PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | 页面 130

Capoeira, Jerusalem
to gather all 14 of his children by his two wives. My
mother counted her offspring for fear of forgetting one,
while cradling her last-born and reassuring the older
ones. And so we found ourselves on the road to Gaza,
along with many tens of thousands of other people,
all from southern Palestine. 4 Fear had permeated our
spirits so that we felt neither cold nor hunger. Night
time, dawn, daylight, the blood red earth, the deserted
villages… Others like us came to swell our ranks along
the way.
On arrival in the Gaza Strip, families had no idea
where to go, and this plunged them into even greater
distress. It was at that moment that my mother real-
ized that she had forgotten the most important thing:
the little metal box in which she kept, properly folded,
the Palestinian pound notes that she had been putting
aside for years. Five hundred pounds of savings hidden
in the ground under the trapdoor in the kitchen of our
house in Yibna.
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Memories of 1948
I was about sixteen years old, 5 but I was one of the
older children in the family, the responsible ones. I
knew that this money could help us to survive, at least
for a while.
‘I’m going back!’ I declared.
Straight away, Mahmoud Al Absi, a 15-year-
old neighbour, joined me and we retraced our steps
together. We were each as anxious as the other, but the
fact of being two made us stronger. We had to be very
careful; there were soldiers everywhere. After spending
several nights in the dark, jumping at the slightest mur-
mur, terrified by the movement of rushes and the touch
of lizards, drinking water from streams and channels,
eating anything that looked edible… we reached Yibna.
On the edge of the village we separated, having
agreed that we would meet up under a big tree two
or three hours after sunset. The Israeli soldiers knew
that some people would come back to their homes: we
had been warned that some objects in the houses had