A Taize Reflection: Why not giving a sß!t is not a good enough reason to get along

In the study of history we like to celebrate the overcoming of divisions and inequalities. Whether it is the improvement of women's rights, the overcoming of racial divisions, or a greater acceptance of homosexuality, we like to think we have made some progress in moving past some of the unjust divisions over the past 10 years. And we have. While one could readily point out that there are still significant divisions in society, a quick dip into New Zealand history will show that we have come a long way. It seems awfully cynical to say we have made no progress at all ( though whether the same could be said of economic divisions, or our own complete detachment from the earth, seems less certain).

How do we become a society of less conflict and greater tolerance of each other? It seems to me that one of the key causes of division is passion. Our own concerns about difference stem from our own passions and convictions; our community, our nation, our religion, our identity, our values. True, some prejudices are just ignorant - a 10 year old boy might decide a girl has cooties because his friend said so, or he might think someone from another religion is bad because his parents said so - and sometimes we might just simply be afraid of something or someone a bit unknown. But often it can be the attachment we have to own culture that can lead us to critique other cultures, the devotion we have to our own religion that leads us to dismiss another faith, the deeply seated values we have that provokes us to deny gay marriage. I think this can often lead us to be skeptical about passions and concerns, as they too often appear to divide people. So too, the answer to many divisions often tends to be an encouragement to stop caring about things so much. Thus the central premise of A Brave New World; a perfectly peaceful and harmonious world, found precisely in the fact that nobody has any attachments to or deeply felt feelings about anyone or anything. But this raises a question; isn't passion a good thing?

Boney M's answer to the problem of racism was essentially to dissolve race altogether. Black, white, brown, pale, dark; the answer to racial divisions is to dissolve race altogether and make everyone look the same. Similar arguments seemed to take place over the gay marriage bill. Many (not all) devoted to the concept of heterosexual marriage found it hard to find room for a definition of marriage that included homosexual union. The argument against this was generally bewilderment that somebody could take heterosexual marriage so seriously; 'who cares' was often the best argument that could be given in response - particularly from Christians in fact (the few that supported the bill anyway). The fact that New Zealanders so greatly celebrated Maurice Williamson's speech seems indicative of this kind of thinking within New Zealand culture. I'm not saying people just found it funny (fair enough); people celebrated it. All the man did was get up and say he couldn't believe why anybody would be remotely concerned about the bill (after taking some potshots at fundamentalists - the easiest targets in the world). He suggested people should stop caring so much, given that the world would not explode should the bill go through. If that's the only ethical category we have then I guess we shouldn't care about anything, except perhaps climate change. I can hear people say he was just being funny; if that's the case we should have a good laugh before turning to the next person to provide us with a slightly more meaningful point, rather than celebrating Maurice Williamson as ushering in a new era of tolerance. Contrast this with Louisa Wall, who took the concerns of the many within the pacific community very seriously. She sought to listen to and seriously address the views of others, while offering her own thoughtful and detailed argument about why she was promoting the bill.  Who had the better argument here? the one who was pushed on by her interpretation of human rights and her research into disturbing suicide statistics linked to feelings of innate error and social exclusion, or the one who said 'hey you guys who care about heterosexual marriage - stop caring so much!' 

The problem with the latter approach is that, while seeking to create a certain kind of unity, it only creates other divisions. If we make unconcern the primary basis on which to create ethical change, and we fail to understand or even listen to those who are concerned, then we leave the latter group alienated and hurt. Furthermore, we dis-empower people from making truly ethical decisions; if we are left with a choice of either acceptance of others built around not caring or a feeling of being divisive by retaining a sense of concern for traditional values or ideas, then not only will we slowly become passionless people, but we will allow traditional values and ideas to become stagnant and archaic. 

I'm not saying it's essential you care about everything. You may not care about Gay marriage, and that is quite fair enough. I, for one, find it difficult to care less about denominational difference within Christianity, an issue which has led to wars in the past. But I don't see my lack of concern as the answer to an ecumenical church (an approach I have heard many take before). Rather, I would follow Taize's lead in creating a thoughtful and ethically sound rational for why Christian unity is essential for the future of the church. Such an approach doesn't dismiss passionate Catholics and passionate Anglicans, it simply offers a reason for why they may be even more passionate about greater unification between the two. Rather than seeking to suck passion from people, it seeks to trump it altogether. It is unity built on passion. Unification does not lie in dissolving concern for one's denomination and tradition, it lies in emphasising how much more unified we are in Christ. Such a perspective does not render tradition as unimportant. Indeed, part of the way unification can be achieved is by sharing stories of our traditions and our differences. This is precisely what Louisa Wall did - rather than dismissing people's values and traditions as irrelevant, she sought to provide reasons why marriage equality was of great ethical importance. One may disagree with those reasons, but at least there was a conversation.

