Thursday, October 11, 2012

A Hope for the Future

Trust in the Lord and do good; 
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and God will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:3-4



Salloom Shreydeh
One cannot spend more than a day in this part of the world without hearing about the importance of land. The Jewish claim to Eretz Israel is rooted in a complex understanding of biblical promises and national identity after centuries of horrific anti-semitism. Both secular and sacred, it is an emotional claim for self-determination, self-governance, and protection from hostiles who want nothing less than their destruction. On the other hand, the Palestinians see this land as their historic and ancestral homeland from which they were forcibly displaced. When family members can still remember being evicted from their farms, their homes confiscated without their choice or compensation, the pain sears the memory as unspeakable injustice.

I'm not sure I can fully understand how this pain is internalized for the Palestinians but I am gaining a clue about how important the land is culturally to them. Every time I've met someone here, they ask where I'm from. For them, this is not a question about where I currently live, it is a query about who my people are. It's like asking someone what their hometown is but over here, it establishes far more than regional geography. Home is a person's identity. It illuminates who they are, the family that formed them, the land that sustained them. And for them, they carry a conscious awareness of family that goes back not one or two but many, many, many generations.  

To a mobile west coaster, it is unimaginable to think about myself in this way. My connections are to the community where I find myself living at any given time. It seems many of us invest more passion in regional sports teams than a commitment to the places of our birth. Family is important, of course. But for many of us, grandparents and great grandparents are more often than not an occasional relational excursion we enjoy during the holidays. No so here.  

It is not unusual for people living and working throughout the West Bank to regularly return to their ancestral home. That may mean renting a cheap apartment in the city where they work and heading back home through multiple checkpoints every single weekend. Occupation amplifies the pain of separation when the politics restrict your mobility so that you cannot see your family for years and even decades. Unlike the young adults I know back home, here the young adults don't flee and flex their freedoms. In Palestine, one finds their foundation and fulcrum by returning to where they are known. Like homing pigeons, they would be lost to themselves without returning and roosting.

And where is it that they go? They go to their homes, their family homes. Arab houses are not really single family dwellings. They are family complexes with a separate floor for each generation. They are built in such a way that they just keep adding floors as the new generation matures. For many, sons, grandsons, and even great grandsons will bring their brides home to live in these shared family spaces. So important is this sense of land and its connection to family that the heads of these clans make great sacrifices to maintain their land and build the family house.     

Iyad's Faith for the Future
For you see, in this part of the world, conventional mortgages are unheard of. When one builds a house, you pay cash. That means you build the house in stages. First you purchase the land, then you build the exterior structure. The completion of the plumbing, the electrical, and the windows may wait for another year or two (or three or four) when you've saved enough dough. But you build what you can when you can on faith and in hope. Regardless of the economic uncertainty here in the West Bank, if you can only finish and inhabit one floor at at time, then you save for the day when you can finish a second, third or fourth floor so that your family can be together.Tied to identity, there is no greater or important legacy you can give to your children and their children than land and family.

And so with obvious pride and delight, Iyad showed me the home that he is building for his family in Beit Jalla. With views overlooking Bethlehem, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and Jordan beyond, it is a symbol of hope, security, and, more importantly, of Palestinian confidence that nothing will ever break their connection to one another and to this land. With his young son, Salloom, by his side, it was a declaration that there will be a future for the generations to come. I pray this will be true.
the view from the future kitchen window



1 comment:

  1. Thanks to your blog, you are not the only one looking through these windows into life in Bethlehem. What a fascinating view.

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