“Yasmin *HAHAHA* stop *HAHAHA* tickling *HAHAHA* meee” I snorted rolling all over the ground while my cousin dug her fingers on the side of my stomach, “or else mama is gonna make me sleep in another room!!” Welcome to my crazy family, where there’s currently 19 people under the same roof. Some may think that’s too many people (especially those of you living in America), but here in Jordan it’s quite normal to pack the house up to maximum capacity. However, I’ll admit there’s usually not this many people, but my twin sisters, Janna and Aliaa, are graduating university and my brother, Bilal, is getting married, so my uncle’s family decided to visit for a few weeks.
“NOURAA” mama yelled as she entered the room to find six of us sprawled on the ground laughing, “you’re gonna wake the babies, quiet down!” First thing she closed the door on her way out my cousin, Mustafa, chucked a pillow at Yasmin’s head and she fell to the ground making a big thump noise. Mama and Auntie Halima rushed in the room to make sure everyone’s okay, and once we reassured them everything’s fine, they turned to leave.
But mama stopped at the door, “Nouraa bring me your pillow and blanket” and so I handed her my pink fuzzy QUEEN comforter and matching pillow.
“So does this mean I’ll just have to grab more from the basement?” I asked.
“No you’re going to the basement and sleeping there” she responded.
“WHAT?! WHY?! What did I even do??” I questioned while knitting my hands through my hair confused. Instantly, my cousins protested and insisted we all sleep in the same room. A few of them even threw out promises to stay quiet through the night, but I saw the look in mama’s face and just knew, there was no point in arguing over this. I didn’t want them to see my cheeks turning red and the tears forming in my eyes so I quickly said, “It’s fine, I’ll just see y’all tomorrow morning” and left the room. Five minutes later I was in the basement room curled up against a wall crying when sidou came in.
When my grandpa saw my tears his face instantly tensed, “what’s wrong habibty” he asked as he crouched down beside me.
“Mama kicked me out of room with Yasmin, *sniff* Mustafa, Bilal, *hiccup* Aliaa, and Janna because *hiccup* apparently I was being too loud, but sidou, *hiccup* everyone was laughing and she *hiccup* only made me leave, and that’s *hiccup* not fair!!” I cried as the tears kept flowing.
“Ooofff it’s okay Nouraa you’ll see them tomorrow morning. How about I tell you a story instead, about how my family was kicked out of Palestine, would that make you happier?” sidou suggested.
“Yeah, but be careful *sniff* lower your voice or else you’ll wake the babies *sniff* or mama’s gonna kick you to another room for ‘being too loud'’' I chuckled, and glanced to find my grandpa also tittering at my diss.
“Well, habibty it all started in January 1947 when I was six years old, playing on a tree swing in my backyard when I accidentally fell and hit my head on the ground really hard. Blood was slowly coming out of the wound behind my ear, but my mom couldn’t do much other than trickle a bit of olive oil on it and keep wiping the blood with a cloth. Later when my baba came home, we got on the next bus that takes us to the next door village where the doctor was living. Some soldiers randomly stopped the bus and told everyone to get off, with no explanation. My father quickly hid me under a seat and covered me up with bags. I could hear--”
“Wait why’d he hide you? Wouldn’t the weight of the bags hurt your head?” I interrupted.
“Yes but it’d only hurt a little bit, my baba put the very light bags on my head. You know, at the time I also did not know why he hid me, but I just knew to listen to him. Later he explained that the soldiers would see blood and automatically assume I was injured by a knife, or some sort of weapon, and those were banned at the time. If they even thought you had a weapon, they would arrest you and throw you in jail with no proof, and the only way you can get out is if you spend time or pay. Anyway where was I? Oh yes, as the soldiers were searching the bus, I could see their shoes from under the seat, and they even stopped and took a few of the bags off the pile I was hiding under, but I further tucked myself under the seat. I remember blood was all over my shirt and I was silently crying, but they ended up leaving and did not find me. Another time I remember my baba’s friends telling us to--”
“Hold on, what happened? Were you able to go to the doctor at the end?”
“Oh yes, the doctor stitched me up and I was fine afterwards, but the point Nouraa was how I was taking a trip to the doctor and instead was stuck hiding in the bus for an hour. Even after the soldiers finished searching the bus, they still made everyone stand outside and do nothing for hours before they were allowed back on. Imagine your mama making you stand in the garage and not be able to do anything when you broke your elbow” he explained.
