Sultans of the City: The West Bank Got Somethin To Say

In August 1995 the Source Awards were held at Madison Square Garden in the heart of New York City. At that time the universe of popular Hip Hop seemed to consist of only two planets, one on the West Coast and one on the East; New York and LA. For the most part, the audience in attendance and the award winners reflected that; Snoop Dogg, Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, Dre, Wu-Tang Clan among others. Then the “Best New Group” was awarded to a strange duo from Atlanta known as Outkast. As Andre 3000 and Big Boi walked to the podium the crowd booed, loudly. The night was supposed to be about the dark, menacing musical turf war between the coasts and here comes a dude dressed in a West African Dashiki who rapped about being an alien. As the boos continued Andre 3000 took the mic, looked out into the hostile audience and dropped a line that would later turn out to be prophecy:

“…But it’s like this though: I’m tired of folks, — them closed-minded folks. It’s like we got a demo tape and don’t nobody wanna hear it. But it’s like this, the South got somethin’ to say. That’s all I got to say.”

In the years that followed Outkast and multiple variations of Southern hip hop would rise to dominate the charts, steer trends and set the style for popular culture. The South that everyone was booing and sleeping on would reshape it all. That moment was the first thing I thought of when I spoke with Aram Sabbah about his involvement in the Sultans of the City Contest and towards the end of the interview he dropped an Andre 3000 mission statement for what is going on in the skate scenes in the West Bank and throughout MENA.

Palestine is a land that is used, ignored, vilified, misunderstood, pitied and even hated by those outside of its ever shrinking borders. It’s a land that is so often defined by external voices and I don’t want to be one more in that mix, not hearing the demo tape. The people and the communities within the West Bank have lives, struggles, hopes and fears of their own. The skaters there are building a scene that stands on the merits of their passion and persistance. They can speak for themselves. The West Bank skate scene got somethin to say.

Ok, so I saw your video of the manual hill bomb and thought oh shit I gotta talk with these guys! Would you start by just introducing yourself and your team:

My name is Aram Sabbah I’m 24 years old. Other guys are Kareem Barakat, Omar Hattab, Mahmoud Kilani and Adham Tamimi. We wanted to have more people on our team but we couldn’t because meeting up was difficult because everyone is spread out. I currently live in Rammallah.

That’s in the West Bank, Palestine?

Yes.

How did you start skating?

Back in like 2012, my friend gave me a board and like 2-3 years before 2012 but I didn’t really do much with it. Then my friend Adham Tamimi mentioned that he wanted to start skating and I was like I have one I can sell it to you. So I sold it to him but then I watched him skating for a week and started to get jealous. So I asked him if I can use it as well and we shared it. We skated together like that for four months, then a friend of ours Ahkmed, said he had a board we could use. So he gave us his board and it was actually really better than the one we had. So we had two boards for a little bit but then that one broke and we were back to square one. Then we were out skating one day and we met Charlie Davis, the founder of SkatePal. He had set up like the first ramp in Ramallah so we showed up and were skating the ramp with him. So since then, in like 2013 we’ve been helping out with SkatePal.

So at that time, before you met Charlie, did you guys think you were the only skaters in Ramallah?

Yeah, I mean basically we were the only skaters in Ramallhah and we even thought we were the only skaters in the whole West Bank. Like knew the Israelis had been skating but we never saw anyone before. But after like 2013, the end of 2013 we met Kenny in Qalqilya, they were building a ramp there so we met other skaters in Qalqilya as well.

*Aram with some ledge work- Maen Hammad*

Oh right and that eventually became the site for the SkateQilya program. How did you become involved with the Sultans of the City Contest?

I think Kenny Reed told me about it. Must’ve been after the Lockdown Challenge which was the Asian Skateboarding competition they did. He mentioned that he’s trying to do like a Thrasher King of the Road style competition for the MENA [Middle East & North Africa] region. So he mentioned it and then after a while was like “Yeah we’re gonna do it with 7 Hills [skatepark].” He sent me like a google drive with all the challenges in it. So I asked the boys, “do you want to do it in a way that like, each city has it’s own team, so it’s more spread out because this would give a lot more exposure for Palestine and new skaters in Palestine?” but then we started to realize there aren’t that many skaters in Palestine [laughs].

