After spending five weeks amid Palestine’s daily despair, the divisions here in Nicosia seem almost quaint by comparison. The forty year-old conflict between the Turkish North and Greek South has lost all of its heat and momentum, but entrenched feelings of betrayal and distrust keep it going. There is some talk in the newspapers about […]
Monthly Archives: March 2009
A Settler Home for Purim
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
(I waited until I left Israel to post this story, and I am not sure why. I guess I didn’t want to have to confront whatever anger it might inspire in those I write about. I tried to convince myself that I was being polite. Now I wonder if I am just cowardly.) I met […]
In Nicosia
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I arrived here in Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus, a couple of days ago. I will soon write a post about my first impressions of the city, and have to catch up with another story from Israel. So stay tuned. In the meantime, check out the work of Cypriot photographer Thodoris Tzalavras. I had […]
March
14
Barbed Wire in Bethlehem
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I went to Bethlehem to photograph some of the graffiti on the Wall – which I did – but found myself more enamoured with the coils of concertina that is everywhere. Perhaps I have seen too much of it in the past year, but there is an aesthetic to barbed wire that I find beautiful […]
The Walls of East Jerusalem
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Today I took a tour with an Israeli-Palestinian NGO called Ir–Amim to visit Jerusalem’s backyards and unholy places. A bus carried a crowd of mostly foreigners around East Jerusalem to show the impacts of the Wall. I had been looking forward to hearing about the Wall from an Israeli perspective and was surprised that our […]
March
14
Sending a Message
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The fingers on Yusuf’s right hand are sore and black. “Some spray cans are more finger-friendly,” he says, and he should know. He finds a broken bottle on the ground, with the bottle cap still on the neck, and discovers it fits perfectly on his spray-finger. The ad hoc prosthetic will make the painting easier. […]
March
08
A Zoo in Palestine
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The rain and wind has stopped and it is spring again in Palestine, and I feel good. For me, it is not really traveling unless I can feel the sun warm my face. Perhaps this is a Canadian thing. I traveled to Qalqilya the other day, a city in the northern West Bank. Qalqilya is […]
Lamenting a Lonely Planet
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I found an interesting article about travel and guidebooks by author Stephen Henighan in the very excellent Geist Magazine. You can find it here.
A Tree Falls
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Mohammad told me that he knows every centimetre of his family’s land south of the village of Jayyous. He remembers camping in the middle of the fields in the hot Palestinian summers, and he especially remembers planting olive trees with his father. “It is a special thing for a Palestinian boy, to plant an olive […]
Talking Walls in Ramallah
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The late winter has brought rain-slicked stones and cold to Palestine. Just like my time in Kashmir in November, I find myself unprepared for the cold. And also just like Kashmir, the unheated hotels bring no relief from the cold outside. My blue jeans which were soaked through during the protest in Jayyous three days […]
Elsewhere 