As I was wandering around the shuttered storefronts looking for a bus, a Chinese guy came up to me and asked in English where I was going. "To Nablus" I replied, and lo and behold, he was also heading this direction. Call me Ben, he said. Ben was from Taiwan, a student of Arabic, studying in Jordan and traveling in Palestine for a few days. I told him I lived in Tel Aviv and and yada yada yada. He made one comment that was quite off-putting. Hmmm, I don't know if I want to spend any time with him, I thought, but he is my opportunity to have a male companion which may be useful in this town. After the hour ride into Nablus, I found that we had a lot to talk about and much in common. He had made a very generalizing statement, but turned out to be not close-minded at all as I had initially thought. We explored Nablus together for several hours and because of him, I was able to do things I otherwise wouldn't have done on my own because I was such a spectacle as 1. lone woman (none else that I saw), 2. light-haired, 3. not covered on the head and forearms, 4. western demeanor (though I seem to not scream brash American). Plus he spoke some Arabic. It all turned out very well.
1:45 rolled around and it was time to meet my group in the central square. There it was: the first group of foreigners that was not me and Ben that I had seen in Nablus--no doubt this was them. Many of them were English teachers at the university in town. There was your classic American loudmouth girl, a shy Italian girl, a hipster American guy, a humorous British guy, an intelligent-looking Norwegian girl, and a few others. As has been the trend so far, time doesn't seem too valuable here, so we waited 45 minutes to board the bus. I never knew quite what we were waiting for, but I got a kabob fresh off the grill on the corner in the meantime. We later had a conversation about time and our absolute obsession with it, how the word or concept infiltrates nearly every conversation we have.
Mohommed was the organizer of this trip, he posted an invitation on Couchsurfing website, which is where I saw the event. He got a knowledgable friend to give us a tour of Sebastia and other to translate. It has some very well-preserved areas and just about every feature you'd hope to see in a Roman town--a basisilca, theater, hippodrome and the like. Along the tour I chatted with most everyone --12 or so people. My favorite turned out to be a 21 year old Palestinian guy Ameed, who was studying electrical engineering and working in his father's furniture shop.
At the end of our walk around the town, the guys from Nablus had prepared for a BBQ in an olive tree grove atop the hill overlooking the Jordan Valley. We had whole tomatoes, chicken, and shwarm on skewers, then pita to stuff it in. Delectable!
And some of the guys' younger siblings joined us which made for an even better crowd. We arranged rocks to sit on and laughed together while we ate. Someone had the idea that we should go to the hillcrest park when we get back to Nablus and have a drink. Soon after, we were off and drove the windy road to the top of the city that beats San Fancisco hands down for varied topography. From here, you could see the big Israeli city of Netanya on the coast and the walled & barb-wired Israeli settlement to the south, which looked frighteningly like an American suburb from this vantage point.
The sun was sinking over the western mountains and the white lights of the ramshackle Nablus metropolis glistened. The neon of the minarets glowed green and the sodium halide streetlights on the hilltop promenade added some orange to the palette. So the emanating light switched from the horizon to the valley below. Ameed insisted that he treat me to coffee, so we savored fresh-brewed Arabic joe by the cliff railing as we soaked up the scene.
We soon joined the others, who were at a picnic table playing guitar and singing folk songs. The Norwegian and American had a perfect duet going. It really made me smile. I could have stayed all night here, but I had planned to stay in Ramallah so had to catch the last bus out. Just as I went to say goodbye to Mohammed, he got a bee sting on the face! Ow. I got a ride down to the bus station from someone's bother, along with the tourist from Jordan who was also going to Ramallah.
