Nablus

Knafeh

 

All the guidebooks say the one thing you should try in Nablus is the Knafeh – a sweet delicacy that the city is famous for.  It’s got a sort of syrupy polenta top with a base of stringy sweet cheese and is absolutely delicious. We went into the bakery where it was being freshly made and watched as three different men put together the desert. It’s made in a huge round disc of a pan, and the queues of locals outside this particular bakery was testament to its excellence.

And in the old city we walked through the winding streets, and were greeted in a friendly fashion by loads of curious people. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Palestinians love Yasser Arafat and in the city of Nablus they have lots of pictures of him as a young rebel. It is said that he escaped the Israelis by ducking out of one of the windows and weaved his way through the maze of streets. The Israelis didn’t have his local knowledge of course, and so ended up just blowing bombs through a good number of them all to clear a path to capture him.

The city is of course, very strongly political – more openly than any of the other cities we had visited. In the centre of the square flies a flag which is a cross between the Palestinian flag, and also, I was told, one of the resistance movements. I forget which, Gawd my memory is so poor when things aren’t written down.

 

Anyway, there it is, dancing in the wind. There was also a protest camp this day – dozens of people inside a makeshift tent, and a wall filled with scores of faces. These are the political prisoners of Israel’s jail – and the rally was for family and friends to make sure they were not forgetten. Also, I suppose for solidarity and some sort of plan of action. I couldn’t help but feel it was somehow a thankless and daunting task – how to get the Israeli’s to change their mind on prisoners they had kept – many very young and many no doubt unlawfully – for years? It would take more than a handful of people to change any of the injustices that are quoitedien in this land.

 

In the picture above, the building in the bottom left corner is one of two soap factories that are based in the town. It was about 2pm when we went to go and visit it and almost closing time, but they were very gracious about letting us go and see inside. It’s quite dark as you enter, but the manager at the time showed us the big vat where the lye is mixed in the mornings. And then upstairs is a huge warehouse style room and on the floor lay about 20 square feet of flat soap drying and waiting to be cut into cubes.

I managed fairly well to ask one of the workmen a few questions in Arabic about their industry – they start very early in the morning, about 5am and work until 10am. There are about 25 people employed – from mixing, to spreading, the cutting and then wrapping the soap in its packaging. This is a pic of the mounds of soap ready to be wrapped, and then sent around the country – including Israel in fact – some for tourism.

The funny thing about my Arabic in Nablus is that it was almost completely useless. I wonder if they have a different dialect to the rest of the country, or if perhaps they are generally less educated/more colloquial but the younger boys certainly seemed to have a hard time understanding what I saying. Earlier in the morning, when we went to the dry cleaners to ask about getting our clothes washed and the boy I was speaking to replied to my perfectly phrased question “I don’t speak English” I replied that he was a dolt and I *was* speaking Arabic, thank you very much.

We also went to visit a women’s collective, where they have an art studio, and a little gift shop with items crafted by Palestinian women. Unfortunately, none of the things in the gift shop seemed that special – it was al quite generic stuff. Embroidered bags and purses, soaps and little olive wood carvings. There’s definitely a tourism market that can be developed out here – just needs someone to do it.

We spent a total of three nights in Nablus – but spent some of the time in Sabastia and Mt Gerizim. Will tell you about those in the next post.

But in between those day trips, we also visited the hammam. It opens two days a week for women and only a limited number of hours, so by the time we did all our other sightseeing, J and I only got about an hour and a half. They really rushed us through because of the limited time, but I can see how you could spend a good two or three hours in there if you came at the beginning of the day. As it was, we were sauna’d, steamed, scrubbed and pummelled rather blissfully. I was really happy to get the grime of the week and a half of travelling off me, and just lie down and snooze on the hot stone for a while.

 

Nablus at night

 

And then all too soon it was over and the men started to queue up outside so the women had a frantic rush to put on headscarves and clear away the area. J and I ambled out quite contentedly, and walked through the market, picking up another knafeh to eat before catching the taxi back to the hotel.

 

Nablus market