Word: jerusalem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Each morning, as I walk out of my West Jerusalem apartment, I must dodge the gardener's hose, as he generously waters our scraggly plants. So conspicuous is his water consumption that little pools form along the pavement, sometimes wetting the cuffs of my pants. The truth is that these native desert plants need infrequent watering but our Arab maintenance man conscientiously carries out his duties...
...first, the 9 a.m. watering ritual struck me as odd, only because even in my native Boston suburb, where water is plentiful, we have rules prohibiting midday plant watering during the hottest months. But as my summer in Jerusalem and the Middle East continues, I have become increasingly attuned to drinking, washing, watering, swimming, cleaning and flushing--anything that involves the precious molecule, H2O. Water availability and attitudes towards this natural resource are subtle yet omnipresent symbols of the different worlds which coexist here, as well as a source of conflict between them...
Traveling back and forth between Israel and what will soon officially become Palestine, the sharp contrasts in quality of life, cultural norms and economic conditions are staggering. The same gardner who waters my plants with gusto each morning probably returns to his East Jerusalem or West Bank neighborhood where tap water is carefully boiled in order to disinfect and toilets are turned on and off between usage. By contrast, in the magazine office where I work, the water cooler of fresh mineral water is restocked daily and, although our tap water is drinkable, we use it only to wash...
...entirety received a record low amount of rainfall this past winter. Hydraulicists constantly make guest appearances on radio and television talk shows, issuing warnings about some obscure "red line" threshold of water supply, a minimum that we are precariously nearing. Here, in the privileged middle-class West Jerusalem, with a lifestyle and surroundings very much like Boston, these warning fall on deaf ears. And, for many of the Palestinians, especially the inhabitants of villages that draw their water from wells, statistics and fancy talk about drought patterns matter very little. There is never enough water during these summer months...
Dafna Hochman '99 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. She is in Jerusalem doing thesis research...