yallknowdatg
02-26-2004, 09:36 PM
PALESTINIAN LIBRARIES
LITTLE PIECES OF HEAVEN IN HELL
by Ghada
Elturk
July 2002 is a memorable month for me. It was the month I went
back to my
birthplace for the first time since 1983. I went to
see my father, whose health is
deteriorating, and to visit
with other family members, including sisters and a brother I
haven't seen in twenty-two years.
Soon enough, on arriving there everything
around me seemed
like the ultimate hell. Everything and everywhere - in Beirut,
Lebanon, in Ramallah and in Jenin on the West Bank in Palestine.
In Beirut,
living conditions in the refugee camps, in the
aftermath of so many wars launched against
Palestinian
civilians, were heartbreaking and disorienting. I had worked
in those camps
before. Living conditions were bad back then,
but now they seemed unreal, as if in a
movie: exaggerated
horror, subhuman and filthy. Lebanese army checkpoints
surround
the outskirts of these camps; Palestinian checkpoints
posted on the inside. Poverty,
garbage, crowded streets and
markets. Everything - buildings, streets, people - seemed
dying and beyond help or recovery. Walking through the camps
was easier than
driving, but when you walk, you trip over
garbage and skirt open sewage, while your
hands and arms make
a path for your body through the throngs of people rubbing and
sliding closely all around - a sickening dance. The stench of
everything combined
beyond words.
The Palestinians in Lebanon are forbidden from working in
some
70 or more professions, one cause of hardship and
poverty. The situation in the Palestinian
camps is not of
their own making. The camps were never like this during the
time I
lived in Beirut before 1983. There was poverty but not
filth, destruction, and more filth.
These Palestinian refugee
camps are like big jails and strikingly similar to the camps
in
the Gaza Strip.
In Ramallah and Jenin, living conditions were similar,
but painted
with occupation, siege, curfews, checkpoints,
arrests and random and planned killing.
Poverty, unemployment,
political uncertainty, lack of food, were obvious. You didn't
need a second look to realize you were living in a war zone,
no matter how close you
are to "borders." Curfews are lifted
at random, announced only to the baker, who calls his
customers, who call their friends and neighbors - thus word
that a curfew has been
lifted is spread. Curfews are
re-instated without notice. You are stuck wherever you
happen
to be when a curfew is imposed, whether at work or the market.
You wait for
the curfew to lift to go back home, but the
checkpoints get you first and you might be
stuck for the rest
of the day or the night if you're not allowed to pass. Israeli
checkpoints are posted between villages, in the middle of
dying olive tree orchards, in
the middle of dust and heat.
It is my habit, wherever I land, to visit libraries and
bookstores. I am a librarian after all, and to me such visits
are, beyond doubt, the most
satisfying part of the time I
spend in "new" places. Not only because they are my "natural"
environment, but also because I talk with the people around me
and feel the pulse of a
newly encountered place, hitherto
unknown to me.
In the refugee camps, I did
not find life. I found what
I call "surviving hells." Family gatherings, unlike the old
times, consist of just sitting around, just being there
between one battle and another,
one curfew and another, one
electricity blackout and another. Politics and economics all
contribute to devastating and inhuman conditions under which
civilians try to hold on
to some semblance of normalcy in the
midst of a surreal and life-threatening
existence.
But even in this "surviving hell," bookstores and
libraries exist. The
bookstores I visited have very limited
and old publications to offer customers. The stores
that have
a larger selection are connected to universities, stocked
primarily with
textbooks, journals and specialized magazines -
most of which are out-of-date, incomplete
and limited. In
spite of their sparseness, however, the shelves present an
order, a
contemplative atmosphere creating the little heavens
of sanity that seem to be all that's
left for the Palestinians.
When you walk to a library or cultural center in the West
Bank, you walk across tracks left by military tanks that crush
street and sidewalk
pavements, smash cars, and eat parts of
fences and homes. When you walk to a library or
a youth center
in Lebanon, you walk through garbage, dust, noise and the
certain
feeling of so much violence in the air, and mass
graves all around you. As you step into
one of these little
heavens, you are surrounded by organized space, colored
painting
on the walls, posters. And you appreciate the quiet,
the quiet we amuse ourselves with
here when we associate a
librarian with "sssshhhhh."
