ANTIQUITY IN BANI NAIM

I recall my early years as a young boy walking in the dirt allies of Bani Naim without shoes and wearing a robe-like attire.  The morning always started with shepherds herding their animals through the dusty roads and directed them to the countryside for grazing and foraging on dried up grass or anything else that is eatable. A trip to Hebron at that time was highlighted with excitement and anticipation.  While there was no planning for the trip to Hebron, the parents talked about it for days and weeks in advance to the point I was intrigued about the idea of taking a trip and see for myself why it is so important to go to Hebron. In one early Fall morning I followed my mother to the only bus that connect the town with Hebron.  She did not hear me walking behind her since I was bare footed.  When she took her seat in the bus I was there standing beside her. She was nervous, embarrassed, spooked, and annoyed all at the same time.  She held my hand and dragged me out of the bus and directed me back to home.  She instructed me to never follow her again.  She was consistent in her actions, stern, and had a strong personality.  On the other hand my father grew up as a shepherd from a young age and learnt things as he went through the hardship of living a solitary life surrounded only by sheep and goats.  He was moody and when I look back at him I recognized a good sense humor coming out of his madness. He spent the whole summer in the country-side of Bani Naim tending his flocks of animals.  He is always in the survival mode and living at the edge of life just like many folks in Bani Naim at that time.  Recently I started to imagine myself standing with him in dark nights gazing upward toward the stars and galaxies.  It must have been a wonderful life to live with the serenity of nature and quietness.

One morning when I was in grade school, I decided to follow my father and his flock of sheep.  He did not notice me at first, but I had a feeling he was pretending to ignore me.  He called my name to come closer to him when we reached the destination, which was a grass meadow.  I was scared at first, but he was affectionate somehow.   For lunch, he milked a few goats in a container and took a small piece of a brownish object from a pouch and dropped it in the milk container. I found out later that the brown piece of material was taken from the stomach of a new born lamb.  In about twenty minutes the milk turned into a very delicious cheese.  The closest type of cheese one may found in a grocery store nowadays is called mozzarella. My father was in his happy mood that day and talked to me about the sheep matriarch, which is an old ewe that all other sheep followed her wherever it went.  He told me goats do not have matriarch, they are dumb and do not listen to him.

A few years past since my first trip with my father in which I learned a good deal on how to survive and what it takes to be a shepherd.  However, the main lesson I learned from this trip is that in no way I am going to be a shepherd.  I continued to accompany my father on many occasions.  He always talked about the two brothers, Naeem and Tameem, and always mad at Naeem for not having enough sense to be educated like his brother Tameem. He blamed all his shepherding problems and his miseries on Naeem.  He made up many wicked jokes about Naeem. At that time I had no idea who these two brothers were.  I thought they were his second cousins and it was customary at that time to blame relatives for one misfortune.   Only until recently I read that these brothers lived during the dawn of Islam and the legend has it that the town of Bani Naim was named after Naeem while Tameem lived in Hebron. One thing I admire so much about my father is that he knew the names of every hill and valley in the countryside, called masafer, of Bani Naim. He even knew some of the reasons why a name was given to a hill as an example.  He spent a good part of his life attending his land and straightened the boundaries. In one occasion he pointed at a pile of rocks arranged in a circle and informed me it was a grave of a young woman named Rabb’a who was murdered by her brothers as an “honor killing” victim.  He walked with his herd of sheep and goats all over the wilderness reaching every corner down to the shores of the Dead Sea. His annual trip to the shore of Dead Sea was the highlight of his career where he submerged each animal in the water of the Dead Sea so that the salt water would kill the parasites and cleanse the wool of sheep and the hair of goats.  He made many of these trips to the Dead See walking during the day and camping at night.  I often wonder what he had witness in this wilderness since very often he refused to talk about the events of his adventures.  He made flutes and taught himself how to play them.  I loved listening to him playing on one of his flutes.  He told me once that the sheep loves his music and they graze well. I did not believe it until I saw it myself.  These sheep love music.  I forgot about my father musical ability for many years.  My older daughter (Sarah) came out to be a musician and I could not figure out why she has the talent for a musician. My wife and I are not musically inclined. Several years ago, I was watching Star Trek, the Next Generation. In one episode the Captain of the space-ship (John Luc Picard) was trapped on a distant planet with peasants, He entertained himself by playing on a flute he made, which reminded me with the flute my father used to play. That is when it hit me and made the connection between the talent of my father and Sarah.  I missed my father and a few tears rolled down my cheeks.

My father was aloof, but he built knowledge of the landscape of Bani Naim’s wilderness since he spent most of his life walking up and down the hills and mountains. I often think about his ideas that other people thought they were senseless. One of his ideas is still resonating in my head as if he had said it a day ago.  He thought the people of Bani Naim should build dams across the steep valleys so sheep and goats can cross them very easily and above all collect the rain water instead of being wasted.  In particular, he talked about building these dams across valleys named, Wadi El-Nimir, Wadi El-Hamam, and Wadi El-Ghar.  I now believe this dams’ idea is a genius and a very practical method of collecting rain water.  As a matter of fact Jordan built in recent years dams across many valleys to collect rain water to quench the thirst of the country.

