ihath

About 14 years ago, as part of attempts to broaden awareness on Palestine we would organize Palestinian movie showings here in Vancouver. Whenever the issue of arab-48 was brought up, there was a single movie whose name would come up.

Wedding in Galilee.



At the time, there seemed to be no other movie by and about the Palestinians who remained inside Israel proper after the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, commonly called arab-48 or “Arabs of the inside” or “Israeli Arabs”.
As a result I have seen that movie more than 10 times. Don’t get me wrong …. it’s a good movie …. it’s just not the sort of movie that you want to see more than 10 times ….. believe me. There is no Julia Andrews singing “the hills are alive with the sound of music” nor a chilling classic scene of a murder in the shower with a sharp knife. However there is a skillful and realistic depiction of a small Palestinian village. It talks about both the positive and negative aspects of that society through the prism of a wedding being attended by the Israeli military governor of the time. Many interesting interactions happen and you are left with a fairly accurate idea what it is like to live in that small village. The movie contains some harsh scenes and so if you are the sensitive type you might want to avoid it.

For all of you silly north Americans who will run out and go see the movie, let me clarify a very important point. Those scenes are not about homosexuality in the Arab society. All you silly homophobic north Americans don’t understand that same sex friendships in other societies can be deep and meaningful. In Arab society men friends frequently hug or even hold hands as a show of friendship and this does not imply that they are gay. Just because your society assumes that all closeness between same sex people must be sexual, please don’t make the same assumption about other societies.

Phew! …. now that I got that off my chest, once and for all, I can continue with the post.

My husband would watch the movie as if he was looking through the family album.

“Look! …. that is the street I used to walk on my way to school everyday”
“I know that actor personally”
“ That is exactly the way my mother used to cook when I was a kid”

He would exclaim throughout the movie. It was both charming and annoying at the same time.

Thankfully, there have been new movies made by Palestinians living in the Galilee and so I have been pardoned from having to watch the same movie over and over again.

For those of you who didn’t catch the drift, the name of the movie is a reference to the Wedding in Galilee mentioned in the Bible. Where Jesus attended a wedding in the village of Cana and performed the miracle of transforming water into whine. Cana now is called Kufer Kanna, Kufer means village in Palestinian dialect, and is visited by Christian tourists every year who buy really bad wine that is made at the village so that they can go home and brag to their friends that they got wine from the village of Cana mentioned in the bible. My attachment to Kufer Kanna has nothing to do with the bible, nor bad wine, but rather with the fact that many of my husband’s relatives live there. My husband was born and raised in the neighboring village of Mash-had, which is about a 15 minute walk from Kufer Kanna. Mash-had is not mentioned in the bible, and is not visited by tourists, not Christian nor any other kind, and does not have an awful wine factory. However while living in Jerusalem we would visit there frequently and attend many of the local weddings. I came to realize why a wedding in Galilee was worth a mention in a holy book, because weddings there are truly unique and worth attending ….. even by Jesus.

While the rest of middle east have gone the way of the west in wedding ceremonies, by embracing silly white dress, silly white cake and food banquet at a fancy hotel with a band; the Palestinians living in Galilee have managed to maintain ethnic authenticity and local customs in their weddings. A wedding there is typically celebrated over three days. A day to celebrate the bride, a day to celebrate the groom and a day to celebrate them both together. The wedding is held in the streets of the town and everybody from the town and neighboring towns are invited.

I used to like waking up early on a wedding day so that I would go watch the women doing the cooking for the wedding. A group of elderly women have been designated to do the cooking for all the weddings in the village. Youngsters like myself are not allowed to participate in any aspect of the food preparation, we are only allowed to sit and watch and clean the dirty dishes and pots afterwards. These elderly women cooked in huge pots on an open fire in the yard of a designated house. These were the hugest pots I had ever seen in my life. They looked like water tanks only they were round. Wedding food is always the same dish ….. mansaf. Mansaf is a traditional Palestinian dish of rice, cooked lamb and yogurt sauce. No need for a miracle by a holy man since the food these elderly women cooked would easily feed thousands.

