The 'service' taxi journey up from Ramallah to Nablus, capital of the North, is a long one, and takes me into an area where I have almost no contacts and where, in addition, there are no reasonably priced hotels. But the friends at BADIL have put me in touch with members of Boulata camp's Youth Activity center, and it is one of them who invites me to stay with his family inside the camp. Hussein is a psychological counselor at a local college, a quiet and very pleasant man. A batchelor, he lives with his widowed mother and unmarried sisters. This family is originally from Kfar Saba, near Qalqilya. Signs of piety abound.

Hussein takes me up to the roof to survey the landscape. Since there's no space to expand horizontally, camp families are forced to expand upwards. Hussein's oldest brother is marrying soon -- his second floor apartment is already built. Hussein's turn will probably be next. With all sons and a daughter professionally employed this must be one of Boulata's more prosperous households.

From the roof a panorama of rooftops spreads out -- mostly two-storey like this one, and topped with water tank, satellite dish and vine arbour. Hussein says there's one part of the camp, called 'Hayy al-Hashasheen' where people are poorer and considered more disreputable. They all marry at 16 and have too many children. It's like the way Irish Protestants talk about the Catholics - or Israelis about Palestinians.

The Israelis recently carried out home destructions in two villages near Nablus. Hussein points out the minaret of one of them, Rujeib, visible from Boulata camp. But he says it would be very hard to go there. Probably no one would speak to us; they might even be hostile. If we went with a friend of his who writes for a local paper it might work out, but he's not sure that there's time to arrange it -- my planned stay is only three days. It's a strange feeling to be able actually to see the village, a mere two kilometers away, but to feel that it's inaccessible because I'm here, in the middle of Boulata camp. Camps can be quite ghetto-like. It's understandable. Even though they belong to the same 'nation', relations between camp populations and surrounding citizens cannot be easy. Refugee poverty and the internal defensive solidarity that all local Middle Eastern communities produce cuts down on normal social exchange, though this can change in periods of high political mobilization. It reminds me how supra-local networks -- whether political or social -- are just as necessary in Lebanon to ensure entry from one locale to another.

In 1998 there is little Israeli military presence in Nablus. The large prison near the city centre is the most visible sign of the occupation. A Jewish sanctuary in Nablus, Qabr Yusif, is guarded by a few soldiers only. But parts of Nablus, eg the four longest streets, have been designated as Area 'C' where the IDF rule, and Palestinian police cannot enter except with Israeli permission. Boulata people say that the surrounding Israeli settlements are less fanatic than those in Hebron. But the IDF has recently escalated home demolitions in Nablus district villages. Besides Rujeib (two homes destroyed), there's Ghaleb

Abu Saud, al-Badhan (two homes), Nasariya, Ghaleb Abu Jabara... The reason for these demolitions is always the same -- lack of building permits. Every time a Palestinian home is dynamited, from ten to 15 people are made homeless.

Hussein takes me to the Youth Activity Centre to meet Dr Said Bushawy, historian of Nablus, and author of a study of the roots of Zionist settlement in the Crusades. His PhD dissertation was on Nablus when it was a fiefdom in a Crusader state -- interesting because until now few Arab scholars have carried out research on the 'mediaval' period. He is guiding young men in the Centre to carry out oral history recordings, shows me the impressive library in the Centre and in his own home. He is not a little critical of me for recording mainly with women, an attitude I encounter quite often, arising from the assumption that the topic of my research is Palestinian history, so that I need people who can give me 'facts', ie. men, intellectuals. He says that women "don't remember" because of early marriage, the hijra, bearing many children and bringing them up...I feel I'm not having much success in defending my interest in the experiences of women, until Dr Bishawy suggests his own mother and wife as candidates for recording. We arrange another meeting.

Hussein then takes me deeper into Boulata camp to record with a woman whose home was blown up during the 1st Intifada., Hajji Zeinab Hashem Abdallah, from al-Tireh. Her home was destroyed because both her husband and son were accused of helping the 'feda'yeen'. The house she's living in now is loaned by a brother-in-law. She cannot visit her imprisoned son. She says he had just got engaged when they took him.

Hajji Zeinab speaks:
"My name is Zeinab. My father was called Hashem. When we left our country in 1948 -- [From which village?] from al-Tireh. The Jews called it Tireh al-Yahooda. It's not Tiret al-Yahooda at all, it's our village, and the village of our grandfathers and fathers, and the country of Muslims. It doesn't belong to foreigners -- though there were Jews living with us, they were ordinary people, citizens like us. There were no problems between us. When the British came the country fell. Who made it fall? The British. They put Jewish patrols. I remember them. In the middle of the patrols -- I remember them -- they used to put the Jews, in the middle of their patrols, and they trained them on the area. God knows where they brought them from. They were in the country, God knows where they came from. Those who made them fight against us were the British. Of course. They should have been with the Palestinians because we are in the right, we are the owners of the land. We go back to our religion, our Islam. We won't give up our right or our religion...

At the time of the Nakbeh I was twelve years old. I had younger brothers and sisters, my mother had young children. My mother for example -- we left our village crying because they were shooting behind us. When they occupied our area...because of Deir Yassin, people were afraid, so they wanted to leave and return later... "