PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 132

arms, hanging up the telephone and announcing to me
that he had to go to Italy urgently, and so I would have
to cross the border with the money, just me, on my
own. In that satchel there was enough to buy the whole
of Gaza, and the Egyptian customs officers could have
taken it all from me, because crossing with large sums
of money was forbidden. Schilling had warned me:
if that happened to me, I was to give the case to the
customs officers and leave. Luckily, I went through the
barriers without being stopped. On arriving in Gaza,
I rushed to the Brazilian battalion and gave it all to
them. When Schilling returned from his unexpected
journey, he called me into his office and told me that he
was impressed with me and that he thought it would be
better for me to leave for Brazil, and that he would help
me; for there was no future for me in Gaza. I was par-
alysed. My family counted on my salary, and I did not
have the wherewithal to pay for my passage across the
Atlantic! My arguments did not dissuade him one bit.
He picked up his telephone, called one of his friends,
Marshal Lott, 15 who was nothing less than the Min-
ister of War in Brazil, and organized for me to obtain
a pass from the governor of Gaza 16 to go to Port Said
where I was to embark on a Brazilian navy ship. I still
have that document, dated 15th February 1959, which
authorized me to cross the Sinai desert to the port – a
one-way pass, with no return!
In Colonel Schilling’s eyes, I had to seize this incred-
ible opportunity at all costs: to be a civilian and travel
on a military ship was not a chance given to everyone!
But my mother found it hard to let me leave. To begin
with, she was firmly opposed to it. I had promised to
send news frequently and to come back to get married
in Gaza with the wife that she would choose for me…
which finally convinced her. I had $41 set aside, which
I put in my bag with my clothes. The day of my depar-
ture, my mother caught the only chicken she had, the
one which laid two or three eggs a week, twisted its
neck and cooked if for me. In this way, she was giving
me everything that she had so that I could eat during
my journey. She had no idea that crossing the Atlantic
would take three to four weeks.
In Port Said, everything was organized for me to
embark on a Brazilian naval ship bound for Rio de
Janeiro. To begin with I stayed in the hold to avoid any
problems, but the Brazilian soldiers were welcoming and
they very quickly integrated me into the crew; the sol-
diers brought me feijão preto, black beans and rice. I had
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Memories of 1948
never seen black beans and I assumed they were burnt,
so I put them aside discretely and swallowed the rice,
which made the soldiers laugh a lot. We put in Tunisia,
Las Palmas, Senegal and Recife before reaching Rio.
Rio, the beautiful, did not enthral me. Barely had
the ship reached the quayside than all the soldiers went
off to their homes, and I – well I lay down on and slept
on a bench in the park, Praça Mauá, opposite the port.
I had not imagined that it would be so difficult to sur-
vive in another country without being able to commu-
nicate. I had been sleeping on the streets for several
weeks when I saw a Brazilian soldier that I had known
in Gaza, and whom I asked to help me by taking me to
the Ministry of War: I was determined to go home. I
missed my family terribly, I was destitute and could not
send them anything: to stay here was pointless! But the
colonel who received me explained that it was not pos-
sible and that I would have to wait six months before a
ship left for the Near East.
I was in the ministry and I could see myself living on
the streets for another six months when a sergeant (who
I knew from Gaza) asked me, ‘Do you want to work?’
‘Of course!’ I replied.
‘And you are not afraid of working in a dangerous
place?’
‘No…’
He introduced me to an acquaintance of his and I
became a bus driver in São João de Meriti, a suburb
in the north-west part of town, where I did not need a
driving licence since the police never ventured in there.
And I lived there, not for six months but for six years,
eating bananas and feijão, sleeping on the back seat of
the bus, washing in the river and learning Portuguese
from the road signs. The people in this dangerous
neighbourhood never ostracized me nor provoked me.
Why would they? I had nothing for them to be envious
of and I ate and lived like them. With time, I became
one of them. And when I told them that I came from
Palestine, they nicknamed me Patrício de deus (compa-
triot of God), because Jesus was also Palestinian.
My salary was not fixed: I received 25% of the
takings, so my income varied from one month to the
next, and I sent three-quarters home to my mother;
this allowed the whole family to survive, for there was
hardship everywhere in Gaza. 17 I always believed that
what one of us earned was for all of us and I have never
questioned that principle. That solidarity allowed one
of my brothers to open a carpet shop and two others to