Voices from Jenin
Photographs I didn’t take
Water The name of the river is Almuqtua`a, Non Continuous
Old Maps and New Borders

Always be sceptical with maps, is what my old uncle used to say, and he was a seafarer as well as an astronomer. I agreed with him. In the German convent where I attended school, they used old maps of Europe which were brought over in 1942. For us children in South America in the Sixties, it was quite strange to have to guess where Norway, Denmark, Poland and France were, since they had all been incorporated into the Third Reich, which was to rule for a thousand years.

The nuns gave us an embarrassed smile when we pointed out that the maps and out history books didn't quite match. The maps had been brought there from the main convent in Paderborn, and no one had thought of getting new ones... I suppose the people of Palestine and Israel must feel the same scepticism towards maps that I felt as a child.

They have seen their cities and villages change names time and time again, to Jewish, Arabic and Christian names. Today's Akka was the Acre of the crusaders, a city that changed its name and its rulers countless times. The 1967 war changed the maps once more. Jerusalem was split in two, and the eternal city is now divided by an invisible border, only noticeable to those that know it.

The taxi drivers no longer find their way around the city. The Jewish settlements in the occupied part of Jerusalem, and the many illegally built houses on its outskirts, have turned the city into a maze. The maps from Oslo agreement have drawn up new borders and created new patterns in the intricate web of ancient sites worshiped by three religions. Samaritans, Philistines, Jews, Romans - they all drew their own maps, drawings in the sand by empires who's remains now collect dust in museums around the world.

But maps are merely representations of landscapes, and landscapes are built by people in motion, nomads that become domiciled and then have to revert to their nomadic state when new maps force them to leave their homes in places where they may have lived for a hundred generations.


Ana L. Valdés, Writer