(Part 1) – However Long it Takes…'
"I could see only an Israeli settlement instead of Ras Abu Amar. There was a checkpoint that stopped us from entering the village. I took photos from a distance but I found all the land was now a settlement. I felt this is not my village anymore and that they had taken it from me. This is my village but I could not enter it…"
Mohammed is angry as he talks. He displays a passion which may have seemed surprising for a child of just thirteen years of age had I not spent so much time with children inside Palestine's refugee camps. Children who, much like their parents, have lived their whole life in forced exile.
Ras Abu Amar was not the first village we had visited that morning. The day had begun in Al Malha, a village that has now been eaten up and seemingly swallowed by the sprawling judaisation of Al Quds. Blue street signs in Hebrew, a zoo, a train station, the city's largest sports stadium, and thousands of Israeli houses covered the site which until 1948 was home to many Palestinians. It was like a Zionist rewriting of history, or rather a history that never existed seemed the impression intended. But whilst the comfortable signs can mislead, distort, or even mask the horrible truths they hide, they will never completely bury the ethnic cleansing which they try to deny. As we headed up a hill in Al Malha a literal tower of strength stretched out and above the surrounding houses. It had resisted the all encompassing sprawl of development. If we were lost on a dark night at sea then this tower was our lighthouse. It was the ancient Palestinian mosque that had served the village and its residents for years until they were chased out in 1948.
When Theodore Hertzl, the founding father of the Zionist dream, described Palestine as 'a land without people for a people without land' he had intended the world to believe such propaganda, and whilst countless governments internationally have attempted to help spread such lies this resilient minaret, and the 750,000 people who were forced from their homeland, would never accept a life in silence. Now, these 750,000 original exiles have become literally millions of Palestinian refugees and the lies are horrifically clear to all.
As children skipped playfully into the new Israeli school opposite the mosque, and bounced basketballs around its playground, I stood outside with Rawan and Samah, two girls born into a crowded refugee camp only a few kilometers away as a result of the atrocities which had created these facts on the ground. They found a certain pride in seeing the minaret despite the fact we couldn't reach the mosque itself due to it being totally surrounded by Israeli houses. There was also pride to be found under the old olive trees down the hill in the shadow of the 'Canyon' shopping mall, the girls knew who had tended these trees and tasted their fruit all those years ago.
Rawan wanted to find the houses her grandfather had told her about. She wanted to take back marimeyah (sage) and zatar (thyme) to him in the camp, but apart from the mosque there was little she could see. Little however does not mean nothing, and she did find something to hold onto:
"Finally I found two trees, two small trees. I knew they were not ancient trees that had been planted in our original country but it was enough for me, and for my grandfather, that they had been planted in Al Malha's soil."
They photographed the trees and they photographed the mall itself – built on land their relatives had nurtured, until that is security guards began to scream at us and order us to stop taking photos. I approached the fuming guards as the girls went back to the bus, and just as the guards were calling the police. More guards and police turned up, more began to shout at me demanding the camera. They told me it was illegal to take photos there as it posed a 'security threat'. I told them to wait whilst I got the camera from the girls and their hesitancy gave me just enough time to swap cameras and return with an empty one and convince them we had not photographed anything at the mall. I would not let them steal the girl's memories in the same way as their forefathers had orchestrated the theft of the girls land.
In Beit Natif we found the kibbutz of Netiv. The name change and the ugly housing units which had replaced the traditional Palestinian abodes of rolling archways and local stone once more masked the history, but the huge gnarled trunks of the olive trees told us other stories. There we tasted the delicious local 'roman' fruit (pomegranate) of which we had been told by Nakba survivors from the village. Young Americans strolled around the kibbutz with shopping bags filled with groceries and beer, whilst those who could truly call this their 'home', and remember it as it was, languished in Aida Camp in proud traditional dress yet with inadequate supplies of fresh water.
On the land of Ajur village another kibbutz stood by the name of Agur but outside its gates we saw the beautiful houses we had heard so much about.
They were not complete and were few in number, but stood proudly like living skeletons of history. In their surrounding fields the swollen ripe sabar (cactus fruit) brought joy to the faces of Amjad and Saja whilst picking it brought spikes to our fingers. Their grandmother had told them so much about Ajur Sabar. She told me last year that if she could just taste this delicious fruit, her sweetest memory, once more in her village she could die a happy woman. She would have loved to have come with us, but even had her health permitted such a trip her ID would have not. The disgusting reality is that the children could only make this journey of discovery as they were too young to have to carry ID (all under 16), and because they had a foreign passport holder with them. Once again I sickeningly found myself with greater rights in Palestine than Palestinians themselves… Amjad's face was alive though and his head filled with his grandmother's memories as he knelt on his land and let the rich red earth slide through his fingers. His excitement was uncontainable. He wanted to explore everywhere at once; his walk was two inches taller and his chest two inches wider now he was back in
his village.
