在以色列冲突之中，Aram Sabbah的腿部中了一枪，在那之后他便开始架着双拐练习滑板，不过用双拐练习新动作确实有新意，他可以在空中滞留更长时间。但是这冲突给这个16岁孩子留下的确是膝盖上的一个弹孔，今天给大家带来一个巴勒斯坦战火中滑板的故事
In July the Israel Defense Forces blew a hole in Aram Sabbah's leg. Since then, he's been skating on crutches, which has actually proved to be a pretty good way of learning new tricks. Propping his body up, air-pedalling over the board while it flips, he can hang in the air as long as he wants. The downside, of course, is the "big-ass wound" in the 16-year-old Palestinian's knee—an unwelcome souvenir of the West Bank's "Day of Rage." Whole story in English scroll down.
原文出自Vice.com
This article originally appeared on VICE.com.
在以色列冲突之中，Aram Sabbah的腿部中了一枪，在那之后他便开始架着双拐练习滑板，不过用双拐练习新动作确实有新意，他可以在空中滞留更长时间。但是这冲突给这个16岁孩子留下的确是膝盖上的一个弹孔。
“我当时正在砸石头抗议，然后石头没有了，我去捡石头，然后就Boom...我的腿就没有知觉了”
Aram Sabbah
7月份时，Aram加入了反对以色列入侵加沙的抗议游行之中，以色列警方与抗议者在卡兰迪亚发生摩擦，超过200人受伤，2人死亡，其中包括一名仅有17岁的青少年。Aram很幸运没有伤及骨骼，不过他所受的伤也让他撑着拐杖行动了一个多月。在那之前他事巴勒斯坦Zababdeh混凝土滑板场里的两名滑板老师之一。
一群外国友人帮助巴勒斯坦建造了一些Mini Ramp和Box，位于West Bank，这周即将开放，由Skatepal－一个爱丁堡大学阿拉伯毕业生Charlie Davis于2012年成立的非营利性筹资建设。
Charlie Davis (戴帽子) 和 志愿者Mick, 两个巴勒斯坦小孩
Charlie今年27岁，他2006年便频繁旅行，他带着滑板玩便了West Bank仅有的街头地形，他一直想在那里建造一个滑板场，他在学校期间不停地思考着自己的计划。2012年他在突尼斯教英语时，开始了这项计划的实施。
我朋友问我这之后会干嘛，我说我有在巴勒斯坦建板场的计划，不过看来有很多事情要做，我不确定能不能成功。她说“那你怎么还在突尼斯？还不去做吗？”
Charlie辞掉了工作，回到苏格兰，成立了SkatePal网站筹集资金。短短几个月内，他便有了几个志愿者。2013年春天他们做了第一组Ramp，尽管过了很久才有人来滑板。
“那里的孩子从没见过滑板，你也给不了孩子很多东西，城市学校里有水泥足球场和一两个篮框，很多孩子在街上打牌，要不就跟在父母店里干活。”
“大多数孩子还是选择呆在街上，抽着烟，坐着吹牛逼”这是那里文化的一部分，我只是想让向那里的孩子介绍这种运动，让他们有挑战自我的工具。
Ramallah的SkatePal mini ramp
第一次我们尝试在Ramallah社区中心建一个木质Ramp，但是当Charlie从外面回到巴勒斯坦发现这里已经被捣毁，Zababdeh的水泥滑板场是经过7个月的筹备策划，Ramallah也筹备了一个16英尺的Ramp。
一共有12名来自英国和爱尔兰的滑手参与到SkatePal之中，很多都是学学校里学习工程的学生。至今已经募集超过$16000，我们正打算在Nabi Saleh建造第三个滑板场，那里在West Bank中心地带，是个600人的小村子。
SkatePal志愿者Kevin Loftus正在清理水泥滑板场
占地160码，位于以色列军事基地的Nabi Saleh先正位于反抗的风口浪尖，整个村子从2009年12月起，每周五都能有Nabi Saleh居民聚集起来反抗，他们也曾遭遇过催泪瓦斯，橡胶弹的威胁，偶尔也有实弹威胁。
自从示威开始之后，有近百人受伤，超过100名村民被拘禁，其中很大一部分是青少年，他们会被关在那里几天，几个星期甚至更长。
“孩子们在示威之中扔石头，士兵们知道那些扔石头的是谁，因为他们曾经去过每个人家里给孩子拍了照片。所以当有人扔石头，他们便去逮捕他，他们抓八九岁以上的孩子，把他们关起来几天，几星期，偶尔会更长。”
“这些逮捕行动非常武断，很多孩子都在扔石头，但是他们来逮捕就是随意抓几个孩子，Nabi Saleh是West Bank青少年逮捕率最高的地方。”
滑板本身也许不能解决很多问题，但是它是Nabi Saleh村民转移注意力的好方法。Charlie希望给这里的孩子建造一个可以玩的地方，他非常坚决地将政治与滑板分开。“我们不需要政府和宗教的参与任何事物，在这里做事得小心翼翼，你不能发表看似正常得意见比如以色列应该撤出，你需要保持中立，避免抗议游行。”
Adham Tamimi
Aram是两名巴勒斯坦志愿者中得一个，另一个今年18岁，名叫Adham Tamimi，是巴勒斯坦第一名土生土长得滑手。他三年前在美国试着玩了一下滑板，便开始一直滑板至今。“我刚踩上去得时候，摔得太惨了，于是我便决定要将它学会。”
滑板文化现在在巴勒斯坦还没有扎根，这里只有10到15名滑手。Adham说：“即使这样我们也很少出去玩，一般情况下只有我和Aram看看滑板视频。如果我发现了一个地方Aram不感兴趣，我也不会在那里玩，因为一个人玩太无聊了。”
