Day Eleven: Conspicuous in Ramallah

Today while most of the rest of the pilgrims headed to Qumran and the Dead Sea (I have visited these places twice on previous pilgrimages), I went with a few folks to Ramallah to visit some of the Anglican ministries here – school, hospital, vocational center.  My friends will have to fill you in on those in another blog post, because I was feeling a bit more adventurous and decided to peel off from the group to wander the streets of Ramallah in search of contemporary Palestinian art.

As soon as I got on the bus headed to Birzeit University’s Ethnographic and Art Museum and waved goodbye to my friends, I was immediately struck by how conspicuous I was. Everywhere we have been to date has been inundated with tourists.  But even without the tourists, there is a twinge familiarity that somehow tempers my foreignness.  Perhaps it’s the ubiquity of of Christian holy sites, however radically different they are culturally manifested here. Perhaps it is a greater western/European influence.  Perhaps it’s the ease with which so many people speak English or their anxiousness to engage in conversation and lull me into a shop.

Whatever it is, Ramallah is different.  Here I am not only conspicuous but somehow exposed. I wear no head scarf, and I’m, well, big.  Ramallah isn’t on the itinerary of Christian pilgrimages, so there are no big tour buses and no wide-eyed tourists about.  Here the locals get to live in peace, in a gross manner of speaking, of course, because it’s impossible to forget the presence of the separation wall, the checkpoints, the unemployment, the water shortages even in Ramallah, called by one local “five star occupation”…

Last Sunday I dragged some friends to the Jerusalem Artists’ House to look at the art of some young Israeli artists.  Today, I went by myself to see “Palestine through the Eyes of Young Artists.” I don’t have anything to back up my fascination with art.  I have no training or knowledge in art history or critique.  I couldn’t even be described as a dilettante I know so little, but whenever I travel outside the United States especially, I yearn to see art.  Not any art (though I love a great museum), but contemporary art.  It taps something in me that desires to experience beauty and complexity and intimacy and estrangement and pleasure and discomfort all at once.  It gives me a different sense of place.  So here I am.

My favorite painting is by a young Palestinian artists named Maysa Azayzeh, born in Haifa in 1985 and currently working as an art teacher in addition to painting.  I wish I could share her work with you all.  It is, to me, the quintessential image of Palestine — stone houses stacked on a hill with roof top water barrels and electric lines that seem to suspend from house to house — in deep colors and bold lines.  I would like to take it home with me.

Just as I finished this blog in a cafe called Stones in Ramallah, a group of Palestinian teenage girls sat down beside me speaking impeccable English with perfect American accents.  I only had a quick moment to ask them where they were from and how they were here.  They were all born in the United States and now have moved back to live in Palestine.  Surreal.

After re-connecting with my other Ramallah friends at the Episcopal Vocational/Technical Center, we went to the grave of Mahmoud Darwish and then to Arafat’s tomb before heading back to Jerusalem.  In the top photo, Megan is capturing Mahmoud Darwish’ name on paper.