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Back Cover Letter from Gaza October 26th, 2005 -- After a longish trek through the barred enclosures of the compartmentalized shed Israel constructed at the northern entrance to the Gaza Strip and a rough ride in an old taxi through the pot-holed streets of Gaza city, Marna House provided a gate to sanity, if not to paradise.  Letter from Lausanne October 12th, 2005 -- Improbable though it may seem Lausanne was recently the site of a camel race meeting. Two races were held in order to show off a new robot jockey designed to do away with at least some of the problems posed by the use of child riders, a custom that remains prevalent in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Letter from Wadi Fukin September 29th, 2005 -- History is a tangible presence in Wadi Fukin, from the Aramaic origins of its name to the still-standing Byzantine church column, and the archaeological remains just outside the village. Also just beyond the village nestle some caves where the villagers sheltered during repeated Israeli attacks in the years following the Nakba. Letter from Rabat September 15th, 2005 -- Unlike in most Arab countries, here it is not unusual to find hardened human rights and democracy activists defending the present government. The president of Morocco’s ground-breaking, Palace-appointed reconciliation commission is Driss Benzikri, a man who served 18 years in prison for leftist political activities. Those with more daunting tales from the time of King Hassan II’s rule (1956-99) didn’t live to tell them. Letter from Sa-Nur September 1st, 2005 -- Miriam Adler, 28, was the spokesman for Sa-Nur, one of the four northern West Bank settlements slated for evacuation under the disengagement plan. She came to Israel in 1989 from Moscow, “after ten years of struggle” in the former Soviet Union. She spent most of her life in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, before arriving here in 2003 with her husband and six children. How would she define her family? “We are Zionists, pioneers, idealists,” she says. Letter from Payuer August 3rd, 2005 -- Harun Uthman Abakir’s cows are grazing in Payuer, an impoverished Dinka village in SPLA-controlled territory on the east bank of the White Nile, for the first time since 1983. Although the Comprehensive Peace Agreement the Sudanese government and the SPLA signed in January theoretically opens front lines that have been closed for more than 20 years, Harun and his fellow Fellata — Sudanese Muslims of West African origin — are understandably a little apprehensive. Letter from London July 21st, 2005 -- In the weeks and months preceding the International Olympic Committee’s decision on 6 July, it was hard to find a Londoner outside the city’s sports clubs and schools who harboured any desire, let alone hope, that their city would host the 2012 Olympic Games. Most either resented the cost of hosting the Games or felt sure they would end in humiliation for the city that has had to endure the fiasco that was the Millennium Dome and that still is the National Stadium at Wembley. Official claims that a vast majority of Londoners backed the bid seemed incredible to those who not only expected, but actually hoped, the Games would go elsewhere. Letter from Qalqiliya July 7th, 2005 -- Yaser Arafat was a symbol of the Palestinian people who believed he would never have to face this day,” says Mustafa Sabri, with a glint in his eye. We are sitting beneath a portrait of the late Palestinian leader in the mayor’s office in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya. Sabri is a city councillor from Hamas, which won all 15 council seats in local elections in May. The reverberations have been felt far beyond this town of 43,000 people. Share this page:
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