Letter From Nablus

July 21, 2003

On Friday I stuffed my few belongings into my backpack, hoisted it
over my shoulder and left the spoils of Balata Refugee Camp behind. In

four days time I had come to feel as much a sense of comfort as a
foreign visitor can expect in a war-torn refugee camp (not much).

Down the stairs and through the half closed iron door (some might say
it was half open, but in Balata it could only be half closed), I
maneuvered between the two concrete buildings that rose from the
ground leaving only a slender passageway between them. My shoulders
brushed the walls on both sides. Removing my pack and turning
sideways, I became thin enough to slip through the remainder of the
alley and into the hot mid-day sun. In the street, I turned back to
face the building from which I had just come. Ali stood waiving his
tiny hand from the second story, his innocent face pressed longingly
against the thin, rusted iron bars that guarded the window. He looked
more like a prisoner than a 6 year old boy. In a few years he would
come to see himself that way too, like many of the others in the camp.

The building's concrete facade, heavily peppered with machine gun
spray and tank morters, looked more suitable for straining spaghetti
than for protecting the home it was a part of. Many of the small shops
and houses lining the street had been left with gaping wounds, unable
to
bleed. Whatever or whomever those bullets had been intended for
surely no longer existed. I couldn't help but wonder where Ali had
been when this hell had visited his home. Had it come in the middle of
the night while Ali was asleep in his bed? Would it next time?

Behind me a man sat in a plastic chair, his head and shoulders
temporarily shaded by the protruding balcony above. One of the legs
was shorter than the rest, and the chair swayed slightly as he shifted
his weight to find equilibrium. I turned, and he greeted me as a
friend. The night before, only a few meters from where he sat then,
Mohammad and I had talked for nearly 2 hours. His story was like that
of so many others I had met in Balata. Mohammad was the 3rd
generation of his family to live in the refugee camp. He knew no other
life and had nothing else to offer his two children. Two years had
passed him by without employment. His brother and his best friend had
been killed by the army, and most of his friends had been imprissoned
by the army at one time or another. He told me that he, himself, had
been arrested for violating curfew by walking in the street. When they
released him, one of the soldiers stamped his ID card with a mark that
would prohibit him from returning to Nablus if he were ever to leave.
He was now a de facto prisoner in his own home.

With his head slightly bowed, unable to connect his eyes with mine, he
continued in a more somber tone. The only thing that gave him hope, he
told me, was the dream that one day he would return to the land his
grandfather had been expelled from in 1948. This was, in his view, his
only chance for escape from the refugee camp. When I prodded a bit
deeper--like a child carefully peeling back the corner of a scab to
expose a drop of fresh blood from a wound that has not been given a
chance to heal--he confessed that he never expected his dream to
materialize, but that he had nothing else to cling to.

The deep lines that traversed his forehead and encircled his dark eyes
spoke volumes of the hardships and heartbreaks he had endured. From
his appearance and demeaner, I guessed him to be in his mid-30's. I
concealled my suprise when I learned that he was 26. Military
occupation has a cruel way of aging people before thier time.

To be continued soon...
Paul