January 24, 2009

Hamshari's Sycamore "Jummez Tree"  

 by Rana Abdulla (St. John’s, Newfoundland)

In 2000, my mother Fatima, accompanied my daughters, Rania 18 and Danah
13, visited her home in Um-Khalid for the first time in years. Most of
the houses had been bulldozed over but some traces of familiar landmarks
remained. When she walked through what was left of her village, she
recognized some of the houses and spoke of the families that had lived
there.

Bending, she scooped soil into her hand; kissing it she turned her eyes
skyward only to rest her gaze upon the lemon and jummez trees of her
family farm. Overcome with grief she burst into tears. My daughters
tried to calm her but the sobbing was out of control. This was her home.
Jewish Moroccan immigrants now lived on her family's land. The pain was
unbearable.

When the Moroccan Jewish immigrants noticed my mother's shaken state
they fetched water for her to drink. To their inquiries about what was
bothering her she answered, "This is my land! This is my home!  "We had
no choice", they answered, "We are sorry, the government brought us
here?"

The apology, although heartfelt, could not change the fact that my
mother was still a refugee and that unwanted strangers were living on
our family land. Reality is that of the heart. The loss of the Palestine
homeland is a wound that time will not heal. Love of the fatherland is a
chronic condition and not a passing illness. Sixty years have passed and
the events of the expulsion of 1948 remain fresh in my mother's memory.
The story that follows is my mother's story, the story of a young girl
evicted with her family from her peaceful farm life and thrown into the
turbulent life as a refugee.

Life in Um-Khalid

Life in Um-Khalid (now Netanya) was so beautiful and stable before the
fighting began and drove us from our homeland. The residents of
Um-Khalid and the Jews of Netanya coexisted with relatively peaceful
relations until 1948. We were friends and neighbours and there were no
problems between us. We called the Jews "People of the Book" and had
great respect for their religious beliefs. My sister Amina used to do
their light for their Sabbath; they called at sundown and she would run
to help.

The Jewish and Arabic neighbours sometimes even attended festivals
together. Palestinians used to build tents and put flags on them to
celebrate the forty day festival of Prophet Robin. My mother Yusra  told
me she visited Yafa with her neighbors to Prophet Robin and some of her
Jewish neighbours went with her. I went on this occasion many times. We
rode on camels and watched camel races. It was such a feast with many
sweets for the children to eat.

Our relationship with the Jews was normal and on good terms. The Jews
attended our circumcision parties and we attended theirs; they attended
our weddings and we attended theirs; they slept in our homes and we
slept in theirs. We played together at the beaches... we cooked
together, played football, danced "dabkeh" and we exchanged gifts at
child birth and weddings. We had so much respect for the Jews. "Why
couldn't we have lived in peace?" "Why did they occupy our land?" were
questions I always asked.

Our house in Um-Khalid was a stone house of four bedrooms close to the
sea. We had lots of land, cows, sheep, olives, and orange groves. We
were farmers and our relationship with the land was very close.

The Partition Decree

One evening in 1948, my father Ahmad Hamshari returned from Tel-Aviv
and said, "The Jews are going to divide Palestine and they are celebrating,
singing and dancing in the streets."  We did not know what was
happening. We asked our Jewish neighbour who came and sat with us. In a
harsh tone that we had never heard her use before, she said, "You Arabs
know nothing, we will take Palestine and you will have nothing."  We
told her that she was lying but she responded, "You will see tomorrow."
After two or three days, the partition plan was issued and celebrations
were held in the streets of Tel-Aviv. 

Another Jewish neighbour apologized to my cousin Ahmad, who was deaf and
was working on his cariole selling produce.  The owner was a Jewish man.
The Jewish owner apologized told him that they could no longer work with
each other as a war had broken out.  He protected him and peacefully
returned him to the way out of Netanya.  Very determined and a survivor,
Ahmad was able to buy another cariole and sell fruits and vegetables in
Tulkarem market.

The Departure

Before the departure from Um-Khalid, my mother told her mother Yusra,
"Lets take our tins of cheese with us." My grandfather replied, "We will
return soon, so why carry this heavy burden with us? Let us have some
food in the house when we return."  We left taking no possessions. Our
house was appropriated by the "Absent, we are not absent!" my mother
said.