While in Ramallah, I took
advantage of a curfew that was
lifted from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to visit four libraries.
The Public Library of Ramallah Municipality is a public
lending library, in a three-story
building with the children's
department on the lower level. Here, the damage left by more
than two Israeli military invasions was not very obvious. The
building, furniture, the
collection, everything was very
impressive, considering the situation, clean and well
organized. Staff was working hard before the curfew was
re-instated. I spoke with
patrons and staff. Understandably,
not many children were using the library. Instead
parents
were checking out books for their children.
The staff told me they had a
full summer program for
children and youth, but they didn't want to take a chance and
go ahead with the programs because they did not want to risk
children's lives or
well-being should anything happen.
The staff shared with me a flyer produced for
the summer
program, which had been planned to run Saturdays through
Mondays for
children ages 8 to 13. At the library facility,
the children would have watched plays and
puppet theatre, film
screenings and music concerts; they would have attended
lectures on the environment, enjoyed storytelling,
participated in book discussions and
writing; they would have
engaged in art exhibitions, drawing, art and crafts. They
would have gone on fieldtrips to the Palestinian Legislative
Council and to the
Ramallah Municipal Park and Gardens.
Children and youth would have, but for the danger
did not.
Indeed, another great concern was that some of the
performers,
storytellers and artists would have to travel to
Ramallah from other cities, towns, and
villages, and due to
curfew and unpredictable Israeli military actions, the library
staff
also did not want to risk bringing these people to Ramallah.
At the Khalil Sakakini
Cultural Center Foundation, a
non-profit organization, destruction by Israeli military
action was more obvious, and despite attempts to fix previous
damage, newer damage
to the walls, glass, furniture, doors was
apparent. The Sakakini Center is a beautiful, old,
three-story
historical site. A music hall is on the third floor, offices
and small exhibit
spaces are on the second floor and an art
gallery is on the first. The Center offers art,
poetry, music
and film programs for children, youth, families and adults.
The staff said
they had decided to take their chances with
curfews and military actions, but made
changes to the programs
with respect to time, materials and audience participation,
due to the military situation.
The Center continued to offer programs and
activities
because they wanted, among other things, to "provide badly
needed outlets
for creativity, entertainment and relaxation to
the public attending them." Some of the
programs offered
explored arts in various mediums, provided open summer night
concerts that gave voice and space to the talents of mainly
amateur young musicians,
poets, dancers and singers. During
Ramadan 2001, the Center held "solidarity iftars" for
those
who were alone during the holiday as a consequence of the
violent events:
students who live away from home and low
ranking soldiers who live outside their
headquarters. The four
evenings consisted of a break-the-fast meal, a concert and the
distribution of care packages. CNN aired a positive report of
this activity.
The making of four patchwork quilts was a project arising
from the consequences of
current events. One hundred and
fifty-six mothers who have lost their children since
September
2000 embroidered a loving tribute to the lives of their sons
and daughters.
The goal of the project is to help the mothers
deal with their grief and teach them a new
and
income-generating craft. The quilts are in their final stages
and will be show-cased
around the world.
The damage and destruction were very obvious and alarming
in the Al-Quds University Institute of Modern Media and
Al-Quds Educational
Television in Ramallah (Al-Quds means
Jerusalem). The Israeli army occupied the
university compound
for 17 days and transformed it into a headquarters and a
detention center. Furniture, computers, equipment, cameras,
walls,
windows?everything - every single item - seemed to have
had a blow, a total or disabling
blow. Staff continue to work
as do so many others between one curfew and another,
faces
stunned yet trying so hard to conduct daily business as
normally as
possible.
I also visited the Museum of History and Archeology.
Destruction is
obvious there as well. Some was repaired but
more damage had occurred later. All the
collection was in
boxes. Staff was maintaining and cleaning, but, again, just
trying to
deal with reality.
Most of the adults I saw in the libraries and bookstores
were
students from various universities who could not attend
classes or take exams. They were
meeting with professors, who
were conducting classes in the library. This was a practice
that I saw often wherever I went - in bookstores, cafés, ice
cream parlors, and
restaurants. You would see a table with one
or two professors and students either listening
to a lecture
or submitting papers, asking questions about research,
bemoaning the
lack of resources, and trying to convince the
professors to accept their papers with the
limited resources
cited. The students lacked access to what the professors were
asking them to read. Because of the economic situation,
unemployment, and extremely
low incomes, the majority of
students cannot afford to buy required textbooks, let alone
additional supporting and enriching material.