Icons at Taize

Taize Church

Hearing each others stories and thus our passions is an important step toward unity. At times we may even believe we have greater differences than points in common, but that we simply need to find a way to coexist anyhow. In examples where differences are so pronounced and coexistence, let alone unity, seems impossible, hearing each others stories seems a good place to start. There are so many examples where convictions and passions lead to conflict. However, the solution is not to give up our convictions and passions, for that seems the worst possible method of unity. Rather, we need to create a forum in which convictions and passions are listened to. We may well not care about difference, but we cannot expect that of everyone, nor should we. We need to be more thoughtful in our quest to reduce conflict and division in our world. 

Taize is a special place. The most ecumenical place I have ever been to. This has been achieved by some of the most thoughtful ecumenical theology I have ever read and witnessed, not a dissolution of tradition. 

Saying goodbye to Taize (and Bauke) before hopping on the bikes

To the West

Turkey is a strange country. Poised between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, its hard to know just what continent it belongs to. Still, it felt decidedly more Western than Iraqi Kurdistan, and so felt like a return to a culture we were more familiar with upon arrival. Leaving Kurdistan behind felt unusual. I was surprised by how seamlessly I shifted back into the Western swing of things, seemingly forgetting than I had spent the previous 5 months in countries located in the Middle East. Remembering the people I had left behind in Kurdistan and the uncertain future they faced also left me with feelings of confusion and guilt.I continued to keep a close eye on the news, and events continued to get worse, particularly in the Nineveh province.

The old city of Istanbul is small, and so felt familiar upon arrival, even though I had only spent one night there previously. Istanbul is of course huge, and I have heard from more than one person that it takes months to discover all the city has to offer. We stayed in a backpackers with beautiful, albeit steep and plentiful, stone steps. In fact, I proceeded to slip down the steps on numerous occasions, one time even managing to hit the side of my neck on a chair at the bottom. The hostel manager became greatly concerned for my well being, as he would often hear a loud noise and then find me appear in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs in front of reception.

We flew out of Istanbul and arrived in Manchester. I had never been to the UK or Europe before, so it was quite new and adventurous for me. At first, everything just sounded like a giant television (I guess that's kinda sad to admit), and I felt like I had cricket commentators to the left of me and Coronation Street actors to the right of me. A couple of trains later the same day found us in Durham, and myself in a small theological library fairly much equivalent to Knox library in Dunedin reading William Cavanaugh's book on Globalisation, Being Consumed.    

Lindisfarne in England

Scotland is a beautiful place, although the temperature north of Edinburgh seems incapable of rising above 20 degrees. I, as usual, overestimated my ability to navigate new terrain without a map, and twisty roads made compass reliance a poor option. We drove along the edge of the Isle of Skye and walked the rolling hills in search of touristy rock formations, which we could never work out if we had found or not. After a week in Scotland we traveled south to Leeds, where any small ideas lurking in the far reaches of my mind about getting a tattoo were left in ashes (Brazil's World Cup dreams were burnt to a crisp around the same time). Mega Bus then drove us to London, where my expectations were to meet the Queen, be overwhelmed by the size of the city, and be stabbed. I wasn't stabbed, I didn't even see the Queen, but I was quite overwhelmed with city-ness. 

Scotland

Isle of Skye

Lunch at Lochness. No monster.

My continental journey began in Belgium, where I caught up with friends, drank some good beer, and got to know some anarchists dedicated to squatting in protest to the absurd amount of empty buildings in Brussels. Heading to the stunning but extremely touristy location of Bruges was quite a contrast, but I was fortunate enough to have some friends house-sitting nearby who could pick me up and take me to the country to witness significant electrical storms and almost exercise a dog to death. After a brief excursion to attend my sisters wedding in New Zealand I returned to Paris to ebb and flow with the river of tourists before heading to Taize, a place I had long wanted to visit. I was not to be disappointed. 

The Trappist monks know how to make a good beer.

Don't be lured into this shop, no matter how good the cookies look.

Perfect timing arriving in Bruges.

Sacre Couer in Paris.

Paris at night

Onto the bike and down to Taize

 

Leaving Kurdistan

Call me crazy, and many people did, but I decided to get another bus back to Istanbul when it came time to depart Duhok. It had been a long, grueling 24 hour bus ride in, but hey, if I could do it once I could do it again. And one saved far too much money busing over flying to pass it up. I wasn't traveling alone this time either - Sonya was traveling with me.

Although well protected by the Peshmerga and at this stage outside the boundary of ISIS's new Islamic Utopia, Kurdistan was beginning to feel a wee bit apocalyptic in the final days I was there. Petrol was becoming scarce, which was difficult for an oil driven society. Transport prices had doubled overnight, and queues for petrol pumps were half a day long. Many were packing up and leaving, and there was a tense feeling in the air. Sonya had finished her teaching job just that afternoon, and we quickly did a final pack up and headed to the bus stop.

