My Mysore: A personal story
My Mysore[1]
I couldn’t
believe it at first when the name of the street was pronounced, Al-Anbia Street,
the street where I grew up!
“Yep, I know
where it is.” I replied.
Out of all the places in Ramallah, did it have to be in that same street?
My first few visits to Mysore were ok. I did my extremely basic Ashtanga Yoga routine and learned few new alignments but I was preoccupied; all I wanted to do was go out on the kitchen balcony and see my neighborhood again. My heart nudged me to go out and see the untamed backyards where I used to play with my friends. I longed to see the small archaic stone steps again and climb the stone fences or ‘sinsela’[2] to reach the back yard of my childhood home. |
| Stone fence 'sinsela' |
I wanted to see the old fig tree and its expansive shadowy branches, the embracive walnut tree sitting as a major monument in the middle of the neighborhood, the grapevines in every backyard, the three pomegranate trees that aligned our ‘sinsela’, and the huge mulberry tree where my friends and I always met under to munch on its sweet white berries whilst exchanging stories.
The house where
Mysore classes took place was the last house in the street, and I never dared
to enter its backyard. For some reason it was always my last frontier.
I couldn’t resist, in my last visit to the Mysore workshop, I went into the kitchen and asked if I could have a look outside from the balcony.
It all hit me
gradually.
The next
morning, I couldn’t do anything. It all came to me again. I couldn’t lock the
tears.
I grew up in
this neighborhood! The main street in Ramallah is down there adjacent to
Al-Anbia Street. This was where it all happened; my childhood, my adolescent
life: The occupation. A word used so often that it almost lost all meaning, but
how could I escape its persecutory affects? This was where I experienced the military
rule day in day out. All the demonstrations took place down there in the main
street. These gardens were where they all fled. The young teenagers fled in
this direction, and soldiers followed. The soldiers seemed huge, larger than
the boys and faster but they quickly stopped. The boys took to the gardens, they
knew these back routes by heart and to flee arrest they jumped the ‘sinselas’
from house to house, and from street to street, but the soldiers although they
were bigger and faster they didn’t dare to venture in an unknown territory to
them. The soldiers ran down the street, and soon they would realize they were
out-fled. Some would dash into the entrance of a house and maybe decide to
barge in and arrest the young boy or boys in that random house, all according
to the temperament of the soldier at that moment.
I remember the
noises of demonstrations exactly as they happened. Demonstrations rarely took
more than five or ten minutes at the most. The clanking and clunking happened
so quickly. First there were sounds of clanking; these were the metal stuff the
young teenagers found in the streets and used to barricade the road to delay
the Israeli soldier jeeps from moving quickly after them; they used large
garbage bins, zinc sheets, large pieces of stone or brick, and inflamed tires.
The clunking sounds of heavy metal doors of the shops closing came second. Then
came the chanting; slogans for freedom and independence announced the beginning
of the third or fourth minute. Depending on how far the Israeli jeep was, the
chanting persisted. Once the rumbling sound of a racing jeep was heard, I knew
the end was near; the rattling sound of stone throwing is heard. After so many
years I could tell if stones hit the road, the pavements, the shops’ metal
doors, or the Israeli jeep. After so much practice with hearing the sounds of
demonstrations, I can distinguish the sound of a stun grenade from a shotgun, I
can tell if live ammunition is used or not.
These sounds
became sirens; once internalized the response instinctively would be to run
away from that scene ‘to be’. The shops would close and everyone would run in
any direction. Few minutes, that’s all it took. But these minutes were imbued with
so much belief, so much theory, and so much politics that in reverence all
would run and hide waiting to see if these few minutes would have a lasting impact
on their lives. On some occasions, those moments can spiral a whole new wave of
demonstrations, escalating emotions even further into negativity.
Usually the last
sounds to be heard were the stamping sounds of running boots around our house;
the heavy footsteps of soldiers and the lighter scuffling of young teenagers
and their jumping off the ‘sinselas’ but the soldiers rarely jumped. I remembered
the halting of the soldiers’ footsteps in the periphery of our house where we didn’t
dare to look from the windows lest they saw us and thus barge in screaming and
arrest my older brother. The intended fear of a military rule is capable of
melting those minutes away from our lives.
Another
fearsome sound would be the sound of a jeep racing through our street. Usually
the jeep is too late. The young teenagers knew their escape route before they
began demonstrating. But if the jeep suddenly made a shrieking sound and stopped,
then an innocent young boy was probably the target and a whole new tragedy enfolded.
