aunt smiled at me. The thunder crashed. A donkey brayed. The imam ranted. The rain poured. A drill thumped like gunfire. Somewhere higher up the valley, the wadi started to run with water, and the old path we had walked became a new river.
The following day, Raja and I walked again, on another long Zone C trespass, starting this time from the village of Ras Karkar. Our route followed old paths and wadi beds from Ras Karkar up to a hilltop refugee camp, then down a long sine-wavey valley, Wadi Zarqa, which was fed by scores of springs. Ras Karkar was well known for having resisted the British in the early years of the mandate. It had a history of wealth and respect, but it was now extremely poor. Plastic drinks bottles had been embedded into the walls to save on concrete. A fence had been constructed out of beer crates, broken chairs and thorn branches.
We left Ras Karkar by its western slope, which was its slum slope. Weird limestone sculptures had been carved by the rain, standing out from the slope like ghouls and hoodoos . Around their bases were children’s shorts, dead dogs, flip-flops and thousands of nappies, flung dirty from the balconies of the houses. Most of the nappies had split and rotted, and the absorbent gel with which nappies are packed had spilled out in grey crystalline slews.
Raja and I were accompanied by a German geologist called Clemens Messerschmid. Truly, that was his name. Messerschmid was tall. His hair was grey and long. Hanks of it fell across his face, and he used his little fingers to tuck them back behind his ears. He walked with a hungry bouncing lope. His passion was geology, and he barely talked about anything else. For years, he had been studying the flow-rates of the springs and rivers in Wadi Zarqa. The Israelis didn’t want him working in the West Bank, but he had developed methods of avoiding their attentions when he travelled in and out of the country, and thwarting their attempts to hinder his research.
Messerschmid seemed to know everything about the region through which we were walking. He was familiar with every footpath and every side valley, and graded each according to the relative likelihoods of meeting settlers or soldiers. He liked to describe the geomorphology of each new area, and his language was unselfconsciously lyrical. He drew explanatory diagrams for me in quick black ink. I loved listening to him. He told me patiently about the ‘ anticline cross-section’ of the West Bank and the location of the two vast and crucial aquifers which hydrate the dry land. He explained the colours of the landscape; how the loose iron in the soil is mobilized by the dry climate, such that it rusts the earth orange and brown. He pointed out the three main surface rock formations of the area: the plated limestone and marl horizons of the ‘Bethlehem’ formation, the marl of the ‘Yatta’ formation, and the karstified limestone of the ‘Hebron’ formation, with its Swiss-cheese holes, which Melville had disparaged.
Geologists describe the solvent action of rainwater on limestone as creating ‘preferential pathways’. With each rainfall, water-drops are sent wandering across the surfaces of the limestone, etching the track of their passage with carbonic acid as they go. These first traverses create shallow channels, which in turn attract the flow of subsequent water, such that they become more deeply scored into the rock. Through the action of water, a hairline crack over time therefore becomes a runnel, which becomes a fracture site, which becomes an escarpment edge.
In a landscape where the limestone is a major surface formation, like the West Bank, these larger-scale fissures are often decisive in the development of terracing and footpaths. Humans and animals, seeking a route, are guided by the pre-configured habits of the terrain. These pedestrians create preferential pathways, which in turn attract the flow of subsequent pedestrians, all of whom etch the track of their
The following day, Raja and I walked again, on another long Zone C trespass, starting this time from the village of Ras Karkar. Our route followed old paths and wadi beds from Ras Karkar up to a hilltop refugee camp, then down a long sine-wavey valley, Wadi Zarqa, which was fed by scores of springs. Ras Karkar was well known for having resisted the British in the early years of the mandate. It had a history of wealth and respect, but it was now extremely poor. Plastic drinks bottles had been embedded into the walls to save on concrete. A fence had been constructed out of beer crates, broken chairs and thorn branches.
We left Ras Karkar by its western slope, which was its slum slope. Weird limestone sculptures had been carved by the rain, standing out from the slope like ghouls and hoodoos . Around their bases were children’s shorts, dead dogs, flip-flops and thousands of nappies, flung dirty from the balconies of the houses. Most of the nappies had split and rotted, and the absorbent gel with which nappies are packed had spilled out in grey crystalline slews.
Raja and I were accompanied by a German geologist called Clemens Messerschmid. Truly, that was his name. Messerschmid was tall. His hair was grey and long. Hanks of it fell across his face, and he used his little fingers to tuck them back behind his ears. He walked with a hungry bouncing lope. His passion was geology, and he barely talked about anything else. For years, he had been studying the flow-rates of the springs and rivers in Wadi Zarqa. The Israelis didn’t want him working in the West Bank, but he had developed methods of avoiding their attentions when he travelled in and out of the country, and thwarting their attempts to hinder his research.
Messerschmid seemed to know everything about the region through which we were walking. He was familiar with every footpath and every side valley, and graded each according to the relative likelihoods of meeting settlers or soldiers. He liked to describe the geomorphology of each new area, and his language was unselfconsciously lyrical. He drew explanatory diagrams for me in quick black ink. I loved listening to him. He told me patiently about the ‘ anticline cross-section’ of the West Bank and the location of the two vast and crucial aquifers which hydrate the dry land. He explained the colours of the landscape; how the loose iron in the soil is mobilized by the dry climate, such that it rusts the earth orange and brown. He pointed out the three main surface rock formations of the area: the plated limestone and marl horizons of the ‘Bethlehem’ formation, the marl of the ‘Yatta’ formation, and the karstified limestone of the ‘Hebron’ formation, with its Swiss-cheese holes, which Melville had disparaged.
Geologists describe the solvent action of rainwater on limestone as creating ‘preferential pathways’. With each rainfall, water-drops are sent wandering across the surfaces of the limestone, etching the track of their passage with carbonic acid as they go. These first traverses create shallow channels, which in turn attract the flow of subsequent water, such that they become more deeply scored into the rock. Through the action of water, a hairline crack over time therefore becomes a runnel, which becomes a fracture site, which becomes an escarpment edge.
In a landscape where the limestone is a major surface formation, like the West Bank, these larger-scale fissures are often decisive in the development of terracing and footpaths. Humans and animals, seeking a route, are guided by the pre-configured habits of the terrain. These pedestrians create preferential pathways, which in turn attract the flow of subsequent pedestrians, all of whom etch the track of their