Lasote Chaim to make life by me

Sometimes, there becomes a gap of awareness in one's memory, between what one once experiences and leaves an everlasting impression on one, and what one actually rememberes. What seems to outlive one's cognitive memory and make it to one's deepest of selves and its formation is what makes its way to inspire me today through watching the Bedouin old ladies in their traditional embroidered dresses going about doing their business, whether it be in the mall, or at the hospital.

I grew up in a buildling where the woman living on the second floor was the owner of the four comound appartments, and was herself, a fallaha, a peasant who wore similar traditional dresses as the Bedouin old ladies I saw today. The lady, Um Unis, had inherited the buildings and the land from her husband who passed away. Her chilren had immigrated to the States and she would often visit them in Cleveland and then come back, still dressed in her tradiational dress and with her head covered with a white scarf.

It was always a mystery for me to see what kind of hair she had under the white scarf, but since I did not live with her, I never saw her take off the scarf. I remember Um Unis going about in Beit Hanina, the neighborhood where we both lived, attening to her business: builldings, payments from people who owed her rent, the olive harvest of the lands and of course came her health. She never seemed to quiet understand why certain medications were given to her, or why she was sick. So, she would often come see my mother, with whom she was close, bringing a bag of mediations, taking each drug out, asking my mother who could read unlike Im Unis and who also was a medical secretary, what each drug was for, when she should take it and so on.

She would also complain to my mother about those who did not want to pay her the rent they owned, physical pains, her family issues and so on. I was little, perhaps about 6 or so, watching the two women, one skinny and one overweight, talk about a world I did not understand. What lingered with me was not logic or words, but rather colors of Im Unis' embroidered dress, the color of the henna she had on her hand, the white scarf covering her head, the hidden papers and docurments that seemed to always emerge out of her chest, the color of the different medicatation boxes, her placing her hand on her heads, signifying pain and the tone in her voice and my mother's.

I dont remember how Um Unis died because we moved out of the apartment while she was in the States, but a woman in her 60s seems to have inspired me as a woman in my mid twenties to be strong, to carry on with daily tasks, to take care of the land, of the appartments rented out and one's health, somehow. Um Unis comes from my forgotten past back to my cognitive memory through the embroided dresses that I see Bedouin women wearing them today. It wound seem that often one lives in a disposable world, where the old dont matter as much anymore, where cars will drive past them, and nobody will wait for them and their sticks to cross the streeet, and where at a certain age for the sake of productivity and rush in one generation, that younger generation places an older onelin nursing homes and then does not visit them as much anymore.

As a young person, one lives with a feeling of potentual abandonnement, for one does not trust one's age, and somehow know that in old age, one, too, might end up in a nursing home, after having fought life's battles like Um Unis. Much is lost when the older generation is forgotten about. They carry the invaluable wisdom of time, that the young can only attain when they reach the grandparents' age, and their level. The ability of one generation to carry on, to continue to fight, to be reminded of their impernance and yet of their strength to overcome is inspirational to a young person. Grandparents, though wrinkled and disjointed with osteoarthritis, are not fragile. They need to be handled with care, though.