palestine...
Every Palestinian has a story. Throughout our history, however, we have struggled to gain a narrative, a path through which to tell of our suffering, refuge, displacement, and victimization. Too often, our voices are lost. Our stories, our personal histories, tell of our collective struggle. Of course, every Palestinian has his or her own story, his or her own experiences, and his or her own unique anguish to describe. But our stories all have some common threads. No Palestinian living today is unaffected by the policies of Israel. Every Palestinian's life has been drastically altered by some Israeli action or another. Whether we have become refugees (in some cases many times over) or remained in our hometowns, we have all somehow been victimized by one Israeli act or another.
The modern Palestinian experience is relentless. No Palestinian can claim to be independent of it; no Palestinian can escape it. To design to write any kind of literature, or to tell any sort of story, or to live any sort of life divorced from political reality is an impossibility for the Palestinian. He or she is consumed by history even before birth. For Palestinian writers, the luxuries of choosing a past, of selecting memories, of transcending outside events, are but all a dream. But the greatest endeavor, and perhaps the greatest achievement, remains the unwillingness to become the world’s groveling casualties. Palestinian writers and intellectuals have fought against this, and while never forgetting the plight of their people, they have remained resilient, and they have risen above tragedy. Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Azmi Bishara, and Hanan Ashrawi are just some examples of this.
I will briefly tell the stories of my two grandfathers, for while they are interesting and unique in their own rights, they are all too illustrative of the Palestinian experience.
Shafiq Zahr was born in Nazareth in 1912. Shortly after his birth, his mother passed away and his father remarried. After his teenage years in Nazareth, and after irreconcilable differences with his stepmother, he left Nazareth for the seaside city of Yafa. Yafa was, at that time, the economic, political, and cultural center of Palestine. He became a Christian missionary, changed his name to Elias (Arabic for Elijah), and went on to become a teacher and principal. In the early 1940s, Elias met Salma Manoli. Salma was also a teacher in Yafa, and they soon decided to be married. Before they were married, however, the British government (which controlled Palestine at the time) enlisted Shafiq to fight for the Allied forces in World War II. Elias performed his duties for the British government, returned to Yafa, and married Salma. In March 1948, George, my father, their first child, was born. One month later, Zionist forces (with the support of the British government) took Yafa by military force, forcing tens of thousands of Arabs from the city, including Elias, Salma, and their infant child.
One can only imagine the despair Elias must have felt. After fighting for the British government and risking his life, he returned to his home only to find that the same government that he had fought for had given his land to a foreign people. He refuged to Amman, living in a neighborhood full of new Palestinian refugees. He became a carpenter (after being a school principal) and lived his life there, providing enough so that his son, my father, could attend high school, earn a scholarship to the University of Jordan, and go on to receive a Master’s degree (at the American University of Beirut) and PhD (from Berkeley).
Elias’ life in Jordan was of course not free of hardships. Although Palestinians were granted citizenship in Jordan, they were still second-class citizens (although they constituted the vast majority). They could not reach higher levels of influential office, and the Jordanian monarchy, and King Hussein in particular, constantly cracked down on them, most notably during the fighting of the fall of 1970, dubbed “Black September.” During that time, 5000 Palestinians were killed and 20000 wounded by the Hashemite army. Elias and his family would seek shelter under their one-room house during the fighting.
My father, who became a professor at the University of Jordan after completing his doctoral studies and getting married in America, was fired from his job in 1979. Without fully getting into that story, it suffices to say that he and a score of other Palestinian professors were fired for being just that, Palestinian. He was exiled from Jordan. Elias had lost his son.
I wish I could have asked my grandfather more about his life and experiences. He died in 1979 when I was only two years old. My father did not return to Jordan for his funeral, knowing he would be arrested and jailed on sight.
Muhammad Jardali was born in the city of Akka, Palestine in 1927. He finished high school there and received a college degree before beginning work as an agriculturist for the ruling British administration, traveling between northern Palestinian villages. During the war of 1948, and especially during the battles that saw Akka fall to Israeli forces, Muhammad was not in his hometown. He had been in nearby villages during the fighting and returned to Akka only after the hostility had died down. Upon his return, he found his relatives gone. At first unaware of their fate, he quickly learned that they had fled to Lebanon amidst the chaos. For the rest of his adult years, he was disconnected from his mother, father and siblings as they began new lives in Lebanon while he attempted to continue his in the new state of Israel. He married in the early 1950s and worked for an Israeli agricultural agency. He traveled throughout Israel, making agricultural assessments in various villages and towns. He became an Israeli citizen, and continued to live in the old city of Akka with my grandmother, who is from Nazareth, and his four daughters. His house was a five-minute walk from the ancient Al-Jazzar mosque, and only a stone’s throw away from the infamous wall of Akka built to keep the Crusader forces from overtaking the city almost 1000 years ago. My grandfather never had a son; so, according to Arab tradition, where a man would name his first-born son after his father, people referred to my grandfather as “Abu Mustafa” (Mustafa was his father’s name).
My mother and her three sisters were born in Akka, where they lived until 1965. In that year, Muhammad boarded a ship with his wife and children and headed for California where he was to gain more agricultural education and practical experience in order to better perform his duties back home. While my grandfather was studying and working in California, the Israeli administration of the day asked him to go on a mini-speaking tour to attest to the “good” life that Palestinians had in the state of Israel. My grandfather refused to undertake such a task. He never spoke of his defiance. I only ever heard of it from my parents. He was not the type to show off his badges of courage. Of course, the Israeli government was not very happy with his decision.
In June 1967, as my grandfather neared the end of his stint in America, the Israeli government notified him that as a result of the Six-Day War, he had 30 days to gather his family and his belongings and return to Israel. If he could not, he would lose his job and, in effect, everything else. My grandfather, an Israeli citizen, a father of four, could not return within that time frame. As a result, he lost his job, his house, and any right to live happily once again in the city of his birth. His house was eventually sold, and today its green front door remains chained and its rooms vacant, a relic in the historic old city of Akka.
He remained in California, moved between a few small towns, and finally settled in Fresno, where he lived for the remainder of his life. As a result of his hard work, he did well enough for himself, and he and my grandmother were able to do what many couples hope to do in their older age: travel to exotic places, sharing time and special experiences with each other. He took great pleasure in spending time with his grandchildren, monitoring their achievements, and giving them advice along the way. He knew of all my endeavors, and always asked me about each and every one of them whenever we spoke. I spoke with him often about his experiences, but I wish I could have asked even more. He died in May 2003, with all four of his daughters by his side.
Living the life of a Palestinian is rewarding and sad all at once. One learns to become strong and independent, but only by dealing with a sense of refuge, displacement, and dispossession. My grandfather escaped becoming a refugee in 1948, but Israel’s policies of bereavement, disinheritance, and expulsion finally caught up with him. The ugly history of Zionism, and its utter disregard and contempt for any non-Jewish humanity, has affected every Palestinian walking the earth today.
Both of my grandfathers were deprived, by a hideous and repugnant ideology masquerading as liberation, of ever living the fully dignified life of men remaining in their homeland, tolling their land, raising their families, and making their native soil a better place for generations to come. The details of my grandfathers’ stories might be unique, but their themes are emblematic of the Palestinian experience. Their stories, and all the others, must be told.
