There's a saying that the eyes are the window to a person's soul. But through the course of a day spent with Jerusalem's St John Eye Hospital outreach team, I realised they are also a window to much more besides.
The body, nutrition, environmnent. And in this part of the world, this also means politics.
I was invited to go along with the outreach team, as the hospital might need me to make a short film about their work to help them fundraise. We set out in a small minibus: 4 male and female nurses and an opthalmic doctor, a dedicated driver, and me.
We were headed to a village near the city of Hebron, or
Al Khalil, as it's known in Arabic. The landscape grew drier and rockier as we headed south - but much of the land was also cultivated with vines. Farah, the one female nurse who I chatted to most of the way, is from Hebron originally, and she explained to me that people from there are renowned for their strength; their love of food and women and their grapes. 'Women from Al Khalil are always beautifully turned out,' she said.
Just as the luscious vines lining the road.
We arrived in a diminutive village full of inhabitants who once were Bedouin, but have begun to creep into small urbanised pockets as many other nomadic peoples are forced to do in our times. We might have been going back 100 years from the outfits, footwear and rugged facial features of the patients who lined up silently outside the small makeshift surgery where the hospital staff were setting up. The building had a sign outside: 'The Non-Violent Resistance Museum of Al Twaani.' The patients were mostly old men and women, but many brought grandchildren with them, with eye complaints to be checked.
The staff arranged themselves in 2 rooms - one registration and one inspection. Their modern metal opthalmic equipment from Switzerland stood in stark contrast to the dusty little building steadily filling up with villagers. The staff, all Palestinian, exuded patience, sympathy and professionalism.
The Eye Hospital is a charitable organisation which provides vital opthalmic care for residents of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. In 2013 they treated 114,000 patients, 33% of whom were children; and performed 4,300 sight saving operations. Huge numbers of Palestinians suffer from diabetic retinopathy. The diabetes is often diagnosed for the first time through the eye hospital teams. Endemic genetic diseases, the diet, the stress of living in this open prison and the tense political environment cause a great number of physical complaints, many of them spotted for the first time by these dedicated eye doctors and nurses. Without this outreach, there would be nothing. That morning, one of the villagers told us, the Israeli settlers up the road had been slamming their cars into the villagers' donkeys and sheep.
Their eyes reveal everything.
The air in the makeshift surgery was calm with the feeling of relief from villagers - some of whom would not be able to afford to reach a surgery even in nearby Hebron, and many of whom will never be allowed into Jerusalem as they don't have the right permit. One elderly lady, dressed in a long black
'thobe' covered in traditional embroidery, asked me:
'Keif Al Quds? Keif Al Aqsa?' 'How is Jerusalem? What is the Al Aqsa mosque like?' with a dreamy look in her eyes. I'm always struck by how intense this lifetime of longing must be for Palestinians without a permit to enter Jerusalem. They are such a tiny distance away. Separated only by a few dry hillocks covered in olive trees, and the residue of nearly 70 years of politics and its physical and metaphorical barbed wire.
But there is great pride in their birthplace nonetheless. One of the local people helping the outreach staff was called: '
Falasteen' (Arabic for Palestine). It's like me being called, 'Scotland' I said to her, wondering to myself how many babies by that name might be born this year of all years.
'I LOVE my name!' she exclaimed. 'For me, it says everything.'
On the way back to Jerusalem I chatted some more to the lovely female nurse. Farah is one of those people who seems too big for her environment. At 40 years old, she is very attractive with twinkling eyes and a dedicated and caring approach to life and her work, which I imagine must make her a very effective mother of two teenagers, whose photos she proudly showed me. She is so exasperated by the injustice and limitations of her confines, and isn't shy to explain the differences between our two lives. I have got a little better at being less apologetic, and just listening to tales, instead. She explained to me: 'My husband has a green I.D. (West Bank) and I have a blue one (East Jerusalem) so we only just manage to live together in Jerusalem. It's not easy, as he's not really meant to be here. But if we left, I would lose my Jerusalem I.D. And we want to offer our children a blue one too, so they have a right to stay in this city. But now I'm worried, because as they reach the marrying age, they are going to have trouble. Life is now dictated by green and by blue here. We are making strategic choices for our lives based on these colours, not on what our hearts say.'
She's worried for her 16 year old boy now more than ever. 'In our village near Jerusalem it's like there's a war. The Israeli police are everywhere questioning people about the kidnappings and ransacking Palestinian houses up and down the country.'
Farah told me she has done everything to bring up her boy understanding that violent resistance is not the way forward. And she admits his friends are good and sensible. But how much does it take for a teenage Arab boy to see red in the end?
We agreed the timing of the World Cup couldn't be better - providing other things to be involved with at midnight than kicking tyres and starting fires.
I told her about listening to Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian author and lawyer, on Desert Island Discs - and what he had managed to achieve without succumbing to violence. On his desert island he said he would take some seeds to plant. I assured her that there was a big world out there that did care about the cause, even if the politicians let us all down time and time again. As one of her colleagues added, having listened to our conversation: 'Nothing ever stays the same, so we live in hope.'
I got home to find Rashimi building a cave from sofa cushions and the Lozenge outside fashioning a car wash from a mop, some chairs and a watering can, with a Postman Pat van underneath preparing for a drenching. I listened to their patter. They were unaware that I was there: 'Washimi, it is Daddy's birthday next week, so you will have to put on a pwetty dreth.'
St Grace is going away for a little trip to Jordan this weekend for a Sri Lankan concert with her husband. Sometimes I don't know how to show her how much I appreaciate her soulful presence about the place, which keeps our little caravan on the straightest path, as I weave around it doing little bits of work here and there. So I told her how much I appreciated her and gave her some extra money for her border crossing. 'You're wonderful with our boys', I said, 'and they are so happy which I feel so grateful for when we're surrounded by so many children that don't have this start in life.'
'Well,' she said, 'When I am with them I just think to myself. That they are mine.' And a little tear pricked into the corner of her eye.
