The launch of Gaza Mom was spectacular-thanks to all who attended! Here is the video from that evening! More events coming up in NY, the west coast, and elsewhere…stay tuned!
Gaza Mom book launch-Video
Gaza Mom book launch-Nov. 18!
Gaza Mom-the book, now on Amazon!
On parasites and parting gifts
10/14/2010
So, its been a while-I’ll admit. We’re now, back in Maryland, where Yousuf has started first grade and Noor has started going to pre-school two mornings a week. It was a very long, very hot summer-as Yousuf keeps reminding me (“is the weather cooler now in Gaza? When it is, tell me so we can go back!”) -but a very productive and interesting one. I am always sad to leave Gaza, my home, the place of so much inspiration and energy and hope-despite the continuous efforts to destroy it. For the first time in recent memory,we were able to cross in-and out-of Gaza in a single morning with no problems.
I guess Gaza felt the same way about us leaving so it gave us a little parting gift…
For weeks, Noor, who was attending a nursery there while I was working, was complaining of an itchy head.
I dismissed her daily pleas as a dry scalp and blamed either the saline faucet water or the body wash I mistook as shampoo and had been using on her hair. “But its itchy, itchy” she kept saying (“bi7uk!)… yeah yeah, so is my hair if I don’t use head and shoulders, big deal, I thought, if its not the water, it must be your genes…
But the itching did not cease. When we made it back to Columbia, I noticed little scabs on her scalp, which I could barely make out through her billowy brown curls.
“Yassine-why is her hair itching?” I inquired, hoping the doctor in him could provide an satisfying answer.
“Dunno-maybe its lice?” he replied nonchalantly, the seasoned son of a refugee camp.
“WHAT?! Lice? Where would she have gotten that from?!” I asked, quickly picking through her curls.
“Naw-long shot, I doubt it” he re-assured me, taking a quick look. “See, nothing”.
But more itching. I snuck to her bedroom, closed the door, and in the privacy of our own space, we discovered the horrible truth on our own…a tiny, sesame shaped bug was racing through her scalp, another hopping around like an ecstatic grasshopper in a large empty field (I’ve been told lice don’t jump-apparently, Gaza’s lice do)…
and then I lost it….”YASIIIIIIIIIIINE…NOOR HAS LICE……..HURRY….HELP…go buy lice shampoo or whatever now!!!” I screamed, recalling a diary article I read from some parenting digest I used to get in my inbox. “NOW!!!!” IT was 11pm. But my loving husband went anyway to the nearest Giant and retrieved said medication.
A quick search through my own hair with the lice comb revealed I too had the unwanted buggers feeding on my head. And so I spent the next week boiling and disinfecting and vacuuming and washing and bagging every article of clothing, carpet, couch, toy, or bag we came in touch with, only to discover that its not really the live lice you have to worry about-its their eggs, or nits, which stick to your hair shafts with some kind of superglue they manufacture, and are nearly impossible to get rid of without finding them one by one ( ever heard of the word “nit-picking?”).
Upon discovering this unnerving fact, I began to research and employ every available home remedy known to man to “dissolve” the nit glue…we soaked our hair in olive oil and vinegar, until we smelled like salad; we poured Listerine on our hair over the tub; Vicks baby rub with essential oils; hot air from a dryer; tea tree shampoo; rosemary sprigs under our pillows…you name it, we tried it.
I then spoke to my father on Skype, back in Gaza City, who convinced me that the easiest thing to do is to shave Noor’s hair. “No! I can’t do that! Her curls!” Instead I sat her on the ground and began to snip every little white thing I saw in her hair…but one hair let to another, then another, then a bunch of hairs, until she looked like a mulcher had gone through it.
Then, in a moment of panic, I whisked her to the kitchen, took out the clippers…and sheared off her curls. That’s right, Noor was bald (I say was, because her hair has since grown about half an inch).
“You know you really didn’t have to do that” Yassine said, “just don’t go telling everyone you speak to that our daughter has lice” he added “there is a lot of stigma associated with it even though its very common in schools and has nothing to do with hygeine”.
“Who, me? tell everyone” c’mon Yassine…who am I gonna tell?” I replied.