滑板场建成之后，Charlie决定让这两人来管理滑板场。他们都有几年滑板功底，也真切地想让这里得气氛变好。“当地的村民看到他们滑板也会来学习，他们看我们滑板会很激动，而且他们看到的是本地的滑手，他们回想‘对呀，这东西是完全可以接受的，玩滑板既不需要抄袭英国，也不算抄袭美国。’”
Charlie 和 SkatePal Zebabdeh 滑板场第一批来上课的孩子们
SkatePal开设的滑板课程，从这星期就要开始，课程针对所有年龄的人，尤其是那些8-12岁的年轻人
“大家很喜欢滑板，有些人觉得有点幼稚便不去尝试。我告诉他们‘这些并不幼稚，你甚至可以凭借滑板养活自己’我们不需要听别人的，我们只管滑板”
Adham说：“要是他不滑板，很可能就去参加示威游行，要不就是毒品之类的，我可不需要这些，滑板不仅仅是一项极限运动，更是我们值得追求的生活方式。”
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In July the Israel Defense Forces blew a hole in Aram Sabbah's leg. Since then, he's been skating on crutches, which has actually proved to be a pretty good way of learning new tricks. Propping his body up, air-pedalling over the board while it flips, he can hang in the air as long as he wants. The downside, of course, is the "big-ass wound" in the 16-year-old Palestinian's knee—an unwelcome souvenir of the West Bank's "Day of Rage."
"There's nothing much to say," he says. "I was throwing stones. I'm out of stones. So I crouched for stones, then BOOM… my leg is numb."
Aram Sabbah
That was in July, when Aram joined thousands across the West Bank in a march protesting Israeli aggression toward Gaza. Israeli forces clashed with demonstrators at Qalandia checkpoint, injuring more than 200 and killing two, including one 17-year-old. Aram was lucky not to break any bones, but his injury will keep him on crutches for another month—or until he "can't take any more." Until then, he's one of two Palestinian skaters teaching children at Zababdeh's brand new concrete skatepark.
Although Palestine has played host to the occasional mini ramp and fun box, built by enthusiastic foreigners in need of a place to skate, the 1,000 square-foot site at Zababdeh is the West Bank's first proper skatepark. Opening this week, it was funded and built by SkatePal, a volunteer-run not-for-profit founded by Edinburgh university Arabic graduate Charlie Davis in 2012. It will be run by a small but growing community of Palestinian skaters, including Arham.
Charlie Davis (in the hat) with Mick, a SkatePal volunteer, and two Palestinian kids
Charlie, 27, had been in and out of Palestine since 2006, taking his board with him to skate the handful of street spots in the West Bank. Building a skatepark there had been on his mind for years, and he made loose plans to fund it after his degree, inspired in part by similar projects in Afghanistan and India. It was in 2012, when he was teaching English at an American language school in Tunisia, that he was persuaded to commit to the project.
