By Eyal and Eileil Shani
A Little of What is Good / Zvia Aharoni
A little of what is good is still good,
Can you recognize what’s bad in it?
A little light is still light,
As with a little light the flame will continue,
And in dark times, sorrowful days
When you look to see where help will come from
Look at the little bit of good, recognize what little light there is,
And remember that even the little bit encompasses the whole world.
Today is the 55th day of the war. There is a sense of darkness, gloominess continues to prevail everywhere, including the South Hebron hills. But in the past few days there have pinpoints of light in the darkness of this long war. For us, this has been mainly the news of the daily release of hostages. And in the Hill villages, too, we have met spots of light, of goodness and cheer.
This week we light the first candle of Hannukah, in three weeks we will mark the transition from winter to spring. So, we want to share today some of these moments of light, of what is good, in our meetings. True, there isn’t enough there to light up all the darkness, but it reminds us that for the folks who have met this moment, the whole world is there.
A few days ago we went to one of the villages and visited, once again, the widow and her house, which we wrote about in our last blog. Just a reminder, we are talking about a small, very poor, family, living on the edge of the village. We told of their difficulties, of their persecution by the extremist settlers who turn up almost every day at the cave in which they live, destroying and breaking everything that comes to hand, scattering the little food they have from the sacks and even taking some of their sheep, which are their only source of livelihood. This time we arrived, again, after a night of “pogrom”, of course with a supply of fresh food for them and wood for heating, as the weather has already turned really cold and most of the cooking is done over an open fire. We were received with a smile of gratitude and the mother immediately sat down on the ground, beside the fire, outside the cave, to revive the embers. In the local custom, there is no way to refuse a cup of tea, and that is the first thing one does when a visitor shows up, as a way of honoring the guest.
"Here we drink three cups of tea:
the first you are a stranger,
the second you become a friend,
And the third you join our family,
and for our family we are prepared to do anything."
Haji Ali Korphe, village chief, Karakoram mountains , Pakistan
From: Three Cups of Tea / Greg Mortenson
We sat down beside her, looking at smoldering embers, at the fire which slowly caught on, at the kettle placed on it. It was quiet. The mother is hard of hearing so speaks very little. But the silence didn’t trouble us. Quite the opposite. There was something comforting about it. A sense of contentment which for a moment settled on us. Around us was the open desert, the silence of the open spaces, and the pleasant sun which warmed us after the previous day’s rain. The mother added a few twigs, each time, to the fire, patiently added some leaves to the boiling water and the good smell of the tea spread out over the fire. We looked at her. At the concentration with which she prepared the tea. At the gracious way in which she moved her hands. At the smile she sent our way every few minutes when she lifted her head up from the fire. That beautiful smile, and we thought, how does this woman, with all the suffering and difficulties that she has experienced in these past few weeks, sit here so patiently, so graciously, and makes tea? The thought was enough to send us a small ray of light through the darkness.
We sat quietly and drank the tea with the mother and her daughter. We left, hoping that they could continue sitting quietly at the cave entrance for just a few days. In the hope that they will be blessed with one night of undisturbed sleep in which the settlers won’t come to trouble them.
We continued on our way, to another village, quite a way away, in which there were only a few families. We had heard that the night before there had been an army search for weapons in all the houses. As we approached the first house, we saw, already from afar, children waving to us. When we stopped the pickup some women and a lot of children approached us, smiling. For a moment it was as if nothing happened here, just last night.
But a few minutes later, when we asked how they all were, we began to hear the stories. In the women’s emotional flow of words, with, each time, someone else adding more detail, more information. The story we heard was that the army had come to them at night. A few armed soldiers, who passed from one family cave to the next in the village. At each cave the family was forced to stand outside, in the desert cold, while they looked for arms, all the while turning each house upside down; emptying out the closets and spreading over the mattresses, which were laid out on the floor, clothes, bedding, food and kitchenware. All the sacks of flour, of rice and of animal fodder were torn, the oil was spilled, and all the while two armed soldiers kept guard over the families, pointed their rifles at them and telling them “don’t move”.
The women kept asking the same questions: “Why do they need to turn everything upside down? If they need to search, let them search, but why like this? And why wouldn’t they let us at least take some blankets to cover the children, in the cold outside?” When the flow of stories had quieted down, one of the older girls, about 16, said, “But there was one soldier there who was different”. “What do you mean”, we asked. “He kept guard over us, but didn’t point his rifle at us. He even played a little with the two younger girls”, she said, pointing at her younger sisters, aged three and four. “Did you speak with him?”, we asked. “Yes”, she smiled. “He spoke with us in English, said he lived in Tel Aviv, he’s thirty-six and he has three daughters. He spoke politely, he was pleasant and quite different from all the others. He spoke with us like you do, and that’s how we passed the time until the other soldiers had finished searching our cave”.
We were really pleased to hear this. We saw how the 16-year old’s eyes lit up when she told us of the “different soldier”. We heard in her voice the sense that there was a moment of good in all the evil that was there, that night in the village. We felt a little bit of innocence, in the description of the cold they felt, as they sat there outside, after they were thrown out of their cave in the middle of their night’s sleep. She didn’t know the soldier’s name. “He didn’t tell us”. So, if by chance you see this blog, the same soldier that didn’t say his name but managed, just for a moment, to light up the darkness, to bring a moment of good into the sense of bad, we want you to know that you managed to create a whole new world for that young girl.
After that, the head of the family took me (Eyal) to show me how they had destroyed his tractor and how he had to buy a new battery and repair the electric system and the fuel pipes they had cut, at a cost of 2000 shekels ($500). That’s enough enough to provide for a family of seven for a month, here in the hills.
This is what it looks like after a search
In another village we visited that day we sat down with a man of about 50. We talked about the situation, we heard about all that had happened in the village in the past few days, and then he suddenly said, in the end there will be peace! You will see! And he waved his hand in the air and said, with a big smile, “Ya Rab, yishi salaam“ (By God, there will be peace). I (Eyal) waved my hands after him and repeated what he said, “By God, there will be peace”, and he repeated it another three times, and I followed him. There was a moment of excitement, of joy. A moment of hope. Then I asked him, what does that mean, peace, and with whom? As we filmed the moment, we are happy to share it with you, see the attached film clip.
It seems that something of what we and other activists have been saying has reached those responsible for what is happening, as we heard from many Palestinian residents that a few days ago an officer toured the area and gave them his telephone number. He asked them to call and let him know of any abuse or maltreatment by the settlers, that they had an army force ready to put a stop to it. Meanwhile, there have been several incidents, and they really did turn up. We sincerely hope that this unit can uphold the law and ensure the basic civil rights of the people in the Hills. Time will tell, it seems.
The same day that we were out in the field we felt that, despite all the darkness, the sense of sorrow, the pain and the evil which are everywhere, a few lights have been lit. Little moments of cheer give us strength to continue and come out to the field. To meet the people and bring the distant villages dry foodstuffs, fruit and vegetables, medicines, diapers, and wood for heating, which is now sorely needed. As we’ve already said, the villagers have great difficulty bringing all these things from the town because of the army roadblocks and the intimidation by the settlers, “that they won’t dare leave the villages”.
So, that we may continue lighting up the darkness around us with a bit of good, we need your help. Every contribution, large or small, helps. All donations go to buy the necessary goods and to maintain the pickup, which in these days is working hard to get through the muddy dirt tracks and reach even the most distant villages.
The pickup, being loaded
Thanks for reading, Eyal and Eileil Shani
This is the link for donations:
Tr. Yonathan (Jon) Anson
Comments