This month’s Spiral Times radio show on Refuge Worldwide is about life in the Occupied West Bank as told through street and bus recordings, songs and voices of grassroots cultural centers run by and for refugee communities in the camps.
Over two hours you will hear lots of different kinds of Palestinian music, noise and opinions, and the sound of life going in a place where everything is being done to try and crush it.
Listen here ~ The Spiral Times - Sounds of Sumud
I tried to recreate the sound and sensation of climbing a vertical road up a mountain past a checkpoint in a packed minibus while a bonkers song that has no start and no end blasts and multiple lads are having a serious dance-off ...using only my very questionable quality iPhone recordings, and made some new ‘songs’ from bits too.
I was lucky enough to conduct interviews with Milad Al Hayek, community worker at Dheisheh Refugee Camp's Ibda'a Center, Lubnah Shomali, Unit Head at BADIL, the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and Tia Odeh, a formidable 14 year old young woman who dances dabke with a group based in the Lajee Center in Aida Refugee Camp.
The first day I met Tia, she saw me taking that photo of the boys and chastised me with a grin. As they attempted ever more precarious wheelies on their bikes up against the apartheid wall she tutted. “Ignore them! They only do that to get girls’ attention.”
An hour later, after dancing and cake, she and her friends were gathered on of the Lajee Center’s balconies watching soldiers approach the boys. I rushed out in a panic, recalling with a wave of nausea how Mohammed had been shot in the face with a rubber bullet from the same balcony. Before I could make the foolish mistake of attempting to offer instructions to this gaggle of girl geniuses and lifelong experts in risk assessing the mood of an occupying army, my face must have said something. She reached her hands out onto my forearms. “Don’t be scared. They practice on us. It’s target practice.”
A month later, Tia and I meet again in the theatre in a union building in Dublin. She is there as part of the Lajee dance group’s ‘Cultural Tour’ of Ireland, thanks in no small part to the heroic odyssey slash charm offensive undertaken by Irish comrade MK, who helped secured them rare visas needed to leave. Resplendent in traditional dress instead of the usual ripped skinny jeans, Tia beams, and by way of a greeting, hands me a tiny wooden key ring in the shape of Palestine.
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Thank you for listening.
Postscript - October Rising
Over the last two weeks things have taken a turn in the West Bank, with some (mostly journalists outside Palestine, it should be said) calling it a third intifada. The dimensions and terrain could not be more different, not least the role of the PA in ‘managing’ the occupation and coordinating security with the occupation.
Which brings me to Nablus. This ancient place has a history of refusal and resistance going back millenia to when they refused to pay tithes to the Ottoman Empire. Now it is home to The Lions’ Den, the most established and well-known of the newest generation of resistance brigades grown up in the last year. They have foregone the factional affiliation to any one political party of previous armed groups, replacing stagnant infighting of armed wings with a broad church of guerilla tactics and it must be noted, an unparalleled social media game. Their profile and activities have only intensified since a core commander, the 18 year old Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, was killed in August, three days after our visit to the old city. Every morning there are new names. The impact and brutality of collective punishment of an eighteen day siege on the city increases. Targeted assassinations against other members started first with raids then drones and now aerial bombs, the first time these weapons have been deployed in the West Bank since the Al-Aqsa Intifada twenty years ago (thus far having been the reserved for the residents of Gaza.) This is a bleak milestone in the ramping up of deadly aggression on West Bank Palestinians.
A telegram group shares translations of statements made by the Lions and the other resistance battalions that have formed in their image, most of whom have grown up in refugee camps. Target practice. Enigmatic lads with a uniform of Under Armour and pomaded hair, M16s and a mission from God, as Gen-Z-to-millenials these brigades are also in possession of a strong grasp of trolling: one such statement refers to the IOF as ‘the Pampers Army’ and—in response to the Shin Bet making boasts about shutting down the Lions’ social media accounts and tracking them using Pegasus—another just says: ‘We don’t even have TikTok.’
Trying to stay informed yet stay sane via DM and recieving news only via social media is a darkly psychedelic experience. Pixels degrade in their reposting, a loop of gunshots gives way to fever pitch grief, the steel in the eyes of every mother. Alhamdulillah throught gritted teeth, wet face. Swaddled corpse. I start to lose count. Last night, one reel showed a crowd of hundreds reverse as one, right back up the hospital steps, when a faint pulse is dictated in the neck of the commander held aloft above their heads. Already on his funeral stretcher. Already tightly wrapped inside his flag. It was not to be. Wadie al-Houh ascended. His sisters describe their relationship as ‘like fingers to a hand.’ A video of his winking smile goes viral on Twitter. His comrade, severely wounded, all four limbs wrapped in bandages, has been driven to his graveside on the open back of a Jeep. He is filmed as he wails out. “On God, my brother, we will return.” Then another man scoops him up like a baby and carries him away.
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