Goodbye Qawawis

( all photos by my friend David Parsons. Thankyou David. )

During Ramadan 2005, I stayed for a short time, just three days and nights, along with two friends, David from Canada and Maraya from the USA, in the rolling south Hebron hills in the occupied West Bank, in a tiny Palestinian settlement called Qawawis. Settlement is a loaded word to use in the context of this land, like so many other words ('wall', 'terrorist', 'refugee camp') it is drenched in subjective meaning - but there is not another good word for this place that I stayed. It is smaller than a village, and not really a farm. Qawawis was a collection of about seven stone huts built low to the ground, it had some pens for goats and sheep, it had some olive trees, a couple of stone bake ovens, a well, and a population of about 40 people, from four or five families. These people are shepherds and olive farmers, they rise early, graze their gaunt stock in the surrounding hills, bake bread, make olive oil, pray, talk, laugh, play soccer. They had electricity for only one hour each evening, from a generator.

David, Maraya and I were in Qawawis for these three nights because we were acting as international activists aiming to lessen the threat of harassment of the Palestinians who lived there. Qawawis was situated near to a smooth bitumen Israeli road, like the many which slice through the West Bank, connecting army posts and illegal Israeli settlements with Israel itself. On the horizon on three sides such Israeli settlements were perched high on hilltops, overlooking the huts of Qawawis - these settlements were all built since 1982, and are home to Jewish communities of the more fundamentalist persuation. Frequently the Israeli settlers or soldiers would make visits to Qawawis, or stop on the roadside, often with weapons, in order to harass, abuse, threaten and sometimes attack them. Shortly before I was in Qawawis a makeshift bomb was found, planted by settlers in a stone wall - if a rock above the device was removed the bomb would be detonated. The log book in our hut documented countless cases of the villagers being hit with rocks and sticks, of cars driving loudly towards the village honking horns to scare the animals, of settlers suddenly walking around, and into the huts, unannounced, and occasionally accompanied by soldiers. Caves attached to the houses and often containing ovens or storage areas have been cemented over, animal feed and olive trees poisoned. Soldiers at one stage declared the area a "closed military zone" and began to arrest any Palestinians found in the area.

In March 2005 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the military had to respect the rights of the people of Qawawis and similar villages in the surrounding area to live in their ancestral land. The people of Qawawis returned and rebuilt their homes, requesting permanent assistance from International Human Rights observers to help them retain their homes. Harassment, on an almost daily basis, continued.


This photo is of Hadj Khalil, one of the patriarchs of Qawawis. In this photo he is sitting on a platform on which he prayed each day, and looking towards the watchtowers of a nearby Israel settlement.

Hadj Khalil, along with all the other people of Qawawis, were welcoming and warm with us during our stay. Despite the fact that they were fasting for Ramadan, they frequently bought us mint tea and olive oil and za'atar and warm fresh loaves straight from the ovens in the caves. They sat with us and spoke in patient Arabic, as we asked countless questions they had been asked again and again by other internationals. The three of us had an incredible time here with these people, we were made to feel at home in our little stone hut, and together we learnt so much, in so short a time. I will never ever forget the people of Qawawis, or the short time I was there.


A few days ago, Qawawis, along with a number of similar Palestinian villages and settlements in the Hebron hills area, was destroyed by Israeli military. My heart is sunk. Please read the below press-release, sent to me by my friend Sarah, and today, keep in your mind these few innocent, peaceful, beautiful and now homeless families, and the countless others like them, throughout Palestine and the Middle East.

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Seven Palestinian Homes Demolished
Independent Catholic News
Saturday, February 17, 2007

Israeli soldiers demolished homes in three Palestinian villages near bypass road 317 on 14 February, the Christian Peacemaker Team reports. Starting in Imneizil at around 9am about forty Israeli soldiers with two bulldozers demolished one home, an animal pen and a stone bake-oven. At noon the soldiers moved to Qawawis where they demolished the homes of five families and one bake-oven, then on to Um Al-Kher where they demolished one home and damaged a wall of another home.

At Imneizil several young children were in their home eating when the Israeli military arrived; the soldiers gave the family time to get out, but did not give them time to remove their personal belongings. The animal pen was demolished with a few animals inside; two lambs were injured. The Palestinian family began immediately to build a makeshift pen for the animals as the majority of the sheep were just returning from grazing in the fields.

In the village of Qawawis one of the demolished homes was over sixty-five years old, and sheltered two families.

