Before the launch of the Israeli experiment in 1948, one of its founders summarized the solution to the existing population of Palestine thus: The old ones will die, and the young ones will forget.

 

How is the solution progressing? Many of the old ones have died, it is true, without ever seeing their homes again, or any justice regarding their forced exile and dispossession.What about their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren?

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

Come with me on a bief tour of exile.Our first stop is Nahr al-Barid (pronounced Nahh-Ral-Ba-Red) Refugee Camp in northern Lebanon. This is the first official refugee camp that UNRWA set up for the population fleeing on foot from attacks on their homes in northern Palestine.

 

We are walking rather briskly through the narrow lanes marked out by the cement-block houses spaced in winding lines three feet apart. Many of the structures reach three storeys high, and a few even higher, severely filtering the sky’s generous daylight. But like the sea that reveals treasures as you dive farther from the sun’s reach, these winding lanes unfold constant scenes of well-wishing and welcome manners. “Peace upon you.” “And upon you peace. How are you today?” “Fine, praise God. God keep you and your children.” There is something about close quarters that brings out either the best or the worst in people. In a constricted passage where one hem brushes another, it is a happy thing that people make these contacts a positive opportunity. The danger of superficiality is overcome by sincerity, even if it is just a tiny portion of humane exchange.

 

We knock on a metal door divided down the middle. “Please come in!” comes the response. So we push open the right panel of the door with its heart-shaped grille-work, and spill into the breadth of a tiled entrance. Proceeding to the first-floor room that constitutes the house, we shed our shoes at the threshold. One lightbulb hanging from the ceiling provides plenty of light in lieu of the small window letting in a few grey rays. Brightness also comes from the cheery scene of silk flower arrangements sporting assorted colors in various corners. Here is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of three framed pictures placed in aesthetic order on the walls. Here is a red Mother’s Day card with the photo of a mother’s final farewell to her son as he departs to disable the invasion of the homeland. “You see, Tahani? The nation is more precious than the son.”

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

Walls in homes and offices become exhibition spaces for the Palestinian flag. More than one door is made into a flag, as the proportions are perfect. The holy places of Jerusalem take myriad forms in photographs, watercolors, oils, pastels, children’s drawings, calendars, bead and shell craft creations, and are framed with flowers or adorned with a martyr postcard. If we were to stack up all of these renditions of the Dome of the Rock, they would surely make a line long enough to thread through all the alleys of the camp.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

We are taking a short drive to Baddawi Refugee Camp which has far fewer people spread over a larger area. Here the sky is bigger than the buildings. But a mural covering the entire side of a building still attracts notice, and we get a full perspective of it from the wide streets and open areas. A four-storey Palestinian flag flies in a blue sky, with a map of Palestine and the Dome of the Rock in the middle. It is signed by the Committee to Support the Resistance in Palestine. This is a delegation of Iranian artists who import their talents during brief visits, and leave colorful reminders of their support on prominent display. Another shows al-Aqsa Mosque with a flag and an armed member of the Resistance in the foreground.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet? Have their outside supporters forgotten Palestine yet?

 

We travel a little farther this time, and find a portrait high above a main crossroads in Ayn al-Hilwa Refugee Camp. Larger than life, Yahya Ayyash surveys the daily comings and goings, with his traditional checkered scarf/kafiyya wrapped around his neck. He is known as “the engineer” for his technical expertise in planning explosive operations against an invader who began by attacking Palestinian civilians, and has not yet ceased. Israel annihilated him about a decade ago by using his father’s call to detonate a bomb in the mobile phone he was using. His portrait monitors the streets of the camp.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

Rain is beginning to fall rather than drizzle, so we stop at a shop with umbrellas in every size hanging from the front awning. Palestinian flags and scarves/kafiyyas and Arafat tee-shirts fill the emporium’s glass shelves. The owner is happy to display his treasures: souvenirs to take back home. Souvenirs that bring home, Palestine, to this place of exile.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

We turn into a narrow lane, like the ones in Nahr al-Barid, where the absence of sky dims our way instantly. Our guide pauses, and we halt behind him because there is not room to walk side by side. A low motorbike coming our way has stopped beside a cubby-hole sized shop at the convergence of two narrow lanes. The driver is unloading packages of chips and juice bottles from the box on the back fender. We proceed through the concrete labyrinth and turn in to an unexceptional metal doorway. The half-width stairs make it seem like a toy house, and the pink walls add to the effect. I almost expect to walk into a candy shop. The squeaky-clean walls are pink only halfway up, and white above. Now that we are on the second floor, where the stairwell opens to the sky, the enamel color glimmers more brightly.

