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The wall cannot stop our stories
DIARY WRITING IN PALESTINE
A Teacher Manual

Terra Sancta School/Sisters of St Joseph
Bethlehem, 2004



1. WHAT IS A DIARY AND WHY TO WRITE IT?


What is a diary? The word diary comes from the Latin root of "day." A diary is about one's daily life, not just about the great events but also and especially about the very common activities one is doing at home, at school, or with one's friends and acquaintances. A diary tells the stories of the day. That does not mean that diary writing needs to be done daily. Once or twice a week is also possible, and some diary writers do it less often.

In most of the cases, diaries are a private affair; that is, they are addressed to nobody else than oneself. Many people trust their most intimate thoughts only to a diary, and hide their diary so that nobody else will read it. Sometimes people address their diary writings to a somebody who does not exist but who is like a "friend" to whom all thoughts and feelings can be trusted. Dear friend, dear Samia, dear Samir, dear Kitty… listen what happened today… People sometimes keep several diaries or notebooks; a common distinction is between the diary as such, in which personal and intimate things are written, and the journal, in which everything else is noted (like "good ideas").

It is also possible to write not only for oneself but for others too. Others may bring out a diary into the public which was originally written only for the writer. Some diaries are published as a book and have become famous all over the world. Our diary project is aimed at a larger audience unfamiliar with the events in Palestine except for the superficial media images. When diaries are written in English, people who don't know Arabic are able to become informed.

Why do people keep a diary? There are lots of possible reasons which may differ from one person to another. Read the following answers given by people – Palestinians and non-Palestinians, youths and adults - who once wrote a diary. Perhaps they provide clues to students about possible reasons to write. Diary writing is in order:

 "To release and control my emotions. I feel less pressure in myself after I wrote down my worries of the day."

 "To move me from not seeing, or seeing the familiar, to seeing the world anew, and so sharpening my consciousness. Look at the following quotation from a famous writer: 'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes' (Proust)."

 "To discover and bring out what is deep inside me. As somebody has said, writing is 'the axe that breaks the frozen sea within' (Kafka). Journals hint at what's long been hidden under the ice of my soul."

 "To loose myself on purpose, to do freewriting. For me diarywriting is a bit like dreaming away."

 "To help changing my own life. When I am writing in the diary, or when I read it afterwards, I learn about myself. This helps me to improve."

In the case of public diaries:

 "To leave a trace, to let other people know about my life which will otherwise not be known to anyone outside my own community."

 "To give a message to other people at my school."

 "To let people abroad know about the real situation in my country."

 "To change images others have of my people."


Diary writing as therapy

Teachers in the workshop saw diary writing as a unique way of releasing emotions. After all, with all the closures and curfews, Palestinian students in the West Bank and Gaza live in a kind of pressure cooker. Especially students who are not so open or extrovert may find in diary writing a useful way of bringing out emotions which otherwise would build up inside. "Let them show their emotions, and lend them afterwards a mirror," said a teacher. The mirror would be provided by discussing the emotions and the reality in which the students live. Parents confirmed that their kids were emotionally supported by diary writing during or after difficult times. Diary writing involves reflecting upon one's life in general, or upon the community. Reflection is also therapeutical. In writing a diary, students try to give meaning to their life and society, give remarks and criticisms, as well as suggestions for improvement. You may decide to have a class discussion about how to overcome negative feelings and frustrations, and about what kind of practical things the youths may do to feel better (having a new experience, putting on music, meeting friends etc.) In this way, the class will build a new level of awareness and group feeling. You can change their mood for the coming days!



2. WHAT TOPIC TO WRITE ABOUT?


It is not always necessary to discuss a topic for diary writing. After all, the diary topics are given by the reality which the students experience. It is well possible, and if the students can handle it, indeed advisable, to conduct freewriting in the diary writing class. Yet many students need some direction and focus. For this reason we suggest here ways for students to arrive at a diary writing topic.

