PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 159

And so, at home no one ever called me Tamam, not
even my mother. At school and in the street, I was Um
Al Kheir to everyone, right into adulthood.
Another little girl had the same nickname as me. Her
father was ‘Abd Al Qadir Al Jilani. He was a very wise
man, a Sufi. 4 My father and some other Sufi men from
Jerusalem often gathered at our house at the end of the
day, which annoyed my mother because she had to pre-
pare everything to receive them; she herself told me about
this later, when I was old enough to understand. Such
gatherings were not forbidden by the British authorities.
We lived with our whole extended family, cousins,
aunts and uncles, great aunts and great uncles, about a
hundred people in all, in a single neighbourhood that
carried our family name, Harat Al Ghul (hara in Ara-
bic means neighbourhood). Our village, Silwan, was at
the foot of the Al Aqsa mosque, on the side of the hill
upon which stands the Old City of Jerusalem. Further
down the Wadi Rababa (wadi means valley in Arabic)
the springs of ‘Ayn Silwan and Bir Ayub flowed out. 5 It
was a beautiful place covered in olive trees. At the top
of the hill there was an Orthodox monastery and the
monks who lived there were happy to exchange their
bread for our olive oil.
Ramadan 6 festivities were very important in our
family. Every year, my father made it a point of honour
to invite the widowed and single women of Silwan to
an iftar, the meal that breaks the fast after sunset, so
that they could enjoy every possible culinary delight.
On the first day of the Eid after Ramadan, all the men
of the family went to Al Aqsa mosque as soon as the
first sunbeams touched the Dome of the Rock. During
that time, my mother prepared the dishes that she then
sent to the mukhtar’s house where the men gathered
to eat after prayers. She had taught us to cook large
amounts of food to distribute to the family, to neigh-
bours and to the most needy. We used enormous cop-
per pots which the nomads, the Doms 7 would come to
polish every two or three months. We called them the
Nawar. They roamed through Jordan, Palestine, Syria
and Iraq and their women were very beautiful. Most
of them were blacksmiths and they were reputed to be
specialists in polishing: they would sit inside the large
pots with a rag tied round their hips and feet and they
polished the metal until it shone. It was acrobatic work
and the Nawar seemed to be dancing the Twist.
For the Eid, the celebration at the end of Ramadan,
we children did not receive presents but were given
a few coins, the Eidiyah. We would spend them on
sweets on the esplanade in front of the mosques, but
we always kept one coin back so that we could go and
see the sandouq al a’ jab, the magic box. It consisted of
a trunk, the size of a television, on which a story-teller
would make the images glide past by turning a handle
whilst telling stories. He captivated us with his social
satire. It was an opportunity to make fun, in a barely
disguised way, of those that power had made egotistical
and greedy.
Another celebration in which I took part every year
was Easter. Both Muslims and Christians would paint
eggs, but the Muslims started on the Thursday and the
Christians on the Friday. 8 For this occasion I would try
to go to the Holy Sepulchre, but it was not easy to get
inside because there were so many people. In mid-April,
our family took part in the pilgrimage to Nabi Musa,
near Jericho, where the prophet Moses is supposed to
have lived or been buried. 9 According to my parents,
this celebration dated back to the time of Saladin. 10
In the early 1940s, my parents tended a farm in Jer-
icho, close to the site of Jesus’ baptism, on the banks of
the Jordan River. My father often went there – it was
the only place where his asthma attacks lessened. Over
the years, for health reasons, we would stay there more
and more often and as a result I was not very diligent
in primary school. It must be said that my mother did
not think it very important, whereas she had made it a
point of honour to send all her sons to the best univer-
sities! For example, she had sold some land so that Faez,
the eldest, could study at the University of Al Azhar in
Cairo; Mahmoud, the second, then Musa, had received
grants from the British government, and Zaki studied
law in Jerusalem – so why not me? I would ask her all
the time: am I less intelligent than my brothers? I was
the youngest child, and at that time girls got married
very young; to pay for them to study was a waste of
money. I did not agree with this view of the world, and
I spent much time and energy trying to prove that it
was wrong. In the meantime, I was the one called on to
do domestic chores: if there were things to serve, clean,
prepare, it was always me that was asked. Um Al Kheir
here, Um Al Kheir there. My brothers were away most
of the time, so the idea of asking them to lend a hand
when they came home to visit was unimaginable!
I was not going to school when my brother Mahmoud
came to see us in Jericho. He was beside himself. “Um Al
Kheir should be in school!” he exclaimed to my mother
Tamam
157