They heard from other groups that in Yafa a dead barber was dead with
his arms on the head of his dead client, still sitting on the chair.
This news frightened everyone and they left. Grandfather didn't want to
leave; he wanted to die for his land.  My grandfather resisted being
removed; he clung to the lemon tree in our backyard. "I am not leaving
my house, my land and my cow." "I am not going to Tulkarem," he said.
The British army assured him that he would be coming back within weeks.
They told him that they just want to ensure the civilians' safety.  "How
can I leave my wheat harvest?" my father said.  "I will stay, I am not
afraid to face death."    Nevertheless, the British army broke into the
home and forced my grandfather to evacuate.  Afraid for his life and
honour of his daughters, my grandfather had to leave, the entire village
left. As we left, my grandfather nailed two pieces of wood on the door
like a cross to prevent people from coming into the house. My
grandfather left the front gate open. The key was tight in his hand
until he died in 1980.

The Road to Tulkarem

The villagers left together en masse. On the road to Tulkarem, they
walked and walked for days. Some people carried a few possessions on
their heads. Many people had brought their gold and money when they
fled, but the Jews stopped some people and took their gold from them.
The journey was difficult. My grandmother Yusra told me "I will never
forget the sight of a dead woman hugging her live, newly orphaned,
baby."   On the road, my grandfather was hit with shrapnel and he lost
his eye.  As we walked, the Jewish militias were shouting, "Go to
Jordan".  People didn't immigrate quickly. It was a long and painful
journey with tense security conditions on the borders.   

On the way to Tulkarem, my mother's family joined children and elderly
who were hungry, thirsty and overwhelmed with panic and fear.  People
slept under olive trees.  They made hasty shelters from rags, blankets
and bushes to protect them from the heat and to give them some sort of
privacy.  These people were desperately in fear for their lives and away
from the warmth of their homes.

My grandmother told me "other mothers could not feed their children.
One woman's breasts could not produce enough milk to feed their twin
babies.  She was looking, trying to find another nursing mother who
could feed them.  Her husband sits next to her, his hands shake as he
stares at the organs scattered across the sand, left to rot".

My mother told me "I will never forget one incident that happened to us
while we were escaping for woman running from a village beside Haifa, a
story that seems like fiction but is true; I saw it with my own eyes. A
woman was crying and screaming because she realized she was carrying a
cushion instead of her baby when she had to flee. This show how scared
we were of the Jews' massacres.  Later on, this woman settled in
Tulkarem refugee camp, her name was "Im-Saber".  Saber was left in his
bed to a Jewish family; until her death, the fate of Saber was unknown
in Israel, Im-Saber was insane all her life, lost her brain and carried
a pillow kissing it thinking it was her son.  People from the camp
washed the dirty pillow from time to time for her, and this was only
when she was sleeping as she wouldn't give the pillow to anybody,
accusing them of stealing Saber from her."   

Many people took their gold and money when they fled, but the Jews
stopped some people and took their gold from them.   At many points
soldiers stopped us and ordered everyone to throw all valuables onto a
blanket. One young man and his wife of six weeks, friends of our family,
stood near me. He refused to give up his money. Almost casually, the
soldier pulled up his rifle and shot the man. He fell, bleeding and
dying while his bride screamed and cried. I felt nauseated and sick, my
whole body numbed by shock waves. That night I cried, too, as I tried to
sleep alongside thousands on the ground. I asked myself "Would I ever
see my home again? Would the soldiers kill my loved ones, too?"

My mother remembered the scene well, thousands of frightened people
being herded like cattle through the narrow roads by armed soldiers,
firing overhead. In front of her a cart wobbled toward the crowd.
Alongside, a lady struggled, carrying her baby, pressed by the crowd.
Suddenly, in the jostling of the throngs, the child fell. The mother
shrieked in agony as the cart's metal-rimmed wheel ran over her baby's
neck. That infant's death was the most awful sight I had ever seen. 

Every day is a horror, my mother said, one day a bullet just missed my
brother and killed a donkey nearby. Everybody started running as a
stampede. I was terror-stricken when I lost sight of my family and I
frantically searched all day as the crowd moved along.   