Kurdistan seems to have a 'save face' culture. That means that people do not want to disappoint you to your face, and are prepared to make matters considerably worse to avoid this. So when we went to the Chizre Nuh bus office and asked if we could catch the Best Van Tours bus there the office worker happily said 'yes'. When we continued to wait  an hour after it was due we started to get worried. When other buses we could have caught sailed past and the office worker continued to ensure us our bus was just "15 minutes" away, we started to get suspicious. Hmmm, will this office worker always say "in 15 minutes" even when no such bus is coming? At what awkward stage will this whole fiasco be revealed. We decided to take action. Thankfully a bus driver who spoke German (many Kurdish people spent time in Europe during Saddam's totalitarian regime) strolled in. Sonya spoke German, and so we seized the opportunity to figure out what the hell was going on. A few frustrated sentences were translated, and a few accidental references to boobs instead of buses were made (the German is very similar), but suffice to say we soon manged to find ourselves on a bus - a real, actual bus - traveling direct to Istanbul.

Waiting 6 hours at a bus station is a poor prelude to a 24 hour bus ride. However, during the time I managed to make some new friends who were also waiting for a bus. Stepping out for some air I was invited to eat seeds with a group of fine Turkish gentlemen, some of whom spoke Turkish, some Kurdish, some a bit of English, some a bit of Arabic. It was confusing working out who spoke what, and what language I should butcher in the attempt to communicate, but we got by. Before long they were my new best friends and we were having a great old time. The club was male only, so poor Sonya wasn't invited.

It was only about an hour drive to the Kurdistan border, at which point Sonya, myself, and my new best friends would have to get off and go through border customs. It had taken two hours to get through the border coming into Kurdistan, but it would take a lot more time getting out. Border customs in Kurdistan essentially consists of a large car park where buses line up awaiting their turn. It takes about an hour per bus, and there were about 10 buses ahead of us, so I foresaw ahead of time that we were going to be waiting for a while. We passed the time by walking around the car park, finding cups of tea and sleeping on cardboard boxes (the 10 hours spanned the evening starting about 10pm). Finally our turn came. It was then I learned the answer to that well known pub quiz question, "Which country should you not try to leave on an expired visa." That's right, the answer is, Iraqi Kurdistan. My visa was a day expired, or two days after the long car park wait, and although I had been assured by some officials in Duhok that this was fine, the border control decided differently. Referring to a system that did not exist but was progressively created by whatever strange idea popped into their head at the time, border control sent me upstairs to talk to the most unofficial and unaware person they could find. The unofficial official asked me where I had obtained my visa. I replied the city I was living in - Duhok. Putting two and two together he decided I therefore needed to return to Duhok to sort it out. At this point it was 5am. The thought of attempting to find a way back to Duhok, find a place to stay, somehow arrange a meeting with some official visa person, have them confirm that the visa was indeed expired, finding another bus back to the border and sitting through another 10 hour wait at the border, did not appeal to me. Although I could not speak the language well enough to explain this, my body language gave certain hints. Thankfully an alternate arrangement was reached that involved a $100 bill I had.

I had held up my entire bus while this fiasco was taking place, who were stuck waiting for me back in the car park. It was an incredible relief to be walking back to the bus, and I was met with a chorus of questions from my new bus amigos. "Jon, what happened?" I sat down and explained it all in a medley of simple English and broken Arabic, and we boarded the bus. We progressed slowly through the border over the next 3 or 4 hours, which mainly involved more milling around on the Turkish side before we were finally through. Only a 22 hour bus ride across Turkey to go. It all seemed like peanuts after the border crossing. We arrived in Istanbul tired but happy and crashed onto our hostel beds, 40 hours after we had first arrived at the bus stop. Istanbul; the crossroad between the Middle East and Europe.          

Kurdistan Trilogy: Part 3

How is it that Saddam Hussein managed to stay in power for so long? 25 years in all. What was his secret, in the wake of a history that witnessed a new Iraqi leader every year or two? Iraqi governments have never really managed to go beyond an obsessive focus on maintaining their own power, to the point where any seeming link between the common Iraqi citizen and the government seemed non-existent. Corruption, sectarianism and an ever shifting patronage system seem the hallmark of Iraqi political history, not to mention coups and resignations. How is it that Saddam managed to secure his position for such a substantial period of time?

The answer is simple. No other leader was able to set up such a robust system of patronage and fear. In other words, no leader was as cunning and ruthless as Saddam in securing his position as a dictator. To be sure, he made some mind-bogglingly bad decisions, like invade countries and lose, but he always managed to hold on to power even after such failures, either by buying people off or destroying them altogether. That is of course until 2003.