“Owoww that was so painful, I couldn’t think straight the rest of that day” I winced as I thought about the agony from my broken bone years ago.
“Anyway that was just some background information, just so you know how it was like before the Zionists really took over. So fast forward to when I was 6½ years old and the Zionist soldiers were getting more and more strict. My mom and sisters couldn’t leave the house alone without a male companion with them, or else soldiers would stop and harass them. The Palestinians couldn't handle the control anymore so they started making and buying old guns in secret, for self-defense. Once the Zionist soldiers found out, they got angry and started attacking random Palestinian villages and ordered those who had weapons turn themselves in, but of course no one really listened because they knew if they came clean they’d never see their families again.”
“But this makes no sense, why were the soldiers so mean, like why were they mad in the first place?” I questioned, this just wasn’t making any sense in my mind.
“Habibty that’s a story for another time, but just know it was a lot of politics, and in the end they were trying to take our land. Anyway, the soldiers couldn’t capture very many Palestinians because they did not know the geography of the land as well as we did. The Palestinian government asked for help from the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, and Iraqi military. Those governments told Palestinian leaders not to fight because they’d send their own soldiers, but the Palestinian government was spectacle the countries would back out, so they asked them for the weapons and said the they’d get their own people to fight, especially because they would have an advantage of knowing the land. However, they refused. When the Arab leaders and their soldiers came, they didn’t do much damage because they didn’t know where to protect and where to target.”
“Later I found out that The Egyptian leader betrayed his people. He gave his troops fake pistols, their weapons would literally backfire and hit the person who fired it. I remember I was at the market with my sisters when I saw a Zionist owned plane flying over our heads, getting ready to drop bombs on us. The Egyptian army stationed nearby hit the plane with a bomb before it could hit us. The Egyptian bomb exploded but it was very light and it did no damage--the plane kept flying. That day, I lost three friends because of the bombs from that plane.”
“Sidou, why would the Egyptian leader kill his own soldiers? Why would he even agree to help if his troops were just going to their death?” I questioned.
“It’s a lot of politics habibty, and even I sometimes have trouble understanding why some people do stuff, but apparently there was a lot of British influence in Egypt at the time.”
“Hold on, what do the British have anything to do with this” I asked barely keeping up at this point.
“Well, they say the British were helping the Zionists. When the Egyptian leader first agreed for his military to intervene and help the Palestinians, the British did not know, so when they found out, they bought a new shipment of the ‘newest equipment’ and the Egyptian leader distributed them to his troops. Clearly, they were duds. The Jordanian Army, however, was very powerful and took some cities that were occupied back from the Zionists. Unfortunately similar to the Egyptians, their general was a British man. After the British saw the damage the Jordanians could do, they ordered them to withdraw the Jordanian troops.”
“I still don’t get it, why do the British care so much about what happens?” I pondered.
“Politics--”
“No!” I interrupted, “you keep saying politics but what do you mean by that? It’s all so confusing!”
“That’s the thing my dear Nouraa, it’s extremely confusing, that even I don’t fully understand. In fact, I don’t know anyone who fully understands, but that is the thing about politics, someone is always hiding something. Anyway, do you want to hear more of the story, or should I stop here for now, we can continue tomorrow?” sidou asked.
“No let’s keep going for a bit longer, I want to know more!” I begged.
“Okay but just a bit longer, if your mama finds out you're still awake she’ll yell at me. It was March 1948 on the 2nd day of Ramadan, when someone got an anonymous heads-up, what is it called?”
“A tip?” I answered unsure.
“Yes, a tip. Someone got a tip saying my village of Beit Mahsir was going to be raided next. We were told to leave the village for a week so that we wouldn’t be hit with bombs and gunshots. I was scared, I didn’t know what to do and I’ve never seen my mama so terrified. Every time I’d ask her what’s happening, she would start crying and hugging me, so eventually I stopped asking her. For a week I was outside, used sand and leaves as my blankets and pillows, and slept under a tree, huddled up with my family. After a week, my baba returned to the village and again the leaders told him to stay away for another week, because the Zionists did not hit yet, but they were confident they were coming soon. My baba checked on the house and everything was fine. Same thing happened for the next 2 weeks--my baba would get sent back and report to my village to stay out because the Zionist soldiers were ‘for sure’ coming the following week. The fifth week when my baba went to the village, the leaders said it was fine to return, but everything was taken. Nouraa, when I say everything, I mean everything: from the food to my mom’s jewelry to even our birth certificates, literally everything. Imagine you come back from school one day and this house is blank, empty, vacant, everything just gone.”
