Spring tour basics

Spring tour basics

The structure of the week was that every night we stayed in Abu Dis, & every day the minibus took us to places of interest. One way to describe Abu Dis is to say that it’s a suburb of Jerusalem; another is to say  it’s a village. Before the wall, one could drive from Abu Dis to a central part of Jerusalem in 4 mins; after, it took 30 mins. When our tour guide Abed was young, he went to college in a central part of Jerusalem & used to walk there.

There were 11 in the group; four females; 7 males.

The two main groups were 3 young women & 5 retired/semi -retired male trade unionists. One woman was about my age: 67; one man was black & London Caribbean; one woman was French Algerian & came from Paris; another was English Pakistani or mixed race. This last was from a small Muslim group that I’d never heard of before, not Sunni, not Shia. I’ve forgot the name of this group. Most were secularists; one was a Jew & probably secular; there were two hijabi women.

 Mostly we were two to a room. The men stayed in one large flat; the women in 2 small ones.

We got to Abu Dis about midnight. My first impression was that we were driving into a building site. My impression of the flat was that it was as bare as some squats I’d been in; it had half of the amenities that I have in my place in London – but it was surprisingly big.