It depends who you talk to which period was preferable - the brutal dictatorship of Saddam or the chaotic civil war that followed his downfall. But then, it always depends who you talk to in Iraq, given the countries sectarian divides. The Kurdish people obviously weren't fond of Saddam's regime, nor were many Shia Iraqis in the south, particularly those bold enough to question the regime. The average Sunni farmer probably didn't appreciate the crippling sanctions imposed by the United Nations in the attempt to curb Saddam's maniacal leadership, though that was probably preferable to the conditions that existed under sectarian anarchy post 2003. If you were part of Saddam's clan on the other hand, or at least within the circles of his favour, you were probably quite content.

What happened in Mosul at the beginning of June was nothing new for the Iraqi people. But for me it was new. I was 50km away from one of the most savage groups in the world. My first instinct was for the safety of myself and those close to me. Would this group come to Dohuk? Were they here in some capacity already? Would they target westerners? Should I leave now? After a couple of days of such self-absorbed thinking and relentless news watching my thinking began to shift somewhat. If this is how nervous I am, what about those who are actually in the midst of this group, unprotected from the Peshmerga? I was closer than I had ever been to such violence, but I was still a world away in comparison to others. And if this is me after two days, what about those who have had this their whole lives? Who have lost loved ones and don't know anyone who hasn't lost a loved one. How do you live like that? It was all good and well for me, in possession of a passport out of town, but what about those who were dealt such a hand that they must live their whole lives in a war-torn country? In a country in which a group like ISIS runs rampant and practices what seems like one of the purest definitions of evil one can find.

And its everywhere. Obsessive compulsive viewing of the news can only show you that such treatment of human beings is happening on a large scale. How does one actually live in a country like the Democratic Republic of the Congo? I felt like I had more of an idea than I had ever had, but that I still had no idea. The media discuss Iraq like its a big game of risk. Which is all good and well until you remember the suffering and terror involved for actual people. The Kurds are apparently the winners of the new Iraqi war. They claimed Kirkuk with great military success. The Kurds I talked to were scared and sad. They were 50km away from a group of terror. I don't like the word terrorism, but I can't begin to describe the kind of terror that a group like ISIS inflicts on the people around it.

Saddam stayed in power because he was the most successful practitioner of Iraqi politics, which is distinctly sectarian and foreign to ideas of nation state and democracy. Its not the borders drawn up by Sykes and Picot that are a problem, it the very idea of creating nation states in the Middle East in the first place, not that we can do anything about that anymore. The political situation has a long history and its complicated and its important and we can all read about it and understand it better and that's important and we can discuss different groups and who is doing what and why and who is to blame and what the solution might be. We can discuss politics. In our living rooms. 50km away from war even. But the incredible suffering of the individuals involved must never cease in being the most significant reality of the situation. We must always remember that we cower whenever we try to understand what it could be like for one of those people. 

On the 19th of July I left Kurdistan, 2 weeks after the start of the conflict.It was the date I had always intended to leave. I said goodbye to the Kurdish and expat friends I had made and got on a bus. It was a strange feeling.  

Kurdistan Trilogy: Part 2

Iraqi Kurdistan is a semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq. Is has its own military, its own parliament, and its own border security, and is about as close as you can get to being an independent country.  I had 7 weeks to spend in Iraqi Kurdistan, the kind of length that is in between visiting and settling in. Once again I would be teaching English, which of course is generally seen as one of the greater teaching needs throughout the Middle East. Unfortunately for me the Arabic I had struggled to learn and was quickly forgetting is not a greatly appreciated language in Kurdistan; though many people speak it, it is generally associated with the oppressive Arabisation that Saddam sought to inflict on the people here, and so one wins significantly more points by trying to speak Kurdish. 

The Kurdish people have very rarely lived an autonomous lifestyle. Abdullah Ocalan talks about them suffering under the Assyrian and Scythian empires, being conquered later by Alexander the Great, coming under Arab rule following the rise of Islam, being invaded by the Mongols a few centuries later, then coming under Ottoman rule in the 16th century. Britain and France are famous for redrawing borders in the middle east following World War One, and, like Palestine, the Kurdish people were largely ignored. Rather than having their own land, the Kurdish people found themselves divided between four different nations; Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. All nations sought to suppress any Kurdish hopes for independence, and some even sought to eradicate Kurdish culture altogether, forcing the people to speak the national language, whether Arabic, Persian or Turkish, and even refusing to acknowledge the existence of a separate Kurdish identity. In more recent years the Kurdish people of Iraq of course suffered a great deal under the Saddam regime.

The sun sets in Erbil

At the lake

Over the past decade the Kurdish people have carved out their own semi autonomous region consisting of three major cities; Dohuk, Erbil and Sulimania. I am living in Duhok. For a while I lived with a lovely family from America, who were preparing to pack up and leave. They were very tall and kind, and coached basketball to teenagers in Dohuk. They also had two very cute children, the younger of which I would often hear asking "where's Jonny" anytime I was in the other room, which never failed to warm my heart. Once that family returned to America I moved in with another friend I had met upon arriving in Dohuk. It just so happened he was a doctor, so I was living in a dormitory in the middle of the emergency hospital. I would often need to catch taxis back to the hospital in the evening. More than one conversation, in my limited Arabic, translated like this,
"Tawory Barushke (Barushke emergency hopital)"
"Tawory?"
"Yes"
"Doctor?"
"No. I teach english."
?
"I live in the hospital."
"Why?"
"It's my home. My friend is a doctor"  (I lately found out that what I actually said here was "I'm a house." Which would have been an even more bemusing reply).

