Ramallah is 15 km north of Jerusalem. Ramallah is the seat of `PNA and Fatah, the party of the late Arafat. Ramallah, as our media obsessively repeated every time I mention the name, is the "headquarters of Arafat (before) Abu Mazen (now) ". \u200b\u200b
But above all, Ramallah is a town full of life, and international guests of Palestinian students in the university is most qualified of Palestine, a city east and modern at the same time, with the souks that reaches everywhere and regular reminders of the muezzin to prayer, with veiled women alongside girls unglued, with night entertainment venues and night clubs, pubs, discos, cinemas, cultural centers that promote Palestinian culture, Arab and Western Europe.
Ramallah is full of windows and recreational opportunities that fill the Old Town, the new quarters, the old Ottoman city, crumbling and charming with its pale yellow stones that reflect the magical night and the moon.
Ramallah is a city administered by a female mayor, crstiana and Catholic, regularly elected by the Palestinian population that lives there.
Ramallah is the city where I buried the two pillars of modern Palestine: Arafat, in a large mausoleum considered a shrine to the north-east of the city, and the great poet Darwish, who died exactly a year ago, around whose tomb have built a park frequented by families and children, south-west.
Ramallah is the city where I arrived safe and full of fear of being kidnapped or killed, because of the things that are told in Italy and even more in Israel, and given the atmosphere at last, finally, when Palestinian arrivals ( the first Palestinian flags, police and soldiers only Arabs, not written in Western characters, no tourists, no jew ...); and it is the city where already the first night, I went out with all the money on him, chatting with all the kids running around the souks, talking, joking , taking photos, feeling suicuro like an old neighborhood of an Italian citizen.
Ramallah is the city that dreams of being the Paris of Palestine: I repeat it three different people: a butcher, a student, a child. Nobody `s fluent English, but the word I've heard dozens of times a day as I passed at any road or crowded semidesolata is" Welcome! ".
In Ramallah, two boys about 25 years know that I am invited to their house to take the coffee and know: Ammar and Hammam, hospitable, curious and well-educated, working at the Ministry of Social Affairs. They are practicing Muslims and have a mentality that mixes traditional Islamic and Western liberalism: both, for example, people expect their mother to the woman for them to be able to decide their own once conosciutala. Neither of them wants to take on this task alone.
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