Qalandiya - a Palestinian’s time is unmeasured and not taken into any account
A Palestinian’s time is unmeasured and not taken into any account. His time is immeasurably cheap and endlessly elastic.
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How long does the way last from hospital in Nablus to Gaza?
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How many stretchers does a patient have to be dragged on, after being released from hospital, whom the doctors have ordered should lie in bed until his recovery?
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How many strange hands rummage through his personal belongings without their owner’s approval?
The West Bank ambulance waited for a long time for its counterpart from East Jerusalem to transfer the patient. When the ambulance finally arrived, the two ambulances, the medical teams and the patient continued to wait quietly and patiently inside the closed vehicles until the armed men approached them and checked documents and permits and bags. Only then, when everything was in order according to procedures and writs, was the patient transferred ‘back-to-back’ to the ambulance that would bring him to the entrance of the Gaza Strip.
This would not be the end of the road and its wanderings for the patient: he and his belongings are expected to keep being moved and checked at the Erez Checkpoint, where he will be transferred to a Gazan stretcher and a Gazan ambulance, and only at nightfall reach his home and family.
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How difficult is it for a friendly, smiling man to make a living?
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A man whose two sons help him with his groceries, a man whose handiwork consists of two poor, loaded carts?
His livelihood is so difficult, that in order to move his carts he actually tied himself to them like a beast of burden, pushing the cart loaded with blow-up dolls in front, and the one loaded with hot corn-on-the-cob pots behind him. Slowly, step by step, he made his way to the entrance of the vehicle checkpoint, where – by the eternal traffic jam, where cars are stuck and many people watch him through their windshields – he spoke to drivers and their family members, hoping that someone would hold out a few shekels in return for a toy or a cup of corn kernels, and he would be able to bring some food to his family’s mouths that evening.