I could hear the hurt in his voice, even after all these years. “Was it just your family, or did everyone’s things get stolen too?” I was too shocked to process what my grandpa really just told me.
“Of course it was the whole village, they did not leave a single thing. My family knew we couldn’t stay because we knew the Zionist soldiers would come back to claim the land, and if we were here when they got there, then they’d kill us, just like they did to the first six villages they took over. So we went and stayed with my baba’s business partner, who was living a few cities over. However, after a month the soldiers came and once again my family and I had to flee. I remember I wasn’t running fast enough and I lost my family. I was yelling their names, but no one would respond. As I was running, someone threw me on their back and I recognized him as one of my brother’s friends. Eventually, after stopping and continuing to migrate for a few weeks, we arrived at Rafah, a camp. I remember it was January 1949 and there was the United Nations Relief and Works Agency waiting for us. They gave us a tent to live in, but it was snowing outside and there was nothing to cover ourselves with, so it was very cold. There were 11 people living in my tent. The UNRWA gave us dried wood to start fires to cook and keep warm, but sometimes it didn’t even start. After the wood from UN was done, we were forced to use tree branches as wood, but it was not dried so it barely worked. But some survived, somehow.”
“But how’d you even live, like didn’t you freeze to death and just how?!?” I questioned.
“Looking back, I can’t even imagine it. I don’t even know how we lived like that. When someone is in a situation like that one, they will do everything they can to survive, and that’s what I did. Every night, for years, I would tell myself just to survive the next day.”
“How’d you get out of Rafah, and make a life of yourself? I always hear stories about how people don’t ever get out of refugee camps” I asked.
*very big yawn* “Ahh Nouraa, that’s a story for another day, perhaps tomorrow?” sidou responded while yawning another time. Seeing his exhaustion I reluctantly agreed and decided I also needed some rest, so I laid on the ground and drifted into a slumber.
Bibliography
Abunaser, Abdulkader. Personal Interview. 2 May 2020.
Al-Taghriba Al-Filistinia, written by Walid Saif, directed by Hatem Ali, 2004.
“Mama kicked me out of room with Yasmin, *sniff* Mustafa, Bilal, *hiccup* Aliaa, and Janna because *hiccup* apparently I was being too loud, but sidou, *hiccup* everyone was laughing and she *hiccup* only made me leave, and that’s *hiccup* not fair!!” I cried as the tears kept flowing.
“Ooofff it’s okay Nouraa you’ll see them tomorrow morning. How about I tell you a story instead, about how my family was kicked out of Palestine, would that make you happier?” sidou suggested.
“Yeah, but be careful *sniff* lower your voice or else you’ll wake the babies *sniff* or mama’s gonna kick you to another room for ‘being too loud'’' I chuckled, and glanced to find my grandpa also tittering at my diss.
“Well, habibty it all started in January 1947 when I was six years old, playing on a tree swing in my backyard when I accidentally fell and hit my head on the ground really hard. Blood was slowly coming out of the wound behind my ear, but my mom couldn’t do much other than trickle a bit of olive oil on it and keep wiping the blood with a cloth. Later when my baba came home, we got on the next bus that takes us to the next door village where the doctor was living. Some soldiers randomly stopped the bus and told everyone to get off, with no explanation. My father quickly hid me under a seat and covered me up with bags. I could hear--”
“Wait why’d he hide you? Wouldn’t the weight of the bags hurt your head?” I interrupted.
“Yes but it’d only hurt a little bit, my baba put the very light bags on my head. You know, at the time I also did not know why he hid me, but I just knew to listen to him. Later he explained that the soldiers would see blood and automatically assume I was injured by a knife, or some sort of weapon, and those were banned at the time. If they even thought you had a weapon, they would arrest you and throw you in jail with no proof, and the only way you can get out is if you spend time or pay. Anyway where was I? Oh yes, as the soldiers were searching the bus, I could see their shoes from under the seat, and they even stopped and took a few of the bags off the pile I was hiding under, but I further tucked myself under the seat. I remember blood was all over my shirt and I was silently crying, but they ended up leaving and did not find me. Another time I remember my baba’s friends telling us to--”
“Hold on, what happened? Were you able to go to the doctor at the end?”
