Last Time in AlQuds

What AlQuds mean to you?

Personally, I never liked the city, every time we had a school trip, guess to where they would take us "here is the dome of the rock, here is Alqasa mosque, stay together kids.... and here u can see...". You know what!? We figured it all by ourselves, can we go to swim, now!?

In 2000 I went to AlQuds with my scout team, we went to it to compensate the actual school trip to Jabal Al Shaikh and Tabaria"yaa, AlQuds is Equally fun, WoHoo". We missed it to go to scout training.

We reached Jerusalem around 10AM, all the trip long from Nablus to Jerusalem we had no music in the bus but the tape our teacher found in his car. It was the worse Hamas's album ever.. "Blood, Blood, Blood, they killed our ancestors and slaughtered our uncles....".

The tape was gone as we stepped out of the bus. we would rather walk back, but god know, we are not listening to this tape again. Well, what else you expect we were living in Oslo era. When the illusion of independence took over. who gave a damn about some Hamas over reaction. Fuck this shit.  

When we were in the Haram Shareef, we went to Wodo'o, before we go for a prayer in the Morwani mosque, as we were gathering around the phantom in the middle of the square, a group of tourist came by with their Israeli guide. He started to explain the washing up the Muslims do before they pray.
We stopped, as we couldn't finish from laughing. The guide fuck it up! Everything he said was pretentious, stereotyping and Ignorant. Well, he was Zionist what else you expect!

After the usual ritual of praying at the Haram Shareef we headed to Omar mosque next to the church of the Holy Sepulcher. after visiting the mosque we went in a tour in the church.
As we walked out, we went face to face with a bunch of Israeli soldiers, also in a tour in the old city. as I walked passing them I was surprised about similar my scout uniform to what they wearing. The only difference was the badges.
I looked to my instructor in protest, "What on Earth was that!?"
"Border police" he said.
"I know, why we were the same uniform!"
He node to the huge scout badge on my shoulder, and the ranks below it, and said nothing.

Something like that.

without the guns of course

But we had this colorful badge on!  

I was proud of it

Few months after this trip, the Second Intifada started, and the chances of going to AlQuds again, started to fade away every time a young man dies. in No times the whole idea of leaving Nablus became a far away dream.

I didn't step a foot in AlQuds since then, although I had a lot of chances of maintaining a permit, or smuggled in Palestine48. But I refused, and I will never accept either of those options.

I still don't like AlQuds.
Doesn't mean I will ever give up on having it back!

Best