The Israeli military, in concert with Israeli settlers, has been trying to force the Palestinian residents of the south Hebron hills to leave their homes for years. Due to harassment from the nearby Israeli outposts several of the young families of Qawawis moved to a nearby town; when the Israeli army then forcibly evacuated the remaining families, a court ordered that the families could return to their homes. According to a lawyer representing the families, the Israeli army now claims that this court ruling allows only the last inhabitants of Qawawis to return, not their children who earlier fled the assaults of the Israeli settlers.

"Our children need homes," said one villager. "What do they want us to do?"

The Israeli army said: "Twenty illegal structures were destroyed after demolition orders were issued, and offers were made to the owners to pursue the available options before the planning organizations. The supervisory unit of the civil administration will continue to operate against illegal building activity in the area, and to implement the steps mandated by law against this illegal activity." The Israeli military made no provisions for shelter for the families whose homes they demolished. The families asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide them with tents.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said: "A building permit is unavailable there [in the south Hebron hills]." The preceding day three Israeli peace activists and two internationals, including CPTer Sally Hunsberger, joined approximately fifty Palestinians in working on their land near Imneizil. The Palestinian men, women and children planted 600 olive trees in fields that they had been afraid to walk on for the past four years due to threats of settler violence. During the action, soldiers and settlers watched from a distance, but did not interfere with the tree planting.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, please visit: the CPT website

© Independent Catholic News 2007

A house, a family, a home.

SINCE arriving in Canberra I have been staying at the house of the Radclyffe family, in Ainslie, just a short ride from the city centre and from the university. The deal was hooked up for me by my friend Sarah, because she is wonderful. The house's residents currently number six. There is a dog named Lucy. There is a cat named P.C. There is a guy named Ed and his girlfriend named Kat. And there is Jane, the mother, a warm faced woman of about 60, who teaches English to refugees and migrants, mostly kids and women from Sudan and Sierra Leone. She also sometimes teaches French and Japanese. And there is Ted, her husband, a small man with a tight face and white hair and a blurred tattoo on his inner arm. Ted used to be a public servant, now works as a contractor, something to do with passports. All this info I was given by Sarah on a special piece of paper before I left Perth, a short introduction to the family. They, and their house, are some of the very best things about my short time in Canberra thus far.

-

ON the front verge there is a vintage car, a light pink Dodge with two surfboards strapped to the roof, and there is a beautifully restored silver and blue full-length antique bus. In the driveway; two more buses, one massive green and cream double-decker which looks like it belongs in some 1930s Superhero comic, the other smaller, blue and red and decorated with Trailer Park Trash stickers and an exhaust-burnt dolls head on the tow-ball. This bus has been converted into a living space and is therefore the mobile residence of Kat, she who is the girlfriend of Ed (the son), has piercings in both nostrils and is from Tasmania. Ed is a musician and this week Kat and he have been in Melbourne while he was being filmed on some new show called "Australia's Got Talent!" so I haven't really spent much time with them yet. Also in the yard is a motorbike that Ted rides to work, another restored Dodge with bench seats and some tiki figurines on the dash, a noseless mini minor which has been converted into a trailer, an old engine or two, and a fair amount of junk. Also: there is a vegetable garden, there is a murky pond rimmed with stones, there is a hills hoist, there is a plastic hose transporting run-off from the washing machine into the garden, there are two wooden hives, flecked with swirling bees.

I am currently bedded in the granny flat, which is out back of the house as well. The flat is joined to the garage and a shed, which until late last year was the space in which Ted was constructing a small aeroplane from a kit he got from the United States. It took him seven years to build it, but its finished now, and hes been travelling two hours each way once a week to fly it around a bit ("It looks pretty unique up there on the tarmac" he tells me, "all those other planes are nothing but caravans with wings, all painted perfect white with stripes. Mine might not be like theirs, its all hand-painted, red and silver, but thats the effect I was going for, and it's the way I like it".) This weekend he is flying it to the coastal town where he and Jane have a holiday house so that in the future he can stay longer on the coast, and just fly back to Canberra for work. "At least once" he says. "I just want to do that at least once, y'know, to say I've done it".

Inside the granny flat there is a small fridge, a tv, a microwave, two burners and a bathroom which has a floorspace measuring about 1m x 2.5m, including the shower. There is also a Telstra rented telephone, as well as an old black telephone without any dial on it, just a silver crank you would use to contact the operator in order to place a call. I thought this was a showpiece only, until it rang with two short bursts the other night. I didn't answer, thinking it must have been hooked up to the main line inside the house, but a few minutes later Ted came knocking on the door. "Dincha hear the phone?" he asked "I was tryin ta ask you if you wanted to come in for some dinner, or a beer". Apparently inside the house there is another vintage phone, hooked up as a direct line through to the one sitting plump on my bedside table. An old-world intercom.