"A friend of mine asked what I was going to do after this. I said. 'I have this idea for a skate project in Palestine, but it seems like a mammoth amount of work and I'm not sure if it's going to work.' She was like, 'You should do it—why are you still here?'"
Charlie quit his job, moved back to Scotland, and set up the SkatePal website to raise funds. Within a few months he had several volunteers, and by Spring of 2013 they had their first set of ramps. It took a while for skateboarding to take hold, though.
"I had my skateboard there and the kids had never seen one before," says Charlie. "And there's nothing much to do for kids. If you go in the villages and towns they have, like, a concrete soccer pitch at the school—maybe a basketball hoop or two. A lot of them hang around the streets and play cards, or work in their parents' shops.
"But most of them just hang around in the street, smoke shisha, sit and chat... it's part of the culture. I just wanted to introduce a sport that gets people focusing on something and challenging themselves."
The SkatePal mini ramp in Ramallah
Their first attempt at a park was a few wooden ramps at a site in Ramallah set up on land belonging to a community center, but when Charlie returned to Palestine after a trip home he found it destroyed. The concrete park in Zababdeh has been the accumulation of several months' planning and weeks of building, and they have also funded a 16-foot mini ramp at Ramallah.
There are currently 12 volunteers from the UK and Ireland helping out with SkatePal, largely students from university engineering departments. To date they have raised over $16,000 and are currently planning a third site at Nabi Saleh, a small village of about 600 in the central West Bank.
SkatePal volunteer Kevin Loftus finishing off the concrete skatepark in Zababdeh
Located about 160 yards from an Israeli military base, Nabi Saleh has become a focal point for the struggle against occupation, following the creeping encroachment of the Israeli settlement of Halamish, visible across the valley. Every Friday since December of 2009, Nabi Saleh's residents have marched in protest at the confiscation of the village's land and have been met with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, and occasionally live fire.
There have been hundreds of injuries and more than 100 detentions of villagers since demonstrations began. A large proportion of these are teenagers, who can be held for days, weeks, or months—and occasionally longer.
"In a protest the kids are throwing stones," says Charlie. "And the soldiers know who they are, because the soldiers come into houses and take pictures of everyone in there. So when people throw stones they come in and arrest people, from eight or nine upwards, for a few days, a few months or a few years—it depends.
"The arrests are quite arbitrary, because obviously a lot of kids are throwing stones, but they might just come in and arrest one at random every so often. Nabi Saleh has the highest percentage of young people getting arrested anywhere in the West Bank."
Skating is clearly not a substitute for direct action, but it is a distraction from the crucible of protest in Nabi Saleh. Charlie wants to build a place for young people to hang out and have fun. He is also determined to keep politics out. "We want to be apolitical, non-religious, everything. You've got to be careful what you do; you can't promote normalization ideas, like saying Israel should exist. You can't be too pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. You have to be right down the middle. So we avoid protests."
Adham Tamimi
Aram is one of two Palestinian volunteers and skate instructors at SkatePal. The other, 18-year-old Adham Tamimi, claims to be Palestine's first homegrown skater. He started three years ago after a visiting American with a board gave him a try.
"When I tried, I fell so hard that I made up my mind that I was going to learn," he says.
Skate culture doesn't really exist in Palestine yet. There are ten to 15 skaters, Adham says, "But we don't really hang out with them. It's basically me and Aram just watching some skate vids. I would've stopped skating if Aram didn't join me, 'cause it'll eventually get boring if I skate alone."
Once the parks are established, Charlie plans to hand over management to the two friends. They have both been skating for several years and want to help the scene grow. "Locals see them skating and want to emulate them," says Charlie. "They get excited watching us, but for them to see local people, they think, 'Oh, this is something we can do and embrace completely, rather than just copying Britain or America or whatever.'"
Charlie with the first SkatePal class at the Zebabdeh park
The classes SkatePal runs, which started this week, are for people of all ages. Typically, though, they get around ten young people between the ages of eight and 12.
"Our friends love the idea of skateboarding," says Adham. "But some of them say it's a bit childish so they're not going to try it. We have to say, 'No, it's not childish—you can make money.' We didn't listen to anyone; we kept skating."
If he weren't into skating, he'd "probably be involved in protests, drugs, and stuff like that," says Adham. "But I don't need drugs or any other stuff, like demos, to be a rebel, because skating is way more than just an extreme sport. It's a lifestyle that I have to commit to."
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