Dancing and music provided by the participants and performed in the streets and main square of the town, these weddings were tiring but fun. Below is a picture from one of the weddings I attended in Mash-had.



While living in Jerusalem, I always enjoyed visiting my in-laws in Mash-had and the neighboring city of Nazareth. these weekend visits provided a welcome refuge from the psychotic Jerusalem.



I remember a Palestinian friend who was named after a famous Islamic battle, I secretly called her Mrs. Battle. The nick name fitted her personality. Mrs. Battle was born and raised in Jerusalem, east Jerusalem, the Palestinian Jerusalem. I remember taking Mrs. Battle to west Jerusalem for a girls night out. I took her to the trendy neighborhood of Emik Rafaeem. We sat in the trendy coffee shop of Kappeet, the one people go to be seen. The one Israeli celebrities and politicians hangout in. Mrs. Battle was amazed. The scenery, the ambience, everything was new to her. She was slightly uncomfortable. You see …. this was her time visiting this side of her home town.

I remember my co-worker Rachel, also born and raised in Jerusalem, west Jerusalem, the Jewish Jerusalem. I took her one weekend to east Jerusalem for a day long adventure. We walked around the old city. Visited a bunch of churches. Walked around Salh al Deen street. We did some shopping and had humous at Abu Shoukri. Rachel enjoyed our little excursion enormously, this was also her first visit to this side of the her hometown. She too seemed a little uncomfortable.

“Jerusalem is a unified city” …. my foot.

Jerusalem must be the only city in the world where tourists can introduce the locals to their own hometown.


But Nazareth was non of that. Despite the Israeli state’s effort to build another Nazareth, calling it the higher Nazareth, everybody knew where the real Nazareth was located and that is where everybody would hang out. I used love walking around the narrow streets of Nazareth. I would wander around in the old market, visit the clothing shops, a mandatory to visit to the Arabic sweets shop where I would have my favorite dessert in the world, knaffeh. Knaffeh is sweetened white cheese topped with shredded filo pastry that id dyed orange and the whole this is drenched is sugary water called qater. I know that the concept of sweet white cheese and filo pastry might seem weird to some of you, but trust me you have to try knaffeh to discover what heaven must taste like.


But my favorite place to visit in Nazareth is the Basilica of the Annunciation. I usually find churches depressing and don’t enjoy visiting them, but this church is different and unique. For some reason, which I can’t explain, I always feel something when I go in there, a feeling I can’t describe, a feeling of peace and contentment, this is the only church in I have ever been to that gave me that feeling. I always go in there for a visit whenever I am visiting Nazareth and I always ask my husband to visit the church for me when he goes to Nazareth without me. The church looks like no other church I had ever seen. It has a very modern design, yet you would never mistake it be anything other than a church. The Italian architect, Antonio Barluzzi, was heavily criticized for his design. Most churches built in the middle east were built by European, Russian or Greek money and hence look like churches that have been transplanted from those far away countries. I have a feeling that the architect was trying to design a church that looked local, as if it was built by the local population, as if it was middle eastern …. people seem to forget that is where it all began. Jesus wasn’t European … you know!. In the back courtyard of the basilica there are wall murals that depict images of virgin Mary and baby Jesus made in various countries around the world. It is a very interesting display because the images change drastically from county to country. Mary and baby look black when depicted in African countries, blonde from European countries and look Asians when depicted in south east asia countries. It is interesting to walk around and contemplate how people create religious icons in their own image. The contrast is almost provocative. A church with a display that makes you think and question? ….. how radical.

Two years ago, our local trash newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, published an image that some scientist made up trying to guess what Jesus looked like from analyzing skulls of people from the same period. I took one look at the composed picture and gasped. The similarity was astounding. It looked just like my beloved husband Za'atarah.

There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes. .... Rumi