Matteo, 60'

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo, 60'

#review

Review by XK

This text was supposed to be a film review of Pasolini’s visits to Palestine, but the text wanted something else. It became a conversation between me and a few of my memories from when I lived in Palestine. I have been to most of the places Pasolini visited; they looked different back in 65’.

The sequence in the movie of the Moroccan quarter in Jerusalem leaves me breathless. I’ve watched this sequence over and over again. I think it’s extraordinary! I have to show this to all of my friends. When I lived in Ramallah I wrote a lot about the destruction of the Moroccan quarter, after Israel occupied the old city of Jerusalem in 67’. Hundreds, if not thousands of year old houses were crushed to create the square in front of the western wall. One of many war crimes Israel has never been prosecuted for. The little sequence in the movie, just a few seconds no more, is valuable and so important – because it proves something that the state of Israel wants to be forgotten – that the Moroccan quarter did actually exist. I move myself to tears when I write this. Those houses, those homes, can’t be forgotten. Or will they be?

We follow Pasolini through the Galilee and on the Syrian side of Lake Tiberias, now also annexed by Israel. We follow him to the Jordan River, to Nazareth, and to Jerusalem – the old city with its famous Damascus gate. I’ve seen the Damascus Gate so many times, for me the gate carries memories of relief. Close by the gate, just a few hundred meters further, is the east Jerusalem bus station, from which the Palestinian busses go to the west bank. I’ve taken these busses so many times, and every time there is this tension, because no one really knows if Qalandia, the Israeli checkpoint, will be open. Always as soon as I was through Qalandia I knew I could find my way home to where I lived. Technically I could walk if I wanted to, it would take a while but it would be possible because there would be no walls in between anymore.

Pasolini was right, the Galilee really looks like Italy. The Galilee is the rich part of Israel, or the ‘European’ part, a bit greener than the rest and quite hilly. I passed through the Galilee when I was on my way to the Golan Heights in occupied Syria to celebrate my 25th birthday. I wanted three things for my birthday; to do something special, to do something I normally wouldn’t do, and to be alone (or at least with people I didn’t know). On the eve of my birthday, I went to the

central (western) bus station in Jerusalem. It was the first time for me at that bus station. Normally, I only went with smaller Israli-Arab shuttles or Palestinian busses. I had learnt to avoid Israeli bus station in order to avoid questions and interrogations, if they would scan my red-flagged (pro-Palestinian) passport.

The bus station was crowded with young teenage Israeli soldiers, their machine guns loaded, hanging freely at their sides. I was thinking WTF this is crazy, I don’t want to be shot and I certainly don’t want to be shot by mistake. As always I could find busses going everywhere except the place I was going to. Finally I found my gate, it had been in front of me from the very beginning. I had just been too early and the name had not yet popped up on the screen. The bus went up through Israel towards the border to Lebanon. We passed the outskirts of Nazareth, a city I had been told by Palestinians as well as Israelis is the most boring city in the whole holy land – Was that the reason for Pasolini’s disappointment? In the film he turns to the microphone and says ‘these faces…. These faces…. And the landscape is so archaic.’

Since the bus was late I missed my connecting bus in Qiryat Shermona. I was not surprised and I was not worried. I’m an expert in improvisation – I’m not bragging, it’s true! Ever since I traveled in India for half a year as a 19 year old trans woman, just starting on

hormone replacement therapy, I was a master in creating c-plans on the b-plans which didn’t work out, and d-plans on the c-plans when they didn’t work, and e-plans on the d-plans etc. etc. It was impossible to have plans. Panic is the way to mindfulness. And raising blood sugar levels is crucial in these situations.

I ate an apple I had taken with me (travel food). I double checked if there were no more busses... There were no more busses. I looked at google maps to see how long it would take to walk… okey 5h 40min... that’s a little bit too long… then I would be in Odem (the village I was going to) around midnight. I thought: Maybe there’s busses to a city or bigger village close by to Odem – and from where I could walk or catch a hitchhike – such as Qatsrin, Majdal Shams or Mas’ada? Yes! From Mas’ada it would only take 1h 30 min to go and there was a bus to Mas’ada going in 30 minutes. The journey not only took me further away, it also took me further up (to be specific 1 kilometer up). When Pasolini was here, this part of Syria was still under Syrian control. 65’ just a couple of years before the six days war and the loss of so much.

From a bit outside Mas’ada I got a hitch hike. Two Israeli dudes (military style – think about the stereotype of men from the southern states in the US – those kinds of people). They were nice to me, and all the time I was thinking if they were nice because I was going to Odem – an Israeli settlement in Syria (illegal according to international law). Maybe they think I’m one of those European settler girls? Probably. And the landscape did look even more ‘European’ now than in the Galilee. Up here in the mountains of the Golan Heights, and in the vicinity of this settlement – it looked like some kind of mediterranean tempered Switzerland. Flowers, valleys, and trees. There were cows, and the bells around their necks created a very familiar soundscape.

As you see I had decided to (for once) try to spend time with settlers. These people whom I boycotted, who I wanted to be evicted, because they take advantage of a land stolen from other people [and even if they have grown up there, born after 67’, bla bla bla, it is still stolen. Only because you inherit something stolen, for instance art or land, it’s not rightfully yours and you aren’t less obliged to turn it back to the rightful owner].

I wanted to write about Pasolini visiting the kibbutz in relation to this. I wanted to write about how he talks about Arabs and Israelis in different ways. I wanted to say that I found his journey to be made quite strongly from an Israeli perspective. I wanted to write about all the weird experiences I had in the Golan Heights, about the hysterical german guy I met in the settlement who talked me (over) into climbing Mount Hermon (Syria’s highest mountain) with him. How much I cursed him that day; I didn’t have proper shoes.

I wanted to try to put words to how surreal it was visiting a settlement. What it’s like being in some sort of American villa suburb, but no you’re not in America you’re actually in Syria. I wanted to write about an argument I had with an American woman from Texas. We talked about Palestine. I wanted to write how it seemed as if no one cared that the Syrian civil war was raging, and that we could hear the bombs during the night or see the lights from explosions from the highest point in the settlement. Awful, awful!

I wanted to say that afterwards, when I left the settlement, I bathed in the Jordan river for the first (and only) time in my life (so far). It was beautiful, the rhododendron was flowering in pink and orange. I wanted to write about the extremely, super warm day when I visited Capernaum (probably one of the most mentioned places in the Bible after Jerusalem). I wanted to write, try to put into words, the unique atmosphere at the dead sea, the ‘not of this world’ feeling it has. There, even I would say, as Pasolini said all the time – archaic, so archaic.

But I don’t know how to write or say this. It has to rest a little bit more.

So I’ll end here and I’ll watch the news. Aljazeera.

Is the third intifada coming?