A few days ago I taught a workshop on creative writing to several young adult Palestinians from various refugee camps in the West Bank. We were cramped into a stuffy meeting room on the first floor of the Ibdaa Cultural Center. I stood at the front of the room with a flip chart and Kosai as my translator and tried to use words that would easily translate into Arabic to describe the idea behind writing a short story, capturing details and speaking to your audience. It was not easy but I managed to elicit a few smiles and laughs as I stumbled over a few Arabic words like Who, What, When, Where and "don't laugh at me please". In choosing an example sentence for the participants to work with in order to think creatively, I choose the topic that has been a staple of my experiences thus far in Palestine and that I knew each one of them would be able to picture in their minds, checkpoints. I gave them the sentence, "The soldiers entered the bus and walked down the aisle." After some fun trying to figure out how to translate "aisle" the students went to work, trying to provide details that would evoke a reaction and an image in the minds of their readers. The sentences they produced were a montage of different images, each person choosing to focus on one or two of the senses primarily. One young man described the soldier with his dark shooter sunglasses and heavy green outfit, one young woman choose to describe the tone of the soldiers voice. And one young woman, dressed in her traditional Muslim "Hijab" with bright eyes poking out from underneath the dark maroon fabric wrapped around her head got quite worked up and choose to turn the sentence into a whole story as she described a soldier yelling at her over and over again to get off the bus because she had laughed at a questions he had asked a youth under 16 (youth under 16 do not have Palestinian ID's yet and so are usually exempt from copious scrutiny)...In some of these small events I begin to capture even more of a sense of the people who constantly face these intrusions into their lives.

Since the victory last Thursday the interviews have been pouring in, not just for the players and director of Ibdaa but for me as well. I have already appeared in 2 or 3 newspapers that I know of and tomorrow a profile will appear in the famous, "Al-Quds" newspaper out of Jerusalem. I gave that interview over dinner last night. A large group of us watched Bethlehem TV last night as the Co-Director Khaled along with YaHya and Abdallah from the team appeared in a half hour interview that included 12 minutes of highlights from the game that I had spent the day splicing together from the video shot by the Ibdaa Media Team. I made my first appearance on the TV screen a few minutes into the interview shaking hands with the team from the First Ramallah Group before the game and then later riding on the shoulders of the players in celebration. Laughter abounded in the room as everyone told me I was now famous and would be receiving calls from the NBA soon. The interview is being re-played on the TV as I sit here in the restaurant writing this entry.

The interview given by Khaled et al. was not only about basketball, it also talked about the situation in Palestine and drew attention to the fact that the teams from Gaza could not participate in this Palestinian Championship because of the current political problems and closed borders. The reality of the ever-present occupation sinking in after the elation and chance to step outside that world for a moment provided by the tournament. This morning we watched Al-Arabia as another feature appeared about the team and the game. This week I have interviews thus far with an English speaking radio station out of Ramallah that is a South African sponsored project and a television interview with Bethlehem TV as well as various appearances with Ibdaa supporters (including my meeting this afternoon with a representative from a major Palestinian shipping company who wants to donate money to Ibdaa and the top Palestinian basketball referee), at a few parties for the team (one hosted by a member of the Palestinian Parliament) and with Jawal (a Palestinian cell phone company and the Ibdaa men's basketball team corporate sponsor.)

It's all a bit overwhelming as I try to reply to the slew of questions that get thrown at me with simple words and straightforward answers. While Ibdaa is very supportive and has helped with arrangements for many of these interviews (transportation, translation, etc.) I am still curious and hesitant about how good this press is for me, personally. While it has already brought new support for Ibdaa and I have a meeting this afternoon with a Palestinian who wants to donate more money to Ibdaa, it still sits in the back of my head that my low profile has been blown and there is the possibility that this exposure will bring unwanted attention to me as I travel around the West Bank and Israel. But, again, Khaled encourages me to take all these interviews and Ziad, before he left for Sweden, insisted that I not censor myself while here.

I have posted two versions of the video from the championship, a large (72MB) video and a smaller one (27MB) to try and give a sense of the game. I recommend that, if possible, you download the large version to your desktop before watching it since if you try and stream it from the Internet it will take a long time and possibly cause unwanted skips and pauses. If that does not work you can try the smaller version though the picture will not be as good. Enjoy.