I couldn’t find the joy in Eurovision this year.
Since I turned thirty, I’ve spent every year at Eurovision. People enjoy hearing this. I don’t know exactly why, I think they respect the commitment. Lots of people have been asking me why I’m not there this year. To understand that, I have to think back.
Eurovision has been part of making me feel good for a very long time.
I have very few memories related to any of my grandparents. They had all died by the time I was ten.
One memory I do have, however, is of my gran Isa. She bought Um Bongo and Five Alive every time I went round, she had a sofa bed that became mine on a Saturday night and her living room was Dumbarton’s premier spot to watch the Eurovision Song Contest.
We didn’t watch the Contest to ridicule it, we watched it because all these countries from across the world were coming together in one place. We speculated about who was going to win and loved the tension of the results.
I don’t know if Isa ever travelled. I wonder now if this was the closest she got to feeling part of Europe and of being exposed to different languages and cultures.
Eurovision stayed important to me after she died. My ability to recall locations, winners and the rules not only serves to let people know that I’m gay without having to say those words but that I don’t find it hard to be serious about things other people think are daft.
Going to Eurovision is so great. I’ve loved my holiday destination being determined by public vote and finding out what city I’m visiting next at the same time as finding out who has won the Song Contest. I’ve loved descending on a new city that feels one part tourist destination, one part Disneyland with all the thought that has been put into photo ops and creating a Eurovision village. And I’ve loved knowing I’m in a place surrounded by people who, for lots of different reasons, have come to experience joy. And it is just total joy.
It’s that seeking of joy part that meant I couldn’t attend 2019’s Eurovision Song Contest. I wouldn’t have been able to settle in it.
I knew very little about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. It wasn’t a topic of conversation in my house and news items about it didn’t seem to offer much other than to show that it was constantly deadlocked.
So when I got an email in 2011 asking for international volunteers to hold workshops at a University in Palestine’s West Bank, I went for it. Aged twenty-six, it would be the furthest and longest I had ever travelled.
When my list of guidance arrived, I was a little bit surprised. The first thing I noted was that flying into Ben Gurion Airport and announcing that I was hear to hold workshops for Palestinian students would cause me problems on arrival. The second was that airport security could ask for my social media passwords, so I shouldn’t say too much about where I was going online. So I had to ready myself for that and eventually made it through.
I spent a month in the West Bank with students. They were a dream. They spent a lot of the time respectfully correcting my English and wanted to learn everything they could about Scotland and about the world outside theirs. The uptake of higher education in the West Bank is large because people believe being educated is a strong way to challenge their oppression.
The workshops I ran were part of an optional programme, which was fully subscribed to. It gave young Palestinian people the chance to meet other young people from across the world. They wanted to learn but they wanted to make friends too. I asked them in one of the workshops to give and explain their definition of freedom.
I spent evenings travelling to different places, hearing testimony from people who had seen their lives and families changed forever by occupation and conflict. I learned things that have stayed with me every day since and saw people live with a kind of determination I had never seen before.
I saw a refugee camp that had become so densely populated, and in which people have lived for so long, that foundations built to sustain a single building were now unsafely supporting people living stories high.
I stood in front of the enormous, 440 mile long wall that runs round the West Bank, put up by people who said it was necessary for the security of those on the other side.
I visited the Samaritan Village and, at the security check point before entry, watched those with international passports be allowed in but those with Palestinian identity cards be turned away by soldiers holding rifles.
I waited and waited on people coming to my workshop, only to be told the next day that an ad hoc security check point set up in their village meant it took an extra two hours to get on with their day.
I visited a barren and dusty farm where the farmer used a well and a bucket to water his crops whilst the neighbouring farm, separated by only a road, was lush, green and tended do with modern machinery.
I saw students move away from me during one field trip to another side of the pavement because there was a designated Palestinian part of the pavement and a part for everyone else.
Over and over again, I saw hopeful people’s day interrupted in the name of security. Their lives disrupted because they are born into a circumstance that they did not choose and don’t feel any ability to change.
And yet they remained open and friendly. One student invited me back to his own village and I stayed there for two days. I had my first hot shower in weeks and was offered fragrance after it by his brother. That means a great deal, knowing that constant running water isn’t a guarantee and that fragrance isn’t easy to get. Every member of the family came to greet me and made me the most phenomenal food.
And at night, we took mattresses out onto the roof so that we could sleep under the sky together.
So I couldn’t go to Eurovision this year because I wouldn’t feel the joy. I’d feel the opposite and that’s not what Eurovision should be about. I can’t be dancing, laughing, making new pals while over the wall, people’s lives continue to be interrupted and their humanity ignored by occupation.
If you want to help, there’s lots of things you can do. I’ve put three of them here:
Find out more about the Zajel programme with An Najah University and take part.
Support members of Scottish Labour who are cycling the West Bank to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Check out the LGBT organisation Al-QAWS and the work they do for a more progressive and diverse Palestine.
