PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 131

been booby-trapped. It was dusk when I pushed open
the door of our house. I noticed something shining
inside the record player – no doubt it was one of those
traps. I went forward carefully to the kitchen, to the
spot that my mother had told me was her hiding place
and took the metal box along with a carpet to make
it seem as if that was what I had come back to get;
I also filled a sack with provisions and then I headed
for our rendezvous. I had crossed a dirt track and the
orange groves when I saw a bright spot, unmoving, a
few metres away. Exactly at that moment a bird flew by
just above me, brushing the top of my head. People say
that fear makes the hairs on your head stand on end:
well, it’s true, I experienced it that day. I thought that I
was being attacked from behind and that this was my
last hour; I plunged behind a bush and waited, immo-
bile, thinking that the light was a soldier smoking a
cigarette. But the orange pinpoint did not go out, and
I finally had to face the facts: it was simply a glowing
insect! When I arrived at the big tree nobody was there,
so I sat down and eventually, waiting in the dark, I fell
asleep. Gun shots woke me up. They were coming from
Mahmoud’s house and I thought that he might have
been injured. I waited for him some more, until he
appeared, panting. A group of armed Israelis had sur-
prised him in his house; they had fired, but Mahmoud
had escaped from them and hidden, and then had had
to wait until they left.
A few days later, we re-joined our families in the
Gaza Strip. 6 The infamous metal box literally saved our
lives because it allowed us to find a roof to put over our
heads to the north of the town of Gaza, in Jabaliya. But
the money was soon running out and a way of earning
more had to be found.
For us refugees, a radio was a precious object.
We would all gather round to listen to it. Egyptian
programs would inform us about how battles were
developing, nourishing hope and suggesting the pos-
sibility of return, even if the reality was quite different.
Since we had no electricity, the radios worked on bat-
teries; I thus had the idea of buying an electric motor to
recharge them and to ask for five piasters in exchange,
that is to say, not very much. There was no work, so
some had to be invented. This is how I came to bring
in a miniscule income for the family. With my brothers
and sisters, we also served tea and coffee in front of our
hut. After two years, I had put enough money aside to
buy a small pick-up which made it possible to deliver
oranges and watermelons to the Egyptian soldiers. 7 It
must be said that our family already had some expe-
rience with oranges: during the Second World War,
our export of citrus fruits to Great Britain had been
stopped, so we disposed of our stock by going through
the alleyways of the Polish refugee quarter, exchanging
it for bread and tins of sardines. 8
After the pick-up, I bought a small French car, an old
Renault, and I became a chauffeur for young students
and their teachers. For one Egyptian pound 9 per person
per month, I took them to college in the morning and
brought them back in the evening. Any mistake could
have been the end of me, so I was very careful: I was a
well-brought-up chauffeur and strictly respected time-
tables and decorum, which earned me the blind faith of
the parents and a growing clientele.
Subsequently, I was able to buy myself two more
cars, American ones this time, a Studebaker and a
Nash. I was managing a small taxi company when the
Israelis invaded Gaza in 1956. 10 Boys threw stones at
them. One day, they came to take my brother, but I
made him escape; they arrested me, confiscated my
three taxis and incarcerated me in Beersheba prison, 11
along with many other young people. They let me go
one and half years later, in 1958. I do not like to talk
about this period of my life. My family thought I was
dead, no one had any news. At the time it was said that
you knew when you entered Beersheba, but not if you
would get out…
When I was released, I started again from scratch. It
was my reputation as a good chauffeur that saved me,
for I was lucky enough to find work with the United
Nations Emergency Forces (Unef) in Gaza. 12 I was the
driver for three representatives of that peacekeeping
force; a Norwegian, a Dane and a Brazilian, Colonel
Voltaire Londeiro Schilling. 13 I was paid seven Egyp-
tian pounds a month which, in addition to the food aid
– flour, oil, bread, etc. – that we received from Unrwa
as a Palestinian refugee family, 14 allowed us to survive.
None of the Al Jamal children had a birth certificate,
but thanks to Unrwa, we had an identity card for the
first time in our lives. Once a month I would take Mr
Schilling to Egypt to bring back a small case full of
Egyptian pounds to pay the salaries of the Brazilian
soldiers working for Unef in Gaza. I knew there was a
lot of money in that case.
During one of our trips, Schilling received a call
from his wife. I remember him, the attaché case in his
Muhyeddin
129