Yet when we eventually located Zur Haddasah settlement, built on top of Mohammad's home village he found nothing. He too had interviewed survivors of Al Nakba in preparation for the trip. His grandfather had recounted in infinite detail his vivid memories of village life, of his days growing up amongst the pine trees and playing in the many fresh water springs, of exploring the mountains and picking herbs and fruit. But none of these memories fitted with the sight that greeted Mohammad's eyes… the sight of huge electric fences with warning signs written in Hebrew, the sight of uniform and bland houses with distinctive red roofs that reminded him of the illegal Zionist colonies that litter the West Bank. The huge yellow gate and control rooms that opened it only for the entrance of resident's cars,
whilst keeping at bay 'strangers' such as himself and his sister, were hard to stomach:
"I felt that my village should have been beautiful like other villages we saw, but when I saw it I didn't feel like it was my village. My grandfather had told me there were ten water springs and two mountains in Ras Abu Amar but when I went I could see nothing. I found that everything had changed as though it was not really my village…"
The towering minaret of Al Malha, the steadfast ancient olive trees in Beit Natif, and the ruined houses and immovable cacti of Ajur, had all provided other children with a sense of pride. These remnants of days gone by, and of their own identity, were all startling only in their absence in Ras Abu Amar, yet on the land of the other villages insignificant as they may seem to the current residents, they had offered the children something physical to see and touch that brought their grandparents memories to life. We had been told that there were still ruins to be found somewhere in the area but we just didn't know where to look, and as far as we could see there was nothing but this settlement that had devoured Mohammad's land.
When the bus in which we were traveling had initially pulled up outside the settlement's gates I asked Mohammad and his sister Ahoud to come with me to take some photos, but he refused:
"This is not my village! I will not take photos here, this is not my village!"
When he eventually came down from the bus he still could not accept that the sprawling city in front of him now covers the land on which his grandparents had lived. I had never visited the area before and since there were no signposts or other evidence that we were in fact in the right place I rang people back in Aida Camp for confirmation. I was told by two people in the Camp who knew the land well that this was the site of the destroyed village of which Mohammad had dreamt so any times. He had been here himself previously only three short years ago and Zur Hadassah was there then but it had grown so much during this time that it was now unrecognizable to him.
It had taken in more land and the fences kept him away from all but a couple of metres of land outside the oppressive 'security' cage that circles the settlement. After I talked for a few minutes with the two children Mohammad began to look down at his feet, but it wasn't because he was shying away from eye contact. I realized he was actually looking hard at the ground around his feet, studying it looking for something to recognize. He dropped down to his knees and began to touch the soil, to play with it in his fingers. He was feeling the textures and the shapes like a blind man reading Braille. As his fingers caressed the earth he spoke:
"Is this my land? Is this my soil? Are these my stones?
It was not said in particular to anyone, maybe he was asking himself, or maybe he was speaking to the land itself. He was looking for something to hold onto emotionally, and something physical, something about which he could proudly say 'this is from my village' when he returned to Aida. His words may now sound very depressing but in a way they were Mohammad's light. They offered him a beacon of hope. The stones and soil were not what he had dreamed about but they were still from his land, this tiny strip of land on which he stood was all of Ras Abu Amar that he could now reach, but it was at least Ras Abu Amar:
"I saw stones and soil at the entrance to the village. I took some to give to some of my friends in the Camp who are also from Ras Abu Amar but who had never visited the village or seen it before. My aunt asked me to bring her zatar (thyme) and marimeyah (sage), but I took her stones and soil instead. I could not enter to get her what she had asked for but I felt that the soil and stones were still ours, and they were better than nothing. Those stones I took will make me always remember that my homeland will return to me and
my people one day…"
The words and actions of this young boy who I have known for three years now were both heart-wrenching and beautiful at the same time. They devastated me and lifted me simultaneously; it is hard to describe adequately with mere words, yet it is a moment that will live with me for ever.
This notion could be said to sum up this trip, the first of two planned trips to take the children to revisit their homelands, this idea that words can simply not describe such an experience. I myself have studied Nakba history through people in the camps, I have interviewed Nakba survivors and heard the passion with which their grandchildren talk about their villages. I have heard statistic after statistic and seen photograph after photograph. But I had refused for three years despite repeated requests from friends in the Camp to go to the villages alone to take photographs for them. I had refused because I always believed I could not understand the villages sufficiently from a visual perspective alone, and could therefore not have done the land or the memories justice. I am now convinced that I was right to make such a decision. The villages cannot be understood in such terms because they are not merely physical. As I visited the villages with our children layer after layer of depth unraveled itself. Through the eyes of our children, through their actions and reactions, I have learnt more than a million books could have told me although this trip was not intended for my benefit. I have seen our children carrying their emotions proudly on their faces and heard them mutter words which have both hurt and inspired me deeply.
If Theodore Hertzl or Golda Meir, or Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert, really ever believed the refugees could be forgotten or silenced then they were badly mistaken. If they ever thought memory would die or pass with time then they were wrong. If they hoped that future generations would lie down in submission and dutifully accept all the wrongs that have been done without struggling for their rights they should have thought again.
Nearly 60 years after Al Nakba I sat in a chair in a small room in a Palestinian Refugee Camp and talked with a young boy about our trip back to his land. He said something to me which I have heard uttered by survivors from 1948 many times, but something that I have never ever heard from a 13 year old boy before. A 13 year old boy who knows the road ahead may be long, but he is prepared for the journey irrespective of its duration:
"If I couldn't return then my sons after me, and the future generations for sure will go back, because this is my village, my home, and my land on which my grandparents lived... The right to return to my village will come one day, however long it takes…"
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