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A
week in Al-Amari (refugee camp)
While
in Jerusalem, I was invited to spend ten days with a family
living in Al-Amari refugee camp, near the city of Ramallah,
West Bank, Palestine. I went there alone and in a very ‘personal
capacity’, introduced to the family by a friend who
took me there and then returned to the Holy city.
Al-Amari
rests a few hundreds meters away from the security fence and
the Israeli checkpoint of Qalandia. The guarded crossing point
separating Ramallah and the West Bank from the metropolitan
district of Jerusalem covers a large area with parking lots
and buildings which make this place look like a customs between
two countries. On its way from Jerusalem to Ramallah, past
the checkpoint, bus number 18 stops just in front of Al-Amari
camp, which lies on the left hand of the road leading to the
centre of the city. There are no signs indicating its presence.
Just like
any refugee camps in Palestine, Al-Amari has gone from temporary
accommodation attached for practical reasons to the closest
urban centre, to permanent suburb connected to the general
urban outfit. As I would later discover, locals say they live
at Al-Amari, Balata, Shuffat, dropping the term ‘refugee
camp’ or ‘camp’, somehow suggesting reception
of the idea that what was once a temporary condition has become
and a permanent one; however, the inhabitants also like to
remind where they come from, Lydda or Ramleh or Jaffa, today
Israeli cities, suggesting the resident’s lasting consciousness
that their present condition is the result of the expulsions
from the cities of partitioned Palestine in 1948. As of today,
in Al-Amari there are 7000 people.
Unlike
what the term ‘camp’ might suggest, there are
no tents in Al-Amari - as well as in any other refugee camp
in Palestine -, but houses in concrete or bricks. Likewise,
houses are mostly unpainted, a sluggish mass of grey which
makes it easy to instantly recognise a refugee camp from the
distance. Buildings are generally little and maladroit, sprawling
accidentally along the camp’s Main Road, - the ‘avenue’
which tights the camp together - in a dedalus of narrow alleys
and whacked streets.
At the
beginning of the Main Road, the U.N.R.W.A. centre is usually
found. Formed by a school, a leisure camp for children and
a few offices, UNRWA centres are administered by Palestinians
employed by the UN as local contractors; they are easily recognisable
by the Punto with bold UN insignia that they drive. Past the
UNRWA centre and along the Main Road, there are houses and
small shops. In Al-Amari there are three groceries, a butcher’s,
three (!) barber’s shops, a tearoom, a one-roomed bubbling
falafel bistrot, two internet points, one billiard room and
a videogames’ one, a mechanic, and a taxi service.
My host,
a guy called Adam, owns the taxi service. He lives with his
wife, his parents, his three brothers and wives, and many
gambolling children in a three floored house at the top of
the Main Road. This house was my home for the week I spent
at Al-Amari. Adam’s home is indisputably ruled by his
mother. From a sofa in the living room, Fatima dispenses orders
to the household, women, men and children alike; and to myself.
The cooking, the cleaning, and the healing; the quarrels,
the finances, and the children’s cries; the marriages,
the crisis and the family’s public relations, all hinge
around the authority of this old woman, a refugee from Haifa
and from Gaza, whose advices, orders, and forbids echoes loud
and clear through the pulsating rooms.
Unsurprisingly,
Adam, 26, recently-married, and I spend most of the day outside,
at his office. His ‘company’ is formed of Adam
himself and two other friends. The office is made of a single
room with a telephone which works but never rings. In front
of it, there is a barber’s shop; the barber, Ahmed,
is a gentle and quite man of 25 and one of Adam’s best
friends.
During
the week I stayed in the ‘camp’, I had two hair
cuts. The reason why I had two hair cuts in seven days is
that there is not much to do in Al-Amari. There is no work
to do and no money to spend. And, besides Ramallah, there
is no place to go. What I did was talking, playing with children,
smoking countless cigarettes, drinking coffee after coffee,
tea after tea, marameye after marameye, linger with people
in the street, receive friends, pay visits to friends, catch
any excuse to kill the time. Very soon, I found out that in
a refugee camp there is nothing else to do.
After
a couple of days of life in the camp, I spent a full day in
Jerusalem. Prevented to enter the Holy City since 2000 for
security reasons, Adam and his friends could not accompany
me; we agreed we would meet up again in the evening. However,
when the time came to go back ‘home’ to Al-Amari,
I reckon I did not want to leave Jerusalem. I knew that friends
and a good meal were waiting for me, but I felt I was under
normal conditions and I just did not want to go back to that
sort of prison. The prospective of another empty day made
me sick.
Dependent
as I was on my host and his friends, I was living inside an
envelope, sealed off, suffocating. I could move freely only
inside Ramallah. Wherever else I elected to go in the West
Bank, I needed to cross a military checkpoint; but according
to the colour of the ID my hosts held – blue, orange,
green etc…- , we could go only to certain areas and
cities, south or north of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which is 15
minutes away by car, was simply out of the question. Whatever
the business or commerce we wanted to carry out, the study
we wanted to pursue, we needed either the proper ID card or
permissions by the ruling military authority. In addition,
the people I was hanging out with were damn scared of any
checkpoints; many of them, who actually had the right to cross
the checkpoint, refused to do so fearing they could be arrested
for ‘irregularities’ in their documents or for
routine ‘security controls’; others just could
not stand being questioned and searched, and preferred staying
home.
In the lengthy talks I had, Adam and his friends made no mystery
that they hate life in Al-Amari. They all said they wanted
to leave, to go with me to Italy and Europe. ‘We want
our life but there is no way we can get it here. We want to
leave this place. We can’t do anything’. ‘What
would you do if you were in my shoes?’ he asked. What
would I do if I were in Adam’s shoes?
I felt
in a prison in Al-Amari and I wanted to leave. I left. Yes,
people were nice, talking was interesting and food was great,
yet the likes of Adam and his friends are just wasting their
best years. Yes, Palestinians are nice, are hospitable, yet
they are painfully unhappy. Their life is long, empty talks,
limitless cigarettes. After a week I grew sick of Al-Amari
and its sickening sights. I could not stand even the thought
that people of my age had spent their youth there, that they’ll
probably spend their life there, and that their children will
grow up in the same anguish.
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