This company is quite open about the evil roots of its desire for profit.

 

"I can think of at least two things wrong with that title."(Nelson Muntz).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sL102pyaLg

I sometimes wondered how much I fit in here with my curly dark hair and browned skin - do I simply look like a local? I asked my class about this, who said I would look like a local, but two factors made me obviously a foreigner. Number 1; I obviously care nothing about how my hair looks (which is only partly true), and number 2; I carry a backpack. No one carries backpacks here. I guess that's why some locals stare at me when I walk around. I like to think they look at my backpack and think to themselves, "good gravy, what a great idea. That's so convenient." But I doubt it. No one likes to be different here with the way they look, though most individuals can't help but express their own unique personalities.

One question my class asked me was to explain the difference between the word 'house' and 'home'. Needless to say, the entire plot of the film The Castle was shared for the remainder of the lesson. 

This shot was taken in Israel, but it is a practice common throughout the Middle East. For an area of the globe in drought for most of the year, it is amazing to see the way people use water. Cleaning concrete is an essential part of Kurdish culture too, and even though it rains once every four months here, streets often flood with puddles as people hose dust from sidewalks outside their shops or homes. Every day I see it, and every day I think of this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn4Frslsq8M&feature=kp.  Less amusingly, I also think of the wetlands I visited in Jordan, which are now exhausted of almost all the abundant lakes that one existed there. 

Kurdistan has remained safe for over ten years. The most dangerous thing I have done while in the region is drive in a taxi to neighbouring city Erbil. 180km with sporadic overtaking is never fun, especially when you sit in the middle and cannot help but see out the front window. Of course, new challenges have arisen for Kurdistan over the past week, and it is difficult to see what will happen. It's been difficult sitting and reading about what people in neighbouring areas are going through. This entry can't help but sound like lighthearted claptrap when placed alongside what is happening down the road. I might wait a while before I write about that.

Kurdistan Trilogy: Part 1

I only had one night in Istanbul, but it was enough to see what an incredible city it was. The size of the city became apparent after my bus trip from the eastern edge of the city to the city centre took over two hours. Being used to driving through rock, rock and more rock, what struck me was the amount of water and forest, along with the completely different style of architecture. Arriving at Taksim Square I then had to find myself a taxi (unfortunately I picked one with a dodgy meter which seemed to inflate standard prices by ten) to my hostel in Sultanahmet, the old city and tourist capital of Istanbul. I then proceeded to be labelled insane by the hostel manager, who turned out to be extremely nice and helpful, for only staying in Istanbul for one night. He was, of course, quite right.

Having only one night in Istanbul made it difficult to know what to see, so instead of trying to take in as many spectacular tourist attractions as I could, I instead decided to sit by the sea for a good hour next to an old man who had stopped to rest during his walk home. I did, however, also manage to fit in a good look round the famous Blue Mosque, and enjoy some Baklava with some friends I had met in Palestine.

Seaside just outside Sultanahmet

The spectacular Blue Mosque, or 'Old Blue', as one might affectionately call it.

The inner court of the Blue Mosque

Inside the Blue Mosque, enjoying some quiet time

Old Blue by night

Call me crazy, and many people did, but I decided to get a bus from Istanbul to Dohuk, my next destination, in the north of Iraq. Unfortunately for me my ipod self imploded the evening before this 25 hour bus journey (and, suspiciously, revived the day after I arrived in Dohuk...), so I was left with good movies with bad Turkish overdubs, acres and acres of scenery and The Count of Monte Cristo on Kindle. I was amazed at the poor quality of the overdubs, particularly for the film Looper. Joseph Gordan-Levitt sounded like a Turkish James Earl Jones, and Bruce Willis lost all charisma with the absence of his 'I know more about everything than anybody else around here' tone of voice. Far more well chosen were the voices for Skyfall - Judi Dench even managed to sound a little bit posh.  

During the trip I found myself crossing highways to find inconspicuous spots in order to save the lire locals charged for toilet stops along the way, more out of principal than any sort of budget restraints. I also began to fade dramatically, mourning the death of my ipod, and getting extremely agitated at the overflow of noise from the headphones of people around me. Hours 8-13 were by far the worst. After that you sort of accept your new life as a bus passenger and begin experiencing a slight numbing feeling, and could probably carry on for another 25 hours for all I know. An unceasing journey however was not my fate, and I knew we were getting close to the border when we entered into the Kurdish region of Turkey. I knew, furthermore, that we were in the Kurdish region of Turkey when the roads began to break apart, potholes emerged from all angles, and townships began to take on a much simpler village look. It was clear Turkey invested no money toward infrastructure in this region, for the rest of the country was very well developed. Kurdistan, of course, has its own long and arduous history, as complicated and sensitive as Palestine. I just knew a whole lot less about it. I guess now was a good time to learn. 

