Raja shahade wrote in his book Palestinian Walks about green Palestine , about the Palestinian hills that our great grandfathers used to go walk in ,walk aimlessly just to feel free not restricted by anything just the way he defined going on a sarha"a man going on a sarha wanders aimlessly, not restricted by time and place, going where his spirit takes him to nourish his soul and rejuvenate himself. But not any excursion would qualify as a sarha. Going on a srha implies letting go".(Palestinian walks page2) unfortunately we are not as luck as our great grandfathers we can not wander in this land aimlessly without being asked where are we going and restricted by checkpoints that won’t allow us to pass.
I’m really thankful for our professor for giving us the chance to discover that part of Palestine that we saw in batir. Each one of us comes from a different place of Palestine some of us come from the city and some come from villages, some have a certain bond between them and the land and some barely know anything about the land ,but this walk was new to most of us even those who were visiting Batir for the second time found something new in going once again
We started our walk from DCO in BeitJala we saw the checkpoint that Palestinians that live in these areas have to pass after being checked carefully by Israeli soldiers in order to go to Jerusalem ,and we saw road number 60 which bypasses those Palestinian cities that the Israelis’ transport easily between the settlements without having to enter Palestinian areas which they consider as danger zones.
We walked in small groups and the environmental studies teachers introduce us to new kinds of trees which their names I find it hard to remember, after a certain stage while going down the hill there were no road any longer we had to find the right track especially that the soil was muddy, we were taken by the beauty of the nature and no longer restricted by time we saw caves ands qasers on our way down the hill and we also saw two men building ’salasil’ from three to four layers of rocks between a certain field of trees that prevented the soil from slipping down the hill when it rains. While going down the hill I slipped down and my pants were covered with mud ,but I was not the only one to slip the others that were behind slipped in the same place. When we reached down the valley we were astonished by the great view we were surrounded by hills that are covered with green trees ,I wish we could stay there little longer but we had to go back up. Walking up the hill made us notice how going down was much easier on our way we found wild herbs such as za’tar and meramyeh and we picked some there we were separated into two groups while we were going up the hill the other group stayed in the valley, we were told by one of the guides that dears lived in this area and on our way we found a skeleton at first we thought that it’s a dears skeleton but when we asked the guide he told us that it’s not the skeleton of a dear it was the skeleton of a donkey .it was one of the donkeys that were killed last year and were made into shawermas .
When we reached the top of the hill we were happy to finally have a break since we were walking for four hours we waited for the other group in the meanwhile one of the guides explained to us about the railway when he told us that it’s the railway from malha to yafa and Haifa and those places in the south I remembered that once my family went there and tried to ride that train And were not allowed by the Israelis’ because their permission was for Jerusalem only, and then we were welcomed in a small factory and the man that owned that factory was really generous to us he offered us sandwiches and drinks. He told us that his factory is set on the highest point of the hill. Then we went down to the spring the main source of water in the village we went down the hill first while the other group went directly up the hill in order to grow trees , on our way down we stole lemons fresh yellow lemons with some help from Hassan they guy that was guiding us through our walk and when we reached the railway I asked him is it allowed to cross the road he said yes and explained that there were cameras’ all over the place we sat on the railway and took a pictures and one of the guys saw a dear few miles away from us there Hassan explained to me that dears never drink water which was something really new to me . And when we started to walk up the hill we stole almonds from the trees it was a new and interesting experience and the best thing was that after we started walking up the hill the trained passed just where we were sitting few minutes before . When we met with the other group we found our spots and started growing trees and instead of writing our named we surrounded it with the peace sign made from rocks after growing the trees I had an argument with one of my colleagues because I didn’t knew what was the name of the thing we used to dig the soil with which eventually was a "toreye" the argument was about the difference between living in a village and being surrounded by lands and living in the city and surrounded by stores . After we finished our walk I was dead tired but also really happy that I got the chance to go on this walk which was worth everything. I don’t know where our next walk is going to take place but I’m sure it will be something new an adventure in our own land that we don’t even know .
Mariam Khalaf
Human Geography
&
Introduction to Urban studies
Supervised by Mr. Alessandro Petti