 

We are welcomed with spontaneous gusto. Have they met us before? No, but we are guests of the son and thus guests of the home. “Our house includes our whole family, with apartments on three floors,” Abu Mahmoud booms. “This isn’t like your system, where a child leaves home at age eighteen, and is on their own. We remain one big family.” Their system is working in our favor, because this amazing circle of energetic smiles and immediate welcoming kisses from mother and daughters makes us feel that we must have done something to deserve it. We feel connected.

 

They are especially proud of Bahaa’ from their newest generation, and Abu Mahmoud quiets the ripples of conversation to spotlight Bahaa’ soloing a well-loved song of the Egyptian legend, Umm Kulthoum. This leads to more performances, and we become one swelling chorus, ultimately breaking up into laughter. Our guide announces that his father recites poetry. So Abu Mahmoud takes the family stage, with a voice to match his robust frame emphasized by an unmistakably mustard sweater. He declaims a poem that brings us to the balcony of a woman who does not yet know if she is a widow or bereaved of her son. His verses affirm her endurance in the face of attacks on Palestine and her people. He composed this in prison at Jalameh near Jenin in Galilee when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. I ask if he has a written copy. Without a break in his enthusiasm, he says, “No, I composed this orally. I am illiterate. I have lots of poems that I have composed and memorized!” He goes on to describe the attack that invaded every home in some way, and he lauds the fortitude of every family’s women.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

Written poems by literate poets include titles such as:

 

A sparrow from my homeland

Sleep, my child: for the martyr Muhammad Durra

Dreams of Palestine

Reading the Faces of the Suicide-Seekers

I weep for you, Palestine, yet we will return (with God’s permission)

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

A new book title is “The people are mightier than massacres,” and the last page reproduces an earlier poster: The Return of Herod. Relatives mourn 4-month-old Iman, who was killed by Israeli troops in Gaza, Palestine. It’s the return of Herod, the emperor who ordered the killing of children in Nazareth around the time of Jesus’ birth. Let the world know the truth. Forward this picture. DamascusOnline.com   2001.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

We lace through more of the network of slim alleyways. A young boy expertly steers a wheelbarrow past us, balancing a full-sized stove on it. We cannot match his pace on this uneven paving, though we have only our own bodies to balance. As we proceed single file, we hear a boy and his aunt up ahead singing a song of Palestine with a memorable refrain.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

We visit several youth centers, each of which has a group that performs music by their own songwriters. At one, we hear a rehearsal tape that sounds professional enough to be in the shops. At another, we pressure the lead singer to indulge us even though he has a sore throat. We are not surprised to learn that he has professional experience. The glue is still drying on the oud (from which we derive the word “lute”) whose pieces they lovingly patched together. Funds are few, and strings are the next step. Talent abounds and we feel the world is missing out by ignoring these voices.

 

They sing of:

 

Muhammad Durra, separate songs in Palestinian and Lebanese dialects

Our Return

Witness, World!

Don’t cry, my nation.

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

Our guide has a niece named Jenin, who was born shortly after Israel’s major invasion of Jenin in March and April, 2002. Schools and streets in these camps have been renamed Jenin. A whole crop of baby girls carry the remembrance of this injustice in their name, Jenin. A local poem comes to mind: “The harvest-grains of our exile embrace the harvest-grains of our nation.”

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

 

A new friend points to a martyr poster on the wall, and explains that it is her father. The attack on Iraq affected him so deeply, after witnessing decades of attacks on Palestine, that he had a heart attack. As his daughters gathered close to him at the hospital, he uttered his last words: “Don’t forget Palestine.”

