PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 197

The freedom of a Sufi
Mohammad Tijani, 93 years old
On Saturday June 10, 1967, 1 the loudspeakers broadcast
the threat clearly: the 700 inhabitants of the Harat Al
Maghariba, the Mughrabi Quarter of Jerusalem, were to
evacuate their houses! 2 They were going to be demolished! 3
Everything happened very fast. The bulldozers began
their work, destroying everything in their path. Since no
one wished to die beneath the ruins, and knowing abso-
lutely that the Israeli threats were real, the residents left
in a panic, taking with them what they could. In a single
day, this part of the old city, dating to the twelfth cen-
tury 4 and situated a few metres from the Western Wall, 5
simply disappeared. Razed to the ground and replaced by
an esplanade. 6
Mohammad Tijani’s family lived in Harat Al Maghar-
iba. His father, Ahmad, had decided to live there on the
day the First World War broke out since it prevented him
from going home to Morocco. At the time, Palestine was
still part of the Ottoman Empire. All Mohammad Tijani’s
childhood, adolescent and even adult memories are tied
up with this neighbourhood, his neighbours, the Buraq
Wall and the zawiya or gathering place for the tariqa, the
Sufi brotherhood of Al Tijaniya 7 which his father set up
there and developed from 1925 onwards.
 My father was ahead of his time. He was an
enlightened and modern man. Enlightened by his faith,
modern because he taught us freedom, the freedom of
breath, of wind. Throughout his life he searched for
the divine in every living being. He was not content
simply to think, or imagine, or theorize, but he showed
us, all of us who lived around and alongside him, he
made us feel the path to knowledge and to freedom
of thought. He gave us wings. Sultan man la yarif Sul-
tan (the Sultan knows no Sultan), he would say, which
meant that in order to be one’s own boss it was better
never to submit to any authority except that of God.
In other words, he pushed us to be independent, free,
yet remaining respectful rather than seeking power by
allying ourselves with the powerful. My father was a
Sufi. His name was Ahmad Al Tijani.
In 1914, he went to Mecca on pilgrimage. A native
of the village of Tissili, 8 he had learned the seven ways
of reading the Koran in Fez before studying Islamic
Law 9 at the famous Al Azhar University in Cairo. Like
most pilgrims, he had stopped in Jerusalem on the way
home to have his pilgrimage sanctified there. 10 He had
been graciously housed and fed on the Esplanade of
the Mosques for a week when the First World War
broke out. He was stuck: going home to Morocco was
impossible; too many dangers lurked along that road.
At first he stayed in Jerusalem, where he was put up
by the Muslim waqf of Abu Madyan, 11 then, since the
Ottoman army was undertaking a massive recruitment
campaign 12 and my father was a ready-made recruit, he
Mohammad
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