The Silent Majority

“Hamas!” “You terrorists! You should be ashamed of yourselves!” These were some of the angry cries thrown at myself and the other black-clad women who stood silently in the rain, in the centre of Jerusalem, protesting against the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The women surrounding me were not Palestinians, or even Arab Israelis. They were staunchly religious Israeli Jews, who believe that what their country does in their name is wrong; and have kept weekly silent vigils of protest against the occupation since 1988.

In the ongoing conflict it becomes all too easy to focus on the injustices experienced by one side, and view the other as a tyrannical monster. The mantra I kept hearing during my trip was “when both sides are ‘right,’ how can there be compromise?” Of course, the conflict is anything but black and white, and from a foreign perspective, the pot-holed roadmap to peace and its depressing history can leave little room for sympathy.

But what must not be forgotten is that there are voices on both sides desperately working for greater peace and understanding. Galia Golan of Peace Now, Israel’s oldest peace movement, says polls show “a vast majority of Israelis (80%) agree with the idea of a two-state solution, a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel, and are willing to see a withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.” However, this silent majority is often publicly undercut by the forceful opinions of the few who do not accept this: and often, the same citizens who are desperate for peace do not believe the ‘other side’ shares that goal.

To combat this, groups have sprung up attempting to bridge the gap between Palestinians and Israelis, and actively demonstrate that not all Israelis are silent collaborators in injustice, challenging their government in the courts and on the ground. For some, their strong Zionist beliefs motivate them to do so: a concept that may sound strange to us, but is better explained by Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the director of Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), who I met in Jerusalem, fresh from a days work harvesting olives alongside Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, protecting them from settlers.

“The way to be pro-Israel is to work for a better Israel, and the real Zionism is to work for an Israel that is not only physically strong but morally strong,” he said. “There is a false equation that if you voice any criticism of Israel you are de-legitimising Israel at some level. I believe the opposite.” Rabbi Ascherman’s words are bolstered by a lifetime of action on behalf of the Palestinian people by himself and other Israeli Rabbis, whose organisation has stood against government bulldozers intent on destroying Arab homes, challenging them with religious and international law alike, and facing arrest for doing so.

For me, the work that RHR and other organisations like theirs do is valuable on many levels. Visiting Bethlehem, a town that has been turned into a virtual prison by the encircling ‘security’ wall, I experienced the deep sense of isolation felt by those living there. The director of a Christian Arab school confided “When the wall went up, we didn’t hear from our partners in Israeli schools. It was like they’d forgotten we existed.’ One of the more insidious aspects of the Wall, the intifada and wars before its erection is the wedge it has driven between neighbours. Arab and Jewish populations are divided not only physically, but economically and emotionally, though decades of misunderstanding and conflict.

And this is why the presence of people like Rabbi Ascherman is so essential to give this area a shot at a lasting peace. Years ago, Arik was arrested when he ran to help a terrified 13 year old boy who had been tied to the front of a jeep by Israeli security forces as a human shield against stone throwers. He was beaten by the sergeant, and handcuffed to the jeep next to the boy, where he talked to him, reassuring him that everything would be ok. Later when the boy was asked about what had happened, he recounted the event, but finished: ‘…and then a tall Jewish man in a kippah came and saved me!’ It is this recognition of the humanity of the ‘others’, this common identification as people, not forces, that will provide the understanding needed for the foundations of peace.

An oak tree

I saw a play tonight. This is what it was about …

A man loses his daughter in a car accident. Nothing now is what it is. It's like he's in a play - but he doesn't know the words or the moves. The man who was driving the car is a stage hypnotist. Since the accident, he's lost the power of suggestion. His act's a disaster. For him, everything now is exactly what it is. For the first time since the accident, these two men meet. They meet when the father volunteers for the hypnotist's act. And, this time, he really doesn't know the words or the moves...

And here’s the thing about this play. The actor playing the father has only met the actor playing the hypnotist one hour previously. He has never seen a script. He doesn’t know anything more about the show than the audience. He discovers it as he goes along - reading from clipboards, fed lines via an ear piece or obeying whispered instructions from the other actor (who also devised and wrote the piece).

It’s raw theatre. As in the moment as it’s possible to be. Like dancing on a knife edge blindfolded in front of a paying crowd. It’s impossible to describe really which makes it doubly annoying that I’m compelled to try. Even the initial conversation between the two actors ‘out of character’ is scripted with the guest answering simple questions like ‘Are you nervous?’ by reading ‘yes … a little’ off a clipboard.

‘Don’t be’ comes the grinning response.

But this isn’t wilfully bizarre theatre for its own sake. The form fits the message, the hesitant and lost actor at its centre able to conjure the broken and bleary world his character inhabits by drawing on the powerfully theatrical device of the play’s central conceit. He is bound to the audience as we discover together just what his life has become. He clings to the actor playing the hypnotist, relying on him for suggestion and encouragement - what to say, where to move, how to look, what to feel - a form of lucid voluntary hypnosis in its own right. More than anything I’ve seen in recent years, this play dances in the twilight place that exists between actor and character, contracting and relaxing that delicate membrane that allows a fictional creation to stand centre stage and the player to stand one atom further back. Stanislavski thought of this tension, this interplay between performer and performance as armour, breastplate and visor to be strapped on before every curtain up. For Meyerhold it was the handful of strings to tug the marionette. Here it is arguably the power of suggestion, the ability for objects in the mind to become fully realised on stage just because we will them to be. A tree becomes a child. An actor becomes a character. A script becomes a cry from the heart. What is hypnosis but the outward manifestation of internalised creativity? What is theatre, for that matter? When an actor steps on stage he creates a character out of thin air, he makes you believe on some level that there is a person in the room who isn’t actually there.

