{"id":916,"date":"2013-07-10T22:51:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T05:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=916"},"modified":"2013-07-11T10:41:28","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T17:41:28","slug":"over-the-wall-to-play-beethoven-in-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=916","title":{"rendered":"Over the Wall, to Play Beethoven in Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jamming at Qalandia: Musicians bound for Jerusalem to play Beethoven's 4th Symphony played a waiting game, hoping the rest of the Palestinians in the orchestra would make it through the checkpoint. Photo by Eric Culver<\/p><\/div>\n

Beethoven\u2019s 4th<\/sup> Symphony has inspired countless thousands of musicians since it was first performed more than two centuries ago.\u00a0 Yet few, I\u2019m sure, have risked arrest and prison time just to play this magnificent piece of music.<\/p>\n

Enter the Ramallah Orchestra, made up largely of Palestinian musicians in their teens and twenties, accompanied by 15 or so visiting teachers and performers from Europe and the U.S.\u00a0 The orchestra is a project of Al Kamandjati, the Ramallah-based music school at the center of my next book.\u00a0 For the Palestinians in the orchestra, Beethoven\u2019s music, inspiring at it is, makes up only part of the story.<\/p>\n

The concert venue was in the Old City of Jerusalem, a holy place embedded deep inside the collective dreams and history of the Palestinians, yet denied them by a combination of bureaucracy and concrete. \u00a0For the Jerusalem concert, some of the musicians had managed to obtain the permits Israel allows for special occasions.\u00a0 But on this hot summer day in Palestine, five members of the orchestra were not so lucky.\u00a0 To play with their orchestra in the Holy City, the musicians would resort to the otherwise unthinkable:\u00a0 climbing over the separation wall.<\/p>\n

Their journey had started in the early afternoon, in the lovely stone and copper courtyard of Al Kamandjati\u2019s headquarters in Old Ramallah, where a jasmine vine in bloom crawled up the wall to the rooftop.\u00a0 Three dozen young Palestinian musicians and visiting accompanists carried their timpanis, double basses, cellos and music stands into the luggage hold of the tour bus.\u00a0 They climbed aboard, instrument cases slung over their shoulders, renewing an annual Jerusalem ritual which, for many of these musicians, is reason enough to learn music.<\/p>\n

For Palestinians, Jerusalem is becoming an imaginary city.\u00a0 Though barely ten miles separate Ramallah from the walls of the Old City, reaching Jerusalem is increasingly less a physical journey than an exercise of the mind and spirit.\u00a0 The city has been effectively sealed off by massive physical and bureaucratic barriers, while ironically being declared \u201cunited\u201d by Israel, the authority in control during this period of the city\u2019s five-thousand-year history.\u00a0 To prove that, Israel\u2019s Minister of Public Security recently shut down a children\u2019s theatre festival and puppet show at the Hakawati, East Jerusalem\u2019s Palestine National Theatre, because the festival had allegedly received funds from the Palestinian Authority.\u00a0 The PA is confined to the West Bank, but its position, backed, in word if not in deed, by the most of the world\u2019s nations, remains that East Jerusalem should be the capital of a sovereign nation called Palestine.<\/p>\n

Now the lucky permit holders of the Ramallah Orchestra would be reconnected, if only for a few hours, with their holy city. (Al Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem, means \u201cThe Holy.\u201d)\u00a0 But the five musicians \u2013 one of the orchestra\u2019s four violists, both of its timpani players, one of the double bass players, and a gifted violinist \u2013 had been told they would need the magnetic \u201cbiometric\u201d cards Israel is implementing for its permit regime.\u00a0 When Al Kamandjati went to apply, director Ramzi Aburedwan told me, \u201cthey said, \u2018We don\u2019t have the magnetic cards until July 10\u2019\u201d \u2013 days after the concert.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s fucking crazy,\u201d Ramzi added.\u00a0 In an orchestra of only 37 people, the contributions of these five musicians was vital, Ramzi said; if the Ramallah Five couldn\u2019t participate, he told me, he would cancel the concert.<\/p>\n

We arrived at Qalandia military checkpoint, a exhaust-choked border crossing where hot, fuming drivers jockeyed for position, funneling into a single line before submitting for inspection.\u00a0 Vendors selling kebab, tissue packets, pillows, bottles of water and verses from the Quran weaved through the knots of vehicles and the plastic litter and chunks of broken concrete.\u00a0 Our bus inched forward.\u00a0 Here, where the massive wall separates Ramallah from Jerusalem, the Ramallah Five would try Plan B:\u00a0 Sit in the back of the bus, hoping that the soldiers would somehow get lazy and check only the foreign passports and approved permits.\u00a0 As part of this plan, musicians holding the proper documents were strategically placed toward the front of the bus.<\/p>\n

Three Israeli soldiers came on board, their American-made M-16s slung around their shoulders, and began their inspection.\u00a0 One of them, baby-faced, with a round, pretty face and honey-blond hair, appeared to still be in high school.<\/p>\n

