Bustan Qaraaqa: British Expats Getting Dirty

I'm writing my geography Master's thesis on traditional Palestinian agriculture, and on Tuesday I went to two farms for some fieldwork. The first one was in the village of Wadi Fuqin, southwest of Jerusalem. I wrote up that visit at GreenProphet.com.

The second one was a British experimental farm called Bustan Qaraaqa (Tortoise Garden), which is southeast of Jerusalem next to the village of Beit Sahour. If Wadi Fuqin is a centuries-old village full of locals, Bustan Qaraqaa has been around for a year, was started by British land lovers and is worked by foreign volunteers who blow in and out for a few days at a time, farming by day and by night sleeping inside the 100-year-old stone house that is the project's headquarters.


I went touring with my friend Anthony, who is launching an English-language program at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem and is looking for ecologists to be professors. We met for coffee in a classy joint in West Jerusalem, then called up Alice at Bustan Qaraqaa and followed her directions to the farm.

From Hebron road in West Jerusalem, we took an Arab bus #124, which dropped us at the Gilo checkpoint south of Jerusalem. We got out and went through a turnstyle where a guard checked our IDs and waved us through. From there we traversed a metal maze and emerged, Alice in Wonderland style, on the other side of the mirror where a clump of yellow taxis stalled, their drivers shouting "Taxi! Taxi!"

The metal maze that leads from Israeli-controled Gilo checkpoint to Palestinian Bethlehem on the other side.

We wound up paying Nayef 30 shekels to get to Bustan Qaraqaa, about 7 kilometers away. He dropped us at a tall stone house with three cases of Taybeh Beer on the front step. We went inside and started talking shop with Alice over fenugreek cake.

For a complete history of the place, see the GreenProphet post or the Guardian article.

Alice, 28, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the region's plants, and of the ecological issues facing West Bank farmers, which she dispenses with starts and giggles and ironic interjections. She said she came to Israel/Palestine originally to keep her friend company, and started by working at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem and other ecological groups. However, she soon realized she would rather actively work the soil rather than writing reports on it, and she and four other friends rented a stone house and the grounds around it from a Palestinian man for 3,000 shekels a month.


Alice checks some of the 1,000 local and foreign tree seedlings growing on one of the terraces.

There, they implement local and foreign techniques to coax the most out of the soil without use of pesticides and fertilizers. I was most impressed with how although Bustan Qaraaqa's founders are well-educated British expats, they approach their work through the eyes of a cash-strapped Palestinian villager. Farming methods are time-intensive but low-technology and low-cost.

When they first started farming, Bustan Qaraaqa's staff painstakingly marked out the contours of the land using a water-level. Two people walked the grounds, each holding a pole attached to a plastic pipe filled with water that stretched between them. When they were on ground of equal height, the water didn't fall out of the pipe.

Along these contour lines, Alice and the crew dug swales, which trap water going downhill and help use it for plants rather than allowing it to flow downhill, taking the topsoil with it.


Melons are planted in a mound, at the center of which is an upside-down plastic bottle with its bottom cut off. This allows for irrigating the roots of the plants. The water doesn't burn the melons' delicate leaves this way, and it also is slower to evaporate.


The swirling dirt and stones help maximize water use. Alice said she will plant a tree at the center of the swirl and smaller plants on the higher parts of the outside. This way, water gets to the plants first and concentrates at the roots of the tree, which eventually grows to shade the plants around it.

A recently completed project is the rainwater storage tank. This was dug out of cinderblock and painted over with waterproof paint. Alice said three big winter storms could fill it, and provide enough water for irrigating crops over the summer. She plans to fill it with tilapia to prevent the water from going bad, and to cover it with thatch to forestall evaporation. Alice said of the paint, "It's not environmentally friendly, but it's more environmentally friendly than letting all the rainwater get away."

Alice and Anthony sit on the reservoir's edge, with the farmland stretching behind them.

The house has no fridge, a situation poorer farmers off the electric grid might sympathize with. The running water used in the house gets filtered and reused for irrigating the fields. No water is used for the compost toilet.


The toilet, which stinks a bit but whose stone room is lined with quotes from Jack Kerouac and Mark Twain, as well as T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in its entirety.


One of two "refrigerators," created by nesting two pottery urns and keeping sand, water and zaatar (to repel insects) in between.