Inside, Ted tells me how he brews his own beer, in order to save money on Reeche's, which is otherwise the only beer he'll drink. He tells me his plans to go to the following night to the club. ("They raffle a meat tray on Fridays. Not many people go down for it, so I think I'm in with a chance"). He discusses his hatred of pumpkin ("Ah, I just don't think we should eat orange vegetables. I mean I don't really mind pumpkin in a soup. Or a pie. Or a garbage dump".) At 6.30pm he turns on SBS World News. Asking my age he puts my data into the Nielsen TV ratings tracking device they have hooked up. I become a statistic. Every morning at 2.15am on the dot the stats of who-was-watching-what,-when for the day gone are sent by modem, causing a single trill of the telephone throughout the house. "We try to stick in who's watching as accurately as we can," Ted says. "You can cheat it if you like, trick 'em about how many people are watching. But what's the point?"

Jane brings out some dinner and the three of us watch the news. The two of them moan and grumble whenever Bush or Howard are mentioned, but its whenever David Hicks is discussed that they start exclaiming at the screen. "Bring the poor fella home!" cries Jane. "Oh, they will, you wait and see," predicts Ted. "Right before the election, they'll whisk him outta there. You wait and see." After dinner and the news are over Ted flips through the channels. "Ah, what is this?! SHIT-HALF-HOUR?! That's what we call this Chris, when they don't have anything to show of value. So all we get is shit."

I excuse myself (something tells me Ted is going to sit and flick through the shit anyway) and head back to the little flat out the back, where I find three Daddy Longleg spiders in the kitchenette. I clamber onto the bed with a massive round of Afghan bread and three tubs of dip - red pepper, smoky eggplant and Persian chickpea; I tear the bread in chunks and dab . I dance around the flat a while to the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, I watch the West Wing on ABC, I do some readings for International Relations Theory. Outside I can hear a possum growling and wheezing like some terrible monster, and then a sudden fight, and a clatter, and then silence. The night hangs close and heavy around my little shack. I am asleep before midnight.

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THIS arrangement was meant to be temporary, while I scouted the city for a room to suit my needs and budget. But, this is Canberra, and therefore this is almost impossible. The city is flooded with students, the (liveable) cheap rooms near the uni have been claimed. I looked at a room in a house the other day whose two other tenants are currently taking each other to court - she's a miniature Russian woman called Dino (who I thought was a feminine Asian man until I was corrected by two others who had also been to see the room before me - apparently we've all been covering the same ground, all us new arrivals) who likes meditating but never cooks, only microwaves, and requests that tenants scrub the shower (in their private en-suite) down after every time they use it - while he is a one-eyed drug user who lives out the back and doesn't trust anyone to touch his stuff, so while thats where my room would have been had I taken the house (haha!) I couldn't actually see that particular room today, because he was apparently in a bad mood. What's confusing is that despite their feud when I arrived Dino was delivering him a salad.

Anyway, after explaining this particular househunt experience to Ted and Jane they warmly offered for me to move more permanently into their house, outta the granny flat and into the spare room inside the house, once they've cleared some clutter out of the way. So this place, this house with its TV watching monitoring system and its stacks of banjos and guitars and cobwebbed books and antique telephones and cars and buses and its mannequins with sailors caps, and its tiki masks and Buddha heads and its cat and its dog and its possums and its smell of possum shit in the rafters, this place is, for the next four months, going to be my home.

The Pull of the Bush

Rising up out of Sawyer's Valley the highway careens at almost the level of the treetops. The forest sprawls out, a shawl over the dry land. It is an honour to see it from this level. The air tunneling through the two front windows makes the car shake. I am driving at 100 km/h and I am listening to "The Dreaming" by Kate Bush, and I am singing loudly and the sky is large and baby blue above me.

See the light bounce off the rocks to the sand.

I break, and the trailer (heavy with the luggage of twenty-six newly arrived CISV teens who themselves are carving crushes and hopes and impressions on each other in the bus just behind me) jolts the car forward as if being toyed with by a hidden magnet. An old wooden train carriage in a small paddock. The rust tin roofs. On the road's edge I pass a car crash memorial; plastic flowers scattered in murky jars on the gravel and a Metallica flag hugging the death tree, refusing to let it forget its charges.

