PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 110

Mosaics in Al Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem
Giorgio, a Christian. We used to eat a lot of lentils,
beans and peas, we grew onions and garlic, and drank
helbe, a plant which, once dried and powdered, is
drunk with water like tea. This same helbe was used as
fodder for camels. We owned a cow and a donkey, and
bred pigeons and chickens in order to have meat and
eggs to eat.
As a farmer, my father had one priority: to send his
children to school. My eldest brother had the oppor-
tunity to go to Egypt, to the University of Al Azhar
in Cairo. As for me, at the age of six I learned to read
and write with the sheikhs 11 in the neighbouring vil-
lage of Beit Tima, and then went to the primary school
in Burayr. To get there I would take the bus from the
Negba kibbutz, which was near our house. 12 I had to
pay the fare, transport was not free. At that time, we
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Memories of 1948
lived peacefully with both the Christians and the Jews,
even with the strangers who came from Europe to settle
in our countryside. Personally, I have never been in the
kibbutzim: they were places where I could not play…
but I know that our neighbours found good doctors
there. We cohabited, exchanged, worked with each
other, it was normal. My grandfather was employed as
a guard on a settlement, and I remember one of the res-
idents of Kawkaba had married a Jewish woman from
Europe… in 1948, and when it came time to leave and
find refuge in Gaza, she had fled too – with him, like
all of us.
Our life was shattered in 1947, five or six months
before the proclamation of the State of Israel – which
we called, and still call, the “territory of 1948”. The
Zionists distributed weapons in the settlements and in