Reading Response- March 19th

Hello Everybody. :)

For me, one of the most striking things about the chapters from Sharon and My Mother-in-Law was how the authoress' life in Ramallah was a mix of ridiculously silly and ridiculously degrading.  For instance, Amiry's dog receiving a Jerusalem ID at the drop of a hat, whereas Palestinians can wait for decades without receiving one of their own. Or, on the day where the citizens of Ramallah were waiting for over eight hours to pick up their gas masks, and then were forced to stand in a straight line (as though they were in elementary schoolers about to come in from recess), and then in the end, not even receive their gas masks. Israelis, however, did. The value that the government placed on Israeli lives over Palestinian lives is obvious. Despite all of the 'second-class citizen-ness' and the nonsense it entailed, the individuals still managed to look at things with humor and get on with their lives, curfews notwithstanding. I also thought the book wasn't written from a "us verses them" point of view. The Palestinian vet  Dr. Hisham was an unpleasant bigot, and the Israeli veteran was relatively lovely person. I think that this was an important thing for Amiry to write about, as it would have been easy to turn  the book into a work with black-and-white morality.

The Hasan-Rokem work was quite a bit more abstract. It looked at Jerusalem in a way that would never have even occurred to me. Sure, Jerusalem is usually referred to in the feminine, but then again so are most cities, as well as things like ships and cars. I never questioned it, but now it seems obvious. Because it's something you cherish and possess and defend and take care of. It is an archaic tradition and in this light, it makes perfect sense.