Qalandiya: Bad! gray, harsh, desperate routine.
Bad!
Like a refrain, like a broken record I keep coming back to the same places at the same times, to the same people, and every time different echoes of the same reality that tells itself keep coming, sounded or soundless.
The common thing to all the stories is the heading, while the content keeps getting filled with changing and accumulating details.
Bad, one says with one’s full mouth. Bad! say the people’s eyes. Bad, say children and boys soundlessly, who try to be vendors and smile for a wee moment at the camera
and then get back to their gray, harsh, desperate routine.
But bad as it got this time I hadn’t witnessed before:
Next to the wall separating the road to the refugee camp and the one leading to checkpoint, an elderly man supporting himself with a cane walked slowly. He made step after hesitating step along the wall. After every few steps he turned to his left and with bare hands rummaged the piles of waste at the foot of the wall. (No waste bins in public spaces - the garbage just piles up at the sides of the road). The man rummaged the growing piles, and then his eye caught some bitten food, a kind of ground meat. He stretched out a hand to the ‘find’, raised it to see its state, stuck it in his mouth and chewed.
Some ways away, in a street corner, where several men stand or sit, some of them cab drivers, others not, a kind of street parliament I share with them at times sitting and at others standing - they tell a lot, ask many questions, and mainly hope for better days, believing that conditions could not be worse than they are now, say they see Netanyahu as the one responsible, as I do.
People got together, asked me to photograph them and bring them their picture. One of them, an old acquaintance, walked away saying “I will not be photographed, I am a wanted man”. He said and was not aware that I felt complimented by his trust.
Before leaving, one of them asked me:
- Are you not afraid?
- Of what?
- To come here.
- No.
- But Israelis are afraid, aren’t you?