An evening in Ramallah
It is 6.30 pm on a wet, cold and windy night in Ramallah. From my apartment I can hear the call to prayer from at least five mosques. Their calls are all completely different, but somehow manage to work harmoniously with each other to create an evocative, mournful, strangely uplifting and haunting sound that echoes off the stone buildings and surrounding hills.
Greitja, the Dutch lawyer living upstairs bangs on my door and wants to know if I’m going to the gym – why not. As we walk the ten minutes up the hill to the “first private gym in Palestine” sporadic machine gun fire comes from nearby Minara Square. We pay it little attention as this seems to happen most nights and the lack of intensity indicates that this is not a military incursion or anything to be particularly concerned about. Greitja continues on telling me that there is a party tonight to celebrate the fact that somebody she knows has managed to avoid going to jail, no small achievement – did I want to go? Along the way we pass women and children, men coming home from work and people shopping. No one pays the slightest attention to the gun fire or shows any concern – at this time of the evening the most likely explanation is that somebody is letting off steam. It is the gunfire at 2.00 am that you wonder about, particularly the single pistol shots.
Back home after the gym the news reports talk optimistically of negotiations between Hamas and Fatah to negotiate their 10th ceasefire in just over a week (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6324677.stm). The next story reports that there have been kidnappings in Gaza and Ramallah between the two groups and the final story is that the Israeli army has entered a number of West Bank towns to make arrests. The last story is unusual as the IDF usually comes to town between midnight and dawn – they’re very early tonight. Last weekend the IDF even snooped around our place in the early hours, shining torches through windows and wandering around our terrace. Some peace activists from Israel were staying over but it is impossible to know whether the two are related.
After the gym Greitja wants to watch a DVD but none of the pirate copies she has purchased in Ramallah work on her player or my laptop – that possibly explains why they were so cheap. I think I’ll just read a book and absorb the sounds of the night.
It is 6.30 pm on a wet, cold and windy night in Ramallah. From my apartment I can hear the call to prayer from at least five mosques. Their calls are all completely different, but somehow manage to work harmoniously with each other to create an evocative, mournful, strangely uplifting and haunting sound that echoes off the stone buildings and surrounding hills.
Greitja, the Dutch lawyer living upstairs bangs on my door and wants to know if I’m going to the gym – why not. As we walk the ten minutes up the hill to the “first private gym in Palestine” sporadic machine gun fire comes from nearby Minara Square. We pay it little attention as this seems to happen most nights and the lack of intensity indicates that this is not a military incursion or anything to be particularly concerned about. Greitja continues on telling me that there is a party tonight to celebrate the fact that somebody she knows has managed to avoid going to jail, no small achievement – did I want to go? Along the way we pass women and children, men coming home from work and people shopping. No one pays the slightest attention to the gun fire or shows any concern – at this time of the evening the most likely explanation is that somebody is letting off steam. It is the gunfire at 2.00 am that you wonder about, particularly the single pistol shots.
Back home after the gym the news reports talk optimistically of negotiations between Hamas and Fatah to negotiate their 10th ceasefire in just over a week (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6324677.stm). The next story reports that there have been kidnappings in Gaza and Ramallah between the two groups and the final story is that the Israeli army has entered a number of West Bank towns to make arrests. The last story is unusual as the IDF usually comes to town between midnight and dawn – they’re very early tonight. Last weekend the IDF even snooped around our place in the early hours, shining torches through windows and wandering around our terrace. Some peace activists from Israel were staying over but it is impossible to know whether the two are related.
After the gym Greitja wants to watch a DVD but none of the pirate copies she has purchased in Ramallah work on her player or my laptop – that possibly explains why they were so cheap. I think I’ll just read a book and absorb the sounds of the night.
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