If we fall apart out there, here we come back together again. Darting up the stairs, ancient and stoney up away from the road. Down there we jostle in and out of traffic and ignore the catcalls, shake off the stares. Faster, up around the corner we run to the little metal gate , behind it, great tall trees with names we don’t know and leaves that turn yellow and fall to the patio floor. Sigh. Up here, tucked behind the behemoth of a Nabulsi mansion that belongs to the landlord, things are quiet and they are decidedly different. Un-palestinian, almost.
We all love this city, we love the crazy roads, the bustle of the souk. We love these people who have taken us in and allowed us to call their land home, despite their home shrinking every day.
Still, when I pass through the gates of the Nasser house I feel a shift somewhere deep. I shed my cardigan although it’s almost too cool to do so today. My bare shoulders greet the midday sun which filters down through the leaves of the same trees that give me the privacy I require for this act of rebellion. In the few short weeks we have lived here all together, we have eaten, smoked, made fires and carved delicate art into this table. We burned sappy sticks and accidentally created a fireball, leaving our place of communion in waxy ruin. We cleaned it, carefully, with more thought than a plastic table deserved. It was like a christening, now the table is ours. All of ours. In every corner we’ve started to carve into the soft plastic and colour over with pens. A tree, a feather, a Palestinian flag.
This house is ancient. I can only guess that the elderly woman who lived here passed away. She was the mother of a school board member and so, the house feels different than the rented flat that most of the english speaking staff lives in. My flat is cold and always empty despite 8 residents. Nasser house is vibrating with life, uncontrollable and unownable. It’s history is bigger than all of us put together.
There’s a mobile on the patio now. Alex, a goofy bespectacled Wisconsinite who seems to have lived countless lives in his 24 years, made it of sticks and found red pantyose. Spencer, the most unassuming New Yorker I’ve ever met put up his prayer flags. There are scraps of paper on the walls inside, in a great collage of found writing, sketches and memorabilia of the least impressive sort. Every time I come over, the collection has grown.
Today it feels like fall, I woke up from a cat nap on the patio to return my cardigan to my shoulders, and all around my little glass of tea there were yellow and brown leaves. It could not have been mistaken for the autumn I learned to adore in the United States but maybe it was better.
- 11:40 AM
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