffa is raining and empty. I go out for a walk and see this:

Then I remember this: 'When will people see Handala's face? When Arab dignity is no longer threatened, and when the Arab individual regains his freedom and humanity.'

A brutal mask

Here is part of a family portrait wall: it shows Sama, her brother Mohamad and her nephew Khalil. They live in Jaffa, and Sama is a poet. She speaks Arabic first, but her poetry is in Hebrew, the language she learned to write at school - her Jewish school.

When Sama read her work one night at Yafa cafe, a Palestinian poet came up to her and said: 'Why don't you write in Arabic? It's a disgrace.'

I am at Sama's house. I show her photographs that Jamileh took on a walk round Jaffa last week. Jamileh saw prisons everywhere: 'The people only live inside; they can not come out.'   She photographed through bars. Sama pauses at an image of a stopped-up window, of which Jamileh said: 'This is home but there are no windows - here they wake up and see only darkness.'

Sama looks at the picture for some time and then she says: 'I am trapped between two languages: I don't know Arabic well - I can read and write a little - but if you speak Hebrew the Jews will judge you. What are we to do?'

'There was a time when I was afraid to speak Arabic in the street. I tried to hide my culture so that the Jews would not be angry.'

Sama shows me some of her poems. In one of them I read this:

History speaks her words ...
you hush your thoughts.
In your solitude is love,
there stands justice,
hiding, seeking under a brutal mask ...
to breathe the quiet air.

Portrait in a bomb shelter

It’s been a long time since I posted – but all the time wanting to. I’m back in Jaffa working for a month on a special photography project with a group of Palestinian and Jewish girls from Jaffa, Lud and Bat Yam. We’re having our first show, Portrait of Jaffa, tomorrow – in the bomb shelter that serves as a centre for Sadaka Reut, the youth group I’m working with here (for more on them, see posts below).

Soon, if the local council has its way, Sadaka Reut will no longer be able to use the bomb shelter – because the group is opposing the Jaffa house demolitions (long story, but basically, poor Arab residents are being evicted in favour of housing for Jews). So we’re having a big protest party and putting this exhibit up – the theme is ‘home’, and  I’m very proud to say that it's all the work of girls from the Jaffa photography project.

The party is tomorrow night – anyone in the area who wants to come is welcome – email me for details. Here are some of the pictures:

‘There is a house here, but no people inside’ - Jamileh

Construction: ‘This will be for Jewish people, but Arabs lived here before’ - Jamileh

 

‘A poor home is just as much a home’ - Mor

 

Family - Jiana

 

Demolition - Mor

Birthday party - Walaa

 

School is my home - Nastia

 

‘There is trash everywhere in Jaffa. Drugs and violence. It's not new to me’ - Rimi

 

My grandmother’s house - Jiana

 

‘I feel at home everywhere but my home’ - Rimi

The generosity of Delme Rosser has made this work possible

'The joint non-violent struggle is our victory'

Palestinians and Israelis celebrate together after the Israeli Supreme Court rules that the separation fence should be moved, recovering 100 hectares of land for the villagers of Bilin.

Jesus on the Cross

At U-Turn. Tracey wants to take a picture of Jesus on his Cross outside the local church. We are on walkabout, doing photography. She can’t take the picture because her hands shake as she holds up the camera, and Jesus slips in and out of the frame. ‘I’ll help you,’ I say, steadying her hands. She has Dave Tracey tattooed on her arm.

Shel, Tracey’s sister, is with us too. She wants a picture of Jesus on the Cross for her boyfriend. ‘Our men are Catholics,’ she says. Their other sister, Susie, has gone to spend £1,700 social back-pay on the crack pipe. The money arrived today.

‘They’re drug addicts, Susie and her boyfriend. They just disappear into the bedroom with the pipe,’ Shel says.

It’s cold outside but Tracey’s only got a T-shirt on. She’s 43, having hot flushes, the change of life. Her hair is steel, edged with white.

‘Can you take a picture of Jesus for me?’ she asks. ‘It is for our boyfriends. They’re Catholics.’

‘You can do it,’ I tell her.

‘No, I can’t. I can’t do it.’

‘You can. Here, let me help you. Come on.’ I take her closer to the statue and hold her hands around the camera, framing Jesus. I have to be firm to steady them.

‘Press the button,’ I say.

She’s pushing on another part of the camera. I wait for her finger to find the shutter. ‘Now. Press now,’ I say.

Look. It’s Jesus suffering in the sun. Low-contrast Autumn light.

‘It’s lovely.’ Tracey looks at the image. Shel looks at it.

‘You did that,’ I say.

‘I never done that before,’ says another Tracey, ducked-under quarter smile.

‘Look what you did. It’s beautiful,’ I say.

Trust

I am working in London again, teaching writing and photography at U-Turn women's centre. U-Turn supports women sex workers, many of whom are homeless with drug and alcohol dependency. Our project, Change the Picture, was set up by charity PhotoVoice.

I have a long conversation in the garden with Emma. She doesn’t trust her mental health worker. It is evident from her diary, which she wants me to read, how much Emma likes photography and writing. She says that she writes for me, because I ask her to. She trusts me. Ever since we went upstairs to the therapy room and worked on her writing, just the two of us, she feels that I am her teacher.