The kitchen's pastry brush is a palm frond.


Bustan Qaraaqa saves beer bottles as building materials; here is an international collection of the local Taybeh Beer as well as the Israeli Macabbi brew.

While we were there, we saw the close relationship between Bustan Qaraaqa and its neighbors. One woman came to pick weeds like hubeiza, which can be eaten in a salad. The neighbor took his goats out to pasture; Alice said Bustan Qaraaqa buys goats for meat when they have money. A little girl walked along the stone wall along the edge of the property and said hello.

Alice said she hopes to turn over the farm to a Palestinian in five years. In the meantime, Bustan Qaraaqa has established connections with farmers at the village of Wallaje, where each Friday volunteers go to help in some way. The latest project is building a compost toilet there.

Post-Modern Cooking with Grandma

Two weeks ago, I took a chance peek at airfares and saw really cheap tickets back to New Jersey. I called up my grandmother, got my yearly bonus from her (she was contractually obligated) and flew home five days later.

Since she lives alone, my grandmother barely cooks anymore and eats mostly packaged, frozen vegetables and soups. I thought it could be nice to come over and cook with her and fill her fridge with some freshly made options. As we cooked I realized we were enacting the reverse of what I would imagine cooking with a grandmother to be.

The meal would be sweet potato soup and vegetable quiche. After hitting the supermarket, we got to work. My grandma played Beta cook; I told her to peel sweet potatoes, wash mushrooms, sautee onions and mash cheese. In the meantime, I roasted a pepper and finely sliced zucchini.

Recently widowed, my grandmother spent 59 years married to a man who despised most spices and made an art form out of a daily dinner of steak and chips. Old habits die hard, and she doesn't even have black pepper in the house. As we cooked, she asked what spices to use and how much; I took them down from the racks that have become too high for her because each year she shrinks a little. She fried the onions, and asked me along the way if there was too much or not enough oil and if they were brown enough. Toward the end, as I blended our sweet potato soup and chopped parsley, she washed most of the dishes. The meal was a simple but tasty success, and my grandmother mused as we ate that "this is really gourmet food!"

I guess it's a sign of the times. Three generations after the first Cheslow (formerly Chavslavsky) crossed the Atlantic, the Eastern European cooking of our ancestors has been lost. Instead, I teach my grandmother how to cook in the pan-Western style I have picked up largely by working as a chef in an Italian restaurant in Israel.

The Contradictions Post

Yesterday Israeli film producer Ari Folman won a Golden Globe for the movie Waltz With Bashir, about his service in the IDF during the First Lebanon War when Israel did not intervene as Christian Lebanese massacred Palestinian refugees. Folman reportedly said nothing about the current activity in Gaza in his acceptance speech. However, it must have been a poignant moment to collect the trophy for his anti-war film even as his home country is at battle again. From this end of the world, it was ironic to see the national press enthusiastic about both Folman's win and about the operation in Gaza. See this collection of headlines from Haaretz today:

• Israel's 'Waltz with Bashir,' on 1982 Lebanon War, wins Golden Globe for best foreign film
• IDF finds Hamas arms stockpile in raid on Gaza mosque
• Olmert: Gaza war won't end until rocket and smuggling stop
• ANALYSIS / Israel's victories in Gaza make up for its failures in Lebanon
• UN Human Rights Council condemns Israel over Gaza op
• Legal expert: Rising Gaza death toll doesn't mean IDF acts are disproportionate
• Amira Hass / Gazans doing their best to avoid becoming death statistics
• ANALYSIS / Why Israel should let foreign journalists into Gaza

I was reminded by Lisa Goldman's epic blog post on Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's Bedouin Israeli sisters that this conflict is full of internal contradictions. Here are a few more:

On Saturday I went to downtown Beer Sheva for a bourgeouis afternoon spent sipping the best coffee in the country. Founded by two friends who fell in love with gourmet coffee on a trip to Australia, the Gecko roasts and grinds all its beans. The result is coffee with a personality. One blend tastes of chocolate. Another delivers a sharp, bitter hit to the palate. Coffee sacks are everywhere - empty hanging on the walls and half full on the floor.


