He rolled his third cigarrette in the span of half an hour and said: “I stopped eating meat because I don’t want to be a slave to the consumerism”, this was his reply to my announcement that I’m vegetarian because I simply don’t want to eat animals. I noticed his very dope lighter or should i say clipper, it had a picture of Homer from the Simpsons on it, looking lazy and caressing his belly. He’s a very sophisticated young man, he is born and raised in Haifa, I met him on my second week after I moved to this city. His nonchalance and interests were especially interesting and gripped my attention. He didn’t care about the price of the tobacco packet, yet he paid attention to where it was made or which company and what kind of stances they had on the Conflict. He wore the hipsterish clothes but he got them from fancy brands like Pull & Bear, Renuar and the like.
The contradiction didn’t seem to be stopping in his way, nor was it noticed by most of his fellow friends. The circle of friends who acknowledge the conflict, defy the racism, speak out against it and march in demonstration, who nevertheless succeed in secluding themselves from the rest of the community by creating this platform is called the Hipster Hub of Haifa (or at least that’s what I have named it).
The HHH is expanding. There are sub-hubs in the HHH, each sub-hub has its own known places to hang out, preferences, political views and even dietary likings!. The members of sub-hubs are critical of other sub-hubs, only implicitly because being critical in any other manner will jeopardize the definition of this hub, which is the place you can be chill, cool, accepting, and be your true self.
Moving from one sub-hub to another is hard, moving to the Hub is even harder. Once I got introduced to this community, I felt an eerie feeling being there. Don’t get me wrong, people were actually nice but the feeling i had sprouted from the fact that i wasn’t in any sub-hub or the Hub for that matter. To be honest with you, I really wanted to join this Hub because it seemed the cool thing to do and to meet new friends.
The Hub-hazing
I looked up the word hazing in Google and this is what I got:
Hazing: “the imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation.”
So maybe hazing is not the ideal word for what i mean, which is the process of entering this hub. The process is not easy but it is not impossible it requires a great deal of paying attention, sounding consistent (not necessarily being consistent) and knowing the fimilar knacks of the sub-hub, also having a cool hobby would be intriguing and thus raises the prospect of being admitted. Hobbies can vary from graphic design, playing the guitar or practicing yoga. In addition, there will be pop-quizzes that will help them (by them i mean the members of the sub-hub, it’s worth adding that sometimes a hierarchy would be built unconciously in the sub-hub forging an elite inside the elite that would lead the group) probe your inclinations, views, and ideas in order to make the hazing or sorting out process. Are you with the BDS movement? are you homophobic? what do you think of Syria? how about religion?. Again the questions are never explicit, things are never explicit that’s why it’s sometimes hard to figure out the steps of this process, the status of an applicant and the next move.
The Heritage of the HHH
It might be my mistake that the HHH has been casted in a negative light so far, because some sub-hubs are doing something, they are actually making a change. There are very few of them. And I’m really concerned with the type of change that is implemented whether it’s directed towards the elite problems or not. One example of a change if publishing a very provocative magazine once a month, it’s anonymously editted and published for it hits on very sensitive topics from sex, religion, tradition and politics. The pieces inthe magazine are written by random people (mostly young hipsters) and submitted via email.
The heritage of the HHH is going to be passed down for sure. This heritage includes: vast acceptance of the different as long as they’re a bit similar to us. Complete refusal of cooperating with Israeli agendas, and smoking weed on a regular basis.
The HHH is a mystifying shape of the Palestinain youth in the occupied palestine of 1948. I see in them a conflicted identity (like every citizen of this country has this crisis) between being accepting and openminded on the one hand, and being resistant making a change and never forgetting the history on the other hand. The chasm between the two expands when we;re faced with the fact that the majority of the Hub come from a well-ff families or even prestigious ones. Why? because the socioeconomic struggle which plays a key role in the conflict is ignored on the expense of socio-political and liberal struggle. It’s the new manifestation od the artistocratic and the intellectual, only this group in the 1920s played a pivotal role in veering the masses and educating the population, so what will the HHH achieve?
We shall see.
(I’m not very optimistic towards the outcome because I think the HHH targets the Haifa area as their end, and not their mean. They have to know that haifa is no the absolute goal but it’s rather a phase).
AICHA BINT YUSIF 