At the turnoff I get out to open the sheep gate; unclipping the chain, throwing the two gates swinging, barefeet on the red stones, Kate Bush spilling out across the yellow grass. I have been listening to this album on repeat the whole way from the city and its beautiful, its perfect. In the bus windows Scandinavian and North American faces are pushed to the glass, anxiously staring at their new temporary life. There is a rattle in the bonnet of the car. The patriotic SHOOSH of wind in the eucalypts. Its nice to drive in one certain direction. It feels like home.

See the light ram through the gaps in the land.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Går å Norge

In 2007, I'm going to live in Norway.

All these photos of Norway are from Fecal Face dot com, and are by Corey Arnold

State of My Life Address, 8th December 2006

A. Today I have lived for exactly 26 years, which means I am no longer classified, formally, as "youth". I have been alive for 9496 days.

B. I am currently living in an old terrace house, which I share with two girls, Jess and Laura. The house has the word MENAI printed on its front facade, above the roof of the front porch. The Menai were the Greek goddesses of the lunar months, the fifty daughters of Selene (the Moon) and Endymion, the king of Elis and Olympia. They each represented one of the fifty lunar months of the four year Olympiad. I have the third room as you progress from the front door, down the hallway. My bedroom is fairly full of items, clothes, books, boxes, cds and other items. On the walls there are 42 postcards, a chart with the letters of the Arabic alphabet, a large diagram of the skeletal system, a reprint of an old map of Australia (missing Tasmania), 24 prints of drawings by Marcel Dzama which are attached to metal rods with bulldog clips, a framed poster advertising a 2003 Mount Eerie/Mountain Goats/Baptist Generals concert in Anacortes, Washington, six small black frames containing Chinese paper-cut characters, and a reproduction print of a 1936 promotional poster for the Palestinian Tourist Association. My bedspread is navy blue with a very fine pin stripe and my bed linen is black. My house is in Lake Street, which is geographically in Northbridge, but technically counted as Perth (because of strange jig-jagged urban zoning) which is the state capital of Western Australia, Australia.

C. I am currently in bed, with my computer on my lap, a wonderful breeze coming through my window and the occasional light spindrift from the thin mist of summer rain hitting my bare shoulders. I am listening to Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. There is soft light from a paper lantern. It is after 1.00am on December 8th and I am tired, having worked ten hours today over a 13 hour period.

D. I am also hungry. In the last 24 hours I have eaten: 1 x bowl of Wild Berry Fruity Bix with milk; many chocolates while in a three hour meeting at work; a Bean Burger with chili cream from Retro Betty's Burgers in Oxford Street, Leederville and two fairly old mini chocolate muffins which were home-made by my boss, Sharon. I was planning to go to the Moon cafe for dinner after work but then I had emails to write and this thing to write, so hungry I remain. This is a common pattern for me - I am terrible at keeping myself in supply of three balanced meals a day. Despite this I currently weigh 70 kilograms and I am 182 cms tall, making my body mass index 21.1, which is healthy enough, apparently.

E. I currently have two paid jobs (bookstore, out-of-school care centre), one smooth alabaster 1.83GHz Macbook, one dental filling, no pets. I am borrowing a car from Gene Eaton, who is in Europe, for a couple of weeks, but usually I ride my bike almost everywhere. My favourite ride is from Leederville to home when its a beautiful still night and the road is empty of traffic and the Morton Bay Fig trees smell rich and pungent. My least favourite ride is around the river towards the university when the sea-breeze is blowin' right towards me and my backpack is very heavy.

F. I have earlier tonight been notified that I am one of seven Australians who have been accepted to the Peace and Conflict Studies Specialisation, as part of a Master of Arts (International Relations) at the Australian National University in Canberra and the International Peace Research Institute / Bjørknes College in Oslo, Norway in 2007. This means that (if I choose to accept) I will spend six months in Canberra from February next year, followed by a semester in Oslo and then another in Canberra. This is exciting news, but there is still a little bit of thinking to be done, as I have also been accepted for a Master of Social Science (International Development) at RMIT in Melbourne, and this also looks like a great course. That said, I think the Canberra/Oslo option is the way I am likely to go, despite the fact that pretty much the best thing our capital had going for it - the legality of fireworks - is no longer applicable.

G. I am not affiliated with any organised religions, though I believe humans should remain humble and inquisitive always, and that we have, on the whole invented a reality to frame ourselves in which is inherently corrupt, self-serving and largely arrogant, and that needs to be changed, in significant ways. I believe strongly in non-violence, but am not strictly a pacifist. I identify in particular ways with all three monotheistic religions and find myself regularly concerned with trying to help rescue Islam in particular from misunderstandings, distortions or misrepresentations. Which is kinda like trying to use a farm plough to flatten the oceans, I fully realise.

