Another even more amazing pre-wedding party

If the first pre-wedding party was amazing (partly because it was my first one), this one that I went to last night - Tuesday 14th July - was absolutely overwhelming. The bridegroom's family must have been well-off because they hired one of the most prominent Palestinian singers in the whole territory Naser Al Fares to perform, with his band which apart from keyboards and drums included an amazing viruoso Oud (lute) player.
Just as before, my student friend Khaled came to collect me and walked me to the place where the party was going to be. He took me there but he didn't go in himself, because he is going to take his final school certificate next year (on which the future of every Palestinian student depends), and he is already working hard for it, even though it is the summer holidays. He has given me a wrist band, with 'I', a heart, and the Palestinian flag printed on it: 'I love Palestine'. I tell him it is a great honour to be able to wear it, and decide I am going to have it on my wrist. It will create some more problems for me coming back to UK through Israel. I cannot risk going through Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv with many of the things I have got here: names, telephone numbers, email addresses, photographs, anything Palestinian, or to do with the situation. I will not only get myself into trouble, get myself strip-searched and maybe barred from ever coming back here (which would be the worst case scenario for me), but I could get my friends into trouble as well. So I will have to behave like a criminal or a secret agent, even though I am neither of these things. I will have to email my photos to myself so I can download them to myself in London, then delete them from my camera, email contact addresses to myself and then destroy physical records, delete phone numbers off my Palestinian sim, and post anything that I want to keep to my address in London via the Israeli postal service. And then make up a fake itinerary to tell the people at the airport, which does not include having been here in Abu Dis (all assuming that no-one 'in authority' has been reading this blog).

...... Anyway Khaled walks me to the open courtyard where the party is happening, which happens to be near the community centre where I work, and then he goes home.