“Oh yes, the doctor stitched me up and I was fine afterwards, but the point Nouraa was how I was taking a trip to the doctor and instead was stuck hiding in the bus for an hour. Even after the soldiers finished searching the bus, they still made everyone stand outside and do nothing for hours before they were allowed back on. Imagine your mama making you stand in the garage and not be able to do anything when you broke your elbow” he explained.
“Owoww that was so painful, I couldn’t think straight the rest of that day” I winced as I thought about the agony from my broken bone years ago.
“Anyway that was just some background information, just so you know how it was like before the Zionists really took over. So fast forward to when I was 6½ years old and the Zionist soldiers were getting more and more strict. My mom and sisters couldn’t leave the house alone without a male companion with them, or else soldiers would stop and harass them. The Palestinians couldn't handle the control anymore so they started making and buying old guns in secret, for self-defense. Once the Zionist soldiers found out, they got angry and started attacking random Palestinian villages and ordered those who had weapons turn themselves in, but of course no one really listened because they knew if they came clean they’d never see their families again.”
“But this makes no sense, why were the soldiers so mean, like why were they mad in the first place?” I questioned, this just wasn’t making any sense in my mind.
“Habibty that’s a story for another time, but just know it was a lot of politics, and in the end they were trying to take our land. Anyway, the soldiers couldn’t capture very many Palestinians because they did not know the geography of the land as well as we did. The Palestinian government asked for help from the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, and Iraqi military. Those governments told Palestinian leaders not to fight because they’d send their own soldiers, but the Palestinian government was spectacle the countries would back out, so they asked them for the weapons and said the they’d get their own people to fight, especially because they would have an advantage of knowing the land. However, they refused. When the Arab leaders and their soldiers came, they didn’t do much damage because they didn’t know where to protect and where to target.”
“Later I found out that The Egyptian leader betrayed his people. He gave his troops fake pistols, their weapons would literally backfire and hit the person who fired it. I remember I was at the market with my sisters when I saw a Zionist owned plane flying over our heads, getting ready to drop bombs on us. The Egyptian army stationed nearby hit the plane with a bomb before it could hit us. The Egyptian bomb exploded but it was very light and it did no damage--the plane kept flying. That day, I lost three friends because of the bombs from that plane.”
“Sidou, why would the Egyptian leader kill his own soldiers? Why would he even agree to help if his troops were just going to their death?” I questioned.
“It’s a lot of politics habibty, and even I sometimes have trouble understanding why some people do stuff, but apparently there was a lot of British influence in Egypt at the time.”
“Hold on, what do the British have anything to do with this” I asked barely keeping up at this point.
“Well, they say the British were helping the Zionists. When the Egyptian leader first agreed for his military to intervene and help the Palestinians, the British did not know, so when they found out, they bought a new shipment of the ‘newest equipment’ and the Egyptian leader distributed them to his troops. Clearly, they were duds. The Jordanian Army, however, was very powerful and took some cities that were occupied back from the Zionists. Unfortunately similar to the Egyptians, their general was a British man. After the British saw the damage the Jordanians could do, they ordered them to withdraw the Jordanian troops.”
“I still don’t get it, why do the British care so much about what happens?” I pondered.
“Politics--”
“No!” I interrupted, “you keep saying politics but what do you mean by that? It’s all so confusing!”
“That’s the thing my dear Nouraa, it’s extremely confusing, that even I don’t fully understand. In fact, I don’t know anyone who fully understands, but that is the thing about politics, someone is always hiding something. Anyway, do you want to hear more of the story, or should I stop here for now, we can continue tomorrow?” sidou asked.
“No let’s keep going for a bit longer, I want to know more!” I begged.
“Okay but just a bit longer, if your mama finds out you're still awake she’ll yell at me. It was March 1948 on the 2nd day of Ramadan, when someone got an anonymous heads-up, what is it called?”
“A tip?” I answered unsure.