As the play progresses the scripted ‘out of character’ moments blend with the narrative ‘in character’ voices until every level on which you’re watching - the play, the concept, the hypnosis act, the father’s fractured inner life, the technical feats required to pull it all off - seem to come to the same conclusion. That we create the world around us, that reality is in the eye of the beholder.

But, of course, that’s just my opinion.

It was a memorable night and a fascinating piece of theatre. I’ll leave you with this - near the end, the guest actor turns to his co-star and reads the following from his clipboard:

‘You’re very good in this. It’s very well written.’

‘Thanks’ comes the carefully considered throw-away reply.

Perfect.

What I did at work today

Here's a link for those of you reading this on Facebook.

Comfortable friends

Sometimes science gets it right. It’s the smell of the memory that comes back first. The image is over-exposed and strangely tilted in my mind, as if some vast projector behind my eyes has buckled somehow and swept the image half off the screen. But the smell is as sweet and as distinctive as it was that morning, that soft January dawn we tumbled out of the manse door and struck out together to see the sunrise.

We were city folk, unused to the lazy burr of the countryside, scents compact and pungent - lavender, poinsettia and the scarlet long stem roses that bordered the peace garden at the end of the drive - ambushed our nostrils with bullish sensitivity. We were unused to the landscape and equally unused to each other, unused to the freedom we found in each other’s company. There were six of us -- or seven or five the image is still faded, water-damaged and treacherous -- a gaggle of loose limbs, high voices and wide smiles. We laughed a lot, I remember that and hugged even more, giddy with the ease, the sheer length of time we could hold each other without judgement or rebuke. Exciting times where nothing was pinned down or uncovered or investigated but haltingly. We didn’t know anything for sure yet, it was all up for grabs, it was still all to play for. Empty country roads, shuttered cottage windows and the sky like pulled velvet above us. Light on the horizon, we danced and jumped and balanced on crumbling stone walls as we made our way towards the park.

Helen let out that laugh, god I remember that laugh, like a dying animal that was inexplicably happy about its fate. Beside her Nic smiled and I wanted to go and hold her hand but the gesture would have seemed uncomfortable and forced and anyway Jon and I were soon racing through the dust of the car park towards the wooden adventure playground, quietly rotting into a public safety liability in one corner of the park. And there we hung upside down and watched the inverted sun drip slowly from the fields down into the sky. It was January the first, the world was new and so were we, I think Elisabeth started singing, I think Nic quoted Auden or Larkin, I know Jon got attacked by an inquisitive horse.

Because that’s what that morning’s become now, a 10 second anecdote, a nostalgic laugh about the sudden appearance of a hungry equine. But I remember more, I remember the hope and the wonder, I remember the heat in my cheeks and the utter certainty that this moment was sacred and untouchable ...

I remember the long stem roses that bordered the peace garden ...

Freeform wonderings

Sometimes I meet someone and I think “I wish I was going to get the chance to know you”. There are people out there – cool people, funny people, talented people, beautiful people – they’re like a great idea just before you fall asleep or a postcard from a stranger delivered to you accidentally. They provide a moment of exhilaration or inspiration that you know you won’t hold on to, that will never be part of your life. A stolen experience from someone else’s diary, a perfect view from a speeding train that aligns momentarily- window frame, angle, perspective, light, something caught in the amber of memory that existed for you for that second but can never be recreated. You know that kind of meeting? A half smile across a crowded tube train from the cute girl with the pierced nose. An overheard joke told with precision and perfect comedy timing. A poem filled with clarity and deeply felt. I’ve met artists who I’d love to chat to for hours, writers who don’t know that I’m even worth speaking to, friends of a friend who pass the time of day, plant seeds of potential and vanish. I now realise -- too late, too late -- you can’t know everyone, feel everything, mean something to every single somebody. You have to pick your life like a bouquet, one flower, one experience, one friend at a time – surround yourself with colour and diversity and remember to celebrate the people you do have the privilege to know well, the places that feel safe and familiar, the experiences and instances that unfolded around you and you alone. And when another exotic life drifts past your eyes, a wind swept blossom of exquisite, unknowable beauty, don’t give chase or crane your neck to see where it falls, know that you are also something special, fluttering on the periphery of someone else’s world and that someone somewhere is yearning to know you too.

For Gwen & Stephen

there are lovers whose eyes are silent reflective pools
for them love is a draft, a long cool drink, a thing of tranquility
they swim in its shallows, it soothes their skin, its touch is heaven
distilled in sweet nectar that pours from their lips
these lovers find in each other peace

there are lovers who’s eyes are flaming brands
for such as these love is a blaze, consuming warm flesh
as sparks fly from between their teeth, they flicker and bend and
blend together, spit and break and rush to embrace again
these lovers find in each other passion

there are lovers whose eyes are secret buried places
for their love is pregnant with possibility, precious and fresh and new
they are rooted to each other, twining together hand in hand and heart
to heart they grow heavy with fruit, strong and firm, bursting with life
these lovers find in each other sustenance

there are lovers whose eyes are studded with stars
for they know love to be vast, all encompassing, breath taking
they feel the gentle caress that fills every inch of their being they
dance on the swell and the ebb of the breeze, arms flung to the horizon
these lovers find in each other eternity

and there are lovers whose eyes are fixed only on each other
in them are oceans, infernos, tranquil gardens and thunder
they are the promise of life in all its fullness, scattering love like
rose petals and bright confetti, they are a blessing to all who know them
these lovers find in each other

everything