I emerged from my Theoden slumber at the Iraqi border, at which I was the only person not from Turkey or Iraq and thus the only person who had no idea what he was doing, having to rely on the irritated and extremely vague pointings of pretty much everyone - passenger and border official alike. Eventually I successfully got the stamp I needed and proceeded to enter the safest area in one of the most dangerous countries in the world; Iraqi Kurdistan. 

  

Thinking about Palestine

Why do Palestine and Israel play such a big role in the news. I heard a few people tell me while I was in Palestine that nobody cared about the Palestinian people, that everyone simply ignores the unjust political situation taking place. I can understand why one might think this, given that nothing ever seems to change and, while discussions of boycotts sometime take place in Europe, nothing ever really happens. But on the other hand the Palestine/Israel situation gets a lot of attention in the press. Why? Is it a crossroads of civilisations? East meets West? Does Europe feel involved given its historical role of driving out the Jewish people and drafting contradictory peace deals? Does the twisting and turning narrative of the drama draw us in? Did anyone really even see Fatah and Hamas uniting, given that a week before they united any Fatah supporter in Gaza and any Hamas supporter in the West Bank was getting thrown in jail? Can anyone predict what will happen next?

What about me? Do our own views become identity markers? "I'm a Palestinian supporter." Why am I so drawn to the politics here? Why not focus on a situation closer to home, like Indonesia's butchery of West Papua? The political significance and absurd degree of conflict in the Middle East makes it a target of political and historical study. Let us not shy away from denying it is interesting.

When I was young my favourite history topic was World War One. Was there an innocent party involved in what became a globally significant conflict? France wanted revenge on Germany, Russia wanted a warm water port, the Ottomans wanted to be great again, Germany wanted to be as powerful as Britain, Britain wanted to stay clear at the top, and so everyone joined in with Austria-Hungary and Serbia's arm wrestle. There were no good guys, only bad guys, and populations suffered as a result. Isn't the same thing happening today in the Middle East? Isn't Syria the centre of a global conflict of self-interested parties from which entire populations of innocent people are being devoured (http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/features/iran/7902-robert-fisk-syrian-war-of-lies-and-hypocrisy)? Isn't history repeating itself? Wasn't World War One my favourite history topic at school? Didn't Chris Hedges write a book called 'War is a force that gives us meaning'?

Back to the Israel/Palestine narrative. I can't work out whether it is fear or power that motivates the Likud party to operate the way it does, but i think the two have blurred together. If ever a country did not trust anybody it was Israel. Can anyone blame them after one glimpse at history? Safer, surely, to keep Palestine as powerless as possible. Perhaps this fear is motivating the expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, the demolition of neighbouring Palestinian houses and farms and the seizure of most available water in the Jordan Valley for the settlers' swimming pools. Or maybe that's power? Or a realisation that it gets very hot and dry in the Jordan Valley in the summer. One thing I do feel clear on; if fear is a factor, it is not justified to alleviate that fear through the means of political muscle at the expense of an entire people.

Whatever the reasons, it is clear the occupation is not sustainable. It cannot last. Either a one state solution or a two state solution is inevitable. Is it? Really? I heard many people say this, and many news reports suggest the same thing. I agreed. Until about a week ago, when I suddenly started to wonder what made it so unsustainable. Why can't it just continue? Isn't that exactly what the government is trying to do? And aren't they doing it just fine? It may end, it is hard to predict what will happen next in this page turner. But it seems a reasonable argument to just assume it will keep on going if Israel want it to. Once again my thinking has changed, and it took me about 1 minute to find an article that explains my new feelings better than I can: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/cohen-israels-sustainable-success.html?_r=0

I wonder whether the Pope's recent action in Bethlehem is the only appropriate way to address the wall. 

Lately I've been worried about Robert Fisk. I wonder if he has been a political journalist in the Middle East and a war historian for too long. I worry that he has read too many stories of people behaving badly.

I am currently residing Iraqi Kurdistan, but I am getting distracted by a lot of questions.  

Some final escapades in the holy land

It sounds profound in theory. The place where it all began. The holy city during what is for Christians the most holy time of the year. But really, Easter in Jerusalem is just kinda annoying. It's super crowded and touristy and near on impossible to find what one needs during Easter - a time of quiet and a community to share it with. Every second person seems to be carrying a cross around the place like its a backpack, while every other person is wearing a blue or red or yellow cap to signify which tourist group they are apart of. But maybe I should just stop complaining and be glad that I got to spend some time in a place that I have been reading about since I was a young lad. I take comfort from the fact that Jesus' first action in Jerusalem was to trash the local temple, which, one could say, he deemed to be too touristy.

