Embroidery in Bethlehem


Suzanna invited us to a women’s meeting this week, Bedouin, Jewish, Palestinian, Ethiopian immigrants and more, all talking about embroidery. I wasn’t that excited. However, it was actually one of the coolest things I have been to. In a tiny gallery, an exhibition of photos from the Negev was being displayed by a photographer. There are several villages in the Negev that are unrecognized, i.e. have no status, and therefore no services, and he decided that taking the pictures wasn’t enough, he wanted to give them a chance to show their work, and meet others doing the same work.

This is the start of girl power in the desert! Bedouin women from the Negev were showing their best embroidery and standing up and talking about the fact that they are kept in the home, dumped when their husbands got a second wife, with no recognition as they are not officially divorced, although it is effectively the same thing.

And guess what, they’re not happy about it. Palestinian women had brought their best embroidery, and then talked about how hard it had been for them to even get there (the meeting was in west Jerusalem). And everyone was making connections, swapping numbers, talking about how we should do this again...

Jewish with Palestinian, Ethiopian and Bedouin. And I reckon they all went home and told their mates about how cool the day was, and their new Jewish/Palestinian friends, with whom they share the passion and skill for embroidery with.

So they all found they had something in common, and every group had their work acknowledged by all the other groups.

Basically, they all spent the day telling their stories and being listened to, acknowledging the great work everyone had done and focusing on what they had in common. Deals were done, plans and friends made. Hmmm, lets think now....

We also visited the Shiraa circus group in Bethlehem; they practice in a playground, which right now is freezing so they don’t practice. We combined our shows, which made for a pretty random show, as they don’t really seem to have anyone teaching the workshops, so they have invented their own things to do with the equipment, which are pretty random some of the time...

Hopefully we are going to put some circus funds towards renting them an indoor space to practice in for winter. It is freezing outside in Bethlehem, baby Jesus must have been cold...

The space we’ll rent is at Al Fanek centre, where we did two shows the next day, the first with a group of kids with special needs... on of our best shows by far, the kids were well over exited, one so much so that he leapt up and grabbed Matt’s juggling knife after he dropped it and attempted to hack his knee caps off.

Shows went from the weird to totally bonkers the next day in Abu Dis... About 200 kids, mostly from the area (!) were lead over the mike in chanting some sort of scouts song by an elderly woman throughout the show, leading to near rioting towards the end, then suddenly, before then end of the show, they all stood up and left. It was great to hook up with some of the kids we worked with in Abu dis before though, I was chatting to a 17 year old girl I'd met before. She was complaining about the lack of stuff to do, and also that while she had no problem working in groups with boys, none of her friends agreed, and that was why she was alone at the workshop. She wants to study medicine at uni. Equality between the sexes could definitely do with a helping hand here. Chatting to Arfa reinforced the opinions I’m forming about this place Palestine... its full of people like you and me, wanting the same things out of life, the major difference is lack of freedom. Its an illegally occupied country. it shouldn’t be.