Ayn Hawd bread story
September 2, 2008
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At the beginning of my first week in Ayn Hawd, if Noga and I opened our windows just right, we could create a lazy crosswind that would exhale her curtains, just as it inhaled mine. Exhale mine, inhale hers. Slow puffs of curtain with the power to close eyelids. Exhale hers, inhale mine.
But the air has been still in Ayn Hawd now for days. It’s very, very hot, extremely humid, heavy weather, a curse on urban clothing and travelling light. Towards the middle of the day, our movement slows to slo mo or just no. Thoughts of escaping the heat are pervasive, even for a desert-born girl like me. Any glance out of the village brings the sea into view, a view which no amount of sea haze can obscure. Alberto, Ali, Alice, Manu, Maurizio, Noga and I vow to end each working day with a short swim, leave the village at 19h and return two hours later.
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But this plan never seems to suit the rhythm of my work; finding out what the ladies of Ayn Hawd produce with all that they grow here and setting up their market. All the production and socialising goes on when it’s cool, which is exactly when my colleagues go swimming. So when Hannan promised to show me how she makes bread using her wood burning stove, I was slow to realise that her rhythm wouldn’t include an escape to the beach. She’s barely done with the kneading and Ali looks at his watch, puts down his camera and with a serious face tells me Everyone has long tired of waiting for me. Off they go and I’m stuck here. Damn if I haven’t seen hundreds of people make bread in my life, made it hundreds of times myself. Especially flat breads, it’s so no big deal and I’m absolutely deflated knowing that I’ll miss out on my colleagues body surfing in possibly unusual swimsuits, showing off silly water moves in the modest waves.
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Hannan’s house is situated on the high corner of what functions as the village square and where porch socializing at all the homes spills out onto the street. Everyone lingers at this corner of the village until invited in, and that never takes very long. Hannan is there at a sort of crossroads, with her particularly cute and expressive baby Mahe, luring smiles, perched atop a hip. Hannan and I get along like a house on fire, partially because she speaks fantastic English she insists she learned in Jenin. But it was the baby Mahe’s toes and expressions that initiated our first conversation.
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Flour, yeast, salt and water. Mix it up, somehow get that exotic stove on the corner of the porch lit without lighter blocks, patty cake, bakery bake, and off I’ll go to the beach at 19h. That’s the thing, it’s been really hot and humid. After a day of speaking to everyone except Hannan using a mere 47 words of Arabic, including the ones that have nothing to do with food like ashtray and lighter and tomorrow. Lots of pointing fingers and gesturing and searching up point-it pictures on the camera, the beach would’ve been so nice. I kept hoping that this would be a simple and speedy affair, pita za’atar.
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Hannan’s 3 yr. old daughter Marjan gathers wood from an until now invisible pile in the square, drags back long branches 3 times bigger than herself to the pile on the porch near the iron bread oven. It’s like she’s playing. She’s wearing a dress seemingly designed by My Little Pony, and my little photographs will later prompt Maurizio to wag his finger and use the ‘O’-word. For orientalism. This in turn will prompt me to sigh dramatically, roll my eyes and strike a dramatic pose. Fuck the swirls, the palet and the pattern. If you insist.
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The more the heavy weather slows down the Debra organism, the more it speeds up the bread organism. In the time I’ve nearly stopped thinking about the beach, 40 balls of bread have risen off the thick exhalation of yeast breath. Hannan keeps telling me how important it is for her that her babies taste her bread, synonymous with tasting her smoke and her fire. She shoves the wood uncut into the stove, and the ends that stick out form a baby barricade. Embers splatter down on the cement each time a chunk of wood breaks off from the flames in the oven, and the right shoes of newly gathered women are swept off in unison to swat them away from our feet.
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Hannan and Nadá bring out the rolled dough on platters. From under the sheet where it’s been rising, it smells like yeasty alcohol. With the back of a spoon they smear the pita with za’atar paste. Home made za’atar, home plucked herbs, home ground. I watched while neighbour Nadá made it this morning, each iteration of this recipe somehow perfumed. Home grown hand picked olives, brought to the big press somewhere to make basically home made olive oil. The za’atar on the pita pools into half moons made by the tip of a spoon, indentations preventing the pita from blowing up in the oven like a full moon.
A crowd has started to gather on the steps to the side of Hannan’s porch as I run off to fetch Noga, who also has stayed behind working, and more than any of us deserves some performative food conviviality. The bread-making pulls focus from all other village activities and I begin to feel sorry for my colleagues urbanising at the beach. Hannan hands out mankoushe after mankoushe to everyone here, folded in half, still warm, bubbled breads aromatic of herb and excellent of texture. All the buzz is silenced when we take the huge bites that centre our attention. Elation. Exhalation.
The next day’s roam through the village lands me on Hannan’s porch again and I confess to her that yesterday’s bread evening was the best time I’ve had here. Beaming, she lets me know that she has been inspired to start a bakery on this very spot.
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A shout out to the ladies Q & H back home whose muse-ic forms my soundtrack at the moments I miss home the most. And to KvR, and to DLP, look forward to seeing you when I see you again.
debra at 23:02 | Comments (4) | post to del.icio.us
Saosan’s carob syrup
August 26, 2008
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A sloppy fig branch roadblock fuels fires burning purposefully under two steel pot stands, each supporting a blackened aluminium cauldron. You can feel the heat halfway down the street where unpredictable gusts of smoke inevitably find your eyes, turn your head for a breath of, oh the parfum of fig wood smoke. Please stay in my hair forever.