During the time I was in Ramallah,
graduating high school
students were not able to take their final exams -
"Tawjeheyah." This not only affected individual students and
the school system but
also the universities, because neither
the universities nor the students knew how many
students would
be eligible to attend the upcoming school year.
In Jenin, the
educational achievement of children I met
was next to nil. Young elementary school age
children could
barely identify letters and numbers. Many had no attention
span
whatsoever, even for the most animated and diverse
storytelling and games I tried to
engage with them. When
electricity was available during programs televised for
children, they watched television. I am not sure of the
quality of what they watched.
Traditional home activities for
children are lost in the current climate under occupation,
since family gatherings that once included storytelling and
games, among other things,
seldom do so now. Ironically, with
the curfews, children spend much of the time locked in
their
homes playing "war." They use blank white paper torn from
their school supplies
to make play guns. When curfew is lifted
they run to the store to buy stale candy and
sweets.
Civil and governmental life is interrupted, due to a
major loss of
equipment, databases, and documents. There is so
much destruction. Tom Twiss's
compilation of the damage to the
libraries and cultural centers is comprehensive and
accurate,
as I saw at the places I was able to visit and meet with
staff, or talk to
people who saw the sites I was not able to
visit.
Following is a summary of the
needs I gathered from
conversations with library staff in the West Bank, regarding
what concerned librarians in the U.S. can do to help them out:
1. Help pay for
periodical subscriptions so they don't
lose them or have a gap, since mail is unreliable and
they
might not have money to pay for subscriptions.
2. Help them bring some
of their art exhibits and
programs to tour the United States of America, since it's the
hardest country for them to get into.
I think we need to keep assessing the
situation. We need
to establish contacts there and use them when opportunities
arise
to help rebuild.
Also we might want to consider "adoption" - establishing
brother
and sister libraries. Libraries here in the U.S. can
establish relations with a library, cultural
center, a
children's or youth program, and coordinate with each entity
or program to
help meet their needs.
In my opinion, I think it is easier to work through
non-governmental organizations (NGO) rather than through the
Palestinian or Israeli
authorities. We might also work through
willing Israeli universities, which could forward our
support
and donations to Palestinian libraries and educational centers.
Our
support might help ease the daily burdens these
librarians and affected civilians deal with,
help focus
attention on coping with reality, and come up with programs
and services to
a population that is robbed of its cultural
life and cultural facilities.
While in
Beirut, I spent more time in two Palestinian
refugee camps, worked with children and
youth, and met with
librarians and general staff. I was amazed at the energy,
dedication, and innovation that all these people demonstrate
in the face of the harsh
situation surrounding them. The
quantity and quality of programs and services they offer
the
children and youth are amazingly high. The understanding of
library personnel of
their profession and role is on the
cutting edge.
I met with children's librarians, a
blind director for
special services, art and dance teachers, environmental
coordinators,
and health-care providers who were leading
diverse programs and workshops for children
and youth. All
were providing excellent programs and offering a wide range of
services
to their students and the refugee population at large.
Some of the needs they
expressed during our conversations
were for Braille books and material for the blind such
as
talking books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and library
supplies such as labels for
call numbers. The sighted
librarian emphasized the special-needs requests, since their
needs are particularly poorly met. I was very impressed by her
professionalism and
ability to stick to the big picture,
rather than trying to get her own library's needs listed as
priorities.
In libraries in this devastated region you find a
different kind of life,
the life that should be, where
everyone is practicing their human and civil right to learn
and improve the educational and intellectual aspects of their
lives. In the libraries you
find a cultural atmosphere, books
and reading materials all around, computers, book
discussions,
civic and environmental gatherings, music, dance, songs,
children's
involvement, youth taking charge - all in the midst
of chaos, devastation and destruction. I
can't think of
anything else that is more humane and in so much demand, yet
has the
least support, than the Palestinian libraries.
The Palestinian people live in isolation.
Without our support
based on justice and fairness, they do not stand a chance for
survival.