There are various ways of discussing and choosing such a topic. A good way of brainstorming is to draw on the blackboard a web like a spider:


YOU


In the middle of the web is YOU. Draw from the middle outward threads to important areas of life: for instance,

HOME AND FAMILY

SCHOOL

FRIENDS

HOBBIES

JOURNEYS

POLITICS

For each of these areas you can suggest topics. As for HOME AND FAMILY, students may want to write about what they are doing at home alone or together with their family, how they feel about their family's life, the problems their brothers or sisters are facing, or the good moments of family life, for instance during feasts.

It is also possible to write in a (family) diary about the life of family members, such as parents and grandparents. By talking with them students would learn about how important political events like the wars that happened in 1948 or 1967 affected their family. They may even see similarities between circumstances then and now, this Intifada and that Intifada or rebellion, this occupation and that occupation. There is a book with family stories of students from St Joseph (Terra Sancta) School in Bethlehem who interviewed their parents and grandparents about the old days. The book is titled "Your Stories Are My Stories."


As said, journals are about daily life. However, that does not mean that a journal should be about everything that happens each day. You can also have a journal about one particular subject like is the case in a

 Travel journal

 Prison journal

 Dream journal

 Crisis journal (about a long illness, for instance)

 Occupation journal

 Nature journal

 Family journal

Some Palestinians have kept a prison journal by writing notes on small papers (even toilet paper!) Especially those who were isolated from other prisoners, said they needed to write in order to survive mentally. You can imagine that many Palestinians could well keep a travel diary that would be shocking and revealing for foreigners uninformed about what is happening in our country today.


Things one never forgets

A good warming up for thinking about diary writing themes is to ask students "which things they will never forget."

Teachers in a diary writing workshop were asked to tell about their own memories and gave the following examples:

- One teacher always remembered the time when their family had to decide whether to stay in the country or to leave. It was such a difficult decision…

- During the Intifada a teacher saw a mother in Gaza who was asking herself whether she should join a militant group: "Two kids in one hand, the homeland in the other." A haunting phrase never to forget.

- A female teacher was arrested for two days because of throwing stones during the first Intifada. She would always remember those days being imprisoned.

- A teacher very much remembered that her son took the risk to walk on the streets during the strict curfew in Bethlehem at the time of the siege of the Nativity. He absolutely wanted to come at his graduation ceremony outside the town.

- Another teacher would never forget the image of people walking, and donkeys carrying things, over a normally busy road after it was closed off by barriers on both sides.

The responses show that people especially remember difficult decisions and extraordinary events.

Sometimes you may elicit student stories of difficult decisions by asking general questions like:

- Does honesty pay?

- What is a lie?

- Have you ever told a white lie?

- Have you met somebody who didn't keep his promises?

- What is a dilemma?


Use models

A teacher at the workshop said that it is very fruitful to employ models. Show students other diary writings by Palestinian students, like the book "The Wall Cannot Stop Our Stories" published by Terra Sancta School/Sisters of St Joseph, or "When Normal Becomes Abnormal" published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem 2001.

Other possibilities:

- teacher diaries

- English diaries by Palestinian authors (Raja Shehadeh's diaries of life in Ramallah, Muna Hamzeh's diary of living in Dheisha, diaries included in the volume "Modern PalestinianLiterature" edited by Salma Jayyusi)

- a short or longer story about Palestinian life, with good (but not complex) descriptions of emotions, relationships and values

- newspaper articles or cartoons

- a diary from a foreign author

- a situation from a different culture or period, such as a fictional diary of life in the Titanic, as a teacher suggested.


TOPICS
from the diaries of students at Terra Sancta/St Joseph School for Girls in Bethlehem (2000-2004)

Occupation, siege and curfew
Describing life under curfew, the restrictions, the boring routine disrupted by moments of violence. The shelling and house searches. Comparisons with curfews in the past (during the British mandate over Palestine before 1947).

Moments of fear
The scare of nightmares, car accidents, soldiers coming into town, assassinations

Coping with loss
The killing of a school student, a student who lost her father. Loosing one's house.

Special days
Moments of joy (birth baby), special occasions like Christmas, old/new year, Al Adha, but also anticipating and enjoying a day of snow.