H. I currently have about 402 Australian dollars in my savings account, along with $A28.50 in my wallet. I will be paid a further $A298 later today. There's another $US10 in my desk drawer, along with coins from Colombia, Israel, Thailand and Costa Rica. I owe $A100 to my parents for a speeding fine I apparently (according to the multinova photographs) attracted a few months ago, which I have only just found out about.

I. I have been to 34 countries (Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, Philippines, Hong Kong (pre-unification), Israel, Egypt, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Spain, France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Czech Republic, Austria, Canada, USA, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina) - 35 if you count the Palestinian Territories (actually, I do).

J. I am currently the co-President of the Perth chapter of CISV - Building Global Friendships. I am a director on the National Board of CISV Australia and a trainee on the CISV International Mosaic Committee. CISV is a worldwide non profit organisation working with young people to promote peace education and cross cultural friendship. In the last 365 days I have attended three international events for this organisation - an International People's Project in Phang Nga, Thailand; the Asia Pacific Regional Workshop in Manila, Philippines and a Seminar Camp in Medellin, Colombia.

K. My appearance has changed very little since last year. Until a week ago I had a month-old moustache for reasons of charity, but it has been replaced by the regular facial hair. On my wrists are two Brazilian wish band ribbons, one green and the other red, as well as two bracelets (1x black, 1x brown) from the Colombian Amazon, made from vegetable ivory. At the moment I am otherwise naked, unless you count the doona.

L. On my birthday today (after I sleep for four hours or so) I will be rising early, going to Claremont Pool, completing a refresher training for my Aquatic Rescue certificate, coming home, sleeping a little more, going to work at the bookstore and fielding enquiries regarding the location (in our store) of this Christmas's sleeper hit(!) book title, Where's Bin Laden, which is kinda like Where's Waldo/Wally but, like, with Osama instead of big Wal, which, wow, how clever, don't you think Carrie will think this is hilarious, what a perfect Xmas pressie, maybe I'll get one for Rebecca too, but is it her sense of humour, oh yeah sure, why not, get three etc. Also: I will eat cake.

M. I am currently reading The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. The last DVD I hired and watched was The L Word Season 2 Disc 1. The last gig I went to was Jason Molina at the Rosemount Hotel. The last girl I kissed will have to remain nameless this year, as I am fairly confident she would prefer it that way.

N. I do not currently have a girlfriend, I am not dating anybody, I am not engaging in repeated casual sexual relations with anybody and I do not have any crushes of significance. I am aiming to seperate the intimate and the sexual into two different spheres, and feel mostly like they would best be coming from mutually exclusive sources at this point rather than combined into the package of a single romantic relationship. And, in fact, the sexual I am putting aside as much as possible for as long as possible, so to concentrate almost exclusively (or at least increasingly) on the intimate (ie: close friendships, without lies or fictions). I need this.

O. I have a goal to speak English, French, Spanish and Arabic fluently by 2014 - there has been little progress on this plan in the last year, and while I have refreshed my Spanish brain while in Colombia and maybe added a bit of knowledge in this area I have carelessly lost a lot of the Arabic I gained in 2005. I plan to concentrate on the Spanish in 2007 and also add to this a devoted one year goal to getting some Norwegian under my wing, should I actually come to live there. Sommerfugl = butterfly or, literally, "summerbird". I hope!

P. I have never taken mind-altering or hallucinogenic drugs, I have never smoked cigarettes, I have never been drunk and I have never drunk coffee. I do eat meat though, and I eat a lot of sugar.

Q. Often, recently, I have felt so distanced from people and from the world and from all the values and opinions and lifestyles and reactions and emotions that humans seem to have, that at times I have ended up feeling almost invisible. Sometimes this makes me feel angry, sometimes very sad. Sometimes it makes me feel resolute and strong and gives me direction - sometimes it thrashes me down and renders me completely directionless. Sometimes I don't understand people so much I want to scream and melt. That said, there are a selection of people I am fortunate enough to know and love who just seem so ready to change everything, just teetering there, just on the ridge of great things, or, actually, possibly already achieving them right now, right under my nose, and I'm just not noticing properly while I'm focusing too much on all the people who aren't. These people, these people who swirl around me and perform brilliantly, and who we are all blessed to live alongside, I also sometimes feel invisible in their world, ghost-like and shadowed, but at the same time, they are and they will always be a constant inspiration and source of wonder to me.


State of My Life Address 2005 (25 years)