Owners Shahar and Haggai said they have been keeping the place open every day even while rockets fall, both to keep a sense of normalcy in the city and because it's what they know how to do. To keep costs down, they have told their waiters and cooks to stay home and they run the outfit by themselves from 8 am to 11 pm on weekdays, and from 9 to 11 on Saturdays. They said that while at first patrons were wary to go out, or may have left town, they are now gradually trickling back. This is the Gecko front patio, on Smilansky Street in Beer Sheva's charming Old City.


During the week, Haggai has reserve duty in the IDF, and Shahar runs the coffee shop alone. He checks the news online, even visiting Hizbollah's news channel in Hebrew to read what's going on and what the Arab world has to say about his home. Here he is with the coffee grinder.


***

The day before, on Friday, a Tel Avivian friend of mine came down to Beer Sheva to volunteer with kids who have been out of school since Hannuka, in late December. The rocket siren went off as her bus pulled into central Beer Sheva and she was understandably shaken, but nothing was hit nearby. I joined her at one of BGU's dormitory buildings which has a computer lab and more importantly, a bomb shelter. There were around 20 kids and maybe a dozen student volunteers, and at first we really tried to help the kids do some schoolwork. I was giving Anwar, 9, tips on how to fill out a multiplication table. He speaks Arabic at home but goes to Jewish public school, and I could see how the different ways of saying numbers in Hebrew and Arabic was making it tough to fill in the chart.

Soon enough, the kids noticed they were sitting next to computers and the room was filled with awful pop music and the sounds of asinine Internet games being played. We managed to drag three of the kids outside for a game of football played with a plastic water bottle. Anwar and his twin brother Ali took every chance they could to pummel each other. The other volunteers and I were just happy to see kids being kids instead of racing imaginary bulls online.

***

Today I sat around with my roommate and his friend, talking about how living in Israel can be so depressing that they both want to leave as soon as possible. "The country has been at war since before I was born and I see no end in sight," one said. "Why would I put my kids through that?"

We listened to "Children of Winter 1973," a song written in the wake of the 1973 war about how Israel's children grow up with broken promises of peace.

You promised a dove
An olive leaf
Peace at home
You promised springtime and flowers
You promised to keep promises
You promised a dove.

We are the children of winter of the year seventy-three
We grew up, now we're in the army with our weapon, the helmet on the head.
We also know how to make love, we laugh and know to cry
We are also men, we are also women, we also dream of babies
And so we won't push, we won't demand, and so we won't threaten
When we were little you said: you have to keep promises
If you need force, we'll give it, we won't hold back, we just wanted to whisper
We are the children of the winter of the year seventy-three.

This was released 35 years ago. A gloomy cloud descended over the three of us as we contemplated the lyrics. Then, a second later, we were watching the "Foxy Lady" clip from Wayne's World on YouTube.

Breather

The following is cross-posted at GreenProphet.com.

I woke up this morning thinking I was on the streets of Chicago with the wind loudly blowing between the blocks of skyscrapers. It took a few minutes to realize this howling wind was actually the rocket siren, an especially long one. The siren is a wail that crescendos and decrescendos; usually the rockets fall 60 seconds after it starts. Since this one was so long, I heard a boom in the middle of it. The house shuddered; the rocket must have fallen nearby (I returned to Beer Sheva last week). The siren stopped and I dozed off again.

The reason I was tired enough to go back to sleep was that last night some friends and I took a break from the action and went on a full-moon hike in the desert, in a dry riverbed called Nachal Havarim near the Sde Boker field school. It’s out of rocket range.

As we drove the 50 minutes south of Beer Sheva, we listened to Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio and reminisced about the effects of Wayne’s World on our youth. Eventually we got out and hit the trail. The moon was so bright that it cast shadows from the large boulders onto the rocky, sandy ground. We were six students, and as we walked we got warm enough to forget that it was the middle of winter, except for a refreshing chill on our cheeks. At one point we passed a large flint stone and threw rocks against it, throwing sparks into the weak darkness.

There was a flat area on one edge of the riverbed, high up, where we drank wine and coffee and ate oatmeal cookies. The moon lit up the rolling hills and canyons all around us. In the distance we heard cars intermittently on the highway.

Towards the end of the hike we took another break and stared at the sky. Although for the last two hours it had been clear, suddenly a thin lace of clouds stretched over half of it. The bright round moon slipped between the clear and the clouds, shining and then casting a light halo on the white around it.

