27th June
Bethlehem.
Since my previous post, much has been happening. At the start of the month one of the piano teachers and I gave recitals in the Jerusalem branch of the conservatory and in the Goethe Institute in Ramallah, as part of a music festival organized by the conservatory, the Barenboim-Said Foundation and Al Kamandjati; all music education groups based here in the West Bank. Following this, I then spent a week in Bir Zayt coaching our advanced students for a series of orchestral concerts in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah. After a slightly uncertain first performance at the spectacularly well-positioned Mormon’s University in Jerusalem (the backdrop of the stage is completely glass, and looks out over the Old City) the students gained confidence and the final concert in Ramallah was excellent. It has been nice to observe the orchestra develop over the course of this year, and I hope I’ll be able to return to hear them playing even better next year.
After the orchestra course I had two free days in which to renew my tourist visa, which was due to expire on the 25th. Normally, I only travel through checkpoints in the afternoon, but in order to make an early start on my way to Egypt I left the house at six-fifteen. Because this is the time when most of the workers from the West Bank are trying to enter Jerusalem, the checkpoints are very slow at this time, often taking over an hour and sometimes several hours to pass. Seeing the huge queue tailing back outside of the checkpoint complex and onto the road, I took the decision to go by another route into Jerusalem. Nonetheless, it still took me over two hours to travel the five kilometres to Jerusalem. I had forgotten the difference in checkpoints between when tourists and Palestinians use them. Having been told the horror stories of hours waiting in the sun, and mothers giving birth while trying to get to hospital, some people who come to visit Palestine are pleasantly surprised by the checkpoint experience. If they travel early however, it is an entirely different experience, and it is not a pleasant one. To do this every day must wear you down unbearably.
From Jerusalem, I took a bus south to Eilat, where I crossed the border into Egypt and found a hotel. Conveniently, the hotels in the Egyptian border town of Taba are just a minute or two on foot from the border crossing. There was a strange juxtaposition in leaving the West Bank in the morning, then sitting at dinner in a resort hotel watching sun burnt British holiday-makers going up for seconds and thirds at dessert. People-watching at its best.
Despite my now rather crowded passport page showing a year of comings and goings, the following day the border police believed my story without any persuasion necessary and I was quickly re-admitted with a 3 month visa. After lunch in Eilat, I was back on the bus to Jerusalem and as we neared the Dead Sea a huge pillar of dark smoke grew on the horizon. Because it appeared to be near the road, I first thought it might be a car accident, but it soon became clear it was far too large for this. Then as we reached the location of the fire, we saw large areas of burning land. At 400 metres below sea level, where the air is oxygen rich and the temperature in summer rarely falls much below 40 degrees in the daytime, this place must be constantly ripe for wild fires.
Once home, as I watched the sun set from my balcony in Bethlehem - the same sun under which I had been lying on the Rea Sea coast just hours before - it occurred to me once again how small the distances are here. If you look at a map, you may be surprised that an area this small has caused so many problems for so many people. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say it is surprising that so many people have caused so many problems to such a small area. When traveling around Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Palestine, one does not sense geographical differences, or even, with the exception of Israel, strong cultural ones.
The differences here are merely man made, but they seem the hardest ones to deal with.
