Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

Station 1: Bilal and the Bedouins

Bilal is from a family of Bedouin Arabs, an often-displaced tribal people who endure a harsh existence without electricity, running water, sanitation and medical facilities. Bedouin homes are makeshift structures made of available materials. At the time of the photo, Bilal lived in a one-room shack in Wadi Abu Hindi, a district northeast of Jerusalem. To the left is the place where Bilal slept. It is unlikely he still lives here, as in spring 2011 many Bedouin families were expelled from the area when the Israeli military said it was illegal for them to live there. Many Bedouins' homes were demolished so that a security wall could be built.

Bedouin Tent

The traditional Bedouin tent was woven from goats' hair. When it rains the weave contracts and doesn't let the water in. In the heat of the summer the outside of the tent feels very hot to the touch while the inside remains blissfully cool. In the winter when it is cold outside with a small fire inside the reverse is true, and the tent stays warm and cozy.

Nowadays the tents are used so often and are moved day by day that we changed the material and style to be more propper for our guests. But they still offer the bedouin comfort and atmosphere. They protect us in the night from the wind and let us sit together inside to make music.

Bedouin Music

We don't need anything else but our voices and the clap of our hands. These songs make us feel strong in the desert and the loneliness disappears. Our grandfathers taught us many kinds of songs.

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

There are also lots of songs for the camels, to make them happy and strong. You will never understand this feeling, only if you sit in the saddle of a camel and your body moves on the camel.

We are singing these songs now with our guests at our fire place in the camp and outside on our safaris. We love to play the drums and the samsomeja (similar to a western guitar) and we feel so happy to keep our traditions alive.

Bedouin Food

Because it was so difficult to carry all the fresh fruits and vegetables with us in the desert our food was so simple and more tasty. Rice and flour was easier to carry. Maybe this is the reason why we have a variety of bread, which was made freshly every day.

The classical fetir was made with flour, water and little salt in the fire. It was used to put it in the soup or hot milk in the morning. Moraras, like a pancake, are made from flour, water and samna (a kind of fat) and sugar or honey.

In our hotel you will get every morning a fresh and special home made fetir with oil. Our meals are mostly made of rice and vegetables in a tasty sauce, simple and healthy.

Bedouin Hospitality

A guest is always welcome to the Bedouin home. We feel our houses are like a poor home without guests. All the big family will come to share the food with the guests who came to one of the houses in the village.

And after the meal the men will discuss between each other, where the guests will eat next. So the guests will feel all the warmth of our houses. Even if you just pass by we will be happy to drink a tea with you.

And because a guest comes from god, so called Dayf Allah, he will never pay for anything he needs. All the cost will be a pleasure for us to pay.

And also in our camp you will see our smiles in our faces for having new guests and when we sit around the fire we will invite you for a tea with fresh mint so you feel our warm hearts for you, our guests.

Bedouin Fashion

Just come and see how we look alike today. We love to wear our galabeya, the long dress, in all different colours and shaals to protect our head from the sun or the cold wind.

There are a lot of different styles how to wear the shaals and lot of different colours. And especially almost all the male members of the Zeydan family hide their own desert on their head with the shaal.

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

Station 2(a): Truika and the Jews

Tzvika lives in the Jewish settlement of Beitar Illit, a fast-growing community of 36,000 with one of the highest birthrates in the West Bank. Located near Jerusalem, the settlement is home to Haredi Jews, who represent the most conservative subset of orthodox Judaism. To the left is Tzvika's bedroom, which he shares with his three siblings. Jewish settlements are considered illegal under international law (although Israel disputes this), and Palestinians strongly oppose them.

Exclusive Report: Life on a West Bank Settlement

By Sarah Sirota

Israeli settlements continue to expand and grow. Those who live there can’t imagine anything else; those who don’t can’t fathom why someone would. Yael Simckes, a 51 year-old inhabitant of Elazar, a Gush Etzion settlement, falls into the former category. In this exclusive Jewish Post interview, Simckes opens up about her life on the settlement.

A mother of four, Simckes has lived in Elazar for 10 years. Her children go to school on bulletproof buses, which protect them from drive-by shootings. The armored buses shield their passengers from terrorists who frequently let loose on wild shooting sprees.