They checked our papers, then conferred, apparently discussing whether to check the whole bus.\u00a0 After some barked orders from a radio clipped to one of the soldier\u2019s uniforms, they moved past us, toward the back. Plan B, it appeared, was not going to work.<\/p>\n

Within minutes nearly all of the Palestinians, even the ones holding the proper papers, had been ordered out of the bus.\u00a0 Permits or not, they would not be allowed to cross the checkpoint in relative dignity, like us foreigners who remained on the air conditioned bus.\u00a0 As we rode to a parking lot on the other side, I pictured the Palestinian musicians, in the scrum of the pedestrian crossing where I have stood many times on my way to Jerusalem.\u00a0 They would walk past the red metal benches of the \u201cpassenger lounge,\u201d surrounded on three sides by blue vertical bars, then pass down a long corridor of silver bars, akin to a cattle chute on a western ranch, except for at the end they would be required to move through multiple eight-foot-high turnstiles, before ending up jammed with dozens of other Palestinians in front of yet another turnstile.<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Our bus was waiting on the other side.\u00a0 Montasser Jebrini, a Palestinian clarinetist now studying on France, was riffing on the hot pavement, playing a solo performance of \u201cHelwadi\u201d (Beautiful Girl), the song made famous by the Lebanese singer, Fairouz.\u00a0 Montasser believed he had been allowed to stay on the bus because he passed for European or Anglo American.\u00a0 \u201cI am glad to be here,\u201d he told me, \u201cbut I feel bad it\u2019s just because my skin is lighter, while my friends have to walk through the checkpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the parking lot, Simon Hewitt Jones, the visiting British soloist scheduled to perform the Mendelssohn that evening, stepped out of the bus with his violin.\u00a0 Other musicians broke out their instruments, and they began jamming:\u00a0 Violins, viola, cello, French horn, trumpet, clarinet, performed by an American, three Brits, a Frenchman, an Irishman, and a Palestinian.\u00a0 Mozart\u2019s \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d gave way to the Mendelssohn (\u201copus baking in the sun,\u201d someone quipped), then morphed into Morrison\u2019s Irish Jig, led by Johnny McBride, a fiddler from Northern Ireland.\u00a0 The whole tableau was set against the backdrop of gun turrets, spindly red-and-white surveillance towers, and the supposedly impenetrable wall.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s pretty threatening,\u201d said the fiddler, \u201cbut not altogether unfamiliar.\u00a0 For the first half of my life, this is what Northern Ireland looked like.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Steps away, on the Ramallah side, separated by more walls of bars, the Palestinian teenagers waited in the scrum.\u00a0 Every so often, above the turnstile, a red light turned green, a click sounded, and three or four more people passed through to place their possessions on a conveyor belt, hold up their permits to a dull green bullet-proof window, and wait as bored-looking soldiers on the other side inspected the documents and waived the permit holders through.<\/p>\n

But there were only nine permits for fourteen musicians, and the musicians without them couldn\u2019t talk their way through.\u00a0 And so the Ramallah Five were turned away.\u00a0 They clicked their way backward through the turnstiles and cattle chute to the Ramallah side, denied Jerusalem and uncertain what to do next.\u00a0 They had to come up with a Plan C.<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One or two at a time, Palestinian string players joined us at the bus.\u00a0 Soon all of them had arrived, except for the Ramallah Five.\u00a0 \u201cThey couldn\u2019t get through,\u201d someone told us.\u00a0 \u201cThey said to go on to Jerusalem.\u00a0 They will try to join us somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n

We rode south in silence for a time, wondering if the concert, in the Old City on the grounds of the French church, St. Anne\u2019s, would have to be canceled.<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d someone said to the musicians on the other side, \u201cyou want to go to Jerusalem?\u201d\u00a0 He sat with a group of men smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, and nodded toward a van.\u00a0 Yes, the musicians said, they did.\u00a0 \u201cYou are five?\u00a0 It will be 250 shekels\u201d\u00a0 \u2013 about 70 dollars, or 14 per musician.<\/p>\n

The man turned to his partner.\u00a0 \u201cGet these guys to Jerusalem.\u201d\u00a0 The Ramallah Five piled into a van.\u00a0 The door slid shut and the driver began working two phones, making arrangements.\u00a0 \u201cGive me the money,\u201d he said.\u00a0 They haggled over the price, agreeing on 40 shekels (about 11 dollars) each. \u201cBut you have to pay now,\u201d the driver said.\u00a0 The man gave them his phone number, and told them to call when they reached Jerusalem.\u00a0 Apparently he wanted satisfied customers.<\/p>\n