Yousuf’s initial reaction was laughter. He then said she resembled Ang from the Avatar series, and proceeded to draw an arrow on her forehead, while I was driving, with a marker (I’m not sure how markers miraculously appear when you least expect-or want-them to). Noor loved it. I tried initially to conceal the fact that she had lice from him, worried this news may quickly spread to his friends and send the school in a panic (luckily, Yousuf was not infected, thanks to his short-sheared hair shortly before we left Gaza).
Her hair is slowly growing back, but of course we are constantly asked whether she was born like that, whether she’s sick, whether we decided to hold a belated head-shaving for her (an Islamic tradition, which we never did at birth), or whether we just did it because its a very modern and cool haircut.
“No-just head lice” I reply, finally coming to terms with the parasites who broke the siege and overcoming the stigma. “A parting gift from Gaza!”
Flipterview with blogger Lina al-Sharif
09/14/2010
Last week, I sat down with 21 year old blogger Lina al-Sharif, author of the blog “Live from Gaza: 360 km2 of chaos“, and asked her a few questions for an upcoming article on social media activism in Gaza. When we were done, I thought-why not whip out my Flip and do a quick interview (or as I call it, flipterview) for my blog? So I present to you a blogger on blogger exclusive: Take 5 with Lina al-Sharif (and pardon the thumbnail that has me blinking mid-sentence!).
‘Twas the night before Eid…in Gaza
09/09/2010
Eid in Gaza is a very strange thing. Then again, what is not strange here except strangeness itself?
On one hand, the streets become one large shopping district, 
as sidewalks become an extension of the shops that overlook them, with street sellers popping up overnight and displaying their fare on outdoor racks and kiosks…offering everything from cheap tunnel goods, toys, handbags, knockoff perfumes and knockoff clothes, beads and bracelets and nick knacks, all for “super-low Eid prices!”, as the man in the freaky bear costume kept reminding us. 
You can barely navigate through the crowds, and so many opt to stay indoors: “its a jungle out there-stay away!!”.
But this is Gaza, and people seldom get a chance to take a “breather”. Its been a long, brutally hot Ramadan. So they say they don’t dare step out, but they do anyway. Its exciting, to hell with the crowds!
After a long day spent in Beit Lahiya, and later, editing, I decided to take the kids to the Shalehat beach resort (sounds much fancier than it is…but one of the only open grassy areas they can run around in). In the last minute, we changed our plans and decide to go get some ice cream at “Mr. Kathem’s” instead (Gaza’s oldest ice cream parlor). 
One street stall catches my attention-a man selling hand-woven rugs, a very old and dying artisan tradition in Gaza so I stop and peruse the selection.
Then-BOOM, the earth shakes, people begin screaming. There is chaos, for a moment, on top of the chaos already present from Eid eve, which is itself another layer of chaos to the already chaotic and indiscernible situation that is Gaza.
One person asks another asks another and we realize Israel has bombed 4 locations in Gaza, one of them being a complex next to the Shalehat resort we were supposed to be in minutes earlier. Injuries? Dead? “None…no wait 2, no 4…serious.”
“This is Israel’s way of saying “Happy Eid Gaza!”" remarked one man casually, as he licked an ice cream cone he just bought from Kathem’s and took in the holiday scenes.
The police are on alert, there are ambulances streaming by. Tension ebbs and flows.
Then, its “as you were”. People continue shopping. It is Eid, after all. And this is Gaza.
Gaza Mom-the book! Coming soon to a bookstore near you…
09/06/2010
I’m happy to report I’ve finished work on my upcoming book, Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting and Everything in Between (Just World Publishing). The book is due out October 14. JWP’s wonderful team of editors, under the lead of Helena Cobban, are hard at work putting the finishing touches on the book. Look for it soon!
Gaza towards self-suffiency?
09/05/2010
“Whatever became of the settlement lands? Such lost opportunities! The land has returned and what waste”, we hear time and again from Zionist apologists and their kind. “If only Gazans would make a life for themselves rather than blaming their problems on others!”