In October 2005, such an attack occurred. A car filled with Palestinian terrorists dramatically slowed when it drove past a Gush Etzion hitchhiking post, which was packed with citizens waiting for rides towards southern Har Hebron. Shots were fired from the vehicle using an automatic weapon. The terrorists then drove away, leaving three Israelis dead and three wounded.

Yet, Simckes is not concerned about safety in the settlements. Her husband, Daniel, she explains, is an optometrist who practices in Jerusalem. Within two blocks of his work, there have been six attacks. Major cities and heavily populated areas are favorites for the Palestinian terrorists; the settlements are

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

susceptible to attacks as is any location in Israel, but are not more prone to them. Statistically, she concludes, “there are more attacks in Jerusalem.”

When Simckes moved to Elazar 10 years ago, there were 150 families, now there are 370. Located in the center of Gush Etzion, right on the Jerusalem-Hebron highway in the Judean mountains, Elazar continues to grow. The need for affordable housing outside Jerusalem is what’s causing the settlement that lies just 10 minutes away, to grow. They are currently waiting for another 75 houses to be built. The government initially approved the construction plans, but has now halted them.

Elazar did not originally start out as a communal settlement. It was originally founded in 1975 as a “moshav shitufi”, an agricultural community, and boasted 75 families. The settlement was named after one of the Maccabee brothers, killed in battle not far from there. However, Elazar did not succeed as an agricultural community and its population dwindled to 25 families. Only when it became a communal settlement did Elazar begin to flourish.

A central synagogue, a well-stocked study hall, and various shiurim (weekly learning classes), comprise the religious life of Elazar. There are also a number of different schools in the Gush Etzion (commonly referred to as the Gush) area.

Simckes’ 13 year-old daughter, Keshet, goes to school in Rosh Tzorim, a kibbutz in the Gush. Her school, Reishit offers small classes with special needs children integrated with the regular children. It features a flexible program that emphasizes the initiative of the children and their active role rather than the more common passive teaching style. In doing so, the school gives its students the opportunity to work together with the disabled children, and to learn experientially, at their own pace.

The settlers of Elazar work primarily in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and within the 15 settlements in the Gush itself. Yael teaches in Jerusalem while her husband, Daniel, works in three optometry clinics, two in Jerusalem, and one in Efrat.

Simckes describes the quality of life as being “so high.” In Jerusalem, she relates, there is the hustle and bustle of city life, making it difficult to carve out a comfortable niche for oneself. In Elazar, there is a strong sense of community and a shared religious lifestyle. “The Yishuv [settlement] is our life”, she explains, “and the people in the Yishuv are our extended family.”

Elazar is an all-religious settlement; its gates are closed on Shabbat. The inhabitants are Dati Le’Umi (Modern Orthodox). Most Charedim (Orthodox Jews) would not be comfortable there, because there is a wide range of observance; people have TV’s and both men and women work. The men all serve in the army, while a lot of the women perform Sherut Le’Umi, an alternative voluntary national service. Simckes clarifies, “culturally, that’s expected; someone who wouldn’t identify that way might not be comfortable.”

On June 19, 2008, a ceasefire went into effect between Israel and Hamas, the militant group governing the Gaza Strip. The truce that is supposed to last six months, states in its terms that Hamas will halt their attacks on Israel, and Israel will end its raids on Gaza. Concerning the ceasefire, Simckes admits, “I don’t think anything’s about to change; it’s just a matter of time. I don’t know what a

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

cease fire is if another bomb falls on the Negev every day. It’s just a joke unfortunately.”

When discussing the government’s “giving-up” Gaza, Simckes sighs with consternation as she remembers. In February 2005, the Israeli government, then headed by Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, voted to remove all Israeli settlers and military bases from the Gaza Strip. The plan began to be implemented on August 15, 2005 and was completed on September 12, 2005. During that time, all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled and the 9,000 settlers who called it their home, were evicted. (Most of them lived in the Gush Katif settlement area in the southwestern part of the Gaza Strip.) Those who refused to voluntarily vacate their homes, were literally dragged away by Israeli military forces.

“It was a huge mistake”, Simckes says. “It ruined thousands of people’s lives. The government was criminally negligent towards people; there are families living in cardboard boxes. It’s tragic. There’s a tremendous amount of anger toward Olmert and the corrupt government he’s got. Everyone who lives in the Gush feels the same.”

