I arrive in Haifa at Easter without having booked accommodation, a crazy thing to do with the spring season already beginning, and tourism to the Holy Land in full flood. There are two Christian Easters and a Jewish holy day as well. All the monasteries listed in the guidebook as 'reasonable' are fully booked. Not only will it be hard to find a place to stay, but people to record with as well. But I have one lucky card - Amir Makhoul's phone number.1 Amir takes me to Beit al-Na'imi (House of Grace), a rehabilitation center for juvenile prisoners and drug addicts directed by Kamil and Agnes Shehadeh. Housed besides an old church that fell into ruin after 1948, the Shehadehs rebuilt the church and made Beit al-Na'imi with their own hands, helped by the young ex-prisoners. The church is a massive structure with a dome that rests on six great round pillars. Over one entry to the yard is written 'Madonna church, build in 1862, restored in 1982'.

Through the Shehadeh's hospitality I

partake of a family Easter supper, attended by at least forty relatives, and ending in a great singing fest of Palestinian folk songs. I sense that their joy in Christ's resurrection is mixed with celebration of their own physical and cultural survival as Palestinians in Israel. One of the guests sings a song from al-Bassa, my mother-in-law's village north of the city of Acre. Used to strange visitors, the Shehadehs kindly start me off on my search for 'subjects'.

It's at Beit al-Naimi that I meet Chaya Touma, widow of Emil Touma, the communist Palestinian intellectual who founded an Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies. She teaches a pottery class here, and arches of the inside courtyard are decorated with the bright colours of painted tiles and basso-relievos. Chaya suggests that I visit Al-Ittihad, a communist newspaper and publishing press founded before 1948. Al-Ittihad survived the Nakbeh and was edited until his death in 1996 by the great satirist Emile Habibi.2 Chaya also recommends the Sama'n family.