We talked as we walked, about how the war had put some of us in a bad mood or in a slump. Twice the conversation went into the politics of Israel’s actions in Gaza and reached an uneasy stalemate between those who supported and opposed the war. Then the chatter moved into discussions of trips abroad, of when school would start again, what we had been doing with all our newfound free time.

Around midnight we got back in the car and listened to the Israeli singers Ehud Banai and Nurit Galron, and then Leonard Cohen as we drove back home. The trip had taken us out of empty Beer Sheva, which is dreary because so many students went home, and into the desert whose very charm and magic comes from emptiness. Away from the sirens and the newscasts, it was lovely to just take a breath.

Lost in Translation

Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian-Israeli writer who grew up in the Arab town of Tira, a short drive from Tel Aviv. He is best known for his books and his sitcom, Avoda Aravit (Arab Labor), about how it is to be an Arab in the Jewish state.

Last week, Kashua wrote in his regular column in Haaretz that he was hosting two Sderot families in his home in Jerusalem and had room for two more. The column was otherwise a sardonic take on Israel's stance toward Gaza:

From my acquaintance with Arabs, I tell you: They simply have a mental problem. There's nothing to it. No matter what you do, they will come back with complaints. Aalek, Gaza is one big prison of refugees, the jobless and the starving. Hey, is that our fault? Hey, is it because of us that they're like that?

It's not that they fire Qassams and say it's because they don't have anything to eat. No. They fire them and say that the gates of hell will be opened on the Zionist enemy and that they want to expel us from our homeland. Right. Hey, are we supposed to be responsible for every hungry Arab kid?

Anyways, perhaps because of an awkward Hebrew-to-English translation, I took Kashua's Sderot comment to mean that he was straddling the divide between feeling sympathy for the Gazan victims of the Israeli attacks as well as helping his fellow Israeli citizens who were getting rocketed, and I called him up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "A number of people have called me about the Sderot thing. It was sarcasm, I'm not hosting anyone."

So much for that. Kashua said that he hasn't gotten requests to stay in his home and that it might be more dangerous for Sderot residents there than if they stayed in the South. He added that he would only feel comfortable hosting Sderot families if he was also hosting Gazan families.

Al-Jazeera goes where no foreign press goes

In a surreal moment, after going to an anti-war protest last night, I came home to find that Israel had launched a ground invasion in Gaza. The protest - and a counter-protest from the right - were in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square. The anti-war movement included MK Dov Khenin, Jeff Halper (who sailed to Gaza from Cyprus this summer to protest the Israeli blockade) and a procession of socialists, anarchists, Communists, Palestinians and people I had learned Arabic with in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva.

Meanwhile, the only foreign press to give the demonstration serious coverage was Al-Jazeera.

Below are photos from the demo. Here's a woman with a sign about Gaza being rocketed.


"Not a leader. A murderer." This is a play on Defense Minister Ehud Barak's campaign slogan, which is "Not friendly. A leader."


Anti-war clown.

"Traitors, go to Gaza" - a slogan from the anti-protest protest.


"We have to talk to Hamas!" This is the book stocker at my favorite Tel Aviv cafe, the Little Prince.


"In Gaza and Sderot, kids want to live."

I guess this lady didn't get the memo that there was a large demonstration planned for the street right by her destination for a salad.



There was a cogent NY Times analysis this morning arguing that the Gaza invasion is suffering from "Mission Creep" - i.e. that gradually the aims of the attack and the responsibilities of the soldiers are getting bigger and bigger. That is to say, at first Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak advocated showing Hamas that Israel has deterrence power, and now his new goal is to topple the democratically elected ruling party in Gaza.

The strange thing about my feeling that this war will neither bring long-range peace nor advance Israel's security is that from inside Israel, it is difficult to see the battlefield in black and white. Of the Israeli soldiers in Gaza, one is the brother of a good friend of mine. Other people being called up include plenty of people I know well. They are going because they believe in supporting Israel and protecting the country. The big decisions are made by the Israeli leadership.

