After finishing the delicious home made Maqloubeh, we sat there in the middle of a left meadow under the orange trees hearing only a far away sound of the water touching the stones gently, we realized how much we usually miss in our daily lives, in this trail we experienced different emotions from sadness to happiness, excitement and much much more.
Our trip started from the allies of the old town of Birzeit touring between its old houses and hearing all about the history and hidden stories of the place, then after making sure we had our delicious breakfast with us in the bus we headed to Qatrawani shrine a Sufi shrine that has been standing there for hundreds of years. Despite the strong autumn wind, we managed to eat our delicious breakfast with tea in the garden surrounding the shrine and we looked in the horizon to see the Palestinian coast and the Mediterranean sea.
Our next stop was “Al-Asireh” shrine, another Sufi shrine with a unique story that combines the affection of nature with the cruelty of man. The story is about a girl who was locked up in that shrine by her father after discovering that she was in love with a local young man, the girl then died in that shrine, the tree in front of the shrine wept for her death and bowed in sadness. After watchingthe tree for a couple of minutes you could notice the looks on all the faces as if we wanted to go back in time to save the girl and save the tree from all the sadness.
After that, we started our walking trail, first climbing up hill to the shrine of Nabi Ghaith and then going all the way down through the rocky paths recognizing the different kinds of the Palestinian wild plants and met shepherds and farmers along the way.
We reached a small paradise, a land for the family of Abu Kamesh, a local Palestinian man fighting settlers by staying in his land and planting it with different crops throughout the year. We talked and ate oranges freshly picked from the trees.
Finally we started to walk to our final destination “Wadi Natouf” and “Alzarqa spring”, after one hour walking we were looking forward for our Maqloubeh and it was worth the wait!