Studying
At home and at school, sometimes under curfew conditions.

Being together
About relations in the society. Discussion of morals in relation to boys-girls, parents-children, dealing with the poor, with neighbours. Do you love your city?

Escape from pressure
About superstitious beliefs, hobbies, music, leisure activities, holiday traveling, puzzles. Funny things.

Purpose and faith, how to go on
Hope and despair. Wishes, dreams and prayers, thoughts about a future job, staying or leaving the country, pursuing happiness. What are your choices in life and how are you guided by searching for values? Do you feel confident? How does God intervene to help in moments of despair? How can you change routines to feel better so as to keep going on? Looking back and looking in the future.

Thinking about the enemy and the self
Reflections about hate and forgiveness. How to look at the American Twin Tower disaster. How to keep dignity and morality. Dreaming about peace.



3. WATCHING THAT TERRIBLE EMPTY PAPER: HOW TO START?


Most people have difficulty to start writing a diary. In fact, there are lots of good reasons why not to start it: you might think that you cannot write, or that it is boring what you write, or that you need to write very often if you want to do it well. People do not want to really write down what they feel because others might not understand. And maybe there is a little voice inside that is warning not to write… The voice of a CENSOR.

Encourage students to think of something which sparks their emotions, which REALLY motivates them to write, such as:

 Values which are cherished. Values are about important things or aims in life. See the list below for a list of values which many people see as important. Students can also think about other values than the list shows.
ook for those values with which you feel most connected, and You may ask your students to describe what influence those values have upon their daily life, or upon that of others close to them.

Sometimes people may develop good writing ideas by sitting alone and staring at the wall or ceiling. But there are also little tricks that help students to spark their imagination and emotions.You might never have thought that they could develop such good ideas!

 Take objects that relate to particular themes. Objects are often full of life stories. For instance, a photo of a person or an event (a feast for instance) may bring up a lot of unexplored memories. Put the photo in front of the students and start the writing session. Or ask the students to look around in their house or neighbourhood for objects with a message; like the old key of the house that was abandoned by their grandparents in 1948, a diploma on the wall, an ancient well nearby, an old mosque or church. Let them talk with relevant people about the history and meaning of the object.

 Encourage the students to think of a place where they would like to return to, if only in memory.

 Snapshots: Which objects, places, single incidents during the last two weeks made much impression upon the students?



Motivate the students

"Motivate them, stir their emotions," said a teacher in the diary writing workshop. It is helpful, when the students are "blank" and they don't know what to write about, to use visuals, like a ten-minute video or posters, because such visuals touch the emotions. Relaxed music is a pleasant background for a diary writing session, or as a background for reading from a diary book. You may wish to have a bit of fun in the diary writing session, by telling a humourous anecdote as a starter, or to use a funny game, or to have a meal at school, or to take the students out to a place. These are good motivators. You may decide not to give marks (or to give extra marks, or a prize, for those who regularly write something, whatever the quality), and to keep your comments at a minimum, and emphasize that the diary writing is helpful for the students themselves rather than a school requirement.


Diary writing and the English language

When diary writing is done in a foreign language like English, students may face "double trouble": the difficulty of writing about oneself but also the difficulty of expressing oneself in English. The lesson set-up may be designed so as to support student.

Here is the advice of a teacher of diary writing who worked with groups of students from different schools.

"First I explained to them the principle of diary writing; that you write about yourself, your family and community. I took examples from diaries of Palestinian writers. The students thus got an idea what to write about. Together we decided about a general topic for the diary writing, such as family matters, special moments, feasts, or confrontations with the army. The topic helped the students to shape their thoughts. Knowing the topic it was possible to prepare the English vocabulary. In advance I wrote lists of words on the board relevant to the topic, and we pronounced them together. For instance, if we talked about the Intifada, I put words on the board like curfew, tank, grenades, watch tower, checkpoint, and so on. The students would then wrote some diary sentences on board about the topic, which we would read together. In this way they became prepared. Then I asked them to write a diary on the topic at home, and to give it a title. The problem is that the parents usually do not know much English and cannot help their kids. I therefore allowed the students to use Arabic expressions in case they did not know the English word. Sometimes the kids, when they did not know how to proceed, copied each other's writings. (Some teachers in the workshop responded that they preferred their students to write in class, precisely to prevent copying). After they brought back their writings the next lesson, I split them up in small groups, taking care that there was at least one person in each group who was good in English.

