PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 92

was yet to come: the arrival of Jewish immigrants from
around the world had remained discrete until then, but
for anyone who wished to see it, it had been obvious
for a long time. In some ways 1948 was inevitable. And
our departure to Gaza came as no surprise.
We each took a small suitcase and we squeezed our-
selves into a big car heading for Gaza. On the way, we
passed Egyptian soldiers who, I was later told, were
very poorly armed. Their willingness could do nothing
in the face of the impressive Israeli forces, which were
numerically superior and extremely well equipped.
South of Hebron, the firing suddenly grew stronger,
and we found shelter in the mosque close to Beit Jibrin
(today in Israeli territory). I was trembling with fear,
my brothers and sisters too; bullets were whistling by
and it smelled of metal. But my father was there to
calm us down.
In Gaza, he rented a flat and we were all able to go to
school. We were not the only new arrivals: many people
from southern Palestine emigrated to Gaza. 13 Unfor-
tunately, four months after our arrival, the war caught
up with us. My father decided that it would be better
to return to Jerusalem, but it was impossible to go back
the way we had come – the road was closed, the Israelis
were already in the area between Gaza and Jerusalem;
Gaza was cut off, like it is today. We would have to go
to Cairo, from there fly to Amman and finally go by
road to Jerusalem.
But when we got to Cairo, my father met up with
some friends who managed to convince him to wait
for a few days, a few weeks even, long enough for the
Arab armies to intervene, for everything to go back
to how it had been, and for the direct route between
Gaza and Jerusalem to open up again. The idea that the
war would not last long was so entrenched that all the
families we knew began to wait… a wait that became
unending. We did not have refugee status in Egypt, we
were just families hoping for the roads to reopen so that
we could go home. Confident families who, in the early
1950s pinned their hopes on Nasser’s speeches (at the
time, all the Palestinians believed in his pan-Arabism).
Every six months we had to renew our residency per-
mits at the Ministry of Interior.
We had become nothing but a large family with no
income. My father had a lot of difficulty making ends
meet, but he never let us feel that we lacked anything.
He opened his house and his table to all his friends
who came from Jerusalem to see him in Cairo. He was
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Memories of 1948
an honourable man who taught us always to behave
respectfully. Girl or boy, he treated us equally, includ-
ing when it came to inheritance, particularly of his
lands in Gaza, which he scrupulously divided between
us all in equal parts.
Then, in the mid-1950s, the export of oranges from
Gaza became possible once again, which was a relief
for him and meant we could live in better conditions.
Since his primary preoccupation was our education,
as soon as he could, he enrolled me and several of my
siblings in a boarding school in Helwan, a suburb of
Cairo. For me, this was an unforgettable experience:
there were 15 or 16 of us per class and I had a group
of excellent Egyptian friends whose main characteris-
tic was their highly developed sense of humour. At the
time no one ever made me feel unwelcome as a Pales-
tinian. After leaving school, I went to study journalism
at the University of Cairo. The reputation of Egyptian
schools and universities was well established, their
excellence attracted students from across the Middle
East. But… but I dreamed of returning to Palestine.
So, when my father suggested a short visit to my eldest
sister in Jerusalem, I jumped for joy. Living in exile for
so many years, far from home, from my roots, from my
family’s history, I was obsessed by anything that could
bring me closer to Palestine.
It was during this trip that my childhood friend
Lubna introduced me to her brother Helmi Mohtadi.
He was finishing his medical degree in Cairo (later he
studied to be an ear, nose and throat specialist in Eng-
land). We were engaged in Cairo in 1955, then married
in Ramallah. I was 19 and I had returned to Palestine;
I could not imagine living anywhere else.
My father decided to leave Cairo at the end of 1961.
He wanted to return to Gaza, to be near his land, so
he went with my mother and my youngest brother. It
is strange: after 14 years of exile, life pushed him to
return to Palestine, to his home, as if he knew that he
would die there three months later. Fortunately, he did
not see how, in 2004, the Israelis bulldozed his hun-
dred dunums of fruit trees, and destroyed his house, his
swimming pool and his stone wells. Today, both sides
of the road that crosses the area are desert – so that the
Israeli soldiers can move around in complete safety.
In the spring of 1967, my mother and youngest
brother came to see me in Ramallah. 14 They had to go
via Cairo, Amman and over the King Hussein Bridge
(also known as the Allenby Bridge, after the British