PREPARING FOR EID

That evening we went to Qalqilya for Rasmiya and Shatha to get their hair done.
The salon was in the hairdresser's house. It was packed with women wanting to do themselves up for Eid. While the hairdresser flitted between two cut-and-blow-dry clients her assistants were busy in corners plucking eyebrows and chins, applying henna and face masks, buffing nails. We had a long wait in the hot, chemical-laden atmosphere.
'The hairdresser isn't married,' Shatha whispered to me. 'Her mother's first husband was a spy for the Israelis and he was killed. Now nobody will marry her because she is tainted.'
She explained how people were often trapped into collaborating, first by inducement and then by blackmail. 'There was a boy in Tulkarim who wanted to go to Canada. He was refused permission, then he was approached by an Arab who said we can help you if you help us. Just tell us what time your neighbour goes to his car. The boy told them and the car was hit by a missile fired from a plane. Then they told him that he must continue giving information. If he didn't the fact that he had spied would be made public.'
Although it was late when we left the hairdresser's, about ten o'clock, the shops were still open and busy, particularly the clothes shops. Everyone buys new clothes for Eid. We went to a shop called Bretty Lady (Arabic speakers often confuse p and b because there is no p in Arabic) to pick up a suit that Shatha had bought. Among the customers hustling round the racks two women stood out. Their heads were bare, unheard of in such a conservative area. They wore jeans and red teeshirts with the face of Che Guevara across the chest. Their body language and their way of speaking were markedly different from the Palestinian norm. No one in the West would have looked twice at them but in that environment they were as jarring as punks at a Mothers Union meeting.
'They belong to a political group,' Shatha whispered. 'They are the opposite of Hamas. They don't believe in God. People here don't like them.'

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