Other teachers suggested that there are various ways of using word lists:

- words put in a context of use

- synonyms

- related words

- opposites

- words to be used in a domain, for instance emotion words, relationship words, value words (emotions, relations and values are always important elements in a diary)

- going from easy words to difficult words in the list, creating a challenge

When giving marks to the writings, you may not so much look at mistakes in grammar but may choose to reward those students who use new vocabulary, it was suggested.

Teachers found significant improvement in English language use after a diary writing project.


Early diary writing

Several teachers in the diary writing workshop had elementary classes in which it was not yet possible to ask students to write diary entries. In the 3rd elementary students usually know a few sentences, only in the 4th and 5th grade the pupils can make a beginning with diary writing. In the 4th grade it is possible to start writing small letters in English. There are several ways to involve the student in a preparatory, early "diary" project.

 Writing about topics in the home environment which are covered by the curriculum; for instance, animals.

 Using little games and prompts to encourage students to say something about themselves, like using flashcards, rhyme games, and feeling sentences: "I like … but I don't like…" Or: "What are your favorite animals?"

 Acting and drawing out the meaning of a word. Students may draw a smiling or sad face on the board.

 In the 6th grade, you may use familiar situations, with pictures, games and questions as prompts. A situation consists of a setting and an action, and an action consists of an actor and an act. Visiting a school is such a familiar situation for pupils. How do you go to school, who brings you, where do you enter the school, what do you do in class? Keep the questions concrete. Jointly the students can make a kind of oral diary. Or you may bring a card board on which the students can design a class diary, with pictures, drawings, feeling words or sentences related to the pictures. You may ask them to bring their own picture or photo, and stick it on the board or on the notebook. It is always important to use words they already know.

 Props can be used, like an umbrella when the students talk about going to school while it is raining. When the topic is about shopping, you may bring fruits.

 You can make charts for students to fill in "I" sentences about something personal.


Check that the tasks are concrete and clear.



4. LIVELINESS IN DIARY WRITING: DETAILS


Details are valuable for any story.

When you write, it is good for the readers to learn about details, little facts or impressions, things which are seemingly not important to the topic, like the weather. A well-chosen detail may help to create atmosphere. The more details, the easier it is for readers to close their eyes and to imagine the situation.

By giving details of how soldiers humiliate people at a checkpoint students may create a clearer picture of what they want to say about the occupation: the waiting time, the signs of tension building up among the people waiting, soldiers looking bored, the strange questions they ask, and so on. Such a story would be much more telling than when students would write: “They humiliated me and I felt bad about it.”

Compare a story to a painting. When people read a good story, it is as they want to paint, to touch, to feel what is written.

Without details, a story is without blood. It will miss uniqueness and interest. Readers would become bored. More than anything else, it is the details of a story that stick in the readers’ mind.

Moreover, through little things one may better bring out the big picture. When you say “it is only a detail,” you say that something is unimportant. However, details do not need to be unimportant. Details can in fact say a lot about something or somebody. For instance, a detail about somebody’s way of walking or looking – slow, careful - may say much about that person’s character.

Details also give a story truthfulness. They show that you know what you are writing about. You take care to observe the little things. As a writer, you make your readers real witnesses to what happens in your story.

Now, what kind of details can you give? They may be about:

 a person (face, attitude, gestures, behaviour)

 an event (what is happening exactly)

 a place (colours, smells, characteristics of the natural environment, buildings)

 feelings (different types of feelings and images which express feelings).


Details often come through our senses:

 Smells
 Sounds
 Touch
 Sights
 Taste.


