By Issa Edward Bourseh
I took that long tortuous ride to Ramallah on Tuesday to watch Souad Massi, THE Algerian singer, perform at the Palestine International Festival 2011 in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Fortunately, the cold weather that welcomed the attendees was the exact opposite of what was to come that evening. Souad Massi’s concert was electrifying in many ways. The performance was a perfect mixture of Arab music along with a delicate French flavoring and North African rhythm. Her music brought joy to the Palestinian audience, which danced the night away. The songs she performed, particularly from her latest album, “O Houria” (Liberty), captured every individual and engaged us all in the lyrics and the guitar chords.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbsvCHzUUWo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The audience was similar in many ways to that attending concerts in Tel-Aviv. The core was a group of enthusiastic university students with vivid dancing skills, who didn’t stop moving from the moment they passed the main gate of the concert. And there was no way you could miss all the “blond” foreigners attending, giving an international touch to the Middle Eastern environment. The audience consisted of mostly people in their late 20s, but children were also running up and down the stairs of the stadium with enormously positive energy, distracting us from the show at times but so charming with their extraordinary laughter. I couldn’t stop thinking about my Israeli friends. Just like I also long for my Palestinians friends to join me on my Friday nights out in Tel Aviv, I wanted them in the audience, too.
As a Palestinian-Israeli, I get to connect with the Israeli part of my identity more. As much as it sounds cliché, studying and working in Tel-Aviv sucks you into some sort of a bubble. But unlike Tel Aviv, that evening in Ramallah threw me into a magical atmosphere, only to be crushed the moment we left the “Ramallah Cultural Palace.” The engagement of the crowd in the concert was an illusion compared to the factual reality in the golden cage city. Freedom of movement does not exist for many of the dancing youth, sparking that mixed feeling I had about life in Ramallah. How would I have reacted living in such an illusion? How would you?
Leaving the concert, I couldn’t stop thinking about how close we are, yet so far. The drive, which took almost an hour, could have taken half the time if inspection points were removed and access to better roads permitted. Fully opening Route 443 is just one small example of an act that must be taken by Israelis to benefit the Palestinians.
This might sound naïve, but being a Palestinian-Israeli, I get to practice both identities simultaneously, and see first-hand the potential for true coexistence. One based not only on economic interests and security measures by governments, but also on the desire to simply know the other on a personal level. I hope we get to a day where concerts by Souad Massi are performed in Ramallah for Israelis and in Tel-Aviv for Palestinians.
But hey, that’s just me being naïve.
Issa Edward Boursheh is a graduate student at Tel Aviv University