Today at the opening in The Wall in Dahiet al-Bariid

Posted on August 18th, 2008 by Marian Houk

This morning, when I woke up, it was impossible to make coffee. There was no electricity.
When I went out, I found that the whole street was out of electricity (but not the Tibi house around
the corner). The grocer on the corner had no electricity either, and he was worried about his freezer full of ice cream. He was making coffee for himself using a flame on a gas bottle, and he shared a cup with me. The street in front of the opening in The Wall was dug up — nobody knew why — and one of the (Israeli-hired but Palestinian) work crew came in to buy cigarettes. He explained that the workers had hit the electricity cable when they were digging up the road. Why were they digging up the road? He shrugged. Nobody knows.