Looking with different eyes

Teachers remarked that one manner to make a student diary more lively is to encourage them to look with different eyes at the reality they (want to) describe in their diary. Looking at reality anew makes people aware of all the details that constitute that reality. This is certainly relevant for Palestinian youths who live in such an oppressive reality that they have little opportunity or motive to look at it in an alternative way.

You may introduce a fictional visitor from a different planet, or a visitor (journalist, for instance) from another country. How would such visitors look at the students' reality? You may play the devil's advocate and adopt an opposing point of view, if only to create new ideas. Or you may conduct a thought experiment in which students imagine themselves looking at their own reality as if they see it for the first time. They may describe that reality as a lively scene, that is, with details and with the various feelings that are evoked.Choose a drawing or photo which shows reality in a somewhat different light or from a different angle, and ask students to write a caption. Or you may ask the students to imagine and describe a fantasy scene inspired by an oppressive reality – like a youth's dream of flying away. The students can be asked to make drawings about a theme, and to compare and comment upon each other's drawings, and see the differences.

Oral history projects may bring students into contact with elderly people who could give accounts of daily life reality that differ much from those of the students, and which would raise another perspective onto their stories. It may turn out that life now is not in all respects so difficult as in the past, and that in the past it was for instance difficult to go to school. All these methods help to free the students' minds.



5. LIVELINESS IN DIARY WRITING: SURPRISE


To keep the readers' interest it is helpful to sprinkle one's writing with small or big surprises. Like details, surprises help to prevent the reader from becoming bored. They make the text alive. After all, writers want the reader to keep going on reading!

There are many ways of creating a surprise. Here are some:

 A surprising turn in events. For instance, one may write about the thunderous sound of a washing machine… which turns out to be a bombardment.

 Writing about something positive or beautiful to introduce something painful. Most readers expect Palestinians just to write about oppression and suffering, and they will be surprised when a diary starts with something beautiful. The British Annie Higgins in Jenin (see the illustrations section below) writes first about the flowers she sees everywhere, and then moves on to the flower wreath at a burial. She goes from a topic about beauty and life to one of suffering and dying. Her diary shows that Palestinians love beauty, and that that beauty is destroyed by the Israeli army. Readers may be more impressed than when they read about the suffering alone.

 Describing a quiet scene from daily life to introduce a problem. Students may start writing about people playing backgammon or eating food (like in the story of Nick Pretzlick below in the Illustrations section). Afterwards they may show how that normal life is disturbed or disturbing; for instance, by explaining that people are doing these things because they are out of work. Another example: Before writing about soldiers who entered one's house, students can describe how a normal evening for your family looks like.

 One can create suspense by writing about a threat without saying what the threat exactly is, or what will be its consequences. For instance, when Annabel Frey writes (see illustrations below): "They do it in the middle of the night. On dark nights. Quietly, stealthily. In large groups." – the reader becomes interested to learn about whom and what she is writing.

 It may be surprising when the diary writer brings in different viewpoints, like in a conversation which is quoted. Muna Hamzeh in Dheisheh (see the Illustrations section at the end) quotes a conversation between herself and an Israeli who is part of a visiting peace group. She shows a confrontation between different opinions. She first quotes somebody who is not a friend. Then she gives her own comments.



6. WHY CAN A DIARY BE INTERESTING FOR SOMEBODY 2000 KM AWAY?


Many foreigners are interested to hear about stories from Palestinian daily life. Why? Because many people only learn about Palestine from the newspapers or TV. What the media tell is often superficial and general. It's about how politicians and governments look at the issues, or it is about violent events. The media rarely provide for personal accounts from daily life.

Diaries fill in that gap. They provide those who are interested with information about common people rather than about (big) events. Diaries also show how big events influence people's daily lives. Stories in diaries are concrete, recognizable, emotional and personal. They therefore manage to build bridges to people who don't know but who want to learn more. Moreover, journals provide facts and details which are important in order to build up a reliable picture about life here. In a diary foreigners may learn that many common people in Bethlehem or Hebron have not visited Jerusalem/Al Quds for maybe over 20 years. These "little" – but for people revealing – facts rarely reach newspaper reports about the conflict. A diary may help people who have never been here before (or at least not in the Palestinian areas) to imagine how life really looks like for Palestinian youth.