A beautiful coincidence then happened. When we got off the bus, we saw a Stars & Bucks (no, not Starbuck's) in the main square and decided to have a drink. I was wearing my MIT shirt this day, and before we even sat down, a guy approached from across the room. He turned out the to be one of only two other MIT students interning in Israel right now! I had even sent him an email (which he never responded too, and was now quite ashamed) when I was looking for an apartment. We had only heard each others names from our program director, never met in person, and are both, per MIT's travel guidelines, not supposed to be in the West Bank! It was great--we all four sat together and had tea and smoothies (he was with a new German friend). We enjoyed the irony of the Star's & Buck's atmosphere for the remainder of the evening --it was absolutely nothing like a Starbuck's inside, not the music, not the seating, not the decor, and not the view out the window to the giant chair in the square symbolizing the Palestinian seat in the UN. Nothing, save the shelf of coffee mugs, brewing apparatuses, and other 'S & B' paraphernalia.
Sometime before midnight, my couchsurfing host called and we set a meeting point at the lion statue. So Jehad came trotting along from across the intersection. He showed the Jordanian who was with me with the way to his hostel and we said goodbye and it was a nice time and all that. I then followed Jehad to the bar where he worked, where I sat for the next two hours drinking Carlsberg, eating peanuts and the tasty bean snack, while using Jehad's computer for entertainment/planning. Jehad is a very special person who thinks deeply about everything and has incredible insight for a nineteen-year-old. He is a buddhist Palestinian, went to school in Nepal, and spent time in a monastery. He came back when his visa ran out and is saving up to go somewhere else where he does not feel like extremists will harm him for being Buddhist. He is immensely frustrated with Islam and the gender inequality, lack of social freedom, lack of individual choice, and expectations to conform, among other things.
He was supposed to be off at midnight, but again with the different perception of time, he ended up staying until 3 because some more customers came in. Alcohol is prohibited in Islam so he tells most people that he works at a restaurant, and of course everyone who patronizes the place (save the infrequent but not as seldom as you might think tourist to Ramallah) keeps it on the down low. So he stayed at the bar all night while I got a ride with the manager/his neighbor to the artist colony where I was to stay. This man, probably in his 60's, was an actor. He was currently in a play in the main theater here and took over the bar for his friend the owner because he knew how to fix it after the last guy brought the business down. He also just so happened to live in Seattle for a decade or so (¡¡wow!!). A resident of Fremont throughout the 90's, he acted in the Seattle scene as well.
The place was his uncle's, where Jehad and his two cousins stayed--two twenty-something girls who were out at the moment as well. The uncle was in Italy. His villa was full of art and unique furnishings--the fireplace in the picture, a Japanese dining area with teppanyaki grill, a hand-made copper sink...I was enthralled. The material goods matched the description of his gregarious, eccentric, globally-minded and also Buddhist uncle, who has a hundred friends who show up to parties here from around the world.
The next morning, after having coffee and chats, I took the service taxi (it honked at me as I walked down the lonely road so I hopped in) to the center of town. He I walked through the market and bought falafel which cost less than two dollars, whereas in Tel Aviv, the same thing is four times the price. I reveled in that 'good deal' feeling for a half-hour or so.
By afternoon, I was ready to move on to the Taybeh Beer Festival--the only Palestinian beer there is. The two brothers who started it learned the business from the mircrobreweries in the good ol' USA and to my surprise, have some importers there, and even a retailer in Boston!
The brewery is in Taybeh, a half hour or so from Ramallah and is a Christian town. The annual festival itself was a big ex-pat gathering, along with the locals of course. Every foreigner living, traveling, or otherwise passing through the Palestinian Territories was without a doubt at this event. It was pleasant at 4pm, at 6 pm it was crowded so I left to go tour the brewery, when I came back around 7:30, it was so packed I could barely walk through. Even though I had some friends here I said I would meet up with (my German neighbors in Florentine), I decided to leave because I didn't like the sardine feeling. And I had tasted the beer and taken in the vibe pretty well at this point. So off I went to East Jerusalem, then the tram full of orthodox folk, then security fiasco with the one-metal-detector-isn't-enough-for-400-people, finally the bus to Tel Aviv central station and the tiresome walk home.
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