So the other guys on your team, they’re not in Ramallah?

Besides me, only two, Adham and Kareem are in Ramallah. Kareem is like sixteen. But he has school all the time and he also plays violin. So he’s busy but he loves skating and he’s a good skateboarder honestly. Adham and I started skating together back in 2012. So that’s it for Ramallah. The other dudes, two of them live in Asira, that’s up north in the West Bank and Mahmoud is in Nablus which is North of Ramallah but south of Asira. So that would usually by the meeting point for us.

And there’s a park nearby Nablus, in Asira?

Yeah and in Ramallah we skate streets.

How is the street skating for you in Ramallah? Are there spots?

I grew up skating streets so even when I go to the park I’m kinda shit at skating transition but I try to learn! Yeah we have good spots and in Ramallah it’s all hills, so we bomb hills. We bomb really good hills.

GX-1000 Ramallah edition

[Laughs] Yeah! We’ve got like two or three hills here that are gnarlier than San Francisco, the rest of the hills are mediocre. But there’s spots. One spot we go and skate in Ramallah a lot we call The Plaza and it has like marble ledges and levels.

I think I’ve seen that place, it’s look sick. How do people react when you’re out skating street, outside of the parks?

I think at first it was like exotic for them, something really fucking new. Skateboarding was first introduced in like 2004 through this Coca Cola promotion where if you opened up a bottle you could win a big ass board. So like you’d see the people who won mostly using that board to like sit down on it instead of actually skating. That was basically the background of skating in the area, they knew the object. When they started to see us skate it it was like “Aaah wow!” But also some attitudes like, “why would you do that?” or “You should be doing something else, you should work or study.” Basically People telling you you should be doing a different sport or that what you’re doing is dangerous. A lot of the times we’d just say “yes” and then just continue skating. After a while though people in the community started to get used to us skating the same spots over and over and some of the attitudes changed.

Like in the Plaza in Ramallah, you saw the attitudes change?

Yeah, exactly. Now if we haven’t been there for a few weeks and we go back they’re like, “where have you been?” The locals and the adults. But also as I get older, I still get the comments like “you shouldn’t do that you should do something else. You should work.” I tell them I do work, I work in this field and I also do freelancing, but this is my life I’d rather skate more than anything else. So still these conversations come up like “why do you do this?”, but usually now at the end of the discussion, they get convinced because they see how passionate we are. Some people just complain too like, “don’t skate it’s annoying, the sound is too much,” and “I’m trying to relax!” But that’s like c’mon man, you’re just trying to have a problem! You can’t relax in the center of the city. So in that case they’re just picking on us but we don’t give a shit to be honest. After they see that they just get used to it.

You talked about how sometimes when you were skating in the past people would be like “you should be working” or “you should be in school,” Do you feel that kind of pressure still when skate? Was it tough to learn to balance that?

Yeah, I mean, honestly it’s still tough to balance that sometimes. But I’ve developed a coping mechanism with it. At first there was pressure because as you said, like around here it’s not a regular activity and…you don’t feel comfortable, you feel intimidated by doing it. Also like when something happens in the country and you’re not involved in it, then you can feel like, “what the fuck am I doing? Why am I having fun on a board when the whole country is getting fucked?”

There’s a lot of people dealing with shit right now, and I feel glad, I’m grateful about everything; that I can ride my board and have no concerns about my life or anything else when I’m doing it. But I it’s confusing sometimes. You can feel wrong about having fun on the board when the whole vibe and energy of the country is being fucked over by Israel and everything. It can just be like constant stress.

I used to think, like I still think that it’s a kind of escape. That skateboarding would be a great escape for me…but like last year when everything happened, started to arise again, I felt like shit about it. The only thing that I use to escape from this reality started to feel like I shouldn’t do it because why should I escape from this reality? I should show up, I should do more. I should try to figure shit out but um I don’t know. It’s also my age, like in your twenties, you’re lost in your life as well, trying to figure things out and being here really doesn’t help with that. I’m aware of it at least.

