{"id":4394,"date":"2018-06-25T15:39:23","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T15:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/?p=4394"},"modified":"2018-06-26T15:47:19","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:47:19","slug":"the-school-at-khan-al-ahmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/?p=4394","title":{"rendered":"The school at Khan al-Ahmar"},"content":{"rendered":"
David Shulman<\/a><\/div>\n
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-1-<\/h3>\n

Today the shepherds wanted to set out at dawn. In summer, here on the outskirts of Jericho, by 9 or 9:30 in the morning it\u2019s already over 38 degrees (100 Fahrenheit)\u2014too hot even for goats. So we leave Jerusalem at first light, and by 6:30 we find Mhammad deep in the desert, close to the fenced-off date-palm grove of the settler Omer, who calls all the shots. Mhammad greets us happily; he\u2019s in a good mood; so far things are quiet. \u201cSoldiers? Have you seen any soldiers?\u201d he asks. \u201cNot yet,\u201d we say.<\/p>\n

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CMZ orders, Al-Auja, 2017-2018. photographs: Margaret Olin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The goats are busy with their lean pickings. Dried-out thorns, a shred of corrugated cardboard, a few leaves\u2014all this constitutes breakfast in the summer. They stand on their hind legs, stretching hopefully toward the higher branches of the tamarisks. It will be months before the rains come and something edible and green re-appears. Among the goats there is one ancient, supremely dignified buck with a long white-brown beard. Mhammad says he\u2019s their leader and commander, mudir. Who would doubt it? The mudir moves slowly, regally, as befits the owner of this patch of creamy rock and sand.<\/p>\n

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Al-Auja, 2017-2018. photographs: Margaret Olin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

After an hour, a little longer, the soldiers arrive, as they always do. I recognize the officer; he\u2019s not a bad man. But he\u2019s carrying the cursed piece of paper declaring this area a Closed Military Zone, with a map attached. According to the map, the shepherds have to stay clear of a huge stretch of land that reaches up to their houses, some three or four kilometers away. Meanwhile, Mhammad and his friend have made a fire and boiled tea, and they\u2019re sitting in what, with a little imaginative effort, might be called \u201cshade,\u201d under the branches of a spindly shrub. They\u2019re eating breakfast: fresh pita dipped in olive oil. They pay almost no attention to the soldiers who have come to disturb this feast. We photograph the illegal order and the map and we tell the soldiers to go away; the shepherds will have to move on. The officer clambers back into his jeep. It\u2019s hot, he\u2019s performed the daily ritual, now he waits on the hill to be sure the order is obeyed.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by David Shulman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

These shepherds can\u2019t be rushed, and we are certainly not going to urge them forward, or backward, toward home. Why should they hurry? It\u2019s their land. Omer is a cruel intruder. The soldiers are soldiers. Time flows in desert rhythms. Mhammad carries no watch, and occasionally, rarely, he asks us to tell him the time. I think he lives mostly in the slow and beautiful flow of goat time: when the goats have eaten enough, they begin to saunter, or sand-swim, home. They don\u2019t have to be told. From time to time Mhammad gently calls them to order: \u201cPzhee (high pitch, almost a whistle); khakhakhakha (deep in the throat); cluck-cluck-clack-cluck (flapping the tongue).\u201d It\u2019s a language I\u2019d love to learn. Sometimes he throws a pebble at a sheep or goat who has strayed from the path. By now the soldiers are gone and the sun is high.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by David Shulman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve tired you out today,\u201d he says to us, apologetic, concerned for our well-being; we deny it. I offer him really cold water, and he takes it, a long good gulp, standing on a rock near his tethered donkey. I feel like a lean dry thorn myself, with the incontrovertible happiness of being a thorn.<\/p>\n

-2-<\/h3>\n
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Photograph by Amir Bitan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Khan al-Ahmar, we fear, is about to be demolished. The government has announced it, and the Supreme Court, to its eternal shame, has approved it. Since the early 50\u2019s, the Jahalin Bedouin have been living here, after the army chased them off their lands near Tel Arad in the Negev. They\u2019re deeply rooted now in the brown-red hills on both sides of the big road leading from Jerusalem eastward, downhill, to Jericho. That redness (limestone tinged with iron oxide) gives the site its name, the \u201cRed Caravanserai\u201d. Caravans once, not so long ago, would spend the night here on their way to the spice lands in the south. The Good Samaritan of the parable is said to have passed nearby; just down the road there are the remains of a Byzantine monastery that marked the site. On a day like today, rife with wickedness, it\u2019s good to remember that Samaritan who did the right, the only human, thing.<\/p>\n