As much as she loves Elazar and Israel, Simckes acknowledges that it is very difficult to raise children in an environment where you know they’ll have to go to war. The kids grow up so quickly and next thing you know, they’re 18 and it’s time for them to serve. Sending teenagers away to fight in a never-ending war is extremely hard and demands an incredible sum of loyalty and nationalistic pride, which then translates into duty. “You have to have a tremendous amount of faith to live here,” she says, “but I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

Since Israel was founded in 1948, there have been 1,634 civilians killed in terrorist attacks. People see this number and deem it a danger zone, an unsafe place in which to live and raise children. Yet Simckes says all it depends on how you look at it. As an outsider looking at statistics, listening to the radio, and reading about the most recent attacks, it is easy to discriminate against the settlement’s safety. However, in terms of quality of life, Elazar offers the warmest and richest environment. “People in the Gush pick up hitchhikers all the time. You go into cars with complete strangers. You would never do it in America,” she explains, “there is very much of a community feeling.”

The settlement embraces its inhabitants and creates a warm and loving home. Danger and uncertainty are a part of life, but not the dominating forces. “What’s security? What’s safe?” she asks. “It’s a different world. We profile and know what to look out for.”

Yael Simckes serves as a contact on the Nefesh B’Nefesh website for the Elazar community.  Nefesh B’Nefesh is an organization that aims to educate and inspire Jews around the world on the crucial importance of the land of Israel, while also seeking to revitalize Aliyah by advertising its appeal as a Jewish home.

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

Station 2(b): Ultra-Orthodox Judaism

Haredi Judaism is the most theologically conservative form of Judaism. Haredi Judaism is often translated as ultra-orthodox Judaism, although Haredi Jews themselves object to this translation. They simply refer to themselves as Jews, and they consider more liberal forms of Judaism to be unauthentic. 

According to Haredi Jews, authentic Jews believe God wrote the Torah, strictly observe Jewish Law ( halacha ), and refuse to modify Judaism to meet contemporary needs. The word Haredi derives from the Hebrew word for fear ( harada ) and can be interpreted as "one who trembles in awe of God" (Isaiah 66:2,5). 

In 18th century Europe, as many Jews were promoting a reformation of Judaism that would enable them to take advantage of new opportunities opening up to them outside of the ghetto, more conservative Jews were arguing that Judaism could not be modified in any way. These Eastern European Jews, who fought against the birth of more liberal forms of Judaism, were the founders of today's Haredi movement. 

Haredim live in insular communities with limited contact to the outside world. Their lives revolve around Torah study, prayer and family. Television, films, secular publications and the Internet are not a part of their world. They tend to have their own economies, educational systems, medical services, and welfare institutions and gemachs (free loan societies for everything from money to household items). In Israel Haredi Jews are exempt from army service. 

The distinctive dress of Haredi Jews helps them to define, and then insulate, their communities, as well as maintain a traditional and spiritual focus. They dress as their ancestors dressed in 18th and 19th century Europe. The men tend to wear dark suits with white shirts, and to cover their heads with black, wide-brimmed hats. The men also generally have beards and sidelocks (peyot). Women, in line with strict standards of modesty, tend to wear long skirts and shirts with long sleeves and high necklines. After the women get married, they cover their heads with either scarves, hats or wigs. 

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

Today the largest Haredi communities are growing in Israel and the United States, and smaller Haredi communities are located in England, Canada, France, Belgium, and Australia. Haredi Jew walking in Jerusalem's Old City Lisa Katz Haredi Jews Haredi Judaism is the most theologically conservative form of Judaism. Haredi Judaism is often translated as ultra-orthodox Judaism, although Haredi Jews themselves object to this translation. They simply refer to themselves as Jews, and they consider more liberal forms of Judaism to be unauthentic. 

According to Haredi Jews, authentic Jews believe God wrote the Torah, strictly observe Jewish Law ( halacha ), and refuse to modify Judaism to meet contemporary needs. The word Haredi derives from the Hebrew word for fear ( harada ) and can be interpreted as "one who trembles in awe of God" (Isaiah 66:2,5). 