I’m touched and encouraged to see how much our attention can mean to the women. I tell her how pleased I am that she is writing consistently. I show her my notebook, the one I carry round with me, and tell her that I write every day too.

‘It’s therapy,’ she says. I can only agree.

Emma has to defend herself even from the workers who are supposed to help her, especially in the hostel where she lives. Emma looks after herself, and doesn’t trust anyone there. She thinks that her mental health worker and other professionals are doing it for suspect reasons, maybe they’re not right themselves. Privately, I agree. My experience of the social welfare system is that a variety of damaged individuals find refuge in ‘caring’ for others (abusing by default).

Working in prisons, I saw how those at the bottom of the pile suffer, helpless, their ‘carers’ like their torturers. I remember this as we talk. I remember jailors and police laughing at the ‘scum’ in their care when I went to represent my clients. Emma has been in prison too, although she refers to this only in passing. The hostel reminds her of prison.

Emma has made a list of people she likes. This includes 'the nice security man with the glasses'. There is a gold star next to some of the names.

‘She’s strong and she’s beautiful’

System Ali is a rap group from Jaffa – young Arabs and Jews. They write in Yaffawiay, a street language blend of Arabic and Hebrew. Ali means big, or strong, and the group's name can be understood as an order, as in make it stronger, turn the system up. I spent two days in the studio with System Ali, as British DJs Gavin Alexander and Tony Nwachukwu,  of CDR, and guest MC Ty helped them record and refine their performance for a gig later that week. Here, Amne, Mohamad, Enchik and Neta warm up – in a professional recording studio for the first time.

 

Ty runs through a series of vocal warm-ups with the rappers, encouraging Enchik, left, who is from Russia, and Mohamad, to project and take the room.

Amne, 15, had never sung before. One day she came to a hip hop workshop at the Sadaka Reut youth centre in Jaffa, where she sang and wrote for the first time. The next day she came back with more poetry, and things took off from there. When Amne first got on stage with System Ali, she was so nervous that she cried, but now her feisty rhymes protesting Jaffa's crime and poverty are central to the set.

Amira is proud of daughter Amne's every move. 'She's strong and she's beautiful,' says Amira, watching Amne sing from the mixing booth. Amira spent the day with us in the studio, and the night by her daughter's side at Shesek, where CDR were doing a gig. Amira was the first woman in hijab to grace the Tel Aviv dance bar.

Most of the group, self-conscious at first, open up when they see that Ty's not afraid to make a fool of himself in MC warm-up games. But poet and rapper Mohamad, whose idol The Undertaker peers from his shirt, is a tough nut. In the end, Ty's determination is too much even for Mohamad, who lets his guard down and cracks a smile.

The sessions took place at Muzik School studios in Tel Aviv. Israeli Producer and DJ Gideon helped the group mix their first professional tracks. Here, Mohamad and Gideon talk during a  break.

After separate workshops, the musicians and vocalists come together to record. Here the groups cheers Eddy, centre, who has just laid down his verse.

Neta and Mohamad watch group members record from the mixing booth. 'We are one family,' Neta tells them afterwards, as group tensions start to rise, two long days into the work. There is still tonight's gig to prepare, and everyone's exhausted, after giving 110 per cent and staying out at Shesek until the early hours. System Ali resolves disputes through discussion - 'talking is the only way,' Mohamad says.

The gig brings System Ali back to its Jaffa constituency. Local people turn up to watch – mothers, fathers, passing teenagers, friends. Children line the stage, including this boy, who is fascinated by Mohamad's oud. System Ali proves that young Jews and Arabs can work together. Jaffa, one of Israel's most troubled cities, is where this kind of co-existence is taking root – perhaps because it's one of the only places where people are willing to listen.

Listen to System Ali

CDR

I love this place

I received the following comment (in Hebrew) on my post Observe and suffer, and thought it an unusual expression of Israeli vulnerability. This comment responds to an earlier one, which protested angrily against the suggestion that Israelis should consider the suffering of Palestinians displaced in '67 and '48.

'Time after time I shake my head in sadness or anger when I realise that most of the world does not commemorate the Holocaust and so many people are not aware of the atrocities, even the Germans. I'm sure you also feel like me every year, but still categorically refuse to recognise the many injusticies we did in order to get this land from the Arabs, whom we consider to be one body with a leadership that did not want our good.

'Without going into what should have been done then or now, we have to realise that to understand the mistakes and reach a real solution (תיקון), we must recognise the real history, what really happened - not deny or avoid (like the anti-Semites also do). We must not let our fear of losing our right to this land prevent us from recognising the real history, because this land is also ours and will remain so. When this happens we can reach understanding with our neighbours.

'I love this place and I know that it is very difficult to be a moral person here, especially because next year I will be in a combat unit, but I also know that war can not go on for ever, neither can the oppression. As long as we delay the solution we will have more people killed. It is important that we analyse our actions and not those of the other side. Those who compare, and put the full blame on the Palestinians, do not understand the meaning of the oppression. During the Mandate times we also performed some terrorist acts, even though our situation was much better (than that of the Palestinians now).'

Thanks, Sharon, for the translation.