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Photo by David Shulman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We see the Bedouin tents of Khan al-Ahmar each time we drive from Jerusalem to Jericho and each time we return to Jerusalem from the Jordan Valley. But in the last decades, the settler-suburbs of Maaleh Adumim and Kfar Adumim have spread over the high ridges nearby. These people\u2014or at least some of them, let\u2019s not generalize \u2014 don\u2019t want to see an Arab face. It spoils the view. So on the one hand, settlers have been driving the government\u2019s campaign to expel the Jahalin. A ruthless racism rules this policy. On the other hand, there are weighty geopolitical considerations. Khan al-Ahmar is the portal, both tangible and symbolic, to area E1, the vast swathe of land east of Jerusalem that Israel wants to annex, thereby cutting the West Bank in two. If the army expels the 172 souls of Khan al-Ahmar, the other 1200 or 1300 Jahalin Bedouins who live close by will be easy prey.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Amir Bitan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Even if the school were not there, we would be facing a war crime; it has no other name. But the school magnifies the crime many times over. Today is the first time I\u2019ve visited it. It\u2019s an eco-friendly school, lovingly made from mud or clay and old tires. On the outside walls there are paintings of the Dome of the Rock and, surprise, a white sailboat floating down the non-existent or invisible rivers of Jerusalem to some place, we must assume, of freedom\u2014some place the bulldozers are barred from entering. An inscription in Arabic says: \u201cWe will remain here as long as the za\u2019atar and the olives remain.\u201d At the entrance there is a sign declaring this school to be under the supervision of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. This is the Jahalin\u2019s first-ever school. The courtyard is swept clean. Activists from the Combatants for Peace and other organizations are milling around; they have come to protest the crime-to-be. So there are speeches and embraces and kisses and many smiles, along with that unrelenting ache.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Amir Bitan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Police and soldiers were here several times this week, probably to prepare the ground for the demolitions. They\u2019re a lot like the heartless thieves in the parable. The government has announced that it will resettle the Jahalin in Abu Dis, next to the municipal dump that is now a high hill known simply as \u201cJabel,\u201d The Hill. No one can live on or near the Jabel. The stench is overpowering, and disease rampant. To dump these human beings on the dump is one of those acts that tell all.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Amir Bitan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But for me, there is something more. To tear down a school is possibly worse even than breaking a home into pieces and burying the pieces in the sand. How many homes have we rebuilt after the army took them down? We\u2019re almost used to it. But a school? Where children first learn to read, where they dream their dreams and play in the courtyard and sing the multiplication table and recite the poetry of the desert and say their prayers? I\u2019m a teacher. I have spent most of my life in classrooms, teaching this and that, languages, thoughts, memories, poems. The mud-and-tires school of Khan al-Ahmar is like any of the others, only more so, like the university I have loved, like the school in Iowa where I learned to read and first fell in love\u2014an almost holy place. It\u2019s not a word I use.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Amir Bitan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Photograph by David Shulman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post\u00a0first appeared posted by Margaret Olin\u2019 on her site, \u201cTouching Photographs<\/a>, Thinking with and about Photographs.\u201d Its title there was \u201cJune 22, 2018 Al-Auja, Khan al-Ahmar \u2013 text by David Shulman.\u201d The text is copyright Shulman. It and the photographs by Shulman, Olin, and Amir Bitan are republished here by permission. The photos appear in full dimension in that version.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0http:\/\/mondoweiss.net\/2018\/06\/school-khan-ahmar\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Shulman -1- Today the shepherds wanted to set out at dawn. In summer, here on the outskirts of Jericho, by 9 or 9:30 in the morning it\u2019s already over 38 degrees (100 Fahrenheit)\u2014too hot even for goats. So we leave Jerusalem at first light, and by 6:30 we find Mhammad deep in the desert, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4394"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4398,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions\/4398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}