Copyright Progressive Librarian, 2003
LITTLE PIECES OF HEAVEN IN HELL
by Ghada
Elturk
July 2002 is a memorable month for me. It was the month I went
back to my
birthplace for the first time since 1983. I went to
see my father, whose health is
deteriorating, and to visit
with other family members, including sisters and a brother I
haven't seen in twenty-two years.
Soon enough, on arriving there everything
around me seemed
like the ultimate hell. Everything and everywhere - in Beirut,
Lebanon, in Ramallah and in Jenin on the West Bank in Palestine.
In Beirut,
living conditions in the refugee camps, in the
aftermath of so many wars launched against
Palestinian
civilians, were heartbreaking and disorienting. I had worked
in those camps
before. Living conditions were bad back then,
but now they seemed unreal, as if in a
movie: exaggerated
horror, subhuman and filthy. Lebanese army checkpoints
surround
the outskirts of these camps; Palestinian checkpoints
posted on the inside. Poverty,
garbage, crowded streets and
markets. Everything - buildings, streets, people - seemed
dying and beyond help or recovery. Walking through the camps
was easier than
driving, but when you walk, you trip over
garbage and skirt open sewage, while your
hands and arms make
a path for your body through the throngs of people rubbing and
sliding closely all around - a sickening dance. The stench of
everything combined
beyond words.
The Palestinians in Lebanon are forbidden from working in
some
70 or more professions, one cause of hardship and
poverty. The situation in the Palestinian
camps is not of
their own making. The camps were never like this during the
time I
lived in Beirut before 1983. There was poverty but not
filth, destruction, and more filth.
These Palestinian refugee
camps are like big jails and strikingly similar to the camps
in
the Gaza Strip.
In Ramallah and Jenin, living conditions were similar,
but painted
with occupation, siege, curfews, checkpoints,
arrests and random and planned killing.
Poverty, unemployment,
political uncertainty, lack of food, were obvious. You didn't
need a second look to realize you were living in a war zone,
no matter how close you
are to "borders." Curfews are lifted
at random, announced only to the baker, who calls his
customers, who call their friends and neighbors - thus word
that a curfew has been
lifted is spread. Curfews are
re-instated without notice. You are stuck wherever you
happen
to be when a curfew is imposed, whether at work or the market.
You wait for
the curfew to lift to go back home, but the
checkpoints get you first and you might be
stuck for the rest
of the day or the night if you're not allowed to pass. Israeli
checkpoints are posted between villages, in the middle of
dying olive tree orchards, in
the middle of dust and heat.
It is my habit, wherever I land, to visit libraries and
bookstores. I am a librarian after all, and to me such visits
are, beyond doubt, the most
satisfying part of the time I
spend in "new" places. Not only because they are my "natural"
environment, but also because I talk with the people around me
and feel the pulse of a
newly encountered place, hitherto
unknown to me.
In the refugee camps, I did
not find life. I found what
I call "surviving hells." Family gatherings, unlike the old
times, consist of just sitting around, just being there
between one battle and another,
one curfew and another, one
electricity blackout and another. Politics and economics all
contribute to devastating and inhuman conditions under which
civilians try to hold on
to some semblance of normalcy in the
midst of a surreal and life-threatening
existence.
But even in this "surviving hell," bookstores and
libraries exist. The
bookstores I visited have very limited
and old publications to offer customers. The stores
that have
a larger selection are connected to universities, stocked
primarily with
textbooks, journals and specialized magazines -
most of which are out-of-date, incomplete
and limited. In
spite of their sparseness, however, the shelves present an
order, a
contemplative atmosphere creating the little heavens
of sanity that seem to be all that's
left for the Palestinians.
When you walk to a library or cultural center in the West
Bank, you walk across tracks left by military tanks that crush
street and sidewalk
pavements, smash cars, and eat parts of
fences and homes. When you walk to a library or
a youth center
in Lebanon, you walk through garbage, dust, noise and the
certain
feeling of so much violence in the air, and mass
graves all around you. As you step into
one of these little
heavens, you are surrounded by organized space, colored
painting
on the walls, posters. And you appreciate the quiet,
the quiet we amuse ourselves with
here when we associate a
librarian with "sssshhhhh."
