The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide. Susan Nathan

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СКАЧАТЬ properties. The local inhabitants, of course, know precisely where to find these shops, but for quite some time the lack of clues made it a nightmare for me.

      Such difficulties were exacerbated by the problem of orientating myself. Because of the unplanned streets and the lack of regulations on construction, the local council has never attempted to name roads or number houses. So if I asked directions the reply would always involve telling me to turn right or left at a building that obviously served as a landmark for the local population, but which to me looked indistinguishable from the rest of the concrete. After a year I started to recognise at least a few of these landmarks. One felafel shop might be used as a signpost rather than its neighbour simply because it had been around for decades, and the community felt its long-term usefulness had been established.

      In the early days I would think, ‘I will never find my way around this place, I will never understand how to get from A to B.’ I started walking every day to learn the complex patchwork of alleys and side streets. I was immediately struck by the huge number of roads that were incomplete, unmade or scarred by endless potholes. Streets would come to an abrupt end or peter out. There were embarrassing moments when, having started to rely on a shortcut, using what I thought was a footpath or an empty piece of ground, I would find one day that it was now blocked by concrete walls. A family, it would be explained to me, was squeezing yet another house into one of the last remaining spaces open to them. Because it was me, no one ever showed offence at the fact that I had been tramping through their yard.

      The sense of community in Tamra is reinforced by its festivals. Anyone who has been to the Middle East quickly learns that public space is treated differently in Arab countries. On their first night, foreign visitors usually wake in the early hours of the morning, startled by the loud wailing of the local imam over the mosque’s loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer. For the first week or so these calls to prayer—five times a day—disturbed me too, but they soon became part of the background of life, as reassuring as the sound of church bells echoing through an English village.

      One of the things I soon noticed about Muslim festivals is how much they resemble those celebrated by religious Jews, including the Orthodox members of my own Jewish family. When Asad Ghanem, a political science lecturer at Haifa University and one of the coun-try’s outstanding Israeli Arab intellectuals, took me to Nazareth for a Muslim engagement party, he asked me on the way back: ‘So, how was it at your first Arab party?’ He laughed when I told him: ‘It’s just like being at an engagement party in North London. I feel like I’m living with my first cousins.’ Israel, and more recently the West, spends a lot of time warning us about the dangers of ‘the Arab mind’, instilling in us a fear of Arab culture and of Islam by accentuating their differences from us and by removing the wider context. Even though intellectually I knew that Jews and Arabs were both Semitic races with their roots in the Middle East, I was still unprepared for the extent to which the traditions in Islam and Judaism and the two cultures were so closely related.

      Take, for example, death. The rituals of the two faiths closely mirror each other. The most important thing is that the dead person must be buried on the same day, before sundown, or failing that as soon as possible. So when Samira’s sister died early one morning, she was in the ground by 1 p.m. As in Orthodox Judaism, the family and close friends went to the home and gathered around the body to pray while it was washed and the orifices were stuffed with cotton. After the body had been buried, the family sat in the house for a three-day mourning period during which guests were welcomed to share in the sorrow (in Judaism this period lasts seven days). The purpose in both religions is the same: to expunge the grief from the mourners’ souls in a communal setting, and thereby to allow them to move on. In both faiths the family continues to mark its grief for a longer period by abstaining from celebrations and parties, and not playing music. During the three days of mourning the family’s house is open from early morning to late evening, with the men and women sitting apart. Another tradition both religions share is that neighbours bring food to the dead person’s family during the grieving period. That is what happened when my mother died in London. In Tamra we laid out a large meal of meat, rice and pine nuts for the mourners. On the second day I brought coffee and milk to the women for breakfast.

      The most joyous and lavish occasion is a wedding, which can last from three days to a week. If it is the marriage of the eldest son or an only son, the celebration is always huge. The basic schedule is three days: one for the bride’s party, one for the groom’s, and the third for the wedding itself. On each occasion the party starts at sunset and goes on till the early hours, with a guest list of a few hundred family and friends. Often the road where the family lives will be shut down to accommodate the party as it spills into the street. Music is played very loudly, with wild, throbbing, hypnotic beats that reverberate around the town. During the summer months there is rarely an evening when you cannot hear the thumping boom of wedding songs somewhere in Tamra. The noise is like an extended invitation, ensuring that everyone can join in—at a distance—even if they have not been officially invited.

      On the bride’s day the women come together to eat, dance and talk. I found it fascinating to see so many women, their heads covered by the hijab headscarf, dancing together. You might expect that their dancing would be modest, but there is something very sensuous and provocative about the way Arab women dance, slowly gyrating their hips and swaying as they twist their arms and hands in the air. The messages are very conflicting. At my first Arab wedding I felt overwhelmed by the noise, the dancing and the huge number of bodies packed together. Later in the evening a group from the groom’s side was allowed to join the party. Arriving in a long chain, they danced into the centre of the celebrations, with everyone else standing to the side and clapping their hands in time. As the noise grew louder, the clapping turned ever more excited until people were opening their arms wide and snapping them shut together, like huge crocodile jaws. Finally, a pot of henna was brought and the bride’s fingers decorated with her and the groom’s initials entwined. On her palm and the back of her hands were painted beautiful patterns to make her more attractive for the wedding.

      The second party, for the groom, follows a similar pattern of eating and dancing. At the end of the night the groom is prepared for the wedding day with a ceremonial shaving. Carrying a tray bearing a bowl, shaving cream and a razor, his mother and sisters dance towards him. Just as with the henna, the tray is decorated with flowers. Then, as they sing, the closest male relatives put him on a chair raised up on a table and begin to shave him in a great flourish of excitement. Soon there is foam flying in all directions, with the raucous men smearing it over each other’s faces. Everyone is having so much fun there is often a reluctance to finish the job. But once he is smooth, the groom is held aloft on the shoulders of a strong male relative who dances underneath him as he moves his arms rhythmically above. The symbolic significance of this moment of transition into manhood is immense: the close relatives often burst into uncontrollable tears.

      On the final day, the groom’s family must go to collect the bride from her parents’ home and bring her to her new family. As in Judaism there is no equivalent of the church ceremony familiar in the West. Before they set off, the groom’s family invites everyone for a great feast of meat and rice followed by sweet pastries. Then the groom’s closest friends wash him while the women dance holding his wedding clothes. He is dressed, and the family is then ready to fetch the bride. In one of the family weddings I attended, we formed a long convoy of cars, taking a circuitous route through Tamra so that we could toot our horns across the town, letting everyone know we were coming. The lead car was decorated with a beautiful display of flowers and ribbons. The bride’s family welcomed us with drinks and plates of delicate snacks while the bride stood by in her white dress. As the moment neared for her to leave, small goatskin drums were banged and the women ululated a traditional song, which to my ears sounded sad and tragic but which actually wishes her health and happiness in the future. It is an emotional moment for the bride, who often cries. She dances on her own, holding in each hand a lighted long white candle, surrounded by a circle of relatives. When she is finished she steps on the candles to extinguish them, and leaves.

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