Soldiers shouted and hit the innocent young boy and some women gathered and
screamed to try and free him.
The final sounds
that put an end to the drama were the soldiers shouting in Hebrew or in Arabic
tainted with Hebrew accent at passing people or shop owners to clean up the
barricade that was put up.
After that, it
was all chattering about what had happened. With my friends, under the mulberry
tree, and in those backyards, we shared stories about those arrested, and what had
happened to them, and whether they were hit, or how severely were they hit, and
whether they were later released or not. We exchanged anecdotes about those who
fled, or even we would recall rare funny moments that some of us missed hiding.
Ironically, even tragedies have their share of laughable moments.
That was it. Few
minutes, that’s all it took, every day, such a heavy burden for a few minutes,
now that I am looking back at it.
Every day, my
mother scheduled her house chores according to these demonstrations. She tried
to finish early before the demonstration began at around noon. My
mother was in a frantic mood almost going crazy when the soldiers were around
the house, and wouldn’t relax until she was certain the soldiers had left Al-Anbia
Street and that would take some phone calls to neighbors who viewed different
parts of the street. “So what if I get arrested?” my brother would argue with
her.
“But what if they beat you or arrest you and
you’re not the same anymore?” replied my mother.
My little
brother, on the other hand, always hid in his room when the noises of
demonstrations began. With his hands, he always closed his ears.
My father owned
a small shop in the main street, where all the demonstrations took place. After
every demonstration, the street was emptied from customers and his small business
suffered. My father was an emblem of silence, patience, and faith. He watched
and spoke few words of approval, disapproval, encouragement or discouragement
when needed. He only had three postures: a sitting posture behind the shop
counter, the ‘TV posture’ in the evening and his prayer posture, ‘Al-Soujoud’ and
‘Al-Roukou’; the Muslim equivalent of ‘Ardha Uttanasana’ and ‘Balasana’ yoga
poses.
I was a
thirteen year old girl then. I faced no threat of arrest. I was the one my
mother and father worried least about. I realized on that balcony in Mysore
that since then and for five years, I was the forgotten one. I always tried to
manage on my own, without asking anyone for help. I gave everything whenever I
did anything craving for recognition.
And I was here,
back again, trying through yoga and posture to understand who am I. In Ashtanga
Yoga they say “practice and all is coming!” In a twisted fate of mine, life
came to me first and then I did yoga. Amidst strife and sudden changes, I understood
loss, grief, and the anger that ensued, all meshed together.
The irony in all
of this is that in comparison to other tragedies, this is not considered a
tragedy at all. I had a father born in a refugee camp and grown in another and
a mother who belonged to a family that, because of war, had fled their home twice.
How can I call my experience a tragedy in an area heavy with corpses and misery?
 |
| The balcony |
I needed
flexibility in life, and I had it, I had to bend in face of every war or
hardship. In the name of duty and giving, I believed, or so I was raised, my
time wasn’t mine to own. I lent it to everyone around who needed help or
companionship. Yet I lacked strength, and I lacked regularity in my schedule.
And so was my body, flexible but lacking in strength especially in the shoulder
muscles that surround the heart. In yoga there is a need to be rooted, yet
expansive upwards. Mysore planted me back in my neighborhood. The heart gets a
special attention as the driver of movements, and here is where I found myself
troubled.
As if I held
the burden of the struggle all on my shoulders, my shoulders hurt. This was the
embodiment of not being able to move ahead without healing the past. This was
my past all cramped up in this one single room, in this one little
insignificant street, yet so insurmountable for me.
I gullibly asked our Australian Ashtanga Yoga teacher on the last
day of the workshop, “Can one start late in life to commit to yoga, even
Ashtanga Yoga?”
He briefly gazed out the window before he replied, “Can you start
with twenty or thirty minutes once a week?”
I looked at the younger and more advanced students doing their advanced
postures. I said, “Twenty or thirty minutes once a week, yes, I think I can.”
“Then give it a go, and see where the practice takes you. I have
students much older than you. It helps everyone in a different way,” the
teacher said.
I needed to
move ahead both in my practice and in life. I need to own my time and to
develop strength and alignment. With my heart in perspective I need regularity;
both a rare commodity in this part of land.
[1]
Maysore is traditionally the name given to the self-practice of Ashtanga yoga
class where students do certain poses in a certain sequence at their own pace
and body alignment advice is offered.
[2]
Sinsela is the Arabic name for stone fence.
[3]
The two Gulf wars, the 2006 war in the north, that had a direct impact on the Palestinian
struggle.
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