The International Community

On a trip to Montreal some friends and I went looking for a bar one afternoon (It was a little early to drink, but we were tourists; no helping it). Not too far off a main street was a worn building with B-A-R written vertically down the front, the big window filled with some potted plants that were getting a little out of control. We were tired of walking, so we decided it looked worth a few beers. Inside was one big room with fake wood paneled walls and linoleum floors. There wasn't much to look at besides a bar and some seating, and one coffee table surrounded by couches, which at the moment were filled with four or five hipsters watching a game and speaking French over coffee and open homework.

One noticed us after we’d sat down and came over smiling to see if we needed anything.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

“Nah, we just have beer, and it’s real bad.”

“Oh…we’ll take that, I guess. You have Guinness?”

“Nah man, we just got like four kinds. Wanna come see?”

We walked over with him to a small refrigerator full of 40s of cheap Canadian beer. He explained the quality of each one to us, reminding us that none of it was good. We grabbed one of each.

He sat down and chatted with us while we rotated turns with the bottles. Apparently the bar was run and staffed by a small group of college students who pretty much used it as their own hangout, using the income from working there to sponsor their homework time. It was a little rundown, almost empty, and classic. Not a family business, but a community business.

That’s where I’m working in Palestine, except it’s an English school instead of a bar, and there’s hookah instead of cheap beer. The entire staff of the school is under 25, including the director. Work ends at five but nobody leaves; we go on walks, buy food and cook it, and smoke hookah on the roof, and the school pays for most of it. Four Americans, two Danes, and a Palestinian, all living in community.

We took a walk with one of the other Americans today to a high point in Hebron (or Khalil, as they call the city in Arabic). At the top of a steep hill we heard some boys yelling to us from the top of an old concrete structure, maybe the failed construction of an apartment building. They came down and led us up two flights of stairs to the flat roof. On top the entire valley was beneath us, covered in the blocky buildings with red roofs that are the norm in Palestine. Several mosques, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and the Old City were all in sight. We could also see the only church in Hebron, a Russian Orthodox church that was built next to a "really old tree," a tree surrounded in stories (the oldest tree in the world, a tree Abraham camped under, etc.).
 

 While taking in the view I let the kids have my camera, guessing correctly that it would be grabbed and hoarded and dropped, but I figured it was about as safe in their hands as they were playing on a roof with no ledge and exposed rebar.

When we got to the street they gave us a friendly goodbye by throwing stones down at our heads. It wasn’t malicious, though, because as our coworker explained, “It’s just what Palestinian kids do; they throw rocks.” I made sure to grab one as a souvenir.