“Yes, a tip. Someone got a tip saying my village of Beit Mahsir was going to be raided next. We were told to leave the village for a week so that we wouldn’t be hit with bombs and gunshots. I was scared, I didn’t know what to do and I’ve never seen my mama so terrified. Every time I’d ask her what’s happening, she would start crying and hugging me, so eventually I stopped asking her. For a week I was outside, used sand and leaves as my blankets and pillows, and slept under a tree, huddled up with my family. After a week, my baba returned to the village and again the leaders told him to stay away for another week, because the Zionists did not hit yet, but they were confident they were coming soon. My baba checked on the house and everything was fine. Same thing happened for the next 2 weeks--my baba would get sent back and report to my village to stay out because the Zionist soldiers were ‘for sure’ coming the following week. The fifth week when my baba went to the village, the leaders said it was fine to return, but everything was taken. Nouraa, when I say everything, I mean everything: from the food to my mom’s jewelry to even our birth certificates, literally everything. Imagine you come back from school one day and this house is blank, empty, vacant, everything just gone.”
I could hear the hurt in his voice, even after all these years. “Was it just your family, or did everyone’s things get stolen too?” I was too shocked to process what my grandpa really just told me.
“Of course it was the whole village, they did not leave a single thing. My family knew we couldn’t stay because we knew the Zionist soldiers would come back to claim the land, and if we were here when they got there, then they’d kill us, just like they did to the first six villages they took over. So we went and stayed with my baba’s business partner, who was living a few cities over. However, after a month the soldiers came and once again my family and I had to flee. I remember I wasn’t running fast enough and I lost my family. I was yelling their names, but no one would respond. As I was running, someone threw me on their back and I recognized him as one of my brother’s friends. Eventually, after stopping and continuing to migrate for a few weeks, we arrived at Rafah, a camp. I remember it was January 1949 and there was the United Nations Relief and Works Agency waiting for us. They gave us a tent to live in, but it was snowing outside and there was nothing to cover ourselves with, so it was very cold. There were 11 people living in my tent. The UNRWA gave us dried wood to start fires to cook and keep warm, but sometimes it didn’t even start. After the wood from UN was done, we were forced to use tree branches as wood, but it was not dried so it barely worked. But some survived, somehow.”
“But how’d you even live, like didn’t you freeze to death and just how?!?” I questioned.
“Looking back, I can’t even imagine it. I don’t even know how we lived like that. When someone is in a situation like that one, they will do everything they can to survive, and that’s what I did. Every night, for years, I would tell myself just to survive the next day.”
“How’d you get out of Rafah, and make a life of yourself? I always hear stories about how people don’t ever get out of refugee camps” I asked.
*very big yawn* “Ahh Nouraa, that’s a story for another day, perhaps tomorrow?” sidou responded while yawning another time. Seeing his exhaustion I reluctantly agreed and decided I also needed some rest, so I laid on the ground and drifted into a slumber.
Bibliography
Abunaser, Abdulkader. Personal Interview. 2 May 2020.
Al-Taghriba Al-Filistinia, written by Walid Saif, directed by Hatem Ali, 2004.
Matari, Enas. Personal Interview. 23 April 2020.
Steven Glazer. “The Palestinian Exodus in 1948.” Institute for Palestine Studies,
Steven Glazer. “The Palestinian Exodus in 1948.” Institute for Palestine Studies,
https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/38640. Accessed 30 April 2020.
I really liked your story! I like the idea of using a grandfather granddaughter relationship to talk about a time where many people suffered. It reminds me about how my sisters and I would be excited to sit down with my dad and he'd tell us about his time as a prisoner of war. Your choice to go with a story-telling style instead of flashbacks was really nice to read. I though the use of things like *sniff* was pretty fun!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your story! I like how you used first-person narration. It made the story feel more personal and it allowed you to be efficient in laying out all the facts. It almost felt like a movie introduction in the beginning of your story. I also like that you chose to put in interruptions to remind readers that it's not a flashback.
ReplyDeleteYour story was really nice! I love how it communicates the crazy complexities of the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as some of the horrible things that have happened there in the past 80ish years. I also like how you don't let the reader get lost in the story, and how Nouraa voices a lot of the questions that I had while reading. I think you did a really good job of both educating the reader and developing an emotional story in such a short length.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how this story turned out! I like how the story really highlights many issues about the Palestine-Israel conflict while keeping the reader informed. The changes you made from the rough draft are great and it really adds to this personal story being told from generation to generation.
ReplyDelete