Qalandiya checkpoint
On the Prophet’s Birthday, colorful sweets are bought in hopes of sweetening the day.
Everyone – buyers, sellers and the photographer – knows that food coloring and sugar are not enough to sweeten, beautify or fill hungry bellies.
How hungry? Opposite the Qalandiya refugee camp, next to the kebab stand, a young man turned to me respectfully – I had known him years ago as a child, as a youth, and now he has turned into a young man – and asked whether I could give him 5 shekels of which he is short in order to buy a kebab. He had never asked before, always welcomed me with a warm greeting. Today hunger overtook niceness. Today he too is hungry.
The raids of Jerusalem municipality’s supervisors on venders in the northern entrance to the checkpoint have distanced the vending children and boys and they have situated themselves on the roadside opposite the center of the refugee camp.
Even though the school year began last week in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and although most children go to school in the morning, quite a few of those who work here do not. One need not be a detective to know where the child lives, like the girl whose home is in Qalqiliya, or the children whose home is in Samu’a, and since the laws of nature do not let a person be in two different and distant places at the same time, clearly these, like others, are fated to be nourished with ignorance and ‘street smarts’.
