25th May
Bethlehem.
As I watched a documentary on television recently about the lives of the various Palestinian families of one particular street in Yaffa (now the Israeli town of Jaffa) - now spread across the globe following their expulsion in 1948 - I felt a new understanding of their loss. This is because as my time here in Palestine nears an end, I am looking ahead to my future back at home and it seems the farther you go, and the longer you stay away from the place you regard as your home, the closer you feel to it. This is all well and good whilst on a self-imposed year of adventure or discovery such as mine, but when you experience this longing for home after 60 years of enforced exile it becomes something different. More than fondly remembering the landscape, and reminiscing over old photographs, more than imagining the smells, sights and sounds of everyday life in the former home, it becomes an identity in itself. The Palestinians who live outside of Palestine, which hugely outnumber those inside, are perhaps in some ways more Palestinian even than those who managed to stay. As Joni Mitchell sang in Big Yellow Taxi, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.
With my departure from the conservatory appearing closer on the horizon, I am also now in the process of planning what I can for next year, so the new teachers can continue as smoothly as possible from where I, and the others also departing have left off. It is one of the many sad consequences of the situation now in Palestine that few teachers stay for more than a year or two, and is a source of personal regret that I am unable to stay longer.
Some rare good news from the Middle East appeared today, with Lebanon finally electing Michel Suleiman as President after a year and a half of political deadlock. The seemingly eternal instability of Lebanon had recently led me to believe that once again full-blown civil war was on the way, but now Lebanon’s future lies once again in the hands of the Lebanese. Whether the countries that like so much to meddle in Lebanon will allow this to remain for long, remains to be seen.
