Unfortunately, it was Paradise*

Huda has five children; her four daughters live in the US and her son lives in England. Her husband died a few years ago and she often complains that she is lonely (1). She even has an American passport so we asked her, “Why don’t you go live in the States with your daughters, Huda?” She just says, “It is better here”.

As you may imagine, not everyone here holds that opinion. Living under occupation is no picnic, especially if you would like to choose where you live or if you want to go away for the weekend. Of course she was upset when she was denied her permit to go to visit her cousin over Christmas, but otherwise only travels when there is some orthodox saint that needs celebrating somewhere. She has a pretty long term view of this Occupation and lists this time in the history of Palestine as simply the most recent in a long line of Occupiers: “….the Ottomans, the British, and now the Isra-eelis.” Unlike our young Arabic teacher who burst into tears and flung herself on our sofa when Elle confessed she was Jewish (2), Huda doesn’t harbour the same feelings toward ‘the Yehud’. We will be watching Al Jazeera and there will inevitably be some story about Palestinian hardship at the hands of the IDF (3) but Huda will just shake her head as though they are naughty schoolboys: “Oh, those Isra-eelis……tsk tsk….more tea?” Don’t get me wrong, she is under no illusions about the situation here, but she doesn’t want to ‘throw them all into the sea’ as some have suggested.

I think the real reason Huda doesn’t leave though, is the produce. We thought the fruits and vegetables were fantastic in Israel but the markets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem seem Canadian compared to the market here in Ramallah. Even so, Huda is very picky and doesn’t fill her cart with just any old tomatoes. Elle and I used to go to the market ourselves but after going with Huda, we feel completely unqualified to manage this on our own. “NO!” she said as I headed toward the baker who was pulling fresh pita out of the oven, “Not him!” I pick up a potatoe and look for her approval. She shakes her head and pulls me along. Looking for onions, she rummages through the pile, tossing aside the majority for the ones with the tops still intact. In this case, I can understand her criteria but for the most part I have no idea. “How does she do it?” we ask ourselves when we have bought some pears on our own but they turn out to be hard and flavourless.

Well the first rule is to buy in season, something we should already know, but here, anything in season is pure gold. When we arrived in Fall it was pomegranate season and we couldn’t get enough of them. Then ‘calamantina’ (4) arrived in December from Jenin or Gaza and the baby eggplants and squashes. In February it was the season of organic cauliflower from Halil(5) but you had to get the bright yellow ones that came from the village. Now we are addicted to the thick-skinned grapefruits from Jericho which are a cross between a pomelo and a grapefruit, sweet and delicious but seemingly only available by the bushel, which means we probably have enough to bring some home with us in June.

The other factor is that Huda is definitely connected to the right people. Lately, every time we walk into her kitchen, we see yet another pile of goat cheese on her counter, the flat white blocks stacked neatly in a pyramid. “More cheese, Huda?!!!”, we ask. “No, this is for my niece Rula”. If she was more enterprising, she would make a good wage as she works hard as a cheese dealer, packaging up her stash and calling for the re-up (6). The other day while we were hiking we stopped at a Bedouin village where the family had goats and was making fresh cheese. It was all very idyllic in an ethnographic kind of way, and while everyone was fawning over all of the dairy products they were making, we knew that Huda’s Bedouins were probably better.

She doesn’t do it for money though; she does it out of love, love for her family and friends, but also the love of food. She has a bit of an obsession with it, but not the stuff-your-face kind, the cooking and feeding others process. And it is this sixth sense she has cultivated over years of being obsessed with making everything as tasty as possible which has enabled her to pick the right cucumbers every time. As obsessions and addictions go, it is not a bad one, especially for anyone living vaguely close to her.

“Come’” she said, “after lunch we eat oranges in the sun”. We follow obediently to her front porch and sit beside the geraniums as she peels one for each of us. I try to imagine Huda at the Costco in Washington somewhere, wheeling some oversized cart around, frustrated that she can’t pick through the apples. “Better to stay here in my house”, she says, and I believe her.

*A collection of selected poems by Mahmoud Darwish

Footnotes

1. Huda complains about being alone but the truth is, she is actually rarely alone and has many visitors.
2. It was, as we say, a Woody Allen moment. As I looked over at Elle her sidelocks unfurled….
3. Israeli Defence Forces
4. Clementines
5. Hebron
6. If you have watched ‘The Wire’ you get it, if not, you should watch ‘The Wire’ any way, it is really good.