Wake-up call

The other day I was woken up at about six am by a loud banging on my bedroom door- I stumbled out as Najah (my present Palestinian mum) dragged me to the window to show me two military jeeps pulling away. Whilst I was sleeping peacefully six soldiers had arrived at the door of our house with four more waiting outside. They were 'enquiring' about Ahmed, one of the sons of the family who studies in the North of the West Bank and who was coming home to visit that day. Ahmed's father was given a piece of paper and told to come to the checkpoint in the nearest town at midday. I decided to go with him. At the checkpoint we duly waited with about fifty other people, some waiting for permits, some waiting to pass, and a few others, who apparently had been 'summoned' by the captain, as in my family's case.

Having waited for four hours and still spoken to no-one, Ahmed's father was told to go home, and advised that his son would be 'summoned' later. After this pointless exercise, I can only conclude that Israel's military budget must be large enough to be able to choose Spielberg-style special effects and extras over popping a letter through someone's door in the banal manner of the rest of the world. I wondered whether ten armed soldiers were really necessary to deliver a piece of paper which was meaningless anyway. Nevertheless, the unspoken yet crassly overstated motive of frightening and intimidating the family did at least work like a charm.

On a more positive note, this town is really growing on me. The hamzeen wind has spent a few day blowing gusts through the town, kicking up the dust and sending cans and papers scuffing through the streets. Herds of sheep and goats come wandering through the streets looking for somewhere to graze- it makes me laugh to see a bunch of sheep chewing around the stones in the nearby graveyard. It is now too hot to walk any great distance uphill, but fortuitously enough I usually only need walk a few metres until someone I know pulls up to offer me a lift in a rickety old car, or I am prised off the street and in to someone's home for fizzy drinks, and then tea, and then coffee, roasted with cardamom and then boiled and drunk without filtering, like a think black gritty sugary soup.

And I am off now to play with my new badminton set which I bought for a pound. Brilliant.