That second night, after the soldiers let us stop, I wandered among the
masses of people, desperately searching and calling. Suddenly in the
darkness I heard my father's voice. I shouted out to him. What joy was
in me! I had thought I would never see him again. As he and my mother
held me close, I knew I could face whatever was necessary. The next day
brought more dreadful experiences. Still branded on my memory is a small
child beside the road, sucking the breast of its dead mother. Along the
way I saw many stagger and fall. Others lay dead or dying in the
scorching midsummer heat. Scores of pregnant women miscarried, and their
babies died along the wayside.  A lady was crying for water, she was
very thirsty. After a long while she said she could not continue. Soon
she slumped down and was dead.

Since her family could not carry her they wrapped her in cloth, and
after praying, just left her beside a tree. God knows what happened to
her body.   

My brother Mahmoud found a well, but had no jar "rakweh" to get the
water out.  Some of the men tied a rope around my brother and lowered
him down, then pulled him out and gave us water squeezed from his
clothing. The few drops helped, but thirst still tormented me as I
marched along in the shadeless, heat. 

We trudged nearly twenty miles up rocky hills, then down into deep
valleys, then up again, gradually higher and higher. 

Made Refugees 

On the way to Tulkarem, I walked bare foot, stepping on sharp stones or
some times thorns.  The pains unnoticed.  Men were crying.  Through my
haze of tears it was very hard to see but I knew that villages were
falling under Israel's cruel hands one after the other.  I also knew we
were now homeless. 

One of the refugees' persistent worries was that the return would find
them unprepared, that it would be as hurried and chaotic as the war and
the flight.  They therefore prepared for it meticulously, down to the
last detail.  My father hung the key of our Um-Khalid house near at
hand; beside the Quran.  He bought a new Qumbaz, new shoes, prayer
rosary and a new blanket none of which he used, reserving them for after
the returns.   

Vociferous debates were held, such as which was the shortest route to
Um-Khalid, the paved one or the dirt road?  How many sheep would be
slaughtered and of which kind?  On which tree would the sacrifices be
hung and who would invite whom to the celebration?  I imagined the
caravan of refugees returning to Um-Khalid. 

Dhahabieh Al-Abdallah was our "dayeh" midwife, who delivered all the
children of Um-Khalid; she delivered me, my brothers and sisters.  She
told me that Um-Khalid was infested with Jinnis, but they were all good
ones.  I thought about what she said on the way as we walked and
realized that may be the Jinnis made this happen to us.  As children we
were especially entranced by the midwife's stories.

My grandmother Yusra was always singing her wounds.  She used to say that
the expressions in songs would fortify and rejuvenate the spirit. She said
that "this is how my stories are told".  Yusra believed that those songs
would transport people across the gaps beyond tribal borders, that they
told the truth about political pollution.  To me this was my treasure of
memories; my grandmother's songs and poems.  They undid the Zionist lies
about the Palestinians.

My future father in law, was working in port Yafa when the 1948 disaster
happened.  He was in a small boat "jirrim" waiting to be taken out to a
ship that was anchored in the Mediterranean Sea.  He later said that the
people panicked and rushed to dock their small boats.  Despite the fact
that the Palestinians were fleeing from the violence, Zionist militia
were still firing at them as they floated in the water.

These tiny jirrims could only hold so many people which left many
stranded on shore.  The boat he was in was too heavy so they asked
people to drop their belongings into the sea.  A terrified mother
accidentally dropped her bundle of belongings "bokjeh" into the sea and
screamed, "Oh my God, that's my son in the bokjeh?"  She became
extremely hysterical.  Another man who tried to challenge a soldier was
slashed from head to toe.

My grandmother Yusra later told me that she witnessed a small crying
baby trying to feed from the breast of its dead mother who was
surrounded by a pool of blood.  A couple approached the baby trying to
comfort him but a soldier ordered them to leave it alone.  They begged
and pleaded so the soldier shot the baby dead.  Grandmother Yusra
watched the baby's blood seep into the soil.  "If I live for one
thousand years, I will never forget," she said. 

Those wretched days and nights, in mid May of 1948, continue as a
lifelong nightmare because Zionists took away our home of many
centuries. For me and a million other Palestinian Arabs, tragedy had
marred our lives forever. 


Tulkarem Refugee Camp

We walked together to Tularem where United Nations troops counted heads
and handed out tents to families. There was nothing to sleep on, there
were not enough supplies and there was nothing the refugees could do.
Many more people now arrived in Tulkarem on foot. Many were allowed to
stay in the mosques, schools or the refugee camps. In 1949 the UNRWA was
established to assist Palestinian refugees.