Precisely because they are so detailed and personal, diaries help Palestinians to become more human in the eyes of others, rather than to remain just a name or a political issue. Diaries help people to understand and sympathize with the feelings of common Palestinians. By doing so, they help to break down stereotypes, general images, or downright negative and hostile prejudices as when Palestinians are considered "terrorists."

So diaries are important for foreigners. It is therefore helpful to think about how foreigners read a diary. By knowing about their readers, students can prevent misunderstandings.

Here are a couple of discussion points for the diary writing class.

 Take care about differences in background information. Foreigners are often not informed about very basic things such as that Bethlehem is not located in Israel, that no Israelis are living in Bethlehem, that there are Palestinian Christians as well as Moslems, that Palestinians are Arabs, that Palestinian refugees come from places inside present-day Israel. Sometimes people know something "half," have heard about it a long time ago, are therefore not sure and need confirmation.

 Readers may not always share Palestinian opinions even though they are interested in them. That doesn't mean that foreigners (in Europe and the United States, for instance) are pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian. Some indeed are, but many others think that both Palestinians and Israelis have a part of the truth on their side. It is good to treat readers respectfully (although voicing anger can be effective too). Students may give arguments and facts that support an opinion, if they want to bring over that opinion. Or the facts to speak for themselves but in that case too they have to be described.

 Much of Palestinian diaries are about suffering. It’s after all the overwhelming reality of daily life in Palestine and it is often not sufficiently seen by others. But there is something to say here:

o Suffering is not only being injured or killed. People suffer also when they cannot see their friends or when they are humiliated at a checkpoint. People abroad are often informed about killings or injuries or houses destroyed but less so about the daily, often invisible forms of humiliation and oppression.

o Although an overwhelming reality in Palestinian life, there is no need to only mention one's or one's family's or community’s suffering. Sometimes the little moments of pleasure – feasts, journeys, returning family members - that happen under otherwise unbearable circumstances make it easier for other people to understand the Palestinian situation well. Students may write about Palestinian culture: food, landscapes, holy places, customs. Also that culture and identity are barely known to a foreign audience.

o Students can bring out stories which show how people who are victims of oppression do their best to overcome it. While reading about oppression and violence, people abroad sympathize with the victims but feel that they cannot do anything themselves to change the situation. So they become feeling powerless. This changes when they see that somebody is trying to redress the situation in one way or another. Simply by showing that young people want to change something they inspire hope among the readers.



7. FOLLOW-UP: BUILDING UPON JOURNALS


It is possible to use diaries for further activities.

Examples:

Photos: a photo album to illustrate a diary, photos inserted into a diary. Once Palestinian Edward Said wrote a travel diary of a visit to Palestine illustrated by photos from a French photojournalist (Jean Mohr)

Websites which include a diary series, such as the Electronic Intifada website [[www.electronicintifada.org], which every week has several new diaries coming from all over Palestine.

Public reading from diaries. Last year, groups in Britain organized a Palestinian diary reading festival in Hyde Park, central London.

Drama or film based on diaries. The Anne Frank diary of the Second World War has been used for theatre pieces and films. Students of St Joseph have dramatized their diaries with the help of 'Inad theatre in Beit Jala.

Video diaries. During the first Intifada, many common people – themselves not experienced in using a video camera - made video diaries that were shown on TV all over the world.



© Copyright St Joseph School for Girls, Bethlehem/Terra Sancta 2004

All rights reserved. Subject to the exception provided for by law, no part of this publication may be reproduced and/or published in print or in any other way without the written consent of the copyright holder(s); the same applies to whole or partial adaptations. The publisher retains the sole right to collect from third parties fees payable in respect of copying and/or legal or other action for this purpose.

Title: The Wall Cannot Stop Our Stories: Diary Writing in Palestine. A Teacher Manual

Editors: Toine van Teeffelen and Susan Atallah

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