Easter Friday, between the Old City and the Mount of Olives.

Inside the Old City. Most Fridays (mosque day), soldiers do not let men under 50 visit the Dome of the Rock for prayer. So the men get as close to the walls as they can to hear the message and pray. 

Queuing for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Easter Friday. We did not even try to get near it.

On Easter Friday I said goodbye to Nablus and spent the last 2 weeks of my time in the land escapading around with a few friends. As you may have worked out from above, Jerusalem was the first stop. Finding accommodation at the last minute in Jerusalem during the Easter season was, obviously, extremely difficult, but we managed to find a word of mouth spot called 'Ibrahim's House' in East Jerusalem, where we were able to stay for a few nights. Ibrahim's House was well known amongst the locals, and presented itself as working for peace in Palestine/Israel and existing as a place where people from around the world could find sanctuary and in return offer a donation. The thing was, I have no clue how the place was doing anything remotely constructive in relation to peace building, and the recommended donation amount was actually higher than most (far better) hostels around Jerusalem. Nonetheless, we had a place to stay, even if we did have to walk 30 minutes straight up the Mount of Olives from the Old City to get there. 

The Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall. Two contested holy sites.

Finally managed to get into the Temple Mount. A close up shot of this impressive mosque.

Muslims pray on the Temple Mount, between the two main mosques on the site - The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa.

This friendly family blocked their ears as they walked so they did not have to overhear Church bells ringing nearby. Sigh. 

As seems to happen with every West Bank volunteer, doing a spot of traveling around Israel at the end of your stay is an uncomfortable experience. Life just carries on as normal, seemingly oblivious to the occupation that is taking place next door. As you walk around the Old City as a tourist, it is impossible not to remember that the people you have just spent the last 3 months with are not allowed to visit this most sacred of places. Most volunteers end up just giving up their travel and returning to Nablus, or anticipating the flight home. We were, thus, not particularly upset to leave Jerusalem after Easter and head to Jericho.

Jericho is about 10 degrees warmer than Jerusalem, even though it is only 20km away. It is one of the lowest cities in the world and lies on the shoreline of the Dead Sea. We did the usual touristy activities, which mainly consist of visiting monasteries and ruins, and even managed to fit in a trek on a day that was not excruciatingly hot. Unfortunately we forgot a few essential supplies; shisha pipe, good food, fresh water. But we managed to buy bottled water at outrageously inflated prices, survive off crackers and peanut butter, and make a pipe out of the local greenery for our lemon and mint tobacco. We also managed to spend a day swimming in the Dead Sea, which was as unusual a feeling as one expects it to be, and camp a night under the stars. Unfortunately the Dead Sea has no sand, only rocks, so the sleep was not the comfiest.  

Overlooking Jericho. It is a pretty small place.

Some ants hard at work.

Local wilder-beast.

A monastery located in the middle of our trek.

Sunrise at the Dead Sea.

A view from Mazada - the last Jewish stronghold during the Roman exile.

I never made it to Galilee in the North of Israel. Toward the end of my trip I started wondering how I could miss such a biblically important spot, and started contemplating catching a bus to spend a couple of days in the region rather than heading to the Jordan Valley for the next stop on our itinerary. The Jordan Valley, as I have already stated but yet to explain fully as promised, is perhaps the site where the occupation is most debilitating to the locals. Plenty has been written by the United Nations on this particular area and the negative impact the occupation is having - one need only Google United Nations and Area C. In the end, I decided that a final visit and farewell to people in the Jordan Valley made a whole lot more biblical sense than a touristy visit to Galilee. So I have never seen the land where Jesus grew up.

The last remaining Kafia factory in Palestine. The rest all get their stuff made in China. These machines have been churning out Kafia's since the 60s.

On the 29th April I flew out of Tel Aviv. It was touch and go, being seconds away from missing the airport train after being accused of carrying a knife in my pack by security, and getting grilled with questions at customs about my Jordanian visa, which the Jordanian embassy in Ramallah had kindly decorated with the word 'Gaza' numerous times for some unknown reason, but I got through. Stories of going through security in Israel take too long to explain, so I won't even try. Suffice to say I progressed through more unscathed than expected. My time in the 'holy land' had come to an end. I was now moving toward the next destination in my journey.   

Leaving Nablus

The month of April saw my time in Nablus come to an end, and a chance for one final trip around the West Bank and Israel before departing on the 29th April. Nablus had become a very comfortable place for me to live by April. I continued to teach at the university a couple of times a week, teach a bit of guitar to some enthusiastic students, forget all the Arabic I would learn within 24 hours, and instinctively play the oud like a guitar, despite the patient reminders from my teacher Ali to play the oud like an oud.