Leaving aside the obvious question of how a territory and its people whose every marker of sovereignty is effectively controlled by an occupying power that nevertheless refuses to recognize its responsibility as an occupier can “build a state” and “make a life”, the Gaza government has actually been doing some pretty impressive things.
On Thursday, I had the opportunity to tour “mu7ararat Gaza”-the liberated lands of Gaza, i.e. the former settlements.
A greenhouse in the former settlement of Neve Dekalim, now being used to grow fruits
It was a follow-up to an interview colleague Maggie Schmitt and I did with the Minister of Agriculture, Mohammad Al-Agha. In consultation with dozens of international and local NGOs, the Gaza Ministry has drawn up an impressive “ten-year plan” aimed at reducing Gaza’s dependence on imported Israeli produce, incorporating organic farming on a wider scale, and generally “helping Gaza help itself” through a return to more sustainable agricultural practices (such as relying more on rain-fed crops rather than cash cropping for export which involves wasteful amounts of water and an abundance of pesticides, and is subject to the whim of Israeli authorities and their punitive border closure).
The plan has been mocked by many people Maggie and I spoke with in the private or nongovernmental sectors: Gaza can never be self-sufficient! And why should it? It doesn’t make economic sense!
So we were curious-what was the eye rolling about? Was it as laughable as they made it seem? In short: not at all. In fact I think few people have actually read the thick manifesto (it hasn’t been published yet, but we got a sneak peak).
A worker gathers dried vegetable plants to prepare for composting
In the former settlement of Kfar Darom, where sniper towers once lined the landscape, there is a massive organic composting facility for seasonal plants (as well as a sewage water composting for trees) and pilot organic farm where workshops are conducted to teach local farmers organic practices. Those who choose to implement organic farming are rewarded with free compost and saplings.
In the former Gush Qatif bloc, further south, infinite rows of several varieties of date palms and young olive saplings, both rain-fed crops that do very well in Gaza, dot the horizon as far as the eye can see.
In another section of this vast empty expanse is the “fruit garden”: carefully landscaped donums of a variety of fruit trees, marked with signs by each row, such as mangoes, citrus, apples, and stone fruits. Gaza now relies heavily on imported fruits from Israel, as tens of thousands of its own trees were razed to the ground during the second Intifada, and most recently during Cast Lead. “We hope within 3 years, for these trees to begin to bear fruit, and within 5, for the olives and dates to become productive,” explained my guide.
Perhaps most interesting of all was a farm which grows Oyster mushrooms in closely monitored environs, under the enthusiastic watch of agricultural engineer Amjad al-agha .
Agricultural Engineer al-Agha showing off his mushrooms
The resulting products are either dried or ground and sold to local restaurants, which use them for soup, salads, and sandwiches, and curries, or distributed in plastic baskets to a woman’s empowerment group to finish cultivating and ultimately to sell as a form of income generation.
Al-Agha said the mushrooms provide an alternative source of protein for people, and are a relatively quick and easy to grow (I keep getting asked if there is any export of these products: no, since there no exports-save for some flowers that the Dutch feverishly lobbied the Israeli government to release-being allowed out by Israel. There was also a fish farm, a chicken farm, and much more.
“The idea is to implement a strategic shift in the vision for Gaza’s agricultural sector, as a response to the situation we are now in for the foreseeable future” explained Minister Agha. “We are not looking to be 100% self-sufficient; in fact we are not even saying this is possible, but we are looking to increase local food production, organic agriculture, and self-sufficiency overall.”
Still, some local experts are critical, saying that without including technocrats in the process, or seeking skilled local consultants that could help them with the methodology, implementation, and possibly exports, they will never be able to reach the level of sophistication they desire.
“Gaza could specialize in mushroom cultivation, for example. What we need is a kind of semi-government that would help bridge the gap between the Hamas government and European governments, and to provide the financial and political backing behind such a project” economist Omar Shaban explained, adding that many in the Hamas government are “resistant and suspicious of such an idea”.
The plan and the projects are seen locally as markers of the ability of the Hamas government to defy the siege and its impacts, even if the results have yet to be seen very far in the future.
For more on this topic, check out Jon Elmer’s “Going organic: The siege on Gaza“.