Pregled posta

Marketing

The People's Party

…We return to the Souk the following day and head to the mobile phone accessories stand, where we are to meet the contact Anna talked to on the phone the day before, following the stand’s owners’ recommendation. We’re due to visit the Palestinian People’s Party’s headquarters and to talk to one of its leaders. Anna makes some calls, and it turns out that the interview won’t last as long as we expected, as some unforeseen business came up and our contact has to attend another meeting. Still, we are to get half an hour.

One of the men we had talked to the previous day, H., says he will drive us to the PPP’s headquarters, which is located in the Ammari refugee camp, in Ramallah’s suburbs. We take place in his old beat up sedan, and roar through the dusty streets to our destination. I feel a bit tense for the duration of the drive – who is this man and where is he taking us? – but Anna seems at ease, filming the streets with her camcorder. I relax and grab a few shots myself.

H. speaks only a few words of english, but he still earnestly tries to talk with us, which contributes to putting me a bit more at ease. “I’m a communist”, is one of the first things he tells us. And indeed, the Palestinian People’s Party, which H is a member of, used to be called the Palestinian Communist Party before the fall of the U.S.S.R., at which time it decided that class struggle in Palestine should be postponed until the end of occupation. Even though it has members in the Palestinian Legislative Council and in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, the party is now focusing on solving problems on a local level.

We arrive to the PPP’s headquarters, a relatively new and clean building, a red flag floating atop a pole in its front yard. H. leads us up the stairs to the entrance, where we meet the person we are to interview, Mr. Issam Baker. A prominent member of the Palestinian People’s Party, he’s also the chief editor at Amwaj Radio, a well-established Ramallah-based radio station. He’s accompanied by two women, one of whom is not wearing a headscarf, which strikes me. Even though Palestinians are considered to be one of the most progressive societies in the Middle East in regards to women’s rights, we’ve seen virtually no women working (or without a headscarf, for that matter) in our previous short time in Ramallah.

We shake hands.

Mr. Baker and the two women (unfortunately, I didn’t write their names down) lead us to a meeting room. Coffee is served, and Mr. Baker apologizes again for not having much time to spend with us. As Anna asks her questions and diligently takes notes, he talks at length about the issues facing reconciliation between the Palestinians and the Israelis, about the almost non-existant employment prospects of the mostly highly educated Palestinian youth (there are nine universities in the Palestinian Territories, most of them teaching engineering – but no artistic education), and about President Bush’s visit to Israel and Ramallah a couple of days before.

President Bush’s visit to Ramallah, following the Annapolis Conference, is a step forward, says Mr. Baker, but it’s a step that’s difficult for Palestinians to take any solace in. Even setting aside the inconveniences caused by the visit – closed roads, lockdown of Ramallah – the fact that Bush talked about even further reduced territorial claims for the future Palestinian state, and most of all that he didn’t mention the Palestinian refugees’ right to return (as recommended in UN resolution 194) just added salt to the wounds of Israel’s continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank, not to mention the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Eventually, it is time for Mr. Baker to go, and, after exchanging contact information, he asks H. to give us a tour of the headquarters and leaves with his assistants.

We notice the book case in a corner of the conference room: most of the litterature is in english, and, what’s more surprising, is focused on China. There’s the Chinese Communist Party Manifesto, a book on religious minorities in China, Chinese market reform… right next to an essay on the effects of the Israeli security wall. In the next few rooms, we meet and talk to the staff: a woman putting together a list of job offers for young people, a young man in a hooded sweatshirt lounging behind a big desk. The office space is big, and sparsely filled, giving the impression that the organization has either just moved in, or had to dramatically cut its workforce. Posters of Che Guevara are litterally in every office.

In one last room, we meet two older men. Enjoying a smoke in the sun-filled office, they talk to us for a while, echoing Mr. Baker’s discourse, telling anecdotes of Palestinian life with a weary, almost fatalistic sense of humor. One of them studied and lived in Moscow, and we exchange a few words in Russian, which he tells me makes him happy. He is nostalgic for his time as a student, a time

Me: Yes, it's been done before but I'VE never done it. So now that
it's out of my system I don't have to worry about shooting it anymore.
Sometime you have to shoot something to say you did it.

The Phone Call: Knowing that it has been done by past photographers I
called my photo editor Don Himsel. We discussed it would be better if
it not run in the paper, although a cool shot, not original enough to
print.

Cutline: Raindrops appear on a car window Wednesday, July 23 in
Nashua. Recent rain and thunder storms have brought flash flooding to
the Nashua region. The rest of the week calls for more rain.

Thanks for looking.
Best,
Corey Perrine
Staff Photogrpaher
The (Nashua) Telegraph