Quelle chance!!! I'm leaving for Ramallah via Amman tonight. I'm going on a holiday for Eid which will not technically be a holiday since I am going with a colleague and I will meet some of our local partners in Palestine but I will enjoy Eid as well. The funniest thing is that I am going to stay with my friends family who are Christian but from the last time I lived in Palestine I have several friends left who are Muslim and who have invited me to celebrate with them.
I cannot really believe that I am going back but it feels like a real gift. I will also try to study hard and good while there. I really need to increase the pace in which my Arabic is coming along, even though I am travelling a lot to other parts of the world before Christmas.
So, if I am not a good writer for the past 12 days you know where I am. I hope that when I'll be back here Internet will be set up at home (although I would not expect my room mate to get her thumb out to fix it...). Insh'a Allah I'll be reporting from my travels upon my return.
Happy Eid!
Thursday, October 4
Monday, October 1
Bruises on forehead
I am all for people being religious if they choose that path in life. I myself have not got a particular faith. I am aware of the hope/meaning religion gives to people everywhere and I respect that.
At work we have so called "runners", they are young men who take documents from one place to another and fix administrative things to the left and to the right. They are indispensable and very, very nice. I also suspect they have good degrees from University.
One of these runners is very religious and as usual this is actually "written" on his forehead: he has bruises from praying. I do not know why one chooses to bend down violently while praying, I hope it is not an end in itself because it seems to be quite painful to repeat that action 5 times a day, ever increasing the marks on the forehead. Still it is one of those small things that makes me realise I am in a different culture and that there are small subtle things which distinguishes people from each other. I like to discover these subtleties, even though they have a religious pretext and I wish that religion here would not be as important as it is, mostly because it is an expression of other things such as poverty, anti Western sentiment and a symbol of compassion with the group and the intolerance of "the other", etc.
At work we have so called "runners", they are young men who take documents from one place to another and fix administrative things to the left and to the right. They are indispensable and very, very nice. I also suspect they have good degrees from University.
One of these runners is very religious and as usual this is actually "written" on his forehead: he has bruises from praying. I do not know why one chooses to bend down violently while praying, I hope it is not an end in itself because it seems to be quite painful to repeat that action 5 times a day, ever increasing the marks on the forehead. Still it is one of those small things that makes me realise I am in a different culture and that there are small subtle things which distinguishes people from each other. I like to discover these subtleties, even though they have a religious pretext and I wish that religion here would not be as important as it is, mostly because it is an expression of other things such as poverty, anti Western sentiment and a symbol of compassion with the group and the intolerance of "the other", etc.
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