In 18th century Europe, as many Jews were promoting a reformation of Judaism that would enable them to take advantage of new opportunities opening up to them outside of the ghetto, more conservative Jews were arguing that Judaism could not be modified in any way. These Eastern European Jews, who fought against the birth of more liberal forms of Judaism, were the founders of today's Haredi movement. 

Haredim live in insular communities with limited contact to the outside world. Their lives revolve around Torah study, prayer and family. Television, films, secular publications and the Internet are not a part of their world. They tend to have their own economies, educational systems, medical services, and welfare institutions and gemachs (free loan societies for everything from money to household items). In Israel Haredi Jews are exempt from army service. 

The distinctive dress of Haredi Jews helps them to define, and then insulate, their communities, as well as maintain a traditional and spiritual focus. They dress as their ancestors dressed in 18th and 19th century Europe. The men tend to wear dark suits with white shirts, and to cover their heads with black, wide-brimmed hats. The men also generally have beards and sidelocks ( peyot ). Women, in line with strict standards of modesty, tend to wear long skirts and shirts with long sleeves and high necklines. After the women get married, they cover their heads with either scarves, hats or wigs. 

Today the largest Haredi communities are growing in Israel and the United States, and smaller Haredi communities are located in England, Canada, France, Belgium, and Australia.

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

Station 3: Douha and the Palestinian refugees

Douha lives in a Palestinian refugee camp in Hebron (in the southern part of the West Bank) along with her 11 brothers and sisters. Her brother (pictured in the poster in Douha's bedroom on the left) killed himself and 23 others in a 1996 suicide bomb attack against Israelis.

Life in a Palestinian Refugee CampBy Grace Halsell

It is predawn, and Sameetha has overslept. Bashir, her husband, calls her. He speaks in Arabic: “Come on, you’ve overslept. Get dressed. Make my coffee. I must be off to work.”

Bashir, forty-eight, thinks his job important. For three decades he has lived in the refugee camp, and he has been out of work as often as not. Now, through a United Nations agency, he has a porter’s job. With a protective leather pad on his back, he hoists and carries steamer trunks, huge bags of produce, or pieces of furniture. As a one-man moving van, he earns the equivalent of fifty dollars a month.

Sameetha and Bashir are the parents of five children, the youngest named Nahla. Meeting Nahla, who is sixteen, I at once feel an affinity for her. Like Kareemi [a young Palestinian woman, who Halsell stayed with several times], she is tall and slender and has dark hair and dark eyes. Unlike Kareemi, she is painfully shy, turned in on herself, even furtive, like an animal in a cage. About her there seems to be the humility that comes with knowing you are living in a very limited space belonging to others who are more powerful than you.

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We walk along streets crowded with Arab Palestinians, looking into shop windows filled with TV’s and even commodes, and I realize anew that the world is divided between those who can buy and those who cannot. Then we board an ancient bus and after a fifteen-minute ride get out on the outskirts of town and walk a short distance to the camp.

Entering the refugee camp, I feel I am entering some medieval ghetto. I walk along a narrow alleyway, skirting an open sewage ditch. I pass tens of dozens of one- and two-room houses, each leaning on the other for support. I am in a ghetto without streets, sidewalks, gardens, patios, trees, flowers, plazas, or shops—among an uprooted, stateless, scattered people who, like the Jews before them, are in a tragic diaspora. I pass scores of small children, the third generation of Palestinians born in the ghetto that has almost as long a history as the state of Israel itself. Someone has said that for every Jew who was brought in to create a new state, a Palestinian Arab was uprooted and left homeless.

We enter the door of a dwelling, not distinguishable to my eyes from hundreds of others like it, and I see two women on their hands and knees, both in shirts and pants, scrubbing a concrete floor. They rise, one somewhat laboriously, as she is heavy with child, and the other, the mother of Nahla and Ahmad and other sons, a woman made old before her time by endlessly making do in a makeshift home, a home that is only this room with a concrete floor and blankets stacked against the walls for beds. And, for a toilet, a closeted hole in the floor. Nahla has never known the convenience of a tub or a commode, nor do any members of her family enjoy that greatest of all luxuries, a room or even space into which one can for an hour or a few moments of each day retire, and in solitude meld mind, body, and soul.

The United Nations provides funds to meet basic needs, such as medical clinics and schooling. But no one has extended the kind of help that would allow people like Sameetha and Bashir to somehow help themselves, to somehow propel themselves into a bigger space, a fuller life. Americans, for example, annually give five hundred and twenty-eight dollars per capita to Israelis and three dollars per capita to the Palestinians.

