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
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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