Thinking about 'freedom'

"take your family to Burger King or for Fried Chicken, and choose any carbonated drink you want, that is your liberty, and no one will interfere with it." 

Ibrahim Nasrallah in

Balcony of Delirium 

The woman on the left of this picture is about to be stopped, searched and questioned by the Israeli soldiers on the bottom right. They will question her while the two international observers (midle right in red and blue) observe. She does not have the freedom to walk from a residential area in the West Bank city of Hebron to the main shopping district without being harassed. 

I may have left my heart in Hebron...

I woke up New Year's day in the suburbs of a foggy city to the tinkling of some green glass fish made from what I had often described as my faveourite place in the West Bank. 

The Hebron glass factory, from my first visit in 2006, has been a place of magical beauty, sparkling craftsmanship, and understated wonder. Better than Santa, it exists even though it seems somehow impossible. And best of all, it proves that the fragile has way more staying power that its given credit for. Beauty persists.