I also had the opportunity to run in a marathon in Bethlehem, well, 10km of the marathon. I was probably more unfit than I had been in ten years, but I managed to finish the race. It was a special event to be apart of; only in the West Bank would a marathon involve running through refugee camps alongside an enormous security wall, dodging cars driving through the runners and witnessing a bus block off all surrounding traffic after rear-ending itself reversing down a steep concrete hill. I think, too, only in the West Bank would a marathon need to be two laps of a half marathon due to organisers being incapable of finding 42 continuous kilometres of Palestinian land. You can read about the race here: http://palestinemarathon.com/

No marathon preparation is complete without a quick stop off at Taybeh brewery the day before the race. Taybeh is Palestine's only beer, and it is pretty good.

Andre at the start line the night before the race, visualising what is to come.

The West Bank side of the separation wall, in Bethlehem.

Palestinian street graffiti on the separation wall. 

Some young Palestinians who insisted on me taking a photo of them. 

A few of us also had the opportunity to celebrate passover in a Samaritan village. Nablus is home to the remaining Samaritans, being the location of their holy site - Mount Gerazim. On arriving to the village we were very quickly invited to the house of a local Samaritan leader, and it was interesting to hear his account of their people. Samaritans see themselves as Arab, and use Arabic as their first language. They follow the first five books of the Bible - the Torah, but do not follow the remaining 33 books of the Hebrew Bible. They see Mount Gerazim as a holy site rather than Jerusalem. They are a small community who intermarry, and recognising that this is thinning the blood a bit too much they have began 'importing' girls from countries such as the Ukraine. They have lived peacefully alongside the Muslims and Christians of Nablus for centuries, and there is no hint of zionism in their thinking. They also celebrate a fairly brutal passover, which involves the lighting of fire pits, the sharpening of knives, the dragging of sheep, the singing of songs, and, eventually, a considerable amount of blood. It is one of those festivals that sounds good to attend in theory, but is not particularly nice to witness when you are there. Witnessing it we did though, and while most visitors had to watch from afar behind iron fences, we were allowed into the inner sanctuary of the celebration, reserved for special guests and Samaritans. How, you ask? The owner of the nearby Samaritan pub, the only pub in Nablus, saw us and invited us in. I guess we did frequent the pub quite often...

Waiting for the festival to commence in the village - the anticipation...

This was a strange sight - a sheep being dragged to the slaughter. It was scarily human like. 

This kid started questioning the fate of his new friend. 

This lady is ready for action - notice the cleaver coming out of her pocket. The sheep looks on with great fear.

Singing is a big part of the event. This man is singing Culture Club's 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me' over a Karaoke backing track. 

Some local Samaritans discuss the slaughter that is taking place in front of them.

Inappropriate selfie. 

Nablus is a beautiful city, and it was sad to say goodbye. But I had a flight to Istanbul on the 29th April, along with plans to head East to Iraqi Kurdistan for 2 months, and I wanted to spend a bit of time traveling before I departed, so on the 18th of April I packed my bags and headed to Jerusalem with a few friends. Over the course of my stay I developed some pretty strong political feelings, but there is more to Nablus than just politics, and I want to do it justice. One of the best things about Nablus is that it has avoided the aggressive and dishonest nature that tourism had created in locations such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem. People in Nablus did not see you as a walking wallet, or an opportunity to charge exorbitant prices. If people you didn't know invited you into their shop for tea, it was because they wanted to give you a cup of tea. If people charged you ten shekels for a taxi ride, it was because that was the cost of the ride for anybody (sure, there were exceptional stories I occasionally heard, but very rare). It is a safe and friendly city in which people enjoy being affectionate to each other. I had my fair share of hospitality over the course of my stay, which was often very humbling.

There are many people I will miss. It was sad to say goodbye to Ali, whom I visited often to teach guitar and learn the oud, and whose open door policy led to an interesting home environment of many comings and goings. I will miss the many intelligent and insightful students I taught at An Najah Academia, and I pray Palestine finds a way to use the talent it has within its walls, for unemployment and brain drain is rife. In particular I will miss Sala, the only person I could find as excited to see The new Noah film as I was (not that it will ever play at a theatre in Palestine). I will also miss my adult English class, who called me Mr Jon and took me out for Kanafa and defended me when one local decided we shouldn't be eating together. I will miss the senseless use of horns and the preference to scrape one's car alongside a wall in absurd passing maneuver down a narrow alleyway rather than to reverse to a more appropriate spot to allow a car to go past you. Well, maybe not that. I did develop some pretty strong feelings about the gender inequalities in Palestine, and I did, on occasions, find the surge of conservatism throughout Palestine disheartening. But the kindness and natural generosity of the people of Nablus is my lasting impression, and if I could sing the praises of any city throughout Israel or Palestine, it would be Nablus.