Far’ata, Imatin
The show is on the road again.
I was thinking – it is just another day. We will arrive, teach and go back home. This time I was accompanied by my partner, Gabi, who wanted to see in her own eyes what she has been hearing for the last month.
I will not tell you that we had arrived at 13:30 – as we were asked by the students of Far'ata – and there was one student waiting for us, Dunia. On the other hand by two o'clock they were all in the class and we started studying. There are four levels in the classroom, and the age group is spread over four years. So- with acrobatics and the help of the amazing Yara – we conducted the lesson. We ended the class by singing "We shall overcome" by Pete Seeger who has died lately, in old age, and their singing was heard around the whole village.
The topping was, that when I arrived at the car I saw that somebody put a white flower in the handle on the driver's door. It was touching to the point of tearing.
Gabi and I collected our meager belongings and drove to Imatin. A little after three o'clock we got to the class and there were thirteen (13) girls waiting for us, out of thirty five. I decided not to let my disappointment influence me, and I started teaching, but withing fifteen minutes the classroom was fully packed. I did not bother to count them, and there were also five new students.
We started real academic work, studying tenses, which is what we will be studying for the next three months. Is is amazing to see so many girls work, ask, laugh, and do excercises in almost full concentration. When we finished everything I had prepared for them (and I had prepared a lot) it was time to sing. I handed the pages with "We shall overcome" again, and after some hesitant beginning, the song was bursting. It was moving.
When class ended the girls surrounded Gabi and interrogated her thoroughly, while some of them whisper to me that she is really beautiful. So, was it not worth coming?
Far'ata
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Far'ata
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Imatin
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Imatin This village lies in the West Bank, 19 kilometers southwest of Nablus city and 23 kilometers east of the city of Qalqiliya. Its inhabitants' number 799, all members of four families from the neighboring village of Imatin. Far’ata is identified with the Biblical Far’atoun, and an archeological survey has identified findings on a timeline from the Second Iron Age until the days of the Ottoman Empire. After the Oslo Accords, the built-up area of the village was categorized as Area B, but 80% of its farmlands were classified as Area C. In 2002, settlers founded the outpost of Havat Gil’ad, which they claim is located on privately-owned land purchased by the Zar family. The Palestinians claim they own the land. The Civil Administration has issued demolition orders for all the structures in this outpost and they were declared illegal, but nothing was done about it. On February 4, 2018, the Israeli government unanimously ruled to regulate this outpost by defining it as a new settlement or by erecting a new settlement next to it. Beginning in 2012, the Palestinian Authority ruled to include Far’ata in the local council of Imatin, a larger community. For further information: http://vprofile.arij.org/qalqiliya/pdfs/vprofile/immatin_vp_en.pdf
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