Out of service

To live a happy life, while being aware of seeing it the way you see it, will make you happier. Simply, to see life in a beautiful way, full of happiness and fear, even if it was not like that for you or around you, you should see it like that to be able to feel satisfied and pleased.
To be really able become aware to life, by looking at the beauty, having a smile on your face and on the surface of all things around you, even you aren’t smiling, you can imagine. And the best way to do that it is by contemplating on everything beautiful around you, away from the negative thoughts and the bad things in life that occur around you and through you. Both of Raja Shehedeh and Jean-Jacques Rousseau did that by doing walks to contemplate, relax to filter thinking, to enjoy the beauty of nature and the landscape. At first when I was reading those books, I did not engage to the texts that much. But when I did those sarhat, I started to remember and to understand every word both of Raja Shehedeh and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had said, I felt every emotion they felt, and I touched their smiles, their thoughts that they felt in their own sarha, while I was walking in my sarha. I was out of service to all the bad and the negative things in life, and my phone as well was out of service and I was happy for it because of no one was able to depress me in my sarha.
We started our sarha in the early morning from Beit Jalla to Battir, everything was perfect the weather, it was a sunny day but there was a zephyr which kindness the air, everything around us was green and full of flowers. Green land dotted with roses and a zephyr touching your face, also the amazing feeling that the odors of the spring and the flowering trees will create in your heart when these odors submerged your lung, all of that will make you feel like you are walking through the hills of heaven, and it will make you wonder why you are not living in this heaven? Why it empty and no one is living in it? But when you think again of it, you will thank god that no one of you or them living in it, because if anyone did live in it, he will ruin it and he will pollute its beauty.
We walked in the valley for a long time, and we identified the types of plants that grow there, and our teachers helped us to do that, and we stopped many times to discuss about this land and their political status and many things ales linked to this land.
After that we split into two groups. The first group completed their way by walking through the valley, but our team took the other way which was through climbing the mountain. The way that our team took, was exhausting and very difficult, but it was enjoyable to no limits. While we were walking and climbing the mountain, our guides taught us about the trees and the plants. Also we picked some of the wild Sage and thyme, as well as we have learned a lot about the type of soil, the land and its nature and the nature of everything linked to it. They also taught us about the methods of cultivation, irrigation that they and the people who owned those lands use to implant this. And they taught us about the type of vegetable planted in this ground also they told us which seasons to do that to be sure that it will succeed. We climbed up a rock, a very large one, and one of our leaders told us that this rock it is actually a very old Roman tomb.
After we reached the summit of the mountain and got to the street we took one hour to rest and have lunch. Then we completed our sarha as groups, but this time our group went down on to the valley, through our way to the valley we drank from the water of the main spring of Battir, and we saw the water canals which distributed water from the spring to the land, in addition that some of this water is collected in a large pool for swimming, and all of these channels, and the pool found from the Roman era. These channels were used for the distribution of water between the lands of Battir also to transfer the water from Battir springs to Jerusalem, for us, it was difficult to imagine how it used to work and how they designed it. And these channels are distributed the water of Battir population, which they are seven families that owned all the lands of Battir. And those canals distributed the water which comes from the springs equally between those seven families lands. Which it open for half an hour every day for each families so in the end of the day all lands would be irrigated.
When we reached the bottom of the valley we got to the railway, we were very excited that we reached it, we laid down on the railway, and we were pleased that we did that, because we felt that we rebelled against the Israeli law, because it is forbidden for anyone who has the Palestinian identity to pass through this railway, which is located under the control of Israel. After that we started to climb the mountain again to catch the rest of the groups to implant an olive tree in someone land and that was the best thing in the sarha because we learned how to dig in the ground to make a hole to put the tree in it in the right way. Then after we finished implant the olive trees. We went back to our houses.
Everything we did in this sarha was special and different than anything we did before, and it was worth all the tired and the pain that we felt in the next two days. Many things we did in this sarha were childish and spontaneous but it seemed from our hearts, and that's what made it great, fun and unforgettable. The best thing that I remember from this sarha is how we felt pleased, childish and exited when we stole the almonds and lemon from the trees of someone’s land, because the taste of the almonds and the odor of the lemon that we stole was different than anything we smelled or tasted before, we felt like it hold all the Palestinian pain also it hold the Palestinian smiles, and that what make it special, and am sure that it will change our conceptions of life forever.