An intimate conversation with Samira of Yanoun village

I went up to see Samira yesterday evening. She lives in the highest house in the village and has a wonderful view down the valley. Her husband, his brother and a man I did not know were sitting outside the house, talking. I asked if Samira was busy and was told that she was ill and in hospital. Her husband insisted that there was "no problem" and that she would be home soon. When I asked our neighbour later in the evening about Samira's illness, she suggested it was serious, but that it was difficult to get Samira to tell you what was wrong.

From the brief acquaintance I have had with Samira, that seemed to me to fit her character. I met her first when I was being introduced to some of the villagers by one in the team before us. I was struck by her direct look – and her eyes are green – and by the question she posed my companion. He was inviting her to a party they were giving before their departure and she asked: "Men and women together?" She is, I was to discover, a deeply religious woman in a village which does not seem to me (and this is impressionistic) to be so.

I was determined after that first brief encounter to meet and talk with her and was able to do so late one afternoon about three weeks ago. We had, as is customary, sweet tea in glasses on the terrace outside the house. The conversation we had, helped by the fact that Samira's English is good, was the most intimate I have had with any of the women in the village. When I asked her where she had learned her English she answered simply: "At school." I knew already that she had ten children, and that one of them – a girl – could recite the Quran by heart. Her children range in age from Ali, who is about 10, to Munther who is a teacher in the village school and is probably in his mid-twenties. One girl is married with a child and lives in Ramallah, and another girl lives with her sister and works in that town. Two are at University in Nablus. Samira asked me if I was married, and when I said I was divorced she commented that divorce was difficult in Palestine. I said it was pretty easy to obtain in the UK, and she asked immediately, "Why?" I found myself saying that I thought we had lost something.

Samira was married at eighteen, and, although her husband is from the village, she came from Aqraba. She said it was too young. But she also said that she liked living in Yanoun and that she enjoyed the hard work of taking care of the sheep, milking them and making cheese. She sometimes takes the sheep out herself (this is usually the man's job) and goes up the hill behind the house rather higher than is generally thought to be safe – from the settlers. When I commented that there were similarities between the village I live in and Yanoun, she was very quick off the mark in pointing out the dissimilarities from settlers, to the novelty of a good tarmac road into the village, and of being on the electricity grid.

When I asked her if one of her children would take over the sheep and the farming she said immediately, "No." She wants them all to go to university and to get good jobs. It made me wonder how many families in the village have the same ambition for their children. I also wondered afterwards whether Samira's feelings were connected with the constant threat and restrictions posed by the settlers and how much to do with the hard grind of life as a sheep farmer. I hope it will be possible for me to ask her that question before I leave the village.