So much has happened in the last few days

So much has happened in the last few days. It is only Wednesday and I have been here since Sunday only, but it seems like I have been here for weeks, such is the intensity of my life here.
One thing is the incredible friendliness of people here. I can be walking past someone in the street, and they will come up and want to start a conversation, or in a shop or in a cafe. Last night I was walking out of my flat and a teenager started talking to me in English.

'Are you a student?', I said.
'No I just want to practice English. I learn by talking to people'.
He wants me to practice with him. I agree to do it. 'You can always see me around here. Come and talk to me when you are passing'.

I have a friend here, a university graduate called Mousa. He studied Geography and Urban Planning at Al Quds university here, but the only job he can get is in a cafe where he works every night from six until twelve or one. Yesterday he came round to the flat that I am sharing with Sarah the other teacher from England, and he brought some lunch - rice wrapped in vineleaves, a Palestinian speciality - that his mother had made especially for me. We sit and chat for a while, in English and Arabic, and then we go out and walk towards the neigbouring village of Bethany. He takes me to his grandparents house. The house is in a quiet sidestreet of the main road. It is quite large - apart from his grandparents he has some cousins living there - and there is a small yard and a shed which is full of goats. The yard backs right on to the wall, which is extremely tall at this point, over nine metres high covered at the top with barbed wire, overshadowing the house. Just before we reach the house, across a field there is a building that looks like a block of flats with the windows blown out. Mousa says, 'that used to be a hotel, now it is used by the Israeli soldiers.' 'How many of them are there?' I say. 'I don't know, about ten'.

In the house, I talk to Moussa's grandfather, who is lying on a couch in the living room. Then a cousin of Moussa comes in, a middle-aged man, quite large wearing a vest. And the first thing he says, is the thing that I knew was going to come up sooner or later, and which I hadn't made my mind about what I was going to say in reply.

'Are you Jewish?'
'Yes', I say immediately without pausing.

He then launches into a long talk about how evil Jews are. 'Jews are taught in their book to hate and kill the Moslems. It is written down in their book. They have succeeded in turning the Christians against the Moslems, but I know that the Jews are laughing at the Christians'.

All this in a very good humoured even friendly way, in no way personal against me. I have come across this before in London, people who say that they hate 'the Jews', who know I am Jewish, but they don't hate me, but feel they can be free to tell me this. In a weird way, I find it a privilege that they can be as open as this, and realise I am not really shocked or upset by what I'm hearing. I decide that I owe it to him to listen to him, whatever he is saying is coming from his life, maybe years of humiliation, the wall, soldiers god knows what, things that I can't even imagine. I try and piece together bits of his life from what he says. His English is quite good. He has worked in Israel, I think as a builder.

'I have worked for Jews in Israel. I have been in their church (he meant synagogue). One thing about Jews is that they will never attack you to you face, they will stab you behind your back'

While I am listening to him, I am trying to work out what sort of response I am going to make. I try to tell him that not all Jews are the same, that many including myself are not happy with what Israel is doing. Some of the things he says are quite thoughtful. 'Every country has a youth, an adulthood and an old age, and then they die. Once long ago, Britain was young and strong, now it is old and weak. The same thing is happening to America. One day, those countries will be dead, and Israel will be alone, and there will be so many Arabs and they will be able to kill one Jew each and ......'

I quite like him actually. He is quite good humoured and friendly with a twinkle in his eye even as he is coming out with all this stuff.

He has some weird ideas about Christianity. He thinks that what is called Christianity is not the original Christianity, which was written down in a secret book and buried deep underground in Rome. One day the book will be discovered, and 'Christianity' will come to an end, the whole world will becom Moslem, and then there will be perfect peace and justice throughout the world.

That gives me a handle about how I should respond. I say, 'I think about justice and it seems to me that it doesn't consist in our all being the same, but in our all being different and respecting each other's differences'.

Mousa has a very good-humoured attitude to his cousin. He keeps teasing him. For example, when his cousin says that all smoking is haram and is forbidden in the Q'uran, Mousa says, 'but you smoke, you smoke shisha too'. 'Yes, but it is forbidden'.

We part on friendly terms. Mousa says, 'I want you to know that I do not share his views. He has his opinions and I have mine. I do not agree with him, but I listen to him with respect'.
'Yes', I say, 'I do respect him. I am here to listen to what people have to say, because of the lives that they have lived'.

I tell him I am going to see him at the cafe where he works later that evening.