Yeah and I’m sure like if you were obsessed with something like football (soccer) it would cause less of a real and existential dilemma because it’s so accepted by society and there’s also this huge community around it.

People would be like “yeah go do it!” Go play for the national team or whatever, go do it! But because they don’t know or understand skateboarding they’re like “fuck this, you’re not doing anything.” But also some people actually encourage skating as well. Like we’ll be out skating a spot and someone will just show up and give us coffee. One guy who managed a building, when Ryan [Lay] came he was stoked. He turned on the lights at the spot we were skating for us and was like “Skate! Skate! I want to see it, go do it!” So you can find both sides, people motivating you, giving you that space and other times they shut you down completely.

Did you grow up watching videos? Were there skaters you followed?

Yeah, we grew up watching like, Braille to learn shit. I think everyone in the world watches Braille when they start skating. Then I started watching Thrasher, The Berrics, like tried to keep up with it. I didn’t know names at first. So at first I wasn’t feeling good because I couldn’t remember names, or soundtracks to parts and some skaters you interact with know like “this skater did this trick in this video to this song” and I didn’t know anything at first. So it was kind of intimidating, but eventually I just started watching and not worrying about it and focusing on the tricks. Now I don’t really have favorites. I love everything to be honest. But off the top of my head, I love Tiago Lemos, he’s a fuck’n beast.

Yeah he’s insane, he’s just hardwired with it.

He’s fuck’n insane. Also Nassim Lachhab, he’s a skater from Morocco.

With the big afro, totally, rides for Blind. He rips! He skates a ton in Spain but I love his Morocco footage.

I love Ryan Lay as well, even though I know him! [Laughs]

He filmed a whole part over there [West Bank]. That was really awesome to see.

Yeah! And a lot of other dudes in Ramallah. I love a lot of skaters, ever skater has their own style. So I try and see a try and see a certain trick from a certain skater and then imitate it. Like that ledge skate from that ledge skater, a mix of everything.

Has the ability to get skate hard goods like decks and wheels and stuff improved at all or is it still really difficult?

It’s still really difficult to be honest, to get shit in. Without it being tied up by Israelis or like all this globalization, supply chain shit. It’s like anything we do, we really have to be aware of the political issues, even with apolitical things. Like, as you know the West Bank has been under seige, it’s landlocked and it’s all controlled by Israelis and they don’t let anything pass by without bringing it through customs which can make it really difficult.

Like in 2014-15 we tried to get sent a bunch of boards shipped in but they were seized and sent back because they said “Palestine” on them. We tried a couple of times, then we tried to find an address in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv of someone who wants to help, or like send them through an embassy or something. I really hope in the future we can have someone with like a shop or something and we can just get boards through them.

So is ordering online even worth it? It still has to pass through customs.

Honestly it’s not worth it. If you’re gonna pick your parts, trucks, wheels, bearings and everything, let’s say it costs like a hundred and thirty five dollars but by the time it gets here it costs like two hundred fifty to three hundred dollars. We don’t have that type of money, nobody has that.

And shops in Israel is that not even an option?

Yeah, like I can’t go there. So even if I was like “I don’t give a shit about Palestine, I’m gonna go to this Israeli skateshop” I can’t. Also even in a shop over there it’s fucking expensive as well. SkatePal, SkateQilya, Charlie, Kenny, all the international skaters and organizations, they always try to bring some things. So it’s been better than when we started but it’s still not that stable. The last two years with Corona [virus] there hasn’t been anyone coming in, so there’s no new boards. If you break your board you’re fucked. You’ll have to wait and no one knows when new ones will come. So you’re really gambling with your boards and shit when you skate. It’s crazy.

Yeah, it’s like a game of chicken. You can’t stop but you also know that if your board snaps or something there’s not an easy option to go get a new one.

