Word: casbahs
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...town is still unfinished - and always will be. Santa Maria dello Spasimo, a 16th century church whose nave was never completed, has been reopened to visitors, who can savor a unique moment of reflection by looking up through the incomplete roof to the sky above. Shopping ranges from casbah-like markets, such as the Vucciria off Via Roma, to an array of elegant European designer shops between Via Libert? and Via R. Settimo. Be aware that the traditional 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. siesta is in effect for most stores. If the hustle for clothes and culture leaves no time...
...edge of the casbah, Colonel Noam Tibon and his patrol funnel from their jeeps and spread out. It's 1 a.m. and the dark streets of Nablus, under curfew for almost four months, are deserted. Twelve hours ago, a Palestinian gunman shot two Israeli border policemen on this spot. Even now, the shadows and silence are deceptive. "If we stand here a few more minutes, they'll shoot at us," says Tibon, the 40-year-old commander of the Nahal Brigade. In those circumstances, most people would leave right away. But Tibon plans to stay. Israel's reoccupation...
...family lean out of their window, an Ottoman arch whose grey stone is pitted by the weather of 250 years. The place was built for one of the richest families in Nablus. Now it serves as rented accommodation for the city's poorest, hidden in the heart of the Casbah. "It's not a palace anymore," says Najah Zakari, the mother of one of six large families that squeeze into quarters once meant for a single household. "Do you think they'd let people like us live in a real palace?" She beckons to the spiral stone staircase, past...
When the Israelis came to the Abdel Hadi Palace in one of their recent forays into the Casbah in search of militants, they took away Zakari's son Khalil, 21. Now standing by the pomegranate tree, Khalil tells how he was detained two days in a camp outside Nablus with most of the other young men of the Casbah, huddling without shelter. He says he was beaten when he refused to recite a crude rhyme that professed love for Israeli troops and cursed the genitalia of Palestinian mothers. He finally recited it to avoid being hit again. Weeks later...
...missions, one to be carried out in Morocco, another in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis wasted little time in setting up their Moroccan cell. Al Tbaiti married another local girl, meaning that he and Alassiri could blend into Moroccan life by staying with in-laws in the teeming Rabat casbah rather than in hotels where they might have eventually attracted police attention. Frequenting mosques and masquerading as businessmen, the Saudis had Moroccan acquaintances provide phone cards and bank accounts for local communications and money transfers totaling thousands of dollars that could not be traced directly to them. All their communications with...