Christmas day was cold and rainy; and I was in Bethlehem, far from home and family when a phone call lifted my spirits.
“I like to spend this day at Aida refugee camp,” said Mazin Qumsiyeh, “can you come?”
I hesitated. I’d been to other refugee camps and thought, I don’t need another downer.
“I think you should come,” he said quickly picking up on my mood. “You’d like Abed; he’s a playwright and theater director of Alrowwad, the cultural center at the camp.”
Four of us crammed into the back seat of Mazin’s car as he swerved along rain slicked stone streets and headed for Aida. A staunch peace activist, he also serves on the Al Rowwad board of directors.
Rounding narrow roads, hillside grapevines and olive trees gave way to high walls blocking view of farmlands on the other side. During my past visits to Palestine, I had watched teary-eyed farmers look on helplessly as bulldozers mowed down ancient olive trees and tore up crops; looked on as workers poured cement and erected high separation walls. Later, their grotesque monotony would be broken by spray-painted pictures and graffiti – pitiful cries to free Palestine.
Aida Camp lies north of Bethlehem and south of Jerusalem, two holy cities separated by a thirty-foot wall. In 2002, during the Second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising, wire barricades began to appear; and within the next few years, giant walls embraced three sides of the camp. Shortly thereafter, the barren gray concrete began to take on new life, one of hope and determination, telling pictures of the dreams of the young enclosed within its prison-like walls. A painted stairway with children ascending to the top needed no words.
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2012.