A short time later the driver pulled over, stepped into a building, and emerged with a very long ladder, which, when extended to its full length, reached the top of the wall.\u00a0 \u201cCome,\u201d he said.\u00a0 The five musicians approached the towering slab of concrete, which reached at least 25 feet high.<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The mood on our bus was subdued; as we rode south, it was still unclear whether the five musicians would somehow make it through to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A string player went up the ladder first, gazing up to the top of the wall, where nasty-looking loops of curling concertina wire appeared to present a sharp and dangerous obstacle.\u00a0 But the Palestinian trafficker, who had scrambled to the top of the wall, had already cut the wire; now, he sat beside the ladder at the top of the wall, and, with the back of his forearm, simply swept the loops of wire aside, like a curtain.\u00a0 This was all completely organized beforehand, the musicians realized.\u00a0 They must do this all the time for illegal Palestinian workers.\u00a0 Then the Palestinian coyote<\/em> pulled a long knotted rope from a plastic bag, looped it around a metal post at the top of the wall, and dropped it down to the other side.<\/p>\n

One by one, the young musicians mounted the ladder, sat atop the wall, grabbed the rope, and slowly slithered down, trying to use the knots as footholds.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t easy; the knots were small.\u00a0 Halfway down, one of the string players saw a vehicle approaching on the narrow access road.\u00a0 He froze; was this a soldier coming to arrest him?\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d the coyote called down, \u201cit\u2019s a local Palestinian.\u201d Still, the violist began to imagine what would happen if he were arrested.\u00a0 From the midpoint, perhaps 15 feet above the ground, he fantasized about being taken to jail, and telling his fellow Palestinian inmates, to boisterous laughter, that he\u2019d been arrested for intending to play music.\u00a0 Then, still sliding down the rope, he imagined the speech he would give to the judge in Israel:\u00a0 Why am I guilty?\u00a0 The only thing that I am doing is trying to make my music for people in Jerusalem; I just want to play Beethoven and Mendelssohn. For your information<\/em>, his imagined speech continued, I have learned about your suffering. I was shocked by this history.\u00a0 What I don\u2019t understand is why you\u2019re treating us this way\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

The hard ground at the end of the rope snapped the musician from his reverie, and he looked up to see the timpanist toss the bag of his sticks down toward him from the top of the wall.\u00a0 Now the violinist was coming down.\u00a0 But something was wrong; he was having trouble telling how far he was from the ground.\u00a0 He jumped too early, landing on his feet and falling hard onto his back.\u00a0 Everyone laughed, and at the time, it seemed he was okay.\u00a0 From the top of the wall, the bass player tossed him his violin, in its soft blue case.<\/p>\n

Now all five musicians were together, on the Jerusalem side of the wall.\u00a0 The entire operation had taken five minutes.\u00a0 They brushed themselves off and entered a restaurant for kanafe, the pizza-shaped Palestinian dessert made of sweet cheese and pistachios. \u00a0\u201cThat kanafe was very good,\u201d recalled the viola player.\u00a0 \u201cThen we called to see where the bus was.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ramallah Five appeared in the road beside our bus, smiling broadly and bounding up the steps to cheers from the orchestra.\u00a0 One of them showed me a video of the ladder, and the wall, and two of the musicians climbing toward the sky:\u00a0 proof of their deed.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later, we arrived on the tranquil grounds of St. Anne\u2019s, a French church built during Crusader times.\u00a0 An old French priest welcomed us with a soft smile and a heavy accent; tourists wandered quietly through the garden, or rested on shaded benches.\u00a0 A French flag flapped from the steeple.\u00a0 It was as if Qalandia and the wall had never existed.<\/p>\n

The musicians disappeared the cavernous, echoey church to rehearse Beethoven\u2019s 4th<\/sup> Symphony, and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.\u00a0 I sat on a rock wall outside the church.\u00a0 The sound of a violin solo drifted out, joined now by the entire orchestra; trombone, oboe, flute, and the pounding of the timpani.<\/p>\n

Soon we learned that the violinist who had climbed the wall fell ill, vomiting repeatedly.\u00a0 It was shock, a doctor told him, from the hard landing at the wall.\u00a0 He would not play the Old City that night.<\/p>\n

But the other 36 members of the Ramallah Orchestra would.\u00a0 A little after 8 in the evening, strings whispered the haunting first notes Beethoven\u2019s 4th<\/sup>, in a minor key, as 200 visitors filled the chairs of the old church.\u00a0 They had no idea what it had taken to get to Jerusalem to play Beethoven.\u00a0 But perhaps they sensed something. Moments after Diego Masson, the visiting French conductor, made his last thrust, and the final notes of the 4th<\/sup> echoed off the walls, the audience rose in a sustained, joyful ovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beethoven\u2019s 4th Symphony has inspired countless thousands of musicians since it was first performed more than two centuries ago.\u00a0 Yet few, I\u2019m sure, have risked arrest and prison time just to play this magnificent piece of music. Enter the Ramallah Orchestra, made up largely of Palestinian musicians in their teens and twenties, accompanied by 15 more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}