On the other hand, it is so frustrating to watch the news and see television studios suddenly filled with all men - from the decorated generals reporting on the situation to the correspondents who report from the rocket-beleaguered Israeli town of Sderot, dropping references about their army service decades ago. It is as if in the shadow of a war, nothing else matters - not the crumbling education system, not the increasing gaps between rich and poor, not the deteriorating environment. It's all about the war and about the men who know what real combat is. Unfortunately, as elections are slated for next month, this means that the deep, incisive discussions about Israel's character are just not happening. Instead we get rolls and rolls of IDF press office footage of Israeli soldiers greasing tanks for war.

Meanwhile, I was thwarted twice more in the quest to get a Beer Sheva refugee discount. Once was at a cafe. When asked about the discount, the waitress said, "Honey, this is possibly the most capitalist, dirty, money-loving cafe in the city. It's not going to happen." The Philippine woman from whom I bought tofu in a Far Eastern grocery also turned me down. That's four cold-hearted refusals in all.

The Tel Aviv Refugee Camp

Well, sympathy in this country only goes so far. I asked for a "Beer Sheva Refugee Discount" on a soy cappuccino, and was declined. "Next time," the cafe manager said. Likewise, when I pulled out the BGU student ID at the entrance to a nightclub I was still told to wait.

Whatever Beer Sheva and other southern residents were doing this weekend, I spent it staying at friends and enjoying the best of Tel Aviv, including sunny, t-shirt friendly weather all day long and ice cream and chocolate on the city boulevards.

However, the most exciting moment came last night at about 2 a.m. I was at the Uptown club on the port, the music was mostly rap and international dance music, and then this gem came on, complete with the music video projected on the club's wall. It's the late Israeli singer Ofra Haza, singing "Hai" (alive) for the winning 1983 Eurovision song.

Refugee Diary

Yesterday a friend drove me from Beer Sheva to Tel Aviv in a "refugee transport" - i.e. three BGU students. I left in part for safety, but also because classes have been canceled and so many other students are leaving that there is not much to do in the Capital of the South.

As we moved away from home, the land grew greener and we kept wondering, is this in the rocket range? Now are we out? Meanwhile the car radio was pretty crappy so we didn't hear much about what was going on.

This was indicative of the general atmosphere in Tel Aviv, which is "out of range, out of mind." Life continues as usual. Added to that, I have been out in the city so there is no time to check the body counts or hear radio reports. Because life in Beer Sheva already is more home based (there is not much to do outside besides go to classes even when there are no rockets) when I was there we had the radio on nearly all the time.

In Tel Aviv there are protests here and there, but they are groups of 20 or 30 people gathered on a street corner. A few bigger protests have happened in Yafo on Monday and at the cinema last Saturday, and there is a large one planned for tomorrow.

Apparently there are war preparations going on here and in nearby Rishon Letziyon in case rockets start falling, but I have my doubts. If there is going to be violence in Tel Aviv, I think it would more likely be suicide bombings - sorry for the pessimism.

Meanwhile, the traditional left in Israel is gradually waking up. Novelist David Grossman, whose son Uri was killed in Lebanon in 2006, called on Tuesday for a stop to the bombings. Yesterday someone called this strike on Gaza "The Second Second Lebanon War" - the first second Lebanon War was in 2006, and the first Lebanon War in the 80s. The left-wing Meretz party, which was quiet in the first days of the war, has come out with a campaign calling for a ceasefire.

On the other side of the coin, a fair share of Israelis, including the leadership, say that there is no choice, that Hamas forced this war on us, and that it must continue until "goals have been accomplished." Unfortunately, I don't know if anyone knows what those are.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is a fellow BGU student. He said he thought this war was a bad idea. I asked him if he would go into reserves if he is called up (students, and nearly all men until their middle age are expected to serve in reserves). "Of course," he answered. "What about protesting the war?" I asked.

"Well, if I don't go into reserves, I'll be abandoning all the people I fought with in regular service," he said.

"How will you express your opposition to the war?"

"I don't know."

Meanwhile, I had a bunch of people over for lunch on Wednesday right after classes were canceled. Someone said the feeling of doing nothing on campus felt like de ja vu. Then it came up that last year classes started two months late because of the professors' strike. The year prior, classes started late because of a students' strike. The year before that, the First Second Lebanon War came during exams, and a load of students were called into reserves when they should have been taking finals. In short - there is no regular school year for students in public universities in Israel. Strikes, war, rockets - it's pretty much all standard.