Yeah, and we always try to send boards and things to support the scene in Gaza. Like care packages and stuff. Right before Corona we sent a lot of stuff, skate supplies, because we thought the volunteers would be coming with more stuff but then that didn’t happen.…so basically Palestine and Gaza got fucked.

I’ve seen some of the scene out of Gaza, they have like a concrete ramp there and there’s this rollerblader there who seems to be doing a lot to build the whole scene. I think there’s an Italian organization helping as well. But they must have to really get everything they can out of those boards man. The borders of Gaza are even more restrictive and you’re saying even having the word “Palestine” on a piece of maple wood can get a whole box of decks seized.

Yeah it won’t get past customs and also, I mean you need an explanation for everything, even if it’s a donation. So through each other like that though, that’s the easiest way to do it. But it still doesn’t make sense.

Can you tell me about your team’s experience filming the challenges?

Basically we set up a Whatsapp group so we’d all speak on there to plan and coordinate. The easiest thing we decided on is that we’d meet in the park and if anything we can skate the streets and the village of Alsira.

Me and Omar have been skating the longest, plus we’re the oldest so our experience led us to be able to do most of the challenges. We couldn’t finish all of them which was annoying to me because to be honest, I felt like we could do them all and just have fun. But the timing hurt us because they start in January and in January we were like mid-pandemic over here and also, the weather was shit. We could only skate the last week of January and February. So I would say to Kenny and 7hills, you guys made it much tougher for us! The weather was shit! [Laughs]. If you did it now it would’ve been better! Still I can’t complain or make excuses though, we tried our best. We’d meet up at the park and see what we could do.

I talked with this skater from the Kurdistan region of Iran, Adib Sheikhy, and his team ran into the same problem, a week into filming their challenges it started snowing on them and they had to adapt. Maybe the organizers didn’t take a long enough look at the weather in MENA when they picked the dates!

They should’ve! [Laughs]. But I mean it’s ok! It shows how passionate the scene is. Even though the weather was shit it shows how much the MENA region is really interested in skating and will bend over backwards to film and complete these challenges. The scene in MENA is real! So yeah, thank you to Kenny and thank you to the Skateboarding Social, and 7Hills and everyone who contributed to do this. It was really nice ya know, to be a part of something.

Was there a challenge you enjoyed doing more than others?

Oh the manual. I love manuals, I can hold one for soooo long.

You did! You were sitting on it.

I feel like I could’ve done it longer but then it would’ve been 2-3 minutes long and wouldn’t fit in the edit, so it wouldn’t post. So I was just like I’ll do this. But manuals are really fun. It’s just fun being around with the boys and trying to film anything that we can. Just trying to figure things out and improvising. The whole thing was nice.

Is that a busy road?

Most days are pretty clear. There were cars coming past us but it wasn’t that heavy at that time. I wish I could’ve done it longer. Not to say like ooh I’m so good at manuals or whatever, but I do actually enjoy manuals. I also like heelflips, I’m a heelflip guy. Until I learned kickflips.

I just like being on the board. Bombing hills is really nice, power sliding through, and doing mannys on top of weird shit you see on the ground. Stains on the road, I imagine them as like manny pads.

So you guys would communicate via Whatsapp and then have to travel to meet up. Being where you are, in the West Bank, what’s your freedom of movement like? Do you have to deal with and plan for checkpoints and roadblocks when you’re trying to go between towns to just skate with your friends?

*The wall that separates the West Bank from Israel and little international law refresher*

Oh yeah, there’s checkpoints throughout the West Bank. Sometimes we’ll have to take a detour which can be like an additional hour of driving because of a checkpoint or settlers are in the street. So there’s checkpoints but I can move more freely…well I wouldn't say ‘freely’ freely but I can move around the West Bank. Within in the West Bank though, all over there’s checkpoints.