While in Ramallah, I took
advantage of a curfew that was
lifted from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to visit four libraries.
The Public Library of Ramallah Municipality is a public
lending library, in a three-story
building with the children's
department on the lower level. Here, the damage left by more
than two Israeli military invasions was not very obvious. The
building, furniture, the
collection, everything was very
impressive, considering the situation, clean and well
organized. Staff was working hard before the curfew was
re-instated. I spoke with
patrons and staff. Understandably,
not many children were using the library. Instead
parents
were checking out books for their children.
The staff told me they had a
full summer program for
children and youth, but they didn't want to take a chance and
go ahead with the programs because they did not want to risk
children's lives or
well-being should anything happen.
The staff shared with me a flyer produced for
the summer
program, which had been planned to run Saturdays through
Mondays for
children ages 8 to 13. At the library facility,
the children would have watched plays and
puppet theatre, film
screenings and music concerts; they would have attended
lectures on the environment, enjoyed storytelling,
participated in book discussions and
writing; they would have
engaged in art exhibitions, drawing, art and crafts. They
would have gone on fieldtrips to the Palestinian Legislative
Council and to the
Ramallah Municipal Park and Gardens.
Children and youth would have, but for the danger
did not.
Indeed, another great concern was that some of the
performers,
storytellers and artists would have to travel to
Ramallah from other cities, towns, and
villages, and due to
curfew and unpredictable Israeli military actions, the library
staff
also did not want to risk bringing these people to Ramallah.
At the Khalil Sakakini
Cultural Center Foundation, a
non-profit organization, destruction by Israeli military
action was more obvious, and despite attempts to fix previous
damage, newer damage
to the walls, glass, furniture, doors was
apparent. The Sakakini Center is a beautiful, old,
three-story
historical site. A music hall is on the third floor, offices
and small exhibit
spaces are on the second floor and an art
gallery is on the first. The Center offers art,
poetry, music
and film programs for children, youth, families and adults.
The staff said
they had decided to take their chances with
curfews and military actions, but made
changes to the programs
with respect to time, materials and audience participation,
due to the military situation.
The Center continued to offer programs and
activities
because they wanted, among other things, to "provide badly
needed outlets
for creativity, entertainment and relaxation to
the public attending them." Some of the
programs offered
explored arts in various mediums, provided open summer night
concerts that gave voice and space to the talents of mainly
amateur young musicians,
poets, dancers and singers. During
Ramadan 2001, the Center held "solidarity iftars" for
those
who were alone during the holiday as a consequence of the
violent events:
students who live away from home and low
ranking soldiers who live outside their
headquarters. The four
evenings consisted of a break-the-fast meal, a concert and the
distribution of care packages. CNN aired a positive report of
this activity.
The making of four patchwork quilts was a project arising
from the consequences of
current events. One hundred and
fifty-six mothers who have lost their children since
September
2000 embroidered a loving tribute to the lives of their sons
and daughters.
The goal of the project is to help the mothers
deal with their grief and teach them a new
and
income-generating craft. The quilts are in their final stages
and will be show-cased
around the world.
The damage and destruction were very obvious and alarming
in the Al-Quds University Institute of Modern Media and
Al-Quds Educational
Television in Ramallah (Al-Quds means
Jerusalem). The Israeli army occupied the
university compound
for 17 days and transformed it into a headquarters and a
detention center. Furniture, computers, equipment, cameras,
walls,
windows?everything - every single item - seemed to have
had a blow, a total or disabling
blow. Staff continue to work
as do so many others between one curfew and another,
faces
stunned yet trying so hard to conduct daily business as
normally as
possible.
I also visited the Museum of History and Archeology.
Destruction is
obvious there as well. Some was repaired but
more damage had occurred later. All the
collection was in
boxes. Staff was maintaining and cleaning, but, again, just
trying to
deal with reality.
Most of the adults I saw in the libraries and bookstores
were
students from various universities who could not attend
classes or take exams. They were
meeting with professors, who
were conducting classes in the library. This was a practice
that I saw often wherever I went - in bookstores, cafés, ice
cream parlors, and
restaurants. You would see a table with one
or two professors and students either listening
to a lecture
or submitting papers, asking questions about research,
bemoaning the
lack of resources, and trying to convince the
professors to accept their papers with the
limited resources
cited. The students lacked access to what the professors were
asking them to read. Because of the economic situation,
unemployment, and extremely
low incomes, the majority of
students cannot afford to buy required textbooks, let alone
additional supporting and enriching material.