Circumstances in the camp at Tulkarem were abnormal, inhumane and
intolerable but, despite their poverty, people did their best to help
each other. The shared bread and cheese; they cooked on the floor; they
shared a bathroom with their neighbour. There were not enough pillows or
blankets for everyone; they slept on dirt encrusted, vermin-filled old
mattresses, weeping, praying or gazing off into space. Life was
unbearable....

At the time of the departure, my aunt Halima was two months old. When
fatigue, hunger and dehydration dried up our mother's milk, grandmother
held Halima and patiently fed her water and flour. My mother's family
spent one winter in Tulkarem Refugee Camp. Life was unbearable in the
muddy tent.

The Room in Tulkarem

A year later they were invited by family members to move to the city.
They stayed in an relative's in theEastern part of Tulkarem. They
 lived there with other Hamshari family members. There were seven
 of us plus them the same room and we had no bed, no chairs or wardrobe.
 They went to borrow some bed sheets from the house their relative was
 staying at but they only had one blanket and his family was already using it.


When they had departed from Um-Khalid, they had left all our furniture
behind. Therefore my uncle's Mohammad and Mahmoud decided they would
sneak back to the house to retrieve some belongings. They would bring
with them one piece of furniture each time they went. Bit by bit they
bought furniture for our one room where they lived for their first few
years in Tulkarem.  They managed to eat there, clean their clothes and
even turn part of it into a small bathroom.



There was no electricity so they used to have lamps with them. When
radios became available, they used to listen to plays that would be
broadcast. There were many of the family members who would all sit
around and listen to the radio.  Despite the difficulties we accepted
our life slowly.  However, we never lost hope of returning to Um-Khalid.

The House in Tulkarem

Gradually my grandparents moved to their own house in Eastern Tulkarem
"el-hara el-sharkieh". The first years were very difficult. Grandmother
still did not smile, my mother always cried silently every day and my
grandfather was still hanging on to his keys. My grandfather had become
blinded in one eye after he had been hit by shrapnel on the road to
Tulkarem. When his son Mahmoud was killed in Paris in 1973, he lost his
sight entirely. Unable to work, he spent his days either sitting on his
"janbieh", a small thin mattress stuffed with old clothes, planting and
tending pot flowers and herbs or caring for his flocks of hens and
pigeons. He never lost his intimate love for the land; he left the hard
work of feeding bread to the six children to my grandmother Yusra . It
was a hard and bitter battle... the pain of losing the land and the
struggle to save the six children, three boys and three girls. On
Christmas day of 1952, a seventh child, Amin was born.  The 1,500
Christian families in Tulkarem did not celebrate Christmas then, in fear
of what happened to the Christian village of Ikret, when the Israeli
army made it a point to destroy every house on Christmas Day, 1951 in
the Christmas land.

Back to the Land as Labourers

After the 1967 war, my brothers used to work for the colonizers of the
land at Um-Khalid. Women also went to work on the farms, in what had
become known as Israel. We worked on our lands as labourers, not as
owners. My mother told her Jewish master, "This land is ours," and he
replied, very harshly, "you come here only to work and you take nothing
except your salary or you leave."

My mother Yusra returned home from work in tears.  I also remember
accompanying my mother during her daily trek to work in the fields or to
take produce or fruits, which she carried in a wide basket on top of her
head and walked the few kilometers to Netanya.  We shared it with our
Jewish neighbors. Why they did this to US, was beyond my comprehension.

Epilogue

In 1973, I visited Netanya with my mother Fatima. As she stood by the
sea saying a prayer, a Jew who was full of hatred told her, "This is not
your sea, this is not your land, forget your memories, go to Jordan
where you have your land."



My mother's passage was as difficult as her eventful and harsh
childhood. As a child, she began to awaken and discover the beauty of
the world and to make connections with the land and trees, home and
hearth and bread kiln in her home. She had an invisible connection with
everything she saw and all things surrounding her.  Whoever said that
the land and trees are not sentient is not connected to a specific land.

She was connected to all these things and the occupation of 1948 severed
this connection and cruelly uprooted her. She rushed off with her family
and she took refuge in the mountains by using the land as her bedroll
and the sky as her blanket. She drank the rainwater and foraged the
land. She found herself traveling through many different lands ...
traveling still after 60 years. Even 60 years didn't diminish her love
and desire to reclaim her roots. Longing for her childhood home still
burns in my mother's heart.