The roaming of the wilderness by my father inspired me, during my early teenager years, to walk alone across the valleys, hills, and mountains. In spring time, I took off walking alone inspecting and scouting many areas in the countryside of Bani Naim.  I memorized many names and places in this wilderness.  I became knowledgeable of finding places, in particular water cisterns used by shepherds and their herds.  I recall many of my family’s friends ask me to guide them to certain places deep in the wilderness. My wandering in the countryside created my affinity to the land of Bani Naim. I became aware of many ruins dotted the land.  These ruins used to house people that are long gone, but left behind them mysterious signs for future generations to syphon and to decode.
The land lies between Bani Naim and the Dead Sea has witnessed drastic events through the history of mankind.  It witnessed the armies of the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks, Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Ottomans, and many more including biblical events that changed the mankind forever. The antiquity of this land of wilderness is evident in the ancient ruins scattering across the landscape.  I had the leverage and honor to rove this land at a very young age.  While I was joyfully climbing up the mountains and sliding down the valleys, I always thought of the people who travelled this land before me.  The most notorious event this land had witnessed is the story of Lot (Lut) who lived in Sodom.  Sodom along with another town called Gomorrah where mentioned in the book of Genesis, old and new Testaments, and Qur’an.  These two towns were believed to be located near the Dead Sea, but no evidence of their artifacts was ever reported by any archaeologists. According to the Muslims faith, Lot was instructed by the angel Gabriel to leave Sodom with his family except the wife because god ordered the destruction of this sin town.  Lot obeyed the order and he exited the town, fire balls and magma start pouring down from the sky that results in a calamity that consumed the dead and alive alike. The folk legends described Lot’s odyssey where he met with his uncle Abraham at a hill top near Bani Naim is engraved in everybody mind.  A structure called Yageen was erected on top of that hill to commemorate the event.  A mosque was built in Bani Naim in which Lot is believed to be buried. The place is called Lot’s mosque nowadays.  The vague and oral history indicates that there was a church on top of Lot’s grave, which was converted to a mosque after the Muslims conquered Palestine.

Many occasions, I sat alone on top of a hill looking east toward the Dead Sea wishing the land, stones, and boulders would talk to me and tell me the rich history of this land.  Now, I live half way around the world, but I send my soul and imagination back home.  It is soothing to the mind and body to visualize myself sitting on a large rock in the wilderness of Bani Naim contemplating and thinking of this land.  I became obsessed with Lot story and what was really happed to Sodom and Gomorrah. I was watching an episode of a TV program called “Ancient Mysteries.” The episode was devoted to solving the mystery of Sodom and Gomorrah. Archeologists claimed that a dated tablet made by Babylonian astronomers was found and it indicates a cosmic event happened about four thousand years ago where a large meteor seen in the day light traveling from east to west over Mesopotamia.  According to the archeologists, the meteor slammed into the European Alps Mountains sending a huge amount of rocks and dirt up into the sky.  The rocks and dirt rained back to Earth as burning fire covering most of the area east of the Mediterranean Sea destroying many towns including Sodom and Gomorrah.  If this theory is true, it must have been a mega spectacular fire work display over the Dead Sea and the rest of the region including Bani Naim. I also imagined in this scenario bewildered people running around with no place to hide or escape from a certain death. I recall I walked by a place called “Ras Siwan” where the rock are black, hard, glassy-looking, and very sharp that can cut a skin open. If one hits two small rocks together, sparks would fly all over. Perhaps these rocks are remnants of the falling rocks and dirt.

I wonder how happy Lot was to escape this massive and total destruction of Sodom.  He was not incinerated in this catastrophe, but died and buried with a grave marker.  His grave is located in a mosque named after him.  Lot’s Mosque is a rectangular structure about ten meters high located at the center of the town (Bani Naim).  It is very ordinary building without any artistic visible features from the outside, but nonetheless it looks a handsome building as compared to the houses built around it.  Old houses that were built by parents and grandparents were clumsy and awkward looking structures, but they all share a dome-like characteristic.  The general single family home is one large room divided into two parts inside.  One part is a mesa structure called “mestaba,” which is meant to be for the inhabitants living quarter.  The other part is the lower ground, which is considered the animal shelter.  There is only one door that is usually facing the east.  A bi-window is usually facing the west.  The front side of the house has the door and a window on one side and a hole in the wall on the other side of the door.  This hole is meant to place food for a camel.  At the top of the door there is usually a small rectangular opening (window) that is meant to be for domesticated pigeons to come and go as they wish and also acts as a ventilator for the house.  When a son got married, his family built another room adjacent to the main room.  More or less like what the Amish people do in the United State.

These old homes are rarely occupied nowadays since people spread out and build contemporary buildings. So these homes are neglected and rarely maintained, but are still standing and each one of them tells a real story.  These houses neither exhibit artistic architecture nor attractive appearance. However, there was one building that attracted our attentions when we were young boys.  It is located on the north side across from Lot’s mosque. According to my mother, the building was the home of Hussien Ibn Hussien who is the father of “Dar Abdallah” family.  We heard strange stories about this building.  The strangest folk story is that Hussien was married to a Genie.  This Genie wife helped him to transport building stones from Bethlehem area to Bani Naim and constructed the façade of the building, which is a very beautiful design and still standing up to this day.

Websites and face-book trickled down to those of us who still live in diaspora images of these houses and old places in Bani Naim.  To the outsiders, these houses are trashed, ugly, and worthless.  To me these houses are a heritage and tell the story of our ancestors. These houses had seen it all; the happy and sorrow moments, the fights and friendships, the scarce and plentiful. These houses and places should be preserved and taking care of them as they are dear to our hearts, bodies and souls.  To me, these houses, places, and wilderness are all on my mind.  I think of them as living entities with many stories to tell to so many generations to come.  Taking care of the land of Bani Naim should be a sacred quest for each one of us.  Perhaps building a dam across a valley in the countryside of Bani Naim may create a river to run through it that fulfills the dream of my father and imprint happy memories for this land instead of a calamity and everything wicked that goes along with it.

Omar Manasreh
29 October 2013