During the time I was in Ramallah,
graduating high school
students were not able to take their final exams -
"Tawjeheyah." This not only affected individual students and
the school system but
also the universities, because neither
the universities nor the students knew how many
students would
be eligible to attend the upcoming school year.
In Jenin, the
educational achievement of children I met
was next to nil. Young elementary school age
children could
barely identify letters and numbers. Many had no attention
span
whatsoever, even for the most animated and diverse
storytelling and games I tried to
engage with them. When
electricity was available during programs televised for
children, they watched television. I am not sure of the
quality of what they watched.
Traditional home activities for
children are lost in the current climate under occupation,
since family gatherings that once included storytelling and
games, among other things,
seldom do so now. Ironically, with
the curfews, children spend much of the time locked in
their
homes playing "war." They use blank white paper torn from
their school supplies
to make play guns. When curfew is lifted
they run to the store to buy stale candy and
sweets.
Civil and governmental life is interrupted, due to a
major loss of
equipment, databases, and documents. There is so
much destruction. Tom Twiss's
compilation of the damage to the
libraries and cultural centers is comprehensive and
accurate,
as I saw at the places I was able to visit and meet with
staff, or talk to
people who saw the sites I was not able to
visit.
Following is a summary of the
needs I gathered from
conversations with library staff in the West Bank, regarding
what concerned librarians in the U.S. can do to help them out:
1. Help pay for
periodical subscriptions so they don't
lose them or have a gap, since mail is unreliable and
they
might not have money to pay for subscriptions.
2. Help them bring some
of their art exhibits and
programs to tour the United States of America, since it's the
hardest country for them to get into.
I think we need to keep assessing the
situation. We need
to establish contacts there and use them when opportunities
arise
to help rebuild.
Also we might want to consider "adoption" - establishing
brother
and sister libraries. Libraries here in the U.S. can
establish relations with a library, cultural
center, a
children's or youth program, and coordinate with each entity
or program to
help meet their needs.
In my opinion, I think it is easier to work through
non-governmental organizations (NGO) rather than through the
Palestinian or Israeli
authorities. We might also work through
willing Israeli universities, which could forward our
support
and donations to Palestinian libraries and educational centers.
Our
support might help ease the daily burdens these
librarians and affected civilians deal with,
help focus
attention on coping with reality, and come up with programs
and services to
a population that is robbed of its cultural
life and cultural facilities.
While in
Beirut, I spent more time in two Palestinian
refugee camps, worked with children and
youth, and met with
librarians and general staff. I was amazed at the energy,
dedication, and innovation that all these people demonstrate
in the face of the harsh
situation surrounding them. The
quantity and quality of programs and services they offer
the
children and youth are amazingly high. The understanding of
library personnel of
their profession and role is on the
cutting edge.
I met with children's librarians, a
blind director for
special services, art and dance teachers, environmental
coordinators,
and health-care providers who were leading
diverse programs and workshops for children
and youth. All
were providing excellent programs and offering a wide range of
services
to their students and the refugee population at large.
Some of the needs they
expressed during our conversations
were for Braille books and material for the blind such
as
talking books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and library
supplies such as labels for
call numbers. The sighted
librarian emphasized the special-needs requests, since their
needs are particularly poorly met. I was very impressed by her
professionalism and
ability to stick to the big picture,
rather than trying to get her own library's needs listed as
priorities.
In libraries in this devastated region you find a
different kind of life,
the life that should be, where
everyone is practicing their human and civil right to learn
and improve the educational and intellectual aspects of their
lives. In the libraries you
find a cultural atmosphere, books
and reading materials all around, computers, book
discussions,
civic and environmental gatherings, music, dance, songs,
children's
involvement, youth taking charge - all in the midst
of chaos, devastation and destruction. I
can't think of
anything else that is more humane and in so much demand, yet
has the
least support, than the Palestinian libraries.
The Palestinian people live in isolation.
Without our support
based on justice and fairness, they do not stand a chance for
survival.
Copyright Progressive Librarian, 2003