There she sat right across the table from me in Arafat’s old soap factory wearing her black hijab and dress bursting out with absolutely no hesitation at all “I’m tired of life”, it’s clear to me that it’s something that’s been on her mind for a while. I freeze, can’t speak, the only thing in motion at this very moment are the tears building up in the corner of my eyes. Some of it because this is my very first session in Nablus and it’s immediately raw and intense, and some of it because I’ve seen her home located in the village hills with jaw dropping views, clean air, fresh herbs growing in the wild and fresh fruit growing on the trees combined with merely concrete walls and not much more. Her kitchen and toilet are located side by side in the same small room; no sofa, coffee table, or dining table throughout the home and now her husband has just been admitted to the hospital.
I made no presumptions about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict before I left to stay 2 months in the Occupied West Bank. Of course I knew there’s a conflict and that it was a long and complicated one, but why, and what exactly was going on – I had no idea. Some might think that’s naive and idiotic but I find that’s the better way to travel, for me anyway – with an open mind.
My first encounter with a Palestinian was the taxi driver who drove me from the check point outside of Tel Aviv to Nablus. During our drive he pulled over outside a bakery, and came back with a bag of deliciously smelling baked goods. What a nice man I thought, he’s dropping me off and then going home to his family with freshly baked breakfast goodies. At 4:30 AM he pulls over and stops the car, I had no idea where we were, if we had arrived or if there was another checkpoint we had to cross that was currently closed. Any attempts on communicating with the driver failed as my Arabic was non-existing and his English is more or less non-existing, however far better than my Arabic. The next thing the driver does I believe sets the tone for my Palestinian visit and is a good reflection of the Palestinian people’s spirit – he pulls out tissues and hands me one, then opens the bag of bakeries that for the past 30 minutes had created the most mouth watering aroma throughout the car, and there we were; In the middle of the night on a quiet street in Nablus enjoying a delicious breakfast together while the mosque was singing it’s morning prayer over the city’s sound speaker system.
“Nablus is a small city” – this is what I was told before I left, and perhaps so if you compare it with large cities such as New York, London and that of liking, however for me, coming from a Scandinavian city with a population of just above 128 000, the Nablus population of just above 348 000 is not a small city for me. Hence it took a good week or two getting used to the amount of people in the streets, the prayers from the mosques, grocers advertising their food for sale and all the chatting. It’s fascinating how it’s not only the spoken language one needs to get accustomed to, but also the body language. Twice during my stay I was seriously worried I’d done or said something offensive or just plain wrong when a person would start talking to me (loudly and in Arabic of course), waving hands and looking at me clearly frustrated. But as it turned out, the first time it was a man who wanted to let me know the zipper on my backpack was open and the second time it was a boy who wanted to let me know that the zipper on my bumbag was open (yes, I have one and I love it), clearly I need to be more aware of my zippers(!).
Once I got accustomed to and understood the language (both verbally and physically) I never felt anything but safe in Nablus. They are incredibly warm, welcoming and genuienly care about your well being. Yes, you get curious looks, particularly a western woman like myself with short hair and whom ‘dresses like a man’. The crime rate is more or less non-existing and the lifestyle is the one of ‘work to live’ – not ‘live to work’. The latter becomes apparent with the fact that no one’s in a rush and you’ll hear the word ‘yalla’ (hurry up/get moving) constantly, but it doesn’t really have any effect as such. The very first thing that struck me however about Nablus is that the whole city smell of soap! Now, this is a city that’s famous for it’s production of olive oil based soap, they used to have at least 33 active soap factories, now they have about 4, which sadly are not exactly actively producing these days. Nablus is a city loaded with character, the old city is preserved with it’s authenticity, which an old city should be. In contrary Jerusalem’s old city is a tourist destination filled with stalls of tourist goods, not my idea of authenticity. It took a while before I was able to appreciate the landscape. In the city there are practically no green areas, simply tall buildings that camouflages with the dry hills surrounding the city. One needs to drive out of the city to enjoy green lush fields and when you do it’s impeccable. As a Scandinavian who thrives on being surrounded by the sea it was quite daunting to never be able to enjoy any water in Nablus. Walking past the tall concrete buildings and looking through the horizon expecting to see the sea, all I’d see was another dry hill with buildings.
My objective for my 2 month stay on the West Bank was to kick off an art project in which I’ve called ’ I Am Also You’. The purpose of ‘I am also you’ is to explore self-esteem and self-awareness, how people think, feel and relate to life. Very few of us have done such an objective “self-assessment”. Normally, ‘who we are’ is a product of what other people have told us what we are, based on what we do or where we live – not who we are. When assessing what we “are about” one can live in alignment with consciously chosen principles and feel freedom over your own life and life as a whole. I create meaningful thought-provoking portraits of people and use the art to encouraging and promote empathy across regions, land borders and identities. In Nablus I met with a total of 30 participants for my series. We’ve talked about them, their toughts and their life before we conclude with an appropriate statement of who they are. Once we had a statement in place I proceed with taking their portraiture.
All of the subject matters I met in Nablus have been incredibly open, vulnerable and honest in their conversations with me and even tough I’m the one, and rightfully so, who feels tremendously humbled and honored that they’ve allowed me to listen to their story; that they’ve shared their most personal and intimate thoughts and feelings with me; far too often they’ve thanked me for giving them a platform to share and talk freely about themselves. The biggest take away and learning from the Palestinians in which I think we all should strive by is not only the importance of taking care of each other and have pride in your history, but also the importance of standing by your principles and values.
If you want to look at my work from Nablus you can find it at www.hegeh.org and follow me on Instagram.
