Fidaa Ataya is a storyteller, a performer, a filmmaker a puppeteer and much more. She was born in 1987 during the First Intifada [uprising]. Like the family of Alaa Albaba, Fidaa’s grandmother got expelled from her village Al Bourj during the Nakba [catastrophe] of 1948. When Fidaa was little, her grandmother used tell her stories, and now, as a grownup, she has passed on the tradition of storytelling. Previously, this tradition has been reserved for the private realm, but Fidaa took storytelling out into the public. She tells Palestinian folk tales as well as her own stories and stories she heard of survival, resistance and insisting to exist and to speak your voice. Some of these stories, like here in Art News Ramallah, is related to the history of the land, to the emotional connection with an area, as well as to the current use of the Palestinian land, of Palestine, which increasingly is being taken over by Israeli settlers.

Fidaa holds a bachelor’s degree in education and psychology from Ramallah, and a diploma in drama from Jarash, Jordan. In 2018 she moved to the US to persue a masters in Integrated Arts from Plymouth State University (NH). Ataya has produced and performed shows in Palestine, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, France, America, and the Arab world and performed in numerous festivals across the globe.

Here in Art News Ramallah Fidaa shares two stories with us, one of a river with hot springs nearby, with grasses and grains growing alongside it, as well as people and wild animals living next to it. The riverbed is now dry, but this is a story of remembering and imagining how the river once flowed freely. The second story describes a beautiful fig tree that her father once planted.

CAN'T YOU SEE THE WATER?

We went hiking here and there, here and there, and we found a very crazy, beautiful, salty river, which has a lot of hot springs. If you come visit, you can bathe or swim in this very hot, salty water—maybe that’s something you’ve never experienced before in your life. And next to the river is a traditional old hotel in the middle of nowhere, for people who want to enjoy the river. On the side of the hotel grows many types of grass and wheat—there’s even a water mill, with a wheel for grinding wheat. The river is a natural resource for all types of birds, animals and people.

I was so happy to discover this place. I called my friends, who lived in Ramallah, Bethlehem, the Hebron area, in refugee camps in the West Bank of Palestine. “Come, come, come with me,” I said. “Come over. We want to invite you to this place we discovered in the Jordan Valley.”

And they came - a group of artists.

And when they got out of the car, they looked around and said, “Fidaa, where is the water?”

And I said, “Oh, don't you see the water?”

And they said, “No.”

I said, “Are you crazy? You can't see the big, huge channel?”

And they said, “We see that, but it’s dry.”

I said, “You are here to see the water. We are trying to bring back the life we lost here—the plants, the animals, the stories, the people—the community.”

And my friends looked at each other, and they looked at me, and said, “Are you just asking us for impossible things?”

I answered, “No. I’m asking every one of us to imagine. Imagine the past, before the military came here. Imagine the salt water, and the bathing, and the fun.”

Then we went to the community, and we asked them about what had happened along the river. They told us amazing stories, about the plants and the wheel and the wheat and the flowers and the food and the dance and the songs and the amazing tea from a sweet, sweet spring. All these things we discovered. This life.

We also discovered how the Israeli military had planted a huge iron stick in the middle of the spring, and how they would come by every day in a white car to measure the water levels. The local people didn’t really know science—they hadn't been to university. They were farmers. They didn’t know what the military was doing to the spring or how to stop them. And day by day, month by month, they kept coming, and then - khalas. The water started to go down, down, down, and then, eventually, there was no more water.

But we succeeded in bringing that life back, through our imagination, by listening to these stories. My friends and I created an artistic trail called “From Salty River to Sweet Spring,” where we invited Palestinians and international guests to come walk along the riverbed and learn some of its stories.

However, we never want to forget that, in reality, this salty river is empty today. There is no water there. And that means a lot of birds, animals, and plants are running away, or disappearing, you know? A lot of people. With our own eyes, we can see how colonization and occupation affect the environment and the culture and the nature. It’s all connected. Since the time of this story, even our trail signs and story markers have since been destroyed by the Israeli military.

But to this day, we are still walking, imagining, creating, and sharing our beautiful Palestine.

The fig tree my father planted