PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 74

who had even been in the same transport as them from
Jericho. He led us to the two children.
Ziyad and Mohammad had waited a long time in
front of the park in Jericho. They had stood there, in
spite of the bomb that had fallen just a few hundred
metres away, where the road had started to burn up,
spewing flames. As luck would have it a neighbour
came by on his bicycle, looking for his own children.
He helped Ziyad and Mohammad to cross the area that
was in flames and left them with a relation of ours,
Amnah. This cyclist later told me that he had had great
trouble detaching Ziyad’s little hand from his, because
he was holding on so desperately. Amnah set off with
the two children. Fate put them in the path of a car
crammed full of children. The driver had turned off
his headlights and was driving in the total darkness of
a moonless night, with the children crying in the back.
Mohammed, who must have been the smallest in
the group, had got very hot and his lips had turned
dark blue, like black stone. Luckily Amnah noticed his
alarming degree of dehydration and found him some
water to drink. He could have died. The next morn-
ing the car left them all in the centre of Amman, and
Amnah began to look for me. When I found them,
when I saw them running towards me, I could not
believe my eyes: God is indeed merciful. Moham-
mad was sobbing so much he could hardly speak, but
between sobs he mumbled, ‘Ziyad’s fault… he lost me!’
Years later I would still wake up in the night shout-
ing out, ‘Where are my boys?’ To lose one’s children is
not a thing I would wish upon my worst enemy.
Half of Palestine was in Amman. And there were
not enough houses to rent, so people were sleeping in
the street. I managed to find my husband and we went
north from the capital to Zarqa where there was a big
Palestinian refugee camp. We were granted Jordanian
nationality, 24 which meant that we were able to buy
a little plot of land in Ar Rusaifa 25 where we built a
permanent house. My boys finished their education in
Jordan, and I had ten children, five girls and five boys.
Mohammad became an artist and makes films. Ziyad
went to study in the USSR. He had completed his lan-
guage studies and had started at the civil engineering
faculty in Minsk in Byelorussia, when Yasser Arafat
called for all the Palestinian students in socialist coun-
tries to join up with him in Lebanon. It was the summer
of 1981, 26 and the PLO was taking on the hostile forces
of Israel, the Phalangists and Syria all at the same time.
Ziyad did not hesitate one second and went in the name
of the people of Palestine. It mattered to him to be one of
those who stood up when the name Palestine was spoken
– it was essential to him even. But during the months
that followed we had no more news from him: commu-
nications were totally severed. The media would report
the deaths of fighters, but never gave their names. We put
a black flag out in front of our house in Ar Rusaifa, as a
sign of mourning. In 1982, a letter arrived telling us that
he was alive and we could not believe it. To make sure
that it was true my husband set off to southern Lebanon.
When he got to the Bekaa Valley he started asking ques-
tions. 27 In the Middle East hearsay and word of mouth
work perfectly, and that is how he managed to find our
son, before returning home, alone, to Jordan.
Not long after, in the summer of 1982 during which
Beirut was under siege by the Israeli armed forces, the
leaders of the PLO had to leave Lebanon. 28 But before
setting out for Tunisia, Yasser Arafat sent the young
fighters back home. So Ziyad went back to the USSR,
but failed to tell me, so that when I heard about the
killings in Sabra and Shatila, I thought once more that
he was dead, and my heart nearly stopped beating.
When I could still see properly, I often used to get
together in the afternoons with the other women in Al
Rusaifa to sew. We used to embroider the traditional
cross-stitch dresses. As we worked we used to sing and
tell the younger ones about life in the villages back in
Palestine. The olive harvest, grape molasses, marriage
customs. Most of the kids today know which part of
Palestine they come from. And if you ask them they will
say ‘Jaffa’ or ‘Haifa’ or ‘Al Khalil’. But since they are not
allowed to go there, not even as visitors, they have no
idea of how beautiful these places are, these places whose
spirit is still in their blood. They do not know that now
the cactus grows on the land where our villages used to
be, as if to fight oblivion with their prickles. It is up to
us, the old ones, to tell them, to teach them the very
special fragrance of Palestine, that mix of freshness and
sweetness that is like the fragrance of honey. 
Rushdieh Al Hudeib died on April 26, 2018 at the age of 80, a few months
after having given us this interview. Her son Ziyad died 40 days later.
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Memories of 1948