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Inside the cauldrons a boiling coffee-coloured liquid moves Saosan and Kamili to swoop in with ladels to test its consistency. If you can get close, the smell of burnt sugar wins out over fig wood. Some protective gear would help against the heat, the ladies are all about layers. Saosan approaches with a sticky plate and dimples that ask me to taste. Molasses, carob, sticky, good. Not entirely my cup of tea, but I no sooner think this than a cup of carob tea is pressed into my hand.
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Kids flit in and out, attracted by the activity, fiddle with Saosan’s efficient fires. The little boys at least are eventually shooed away by her shouts, go to start their own much bigger fires, considerably larger than they are. It’s all in good fun, the flames are massive but die down quickly, like the attention spans of the boys that make them. The boys are burning cardboard which would infuriate our Maurizio, if only he knew. 4 days now he’s been trying desperately to commandeer all of Ayn Hawd’s used cardboard for Yona’s installation.
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Saosan and Kamili are making carob syrup or ‘rup’, from the carob they picked themselves, washed themselves, cut and soaked themselves. The entire house is involved, the entire street really, seeing as how it’s blocked off with big fig branches, hastily sawn, some not sawn just broken off. Spatially, temporily, apparently, this is the time of ‘rup’. Saosan is making a year’s worth, two days in, days and nights, really. One more day to go, and night.
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debra at 10:47 | Comments (5) | post to del.icio.us
Soft landing in Ayn Hawd
August 23, 2008
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The tickly prickly pears of Ayn Hawd
Two days ago I arrived in Ayn Hawd, to start producing my farmer’s market installation for the One Land project and Platform Paradise exhibition. In 2004 the Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd received widespread recognition when architect Malkit Shoshan (NL/IL) initiated an international architecture competition to develop a forward-thinking masterplan for the village. An underlying notion behind the competition is the issue of Israeli zoning laws and planning practice used to express non-kosher political ideologies. From 1948 when the villagers were expelled from their ancestral location only a few kilometres away, to 2004 when Shoshan initiated the One Land (Two Systems) project, Ayn Hawd had been an illegal, non-existant village, situated in Israel, but subject to an entirely separate set of laws and lack of access to state infrastructure.
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The exploding pomegranates of Ayn Hawd
Now Ayn Hawd is in a state of transformation, all the more so due to the effects of the exhibition and One Land project.
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Yellow dates harvested in of Ayn Hawd
Collaborating with the villagers, my small part in this massive project is to develop a farmer’s market for Ayn Hawd, and I’ve been devoting the days to researching the village’s produce and taking stock of her food products. Olives, pomegranates, figs, kumquat, dates, grapes, prickly pears, passion fruit, peaches, lemons, limes, carob, plums, and pecans, but also herbs: thyme, hyssop, sages, rosemary, lavender, basil, chamomille, eucalyptus, lemongrass, and then there’s the honey, and the flowers, all the things one can make with all of the above ingredients. I’m certain I’ve ommitted more than half of the species, because I don’t recognise them, because I don’t know them, I can’t even see that they’re there.
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Herb garden at restaurant Al Beet in Ayn Hawd
It’s extraordinarily beautiful, with outstanding food and folk. The best restaurant in Israel is run by the mayor’s wife, Safiya and the family, right under the place where we are staying. Al Beet (the house/at home) has an herb garden and fruited terraces with figs and walls of passion fruit. Whoever is doing the landscaping clearly has a basil addiction, but the chammomile is also well represented and of course the ubiquitous thyme and hyssop… it all gets turned into za’atar.
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Pomegranate, grape, rose hips and kumquat in Ayn Hawd
One day in and they’re already overfeeding us, but that was to be expected.
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PLATFORM PARADISE is an art show commissioned by FAST (Foundation for Achieving a Seamless Territory) and curated by Maurizio Bortolotti assisted by Noga Inbar, will open from September 1st to 7th, and continue until November 1st. Invited artists and architects will address the village’s lack of public space (as an ‘unofficial’ place) by interacting with the villagers to improve their living conditions and generate new kinds of common ground. “Platform Paradise is a democratic tool aimed at bringing art (projects) into a specific living space of a community. The lack of cultural institutions in Ayn Hawd creates a new condition in which art is represented and used. In this experimental space a new kind of art projects will emerge†(Maurizio Bortolotti).
The artists will work in the village from 1st Septemebr- 6th September 2008
The opening of the art show: 6th September 2008
The show will be exhibited in Ayn Hawd until the 1st November 2008, some of the projects will remain in the village.
– MUSEO AEROSOLAR, a project initiated by Tomas Saraceno and Alberto Pesavento with communities in Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt am Main, Milan, Medellin (Colombia), Tirana, and now Ayn Hawd.
– TODAY, a video installation by Ali Kazma
– MERSTRUKTUREN by Yona Friedman
– THIRD LAND by Map Office
– A VIDEO INSTALLATION by Dan Graham
– UNTITLED by Nico Dockx and Helena Sidiropoulos
– THE ROAD MAP video installation by Stefano Boeri/Multiplicity
– MARKET DEVELOPMENT by Debra Solomon
– APPEARANCES by Berend Strik and Nisreen Abu Al Hayja with the Community of Ayn Hawd
Platform Paradise press release: low resolution (1.7 mb pdf)
Platform Paradise press release: high resolution (9 mb) pdf)
Restaurant Al Beet in Ayn Hawd, the best Palestinian food in Israel
Website devoted to providing the histories of the unrecognised Palestinian villages
Interesting website article about Israel’s unrecognised villages on Cult Case
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Map Office’s One Land garden installation in Ayn Hawd
debra at 14:36 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
