"At first, I didn't understand anything, neither Hebrew nor Arabic. So I just sat quietly, listening. Then I started to remember some words and asked what does this and that mean, writing it down and learning."

Today Natasha has a job working at a nearby factory packaging desserts. "It's important for me to work, not to just sit around. I try to send a bit of money back home to my mother when I can," she says. Later, she plans on becoming a policewoman once again.

Natasha is one of ten women who have been welcomed into the Samaritan community in recent years, from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey. The community pays their travel expenses and sorts out visa issues. The would-be brides then undergo a trial period of a year to sample the traditions of life with the Samaritans — which can prove a substantial culture shock.

Alongside a strictly observed sabbath and a kosher diet, as observed by religious Jews, the Samaritans apply other ancient customs to the letter, with few exceptions. Whenever a woman menstruates, for example, she is required to undergo a period of isolation, which even involves having to sit on a special chair whenever she is in the house, explains Rajai Altif, a member of the community. A longer period of isolation — up to 80 days — applies when a woman has just given birth. Natasha says such customs do not really bother her. "The laws don't apply when I go to work — only at home. So I can still continue with more or less the same routine."

A few other women — both potential brides and natives — have not been quite so accepting and have chosen to leave the community. This is something the Samaritans do not like to discuss in detail, and so the exact numbers are unknown.

At the mention of this issue, Yousef looks downcast. "If they leave, they are outcasts from the community, no one talks to them," he says. "If we could kill them, we would."

Politically and geographically, the West Bank community faces complications too. The Samaritans' holiest site is located right in the middle of hotly disputed territory. Under the 1993 Oslo accords and subsequent protocols, Mount Gerizim is in Area C, under Israeli control, while the village Kfar Luza where the Samaritans live is in Area B, under mixed Israeli and Palestinian control, and the main road at the foot of the village connecting the residents to Nablus is in Area A, controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Samaritan children often play with their closest neighbours, children from a community of Israeli settlers, while attending Palestinian schools in Nablus and speaking both Arabic and Hebrew.

While members of the Holon community in Israel voluntarily serve in the Israeli Defence Forces, the community in the West Bank hold both Israeli and Palestinian identity cards, enabling them to travel throughout Israel and Palestine and enjoy the unique protection of both authorities. This allows, for example, a Samaritan woman access to Israeli healthcare, while working for the Palestinian Authority's Nablus municipal council.

Students from London who are spending the year learning Arabic in Nablus tell me the Samaritans are known locally as "border entrepreneurs", often providing the best deals in the local alcohol trade, alongside selling delicious home-made tahina sauce and other goods.

This means the Samaritans walk a daily political tightrope. Despite this, Rajai says  the relations with both communities are "very warm". It is clear that the Samaritans of Mount Gerizim are keen to keep it that way, as the newly integrated brides nursing newborn babies ensure the future of the community — for the next few generations at least.