“We are only seven,” Nahla comments the first evening, as we sit on the floor. Members of the family-in addition to Nahla, her parents, and her brother Ahmad, include her eldest brother Zayid, twenty-four, a construction worker, and his wife, Rima, nineteen, who is nine months pregnant. Nahla has two other brothers, Abdul and Salah, who are not at home. She does not tell me immediately, but in time Nahla says they are both in Israeli prisons.

Living with Nahla and her family, I am astonished both by their poverty and also by their will to survive under the weight of being a people without a political party, a government, a land, a people without an identity and without a promise for tomorrow. I learn they unite through the shared experience of exile. Once Nahla introduces me to an old man in the alleyway near her home, and she tells me he is the head man of the camp, having once been a village mukhtar in the area of Lydda. Her parents and others like them from Lydda wandered from camp to camp until they found this old man, their mukhtar, and other friends from home and then they set up the same kind of

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community, as best they could, that they had known before the 1948 war that disrupted their lives.

I sit beside Nahla listening to her read her English lesson. On the sides I hear a cacophony of radios, loud voices, and wailing babies. Nahla, like every child in this camp, is handicapped in her attempts to study. Moreover, Sameetha constantly asks Nahla’s help in household chores. She has no time to think or plan a future outside the camp.

“I feel buried here,” Nahla tells me. “I know there is a world out there”—and her eyes seek space beyond the ghetto walls.Nahla’s family does not own a television set, but hundreds of camp refugees do, and Nahla sees, in regularly rerun Hollywood movies, luxurious homes with carpeting and bathrooms and kitchens, and a thousand amenities missing in her life.

For so young a person, she seems uncommonly perceptive about human nature and the unnaturalness of the crowded conditions in which she lives.

“My brothers knew when I began my period. Living so close, none of us is ignorant about the changes in our bodies, about life,” she confides, adding that often she must undress before Ahmad and that he trains his eyes not see, psychologically, what in truth he sees. “Once, removing my dress I deliberately studied his face. I saw that his features did not change. I knew he was ‘not seeing.’” Only in this way, she explains, does each member of the family give the other a sense of space, of living in a room of one’s own.

Nahla hopes to go beyond the nightmare of her parents’ past. And she has one dream—to continue her education, and then—her eyes widen at the possibility—to leave the camp and get a job. I ask casually, What kind of job? And then I realize I am thinking of Nahla and her future as if she were living in America, in a land that still provides alternatives. But I am in Nahla’s world, where as many as three generations are born in a cramped room, and their only alternatives are to survive or not survive.

Also, I am in a world where women have traditionally never left home, and those who work outside the camp are liberated only to the point of being “free” to labor in Israeli factories and return to what is too often called woman’s work.

I watch Sameetha, seated cross-legged on the concrete floor, mixing flour and water, and kneading dough into flat, round, pizza-sized loaves. She has only a hot plate, no oven. She must send the loaves outside her home to be baked.

For meals, we sit on the floor around a low table. We do not use spoons, knives, or forks. At each meal, Sameetha distributes freshly baked bread loaves, the main staple at all meals. I place my loaf on my lap, tear off a chunk and use it to spoon spicy crushed chickpeas with garlic sauce. I lift small bits of food such as olives, eaten at most meals, with the fingers of my right hand. Sometimes we eat sliced cucumbers seasoned with mint and mixed with thinned yogurt. Most frequently, we dip chunks of bread first into a bowl of olive oil—a big staple in the diet—then into another small bowl of thyme.

Once, we are all sitting on the floor, eating. Sameetha brings a pot of hot tea. As she bends to serve, Bashir inadvertently turns and hits the pot, sending the boiling tea

Unit 6.I: Lesson 5

pouring down Sameetha’s thighs. She screams, curses, and slaps Bashir, who cowers like a beaten animal.

“Get the paste!” Sameetha shouts to Nahla, who runs to a small cardboard box of possessions and returns not with a medication but with the only salve they have, a tube of Crest toothpaste. Sameetha, still grimacing in pain, lifts her skirt and Nahla applies the paste.

