In April 1999 I'm in Jerusalem with the photographer Leena Saraste. K., the friend who took me to Nabi Samuel in 1998, tells us about a recent home demolition in a village called Anata, just outside Jerusalem's present municipal boundary, and offers to take us there. 6 Home demolitions have recently been speeding up in all the villages close to Jerusalem, in preparation for the 'Greater Jerusalem' that is already planned, which is expected to extend the area of the city to an area of 300 square kilometers carved out of the West Bank.7

Anata is some way beyond Shu'fat camp (a small UNRWA camp inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries). The village itself is small. We drive beyond it to a bare rocky hillside, facing towards the city. There are a few houses, thinly scattered, along recently built roads. Two of them have recently been demolished. In the distance are tin shacks inhabited by bedouin. We pass the demolished houses and come to a new unroofed house structure. Beyond it there's a one-roomed shack of planks with a zinco roof, and a banner across the entrance proclaiming in Araic, English and Hebrew "The Movement Against Ethnic Cleansing". In front of the shack is a small space with grass and five plastic chairs. Here live the Shawamras, a family of eight, Salim and 'Arabiyya, with their six children.

Their home has been demolished twice and twice rebuilt. The rebuilding has been done by volunteers, many of them Israeli. All that is lacking now is the roof.

I record with Salim first.

Salim Shawamrah:
"I'm a human being, Salim Shawamrah, a Palestinian. I was born in Palestine, in Jerusalem to be exact. My father and mother moved in 1948 from a village called Umm Shaqqa. It's one of the 450 Palestinian villages that were destroyed in 1948. They moved and lived in Jerusalem. I was one of ten children, five brothers and five sisters. We were born in Jerusalem. In 1965 they transferred us to Shu'fat camp, near to Jerusalem. Five brothers and five sisters, and the camp gave us two small rooms, each one three by three [meters]! The family expanded, the brothers married. And I graduated from Kalandia Institute, the Vocational Training Centre at Kalandia, in Jerusalem. After I graduated I left for the Gulf, to Saudi Arabia. I worked there for eight years. During that time I married my wife, and we had three children. In the year 1998 we decided to go back our country, to live in our country and build a house, after the work I'd done there. So we went to Jerusalem. The camp there was full, our

house in the camp was full, it wasn't possible for us to live in the house because my brothers and their children were there, a large number of people were living in it. It wasn't possible for us to live in the house in the camp. We decided to buy a piece of land and build a house on it. The money that we brought back from the Gulf after eight years' work, we went and bought this piece of land with it, that we're on right now. We tried to get a license from Beit El, from the Israeli administration. The first time we applied for a licence they refused, with the senseless pretext that the land is outside the limit of the Master Plan. But there isn't any Master Plan for the Palestinian villages, it was all just talk. And the second time also they refused a license, also on a senseless pretext. We applied a third time, and again they refused us a license..."

K. told us as we were driving to Anata that 'Arabiyya has suffered a breakdown. Usually I don't ask many questions when I'm recording, but try to let speakers tell their own stories. But with 'Arabiyya I make a real mess of things, interrupting her twice, the second time just as she's about to tell me about her breakdown. If it's a guilt reaction, I should be in better control of it by now. Every recording I'm doing evokes memories of home loss.

'Arabiyya Shawamrah speaks:
"I'm from Jerusalem. From Umm Shaqqa, yes, near Hebron. [Can you tell us a bit about your life, the house, how it affected you?] It affected me not a little, but to a degree of madness. [What about before?] I was born in Umm Shaqqa, and my family left for Jordan. I lived in Jordan, and I married in Jordan. Then I left for Saudiya with my husband. Eight years later we came and settled here in Palestine. We built the house. We lived in it. [You worked on the house too?] Yes. [What did you do?] No, nothing. My husband worked on the house and he laid its foundations. We came to Palestine and we bought this land and we built the house on it. We stayed in it for five years. After five years, they came to destroy it. [Were your children at school?] Yes. [Is there a school here?] Yes. [Was everything okay before?] Yes, everything was okay. But they used to threaten us. The Jews used to threaten us... They came at 1.0pm, we were sitting down at lunch. Suddenly they surrounded the house. They came in, they forced us out, the Israeli Army. They came in, inside the house. They threw out the children, they hit them as well. [With their weapons?] Yes, they hit us, and they hit me hard on the head with a gun. I fell unconscious. They hit the kids hard, those women soldiers. They were there to kick us out of the house..."