Are what I’m looking for here, I suppose. What is university life like under occupation? I came to find out. Today the subject of my non-empirical research is the library. It’s a pretty building with many tall windows, offering the same quiet respite as any other. It has crevices to hide in and rooms for group projects. Couples whisper in corners and students sneak surreptitious naps behind shelves.
But on my way in I was stopped by a voice and a knocking behind me. “Your bag,” it said in Arabic. I turned and there was a small room with many shelves. I didn’t understand at first. What would be the point of going to the library without my study materials? “Can I bring my notebook?” I asked the man behind the counter, bewildered. “Yes, take whatever is important but leave the bag. Library rule.” He had switched to English.
I removed a notebook or two, some pens, and my photocopied- and- bound- with- plastic colloquial dictionary and walked in. I sat down but was too perturbed to study. I missed the comforting, weighty presence of the backpack usually at my feet. I’d forgotten my flashcards, and what if I was to need a tampon while in the library? Or someone’s email address on a small slip of paper crammed between my daily planner and granola bar. My water bottle is irrelevant; it is Ramadan anyway and the only place I can drink is the cafeteria. I store my life in a bag, always carrying something for any eventuality, and I feel naked without it. I remember my lifestyle in
A detail not as immediately tangible but far more devastating is that this library contains no books published after 1986. Our student guide told us that on our first day.
I don’t know how far this fact about Birzeit extends or even if it is true. I don't know if it applies only to library books or to textbooks in the bookstore as well. In the worst case scenario, students may be learning last century’s politics and yesterday's science, nothing more than a futile waste of their time. How is the architect to sell a design built on oudated phsyics? How is the political scientist unversed in today's pc terms going to gain legitimacy? What will become of the aspiring economist who knows little of globalization? What will students know of the recent history of their own society, other than the exaggerated and twisted word-of-mouth accounts from necessarily biased sources?
In the best case scenario, a useless library is just one of the many frustrating but bearable aspects of Palestinian life.
3 comments:
It is no different in Israeli universities.
I think the library culture in US schools is unique, students commute in other countries and libraries close in the early evening.
I bet it is not for security but for theft, there are better ways to inconvenience people for security purposes.
There are Urban legends everywhere, and nowhere worse then in politics.
Here's the university's web site, where you can see all the new books listed.
http://home.birzeit.edu/library/libactivity.htm
I suspect students at your U.S. University learn on student-lead tours, hear and share with each other all sorts of stories about buildings and student history that have at most a partial basis in fact. And we know how inane, unfair and simply vituperative some students were about spreading personal stories about hard-working sweet honest people in your political groups on campus...some of you were put in Karite (right word? I no longer have an in-house Rabbi) excommunication simply for trying to get Coke-a-Cola off campus.....
It's tricky sometimes keeping a balance between fervently believing in Just Causes and staying skeptical. Before your Aunt and I brought political/activist ideas home, your grandparents didn't do much political....I believe precisely BECAUSE they were too skeptical to believe anyone's politics could improve the world.
And whatever the number of books, i think I've read in reliable sources that about 100 Bir Zeit students (often from the student council) are in jail, and others get frequently searched and targeted; students from Gaza have been losing scholarships to study abroad because they can't get out of Gaza....And I don't know when the University was last closed, and/or whose safety that was ostensibly for....
I like your description of how discomfitted you feel, even by little differences, like having your backpack next to you. (I remember doing research at Cornell once when syudents had to request books and couldn't enter the stacks! I hated it, I wanted to see all the books filed on a shelf...including the one's I didn't know about....it was much harder to do computer searches then.)
Yes, the details always evoke life better then any ideology......
It's part of why traveling expands the mind: you see, you actually feel all the little things in life one takes for granted on one's home turf.
Getting used to differences, putting up with myriad new annoyances, dealing with things that could happen at home but haven't (well, I guess one doesn't usually get groped on the street, but on the subway..., builds character, strength AND perspective. Hazak.
the politics can hardly compare, but at the university library in austria they also don't allow bags. we still haven't figured out if it has to do with security, or theft, or maybe just clutter.
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