Laughter is only a remembered experience. Ibrahim, the baker is an example. I accompany Nahla, with a tray of pie-shaped dough, to a small shop where refugees pay a few pennies to get the dough baked. I find myself in a cramped, dark room with a low ceiling. The room is filled with smoke and seems like a dungeon. Ibrahim, a stooped, dark-skinned man of about fifty who seems at the end of his tether, says he starts work at 5:00 A.M., finishes at 7:00 P.M. and bakes about a thousand loaves a day.

“I am on my feet all day, my legs ache, and my head aches from the smoke, fumes, and heat. I work fourteen hours a day to make enough to feed my family. My health, perhaps also my mind, is breaking from the strain. The camp produces one generation after another of people who are trapped.”

Is he training his eldest son, I ask, to take over as baker?

“I am trying to teach him to get out of this camp!” he bellows, as if I have hit his sorest nerve. His eldest son is named Fouzi. He is seventeen and has been invited to Russia to study art.

“Wherever he goes,” Ibrahim says, “I am glad to see him escape from the camp.”

When talking to Nahla’s principal, he said “This is one of ninety-four schools for thirty-five thousand refugee children on the West Bank,” adding that West Bank and Gaza refugee schools, as well as all Palestinian refugee schools in the Middle East, have for three decades been operated by the UN Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA).

“Overcrowded classrooms are our worst problem. We have not been permitted by Israeli authorities to build new schools since they occupied the area in 1967. Our school population, now more than one thousand in this school, has more than doubled. Consequently, we have to use our schools on double shifts.

“Censorship is another problem,” he continues. “We made a list of 117 textbooks we think necessary for the elementary and preparatory cycles. But the Israeli government censored 42 of these. As a result, our students in several courses must rely entirely on classroom lectures.

“About ninety percent of our resources come from voluntary contributions by governments,” he continues. “The remaining ten percent is provided by the UN. The Arab countries saved us from bankruptcy in 1979 when Saudi Arabia provided the money we needed at the last minute. But the Arabs believe that the refugee camps were created by the West, and that the Western countries must finance UNRWA.”

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The administrator pauses to sip his coffee, and I glance around his office, bare save for his desk and three chairs. I see no wall docorations, no photographs, diplomas, or books. What, I ask, does he need most? It is a perfunctory question, and pencil poised, I await a perfunctory answer, such as, We need more books. But he is done with discussing school needs as such.

“Our freedom! Our freedom!” he replies fervently. “We are a people exiled and held under the yoke of tyranny. We number nearly four million. Three million of us now live in exile—in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Persian Gulf countries, and in scattered groups throughout the world. Only six hundred thousand of us remain in that part of Palestine that became Israel.

“About half of the Palestinian people living outside Israel are still considered refugees, and about twenty percent continue to live in refugee camps. In our refugee school, I see the psychological effect of the prolonged stays in camps: an atrophy of initiative, an increased tendency toward passivity and fatalistic attitudes. It seems contradictory to say our young students are passive, with loss of self-confidence and increased dependence, and at the same time to say that they have mounting drives of vengeance. But their hatred builds on their lack of freedom. Israel forcibly produces a generation of tongueless people, and we will, in the end, speak with fire.

“For thirteen years, the Israelis have chosen not to hear us and not to see us. An Israeli premier, Golda Meir, said ‘There are no Palestinian people.’ But ignoring us does not make us go away. Nor will the Israelis prevent our attaining national independence. Since Israel became a state scores of nations have won national independence, including some that number no more than a few hundreds of thousands. No power on earth can stop a people from throwing off foreign rule, once they have made up their mind to do so. Israel with all its guns and power will not stop us.

That evening, Nahla and I walk with Rima—her face chalk white—to a nearby clinic, where Rima gives birth to a boy, who she names for her husband, Zayid. Rima returns home the next day. There are only 293 hospital beds available for all the refugees in all the West Bank camps—one for every thousand. And there is only one doctor for every ten thousand refugees.

Zayid looks like all newborn babies, amazingly small and fragile. Yet Rima and the other members of the family insist I hold him and join them in their celebration. They all accept another mouth to feed as a marvelous gift of God. And where will this life end?

Bashir and Sameetha had come to the camp as teenagers, had married, had five children, and had now become grandparents of a child born in the camp. And would the child in two decades foster more children in this same camp?