Night
We have made our way to the Ar'roub refugee camp, which is where my grandmother and cousins reside. The trip was relatively unremarkable except for these three little kids who ripped me off in a most professional way. Oh well.. Live and learn.. Other than that, it has been quite a happy day. Everybody with whom we have a blood relation was here today to greet us. I would never have imagined that I would be this content to simply see the family, but I discovered just how important extended family is. The last time I saw my maternal grandmother was seven years ago. Seven years.. She has barely changed, but I guess that's one of those things about old people.
It's really great to see my grandmother (though the rest of the family is also cool).. I am relatively sure she's blind, but one can barely tell.. She navigates the house very well, traversing the stairs with ease.. but her eyes look funny, and sometimes she says things that make me relatively sure that she is blind. Whatever. It's like saying an old person has bad posture.. it barely matters..
One of the things I really enjoyed today was the stories.. I have quite an interesting mix of crazy and crazier in my mother's family, but I guess I always knew that to some extent.. My grandfather probably fits into the "crazier" category. He's dead now, but that's another story.. As legend goes (told by my grandmother and several other convergent sources), he once fought with a woman over some matter that nobody can now remember but everybody believes was trivial. The fight was heated, and tempers flared.. Still fuming over the matter, my grandfather stormed out of the store where the fight was taking place (a little brick hut that made a small convenience store -- duk'kaan). When he returned, he liberally sprinkled gasoline on the store and lit it on fire..
Yep.. That's where I come from.. Go figure..
We're getting ready now to go to sleep.. Tomorrow, we'll go to Gaza after lunch.. Everybody here describes it as a powderkeg. I don't doubt it.. I just wonder what'll happen if it blows up.. Hopefully I won't be writing about it : )
Time to sleep now.. It's 11pm now. 5pm in my other life.. I'm happy here. I love hearing about my crazy family : )
tarek : )