The end of the wedding cycle has been reached. Last night we welcomed F and R back from their honeymoon with a dinner in Bethlehem, held by R's father. It officially closed the series of events that began last year with the engagement party, and that have, cumulatively, contributed many kilos of weight gain to family members and put a dent in at least two fortunes. The dinner was a bit anti-climactic and subdued, compared with what has occurred to date as I think we are all a bit exhausted by intensive socializing, food and drink. In theory, F and R will now go off and live their own lives, at least until their first born.
I say "in theory", because if they think they are going to have private lives and not have two mothers' close attention in the medium term, they have another think coming. It's in the nature of Arab families, and I find it one of the most valuable of their cultural attributes: their family coherence and mutual support over any distance and between even remote relationships. (An example: I'm blood-relative close to my brother-in-law's brother-in-law.) American families seem to fragment far too often and far too early; it's a cultural weakness. That said, there can be too much of a good thing.
After a couple of days in Taybeh, Bethlehem seemed cosmopolitan and hectic. Well, hectic, at least. A direct comparison between the two cities also points out Taybeh's accomplishments in neatness; Bethlehem has a disgraceful amount of trash everywhere. I'm not sure what Bethlehem's city administration is all about, but picking up trash is not one of their success stories. Public attitudes probably don't contribute to a solution to the trash problem—people just toss out anything, anywhere—but there are more concerns to this problem than just neatness. I saw one open-air grocery with an incredible pile of garbage that might well be older than I am. Sanitation is an issue, public health a concern, and it has to impact tourism as well. There is no excuse for all this crap.
In truth, I find Jerusalem equally culpable in leaving the streets, walks, parks and empty lots trashy, and the Israeli Jerusalem Administration's priorities as to frequency of trash pickup by geographic area might be suspect. Often, the only solution to the smell and congestion of public trash bins in the Arab neighborhoods is to set them on fire. I remember this technique for trash control was popular in Haiti, where public services were essentially non-existent. Hello, Israel is a modern, wealthy country; unless they can be more even-handed in their provision of public services (the Arabs are tax-payers, too), there remains a hint of discrimination in the treatment of Arab housing areas.
In another ten days or so we're off to Europe; first Italy then back to Brussels. Belgium has been in the news lately. The election was predicted to result in a political mess, and all such expectations were fully met. This is not entirely a bad thing as Belgium has usually operated very well without a government. It will be interesting to see how pervasively the reported schism is being seen by Belgians—we are notorious in our skepticism of political motives and agendas. In the meantime, we have much to see yet in Palestine and a notebook full of observations.
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