PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 178

Jaffa them were dark skinned. I learned later that they came from Africa and India, from parts of the British Empire and were enlisted in the British Army. One day in 1944, my father (who was employed by the British at the time) was transferred from Jaffa to Jeru- salem. There we lived in the Baqa’a quarter, 5 in a house which enabled me to get really close to the English for the first time: there was a senior British officer who lived on the ground floor and his son, Jacob, preferred to play with my sister, the gentle and timid Siham, rather than with me, who couldn’t sit still. Jacob’s parents would chase me away shouting as if to scare off birds, but they would fill my sister’s pockets with sweets. They did not like me and knew how to make me feel it. So I began to reject them too. In the mid-1940s, I was able to go the Mamuniah school in Jerusalem, thanks to my aunt who taught 176 Memories of 1948 there. British soldiers were everywhere in the alley- ways. We were afraid of them, and also we feared the Zionist groups who were attacking the British to try to make them leave as quickly as possible – they were no longer needed. 6 One such attack took place on July 22, 1946. I was waiting to be picked up after school at 12:30 when an explosion swallowed up all the noise of the city: the Zionists had just blown up the King David Hotel, the headquarters of the British in Jerusalem. 7 All around me people started running. By chance, I was able to find my aunt’s house. I was eight years old when fighting broke out on November 29, 1947, 8 immediately after the adoption of Resolution 181 by the United Nations General Assem- bly, and nine when the British left Palestine after 26 years of mandate and the Zionists announced the cre- ation of the State of Israel. The British administration