The preponderance of Palestinian tradition is made of up of customs,
arts and values of the "fellah", the hardworking teller of the soil
governed by the rhythms of crops and looking for support from God and
the extended family.   The "fellah" has imbued Palestinian folklore and
folk songs with the presence of nature, the importance of family, clan,
devoutness and the veneration of the prophets and saints who passed by
the holy land.

Every occasion is elaborate like a wedding, the building of a house, a
pilgrimage, school success, or circumcision; the whole village would
take part in preparing festive food.

Her mother Yusra, was chanting and singing her wounds all the time and
she carried this to her daughters.  She chanted and sang and punctuated
every phase in Palestinian life.  She expressed her joy, her sadness,
her sorrow, her hope and challenges and she memorized all of them in her
intelligent mind. 

She was the matriarch of the family. Her husband played a peripheral
role although he was granted the respect that a dignified elder was
entitled to. But he was disabled, blind and could not carry his share of
the burden. Therefore, he often deferred to her in matters of
consequence. But she never made him feel that she was the one who made
these fateful decisions and she never let on to the outside world that
she was the one who ran the show. She was feared and respected in
Tulkarem because of her no-nonsense approach, her candor and her
outspokenness about various issues.

Their exile from their homes was supposed to be for a short duration.
People thought that they would be going back to their homes and land in
a matter of weeks. Surely the Arab armies would enter Palestine and stop
the Jews.

Shortly afterwards, however, as the exile began to get longer and
longer, new stories began to emerge. They all focused on great
conspiracies being hatched against the Palestinians. The Jordanian Arab
Legion, we were told, did not fight at all. King Abdullah and his
British commander Glubb Pasha handed Palestine over to the Jews. The
Egyptian Army fought with empty bullets. Only the Iraqis and some
volunteers from various Arab countries did any worthwhile fighting. But
the Arab armies were no match against the superior firepower of the Jews
and their generous British supporters. The British had for years clamped
an iron fist over the Palestinians, severely punishing anyone who was
caught with a gun or a bullet.

I, Fatima Hamshari, the girl of 6 years old, cannot easily describe the
feelings of hurt and bitterness among the people whom I knew who
weathered the first harsh winter in the Tulkarem refugee camp. But they
made it, somehow, with the minimum necessities of life provided by the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.   Tents
and blankets were provided along with some basic foodstuffs. What sticks
in my mind from those days is a bitter feeling of a cold chill that
never went away and the mud that surrounded us after the rain. 

I cannot forget Im-Saber, the lady who grabbed a pillow instead of her
son and running for her life in fear and once she discovered it was a
pillow, she became insane, crazy, running in the camp's streets with
bare feet, calling for Saber and holding onto her dirty pillow.

The "Catastrophe" was the name given to the events of 1948 but in the
long term, the loss of the fertile land and the Palestinian way of life
is what makes "Al-"Nabka"" seem like a tidal wave has hit with constant
and unchanging waves.  The sound of wailing women mixed with the prayers
of the elderly all can still be heard. 

The cataclysm in 1948 Palestine fragmented the land, the people and
their minds.  It is about generations of longing, hope and resilience.
What happened to the boy, Saber, who was left behind when his mother
grabbed a pillow by mistake during the bombing?  Their stories represent
thousands of people.  Perhaps their stories can be hard in the waves
that touch the shores where people slept inside tents or they ran for
their lives.

For the Palestinian refugees the world does not go on.  Time is frozen
within the defining moment of being forced out of Palestine.  Yet
Palestinians had every hope of returning and carried with them keys to
their homes as well as the title deeds.

The whole country was taken. It's not an economic problem. It's not a
refugee problem. It's a problem of national and cultural existence. The
"Nabka" was intended to uproot and completely demolish Palestinian
nationhood.



I made my will leaving my key of return to my grandchildren.  The key
symbolizes the right of return for them and for all refugees worldwide

I, Rana Abdulla, granddaughter of Yusra and daughter of Fatima, cannot
hold a gun and fight.  I can do nothing but carry on the message in a
way in which perhaps, people will understand the truth about the refugee
camps.  I represent the nameless who have witnessed unspeakable horrors
and whom the world is afraid to acknowledge.  I pass it on to YOU!

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