The children of Jenin

82643237 Palestine, October 15, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) -Alexandra and Qud stick together like glue. Qud is smaller with pale eyes and hair and seems quite besotted with her taller, European friend and her strange, thrilling new games. Rooms, cars and streets echo with their sing song chants of the French clapping game 'Dam, Dam der der, Si, si, olero olay...'For Alex's aprt her natural reticence with new people has vanished, when she is invited to visit Qud's school and speak to classes about her life in France, she shrugs 'kay'. Children here are up at dawn to dress for school. The birdsong so lacking during the scorching sunlight hours is more than made up for by the vibratto of the dawn chorus. Prior to 1948 Jenin was the 'garden of Palestine' abundant with fields of vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. Even today despite decades of poverty, the soil refuses to be silent pushing her green threads between rocks, stone walls and in the ankle grinding granite that counts for pavements in this part of the world.

Al Ryiad is a progressive private school in the Al jaberiat suburb of the city. I swear that I have never been anywhere to noisy in my life. The decibel level at morning break when Alexandra and I arrive along with Qud's mother makes Alex momentarily clingy. Then ther eis a scream and a bundle of plaits come hurtling towards us - Quds.

'What eez your name?'
'Where do you come from?'
'How old are you?'

There are 350 pupils at the school and langugage is a priority. Qud's and Alex jabber all day in the secret language of little girls, but it is now clear that Qud's actually understands a good percentage of what Alex is saying.

The head mistress Saheer Khalil, is a smart lady, with a temper (I can tell, I am proved right). She is like most people here a heavy smoker, which is lucky as I've forgotten mine. We puff away over photo albums of the cloak wearing grads of last year
'these children all went on to university' she says between puffs,

'In Egypt, Ramallah, Jordan...'

THe school is three storeys high, with a cement playground on three sides. The outside walls are covered in murals; the kindergarten with an attempted Sylvester the Cat, the larger children rushing around before painted mountainscapes.

Crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate bars from the school shop, keep the noise level at airport landing strip level as we head towards the classes where Alex will give a short presentation on life in France. The schools two female English teachers are excited at the unexpectec cultural exchange and class plans are dropped.
'My name is Alex and I am going to tell you about my life in France.' Whispers Alex. She is standing before a class of children her own age staring at her with the curious blankness all students wear after school yard fun and fizzy drinks. However the by now nerve jangling volume still coming from the halls makes her have to begin again. And again. Dear thing, she struggles on not really getting beyond her name and age before the head English teacher, a cheeky woman with a spakling grin and beige hijab shouts above the din 'ask her her name, what is she doing now? Writ-ing her name, yes, writ-ting.'

The next class is better for Alex who this time gets to 'My family and the animals who live near us...'before I am forced to interrupt her.
'My father had a motrobike accident because he was drunk and he was out with the rugby guys and...'
'Alex' I yell
'What is dr-u-nke?' Asks the teacher bemused.
'Never mind, nothing' I say not really wanting to explain alcohol excess in the West.

I needn't really worry or have been so sensitive, this isn't Gaza. In fact the differences are so pronounced between life in the Jenin and say Khan Younis, I feel tearful at times. In one classroom the children are curious to hear from a foreigner who has spent time in that strange place so physically near, so culturally removed from them.

I feel an odd anger welling up in me. Why don't they know what it's like, why don't they call people there and ask them? Do their families care about the people in Gaza really or are they a racially inferior class of Palestinian even to those in Jenin? I fear they are. Ofcourse it's the occupations fault, the Israel's pride that the West Bank and Gaza are now utterly separate entities. No one who lives here has been there and almost certainly never will. Their permits after negotiation may get them to other parts of the middle East but never to Rafah.

' Jenin is Hollywood compared to Gaza' I say wanting and receiving shocked looked off the assembled fourteen year olds. This region of road blocks and refugees can make you irrational if you let it.

'And Jenin Camp is a PA-LACE compared to Gaza.'
The main theme, and one that the teachers are clearly keen to keep alive in their pupils is; Jerusalem. Teachers ask if I have been there, for me to describe it to the pupils, is it beautiful, what are the roads like, did I go to the mosque (where they cannot?) Across the West Bank, no further into the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, 'Quds' is a burning sore that cannot heal. This Holiest of Holies, this city of history, pride and light, must be visited seen again before death. Of this trip so far, I have cried just once. A Mount Nepo in Jordan, at dusk. Standing on the site where Moses is supposed to have looked over the Holy Land and said 'this is it chaps, but we can't go there (yet)', the whole sprawling, story lay beneath us. To the left the Red Sea, shimmering, looking depleted from its banks after along summer. The green and sandstone hills of painters, poets and religious clerics, a signpost for visitors with arrows bearing the legends "Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem and..Jerusalem. I was utterly overwhelmed, crumpled by it's hilly closeness. By the temptation to just vault the barrier and walk to Jerusalem myself. Our guide a 48 refugee whose mother and family were driven from Jerusalem was with me. He sighed.

'Does your mother ever come here and look for al Quds' I asked.

'Every week for fifty years' he said shaking his head.
'Every week....'

Alex, took up the theme, really she is quite something for an eight year old.

Hands clenching slightly, she spoke loudly for the first time

'on our television news and in our newspapers you are shown as bad people, as violent..' their are gasps, some nervous laughter.

cheeky teacher says

'And are we Alex, are you afraid in Jenin, are we horrible people/'
'NO' she shouts back looking upset at the very idea
'You're nice, I like you'
'and are you afraid in Jenin?'
'NO! I am happy in Jenin the people are kind.'

This after all is the message they want, children, teachers, janitors, shop keepers. They have information from the outside world, TV's are on night and day, dawn till dusk. But an abused nation suffering collective emotional hurt, they are compelled to ask visitors over and over again 'do you think we are bad, nasty, wrong, violent?' 'Are we scary, strange, deserving of this...?'

Gaza is on my mind as we drive away in the taxi.

by Laureen Booth
British Journalist and Activist

She is also Tony Blair's sister in Law

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