Valley of Dry Bones

Our travels today included first a visit to an "unrecognized village" which contained some 1,000 Palestinians in the shadow of a large Jewish settlement. Then we visited to Al-Birwa, the ancestral home of the great Palestinian poet Mamoud Darwish which was now nothing but ruins, stones and graves. In the field beyond the ruins was a cattle lot, the stench of dung and cattle permeating the air. The village was destroyed to make way for an industrial park, although there seemed to be plenty of space for the complexes nearby. Never before have I been in such a desolate place. To make matters worse, we walked amidst the graves of the people who had been buried there, and came across bones that may have been disturbed when Israeli bulldozers cleared the village.

It minded me of the famous passage from Ezekiel, called "in the Valley of Dry Bones.". In that passage, the prophet Ezekiel is brought to a valley where there is nothing but rubble, ruin and bones. "Can these bones live?" he asks. "Prophesy to the bones," he is commanded. He does, and the bones reassemble themselves and then are enfleshed and made whole.

The irony of this scene is that the Valley of Dry Bones is a metaphor for the restoration of Israel. It's a scene and a story that gives hope to a people who have been oppressed, had their homes and lands destroyed, and driven from their home land. In that desolate place, a place that once held a mosque and a church, where perhaps the bones of the great Palestinian poet Darwoush's ancestors may have been laid to rest, there was nothing but dirt, stones, dung and bones.

Perhaps it is best to close with Darwoush's own words:

My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees
A marble epitaph of time
And I always anticipate them at the funeral
Who then has died...who?

Location:Al-Birwa, Palestine