Sometimes roads are closed, sometimes they’re not, you never really know. Back like ten years ago there were more closed road and detours and everything. Now it’s a bit less but it’s the same man, you always have to like check the road, see if it’s ok to travel. If it’s ok to move across from city to city, if anything is happening or not. You always have this concern in your mind. You never wake up and say “I want to go to the park!” without first thinking will the road be closed? Will we get there in time? It’s kind of stressful sometimes even to commit. We get used to it somehow, we cope. We just make fun of it.

Do you have to interact with Israeli soldiers when you’re skating in the West Bank or is it mostly the Palestinian Authority police?

Well if you’re skating in the street, in the West Bank if any police are gonna come it’s going to be the Palestinian Authority. If you’re traveling between towns and cities it’s always going to be the Palestinian Authority with the army, the Israeli Army. So basically the checkpoints are run by the Israeli Army. Let’s say, god forbid, you get into an accident on like the main roads, the outside roads, both authorities would respond. But skating in the street if someone wanted to bust you down or remove you from the spot its usually normal people or PA police.

Can you talk about the growth you’ve seen of skating in the West Bank with the increased exposure to skating?

Of course, I mean it’s so hard to explain to non-skaters because, I’ve been skating for ten years, other people that don’t skate I see them as non-skaters, as normal people. You understand. But like everybody who does skate knows that skateboarding can be a really good tool, especially when it’s used right. It can give people a lot of self-confidence and build a sense of responsibility and balance. You can learn a lot of things from skateboarding like if you fall you get back up. That’s a lesson you can apply to all aspects of your life.

Resilience.

And the exposure that Palestine gets from skateboarding is really good exposure I guess because we’re all skaters and other skaters when they see us, when they see Palestinian skaters they can find a way to better understand the situation here through skateboarding. So it’s easier for people who aren’t living here and don’t know all about what’s going on to digest and to process this reality. So it’s good I guess, it brings more exposure and understanding for the situation here. A simple way to explain things by just skating.

You also work with some of the organizations in the area right?

I was volunteering with SkatePal until like 2015 but then I had to go abroad. I was studying cinema so I went to North Africa, Tunis. When I came back in 2019 I was offered a job with SkatePal. So now I’m working with them as a full time manager. It sounds like a big important word, it’s just like skating, making sure things go right and find departments for the volunteers, keep things organized and working well and just being around making sure the programs happen.

Did you skate while you were in Tunisia?

Yeah man! It was the fucking best times. We had a crew, since there aren't many skaters here, I got to feel what it’s like just being with a crew. Being out there in the city, making trouble, skate-rats, even sleeping in the streets sometimes. Just skating your ass off and filming and trying to stack clips. We were traveling as much as we can throughout Tunisia. It was really nice man. Also the scene in Tunisia is pretty rough, there are no shops, no parks either, so it felt like home as well in that way.

Anything else you want to add?

Well to be honest, I would love if like eventually someone came and saw the good potential here. Like sponsor our asses! I know we have these organizations working with us and I know we’re being patronized by the occupation and all that shit but also we’re real as well! The skateboarding scene is gonna blow up here.

So if anyone really gets on it, from now, and gets in the industry from here in Palestine and starts to sponsor our asses, even a little, like by flow or something, That would be a dream! I know we’re like kinda sponsored as like through these organizations but it would mean a lot more if it’s real, real.

Yeah, you want respect not pity. I did an article a few years back on the Skate scene in the Apache Reservation in San Carlos and the founder of Apache Skateboards, Doug Miles said the same thing. That they don’t want to be looked at as a non-profit, as a tragic charity case. That the scene is real and the skaters are out there working and ripping just like anywhere else and want that respect.

Yeah invest in us! Instead of just charity, and a patronizing situation.

Aram, thank you so much for taking the time and talking with me dude. I wish you all the best and can’t wait to see you guys continue to destroy.

Thank you man, thank you for doing this and bringing more exposure to the scene. And try and visit as well!

Oh dude trust me, I would love to come skate over there. Eat some shwarma and bomb some Ramallah hills. I’m a thousand percent down.

Sultans of the City: The West Bank Got Somethin To Say

Telling Our Stories: Lakota Skaters and the legacy of Ground Control

Sultans of the City: The Curbs of Kabul