BEIRUT: The March programme is still posted on the website of Khalil Sakakini Gulyural Centre in Ramallah. The theme of the month-long activities is Women in Photography and Film. It features two exhibitions commemorating tragic events in Palestine modern history with films, art exhibits, a book signing, a children’s work-shop and poetry reading.

One morning recently, as Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon was meeting US Secretariat of State Colin Powell, Israeli troops broke into the centre. “They came in two tanks carriers. They went through the front gate, detonated the second-floor iron door and entered. The soldiers stayed inside for 40 minutes and then left” said centre director Adila Laidi.

The centre is nestled in a traditional Palestinian residence and up till that day, it remained relatively undamaged by the Israeli soldiers’ incursion and siege of Ramallah. The centre has been closed since Israel launched “Operation Rampart on March 29. Since then its staff has been reduced to one women, 35-year-old Laidi.

Like thousands of Ramallah residents, Laidi has been confined to her home with her husband and 3-year-old daughter Shams. But far from being a deterrent, her internment has allowed her to use the time at hand for documenting and relaying the suffering of her people to the world through e-mails. “I want to raise our voices as human beings and tell little, horrifying true stories of what is happening in Palestine” she said.

To do so Laidi has been writing daily accounts of the situation in Ramallah collecting children’s testimonies and drawings, and briefing friends and foreign journalists about the Palestinian hardships under siege. Her main concern is to convey a true different reality of the war stories circulating in the news. “I want to tell the stories that people living in normal peaceful societies can understand and relate to more readily than abstract tales of massacres and invasions” she added.

Laidi who holds a masters degree in international relations from Georgetown University in Washington DC usually starts by sending her e-mail to a group of friends. They, in turn, send it to there until it reaches thousands. Her first two famous letters have been posted on several websites and published by various media. The most important thing is the outpouring of sympathy and support they prompted. This is manifested in the hundreds of letters Laidi has been getting in reply.

Yet, she would like her messages to reach out to “people who are not aware of what is going on, or those who get to hear only one side of the story”. “I wish we could get out of our pro-Palestinian circles and break into mainstream public opinion and media which is not aware of the existence of a Palestinian people” she said.

One of her two famous messages is an open letter to US President George W. Bush.

“I am writing you from the Middle East, from a small town called Ramallah, in a country we hope one day will be called Palestine,” Laidi wrote”. Even if after 53 years and 17 months of repression, the most desperate among us commit suicidal acts of destruction, we all simply want to be able to lead normal, simple peaceful and free lives”.

Laidi’s eyes have grown accustomed to the square space demarcating her existence since the beginning of Israel’s new war. “Our universe is to rooms of our homes and the space of television images” she added. Contact with people of limited to contact over the phone. When the curfew is lifted briefly, she tours the town in her car to check the damage and to but food.

She recounted how during the fourth curfew the family went to her mother in law’s to have lunch. “But as the time allotted for lifting of the curfew, was not enough, we had to take the uncooked dish in the marmite in our car and cook it and eat it alone at home”.

One of the things that hurt Laidi most is “living outside time, to have one’s life suspended and to loose all the time”. “Our life is on hold and frozen, wasted like prisoners” she said. “I have a hard time imagining other people — my friends — abroad travelling taking vacations, reading daily paper making appointments etc... have to make an efforts to remember what day of the week and time just merges and coalesces”.

In a letter dated April 15, Laidi wrote: “The curfew imposed on Ramallah was lifted for four hours allowing us to enter the centre and assess the damage wrought by the Israeli army... The scene was that of desolation and destruction”. She added: “all windows shattered offices broke into and vandalized, drawers emptied and bookcases broken with books thrown on the floor.”