PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 48

the settlements that always want to grow, since nobody
is stopping them! But each time they have tried to evict
me, I went to court, even if they shut the door in my
face when I arrived and I had to go back the following
day and the day after that. So far I have won the right
to keep my land, but only on paper: in practice it is
they who decide when they will allow me to access it
and harvest my olives!
We, the Palestinians, call Israel “48”. 4 I was five
years old in 1948. We lived in the countryside. My par-
ents had neither radio nor television, and news did not
come to us easily. We would only see the British when
we went into town…
We were ten children at home. My father, Saleh, was
a farmer and trader and in particular a discoverer and
advocate of new agricultural technology. Everybody
used to call him “the Ambassador”, and he was widely
respected in the whole area. He would often set off
with his camel, laden with bags of sheep manure, to go
to Haifa and Jaffa to sell them as fertilizer. He would
sell to everybody, Christian and Muslim Palestinians,
and Jews who had arrived as immigrants between 1920
and 1930, mainly from Europe. In the late 1940s, a
drought killed our crops and our wells went dry. We
had to walk miles to fetch water from the springs of
Wadi Qana.
One day during the summer of 1948, tens and then
hundreds of our Arab neighbours came to our village,
whole families crowding onto any uncultivated land
around. They were fleeing from Kafr Saba, Arab Abu
Kishek… villages that had become part of the new state
of Israel. From that day on, there was a border separat-
ing us from those who yesterday were our neighbours
because their land was now part of Israel. They had
been driven out, but we had not. At least, not that time.
Terrorized by the attacks of the paramilitary groups
and the fresh memory of the Deir Yasin massacre, 5 they
fled their homes taking nothing with them, thinking
they would go back as soon as the Arab armies, of
whose might they had been convinced,  had liberated
their land… Poor neighbours! They were so destitute
that they willingly exchanged their old shoes for some
food. They slept on the ground and planted whatever
they could, wherever they could: faquss, a long, thin
variety of cucumber that we did not grow and melon,
amongst other things. They also collected wood to
make charcoal that they sold cheaply in winter time.
My father would buy some and take it to Rafidia (west
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Memories of 1948
of Nablus) to resell. Then he would go to Nablus where
he bought some flour that my mother could turn into
bread to fill our hungry bellies. We did not have much
to share: our meals consisted mainly of dates soaked
in warm water and homemade bread. Our olives were