 

Have they forgotten Palestine yet?

The View South From Abu Hamdoun's Home           

 

            We are introducing ourselves, and our host tells me, "In all honesty, I tell you that my only name is "Returner/`A'id," i.e., "one who is returning to his home." This is the masculine version of the name known to opera lovers for Verdi's heroine, Aida. You hear it frequently as a name for women, but not for men. Our host never does say his real name, but I hear it when the others address him. Another attendee, the convener of the poetry salon, defers to "our professor," the self-taught returner, and asks him to open the session by reciting a poem. He agrees, but first introduces his daughter, telling the story of her name. If the baby was a girl, he and his wife decided they would call her Palestine. However, since he was away when she was born, his wife yielded to the political tension of the times, giving her the name of a fragrant flower instead. But he still calls her Palestine.

            I think of another Palestine, a few years older than this articulate high-school girl born in Lebanon. The other Palestine was enrolled at Najah University in Nablus, Occupied Palestine. But her commute from Jenin Refugee Camp became too difficult, as the Israeli checkpoint soldiers would harass her when they saw her name, written in Arabic and Hebrew on her identity card. So she ceased her studies at that superior institution, to continue them at Al-Quds Open University just across the road. The military often closes down that university, too, but on those days she stays home, and does not have to present her identity card to anyone. Her friends, Tahrir/Liberation and Islam, laugh about what a problem the three of them would cause to the occupation forces: "Islam, Liberation of Palestine" is the phrase their names form.

           "Yes, I'll give you some change for a treat, but first tell me who you love," says Abu Hamdoun, cradling his little daughter. Her brother is there, too, such a polite youngster who had brought me some nuts and insisted I partake of his offering. The boy's name is not Hamdoun, so I ask his father about the moniker. The common custom is for a man to be called after his eldest son's name, Abu X/Father of X, or his daughter in the absence of a son. The western press sometimes erroneously refers to this as a nom de guerre, a militaristic misnomer for a tender relationship. As for his name, he explains that their first child, Hamdoun, died in infancy. The next two children were boys whom they also named Hamdoun and who also died in infancy. "You see, we have a number of shahids/martyrs," he says, his eyes widening slightly with a mixture of melancholy and realism. It is not a political statement, just a reference to the environment in which people live and die in the refugee camp. His children are dear to him, and are remembered in his nom de paternite.

            A reverse procedure keeps Abu Jihad in remembrance. When I first meet Jihad, I am told that his brother is a shahid/martyr, and his parents are missing since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon more than two decades ago. Later, when I mention a young journalist I have just met, he tells me that she has interviewed him, but knows him by his original name, Sharif. Responding to my unasked question, he says, "The result of jihad/struggle is that a person becomes sharif/noble, isn't it?" I nod agreeably, though this illumination is like moonlit clouds-lovely but unclear. However, I notice that new friends call him Jihad, while long-time neighbors call him Sharif.

           On one occasion, he tells a new acquaintance about his names. By this time, I had forgotten that his parents went missing and have never been accounted for. Jihad is actually the name of his eldest brother, the shahid/martyr. One would not normally assume one's brother's name, but where there is a Jihad, there is an Abu/Father of, and Imm/Mother of Jihad. Now I realize that he is preserving his parents' memory. He goes on to say that when he marries, he would like to name his eldest son Jihad, and thus become Abu Jihad himself. His parents are dear to him, and he will thus be a living tribute to his father.

            As we walk through the area that used to divide East and West Beirut "during the Events," Jihad tells of riding his bicycle here as a schoolboy. Lebanese forces stopped him and took him to their nearby headquarters for questioning. When they asked for his identity card, he said that he didn't have it with him, as he was just going to school. "If they had seen my identity card, they would have known that I'm Palestinian, and they would have slaughtered me on the spot," he says, smiling. They held him for a week, and then released him, but would not release the bicycle. He began to cry, so the commander made them return his bicycle to him. That was when he was still Sharif, and didn't have to bear a different name to keep his parents in remembrance. Although he likes to visit Syria where his uncles reside, Lebanon is the most beautiful place in the world to him because of all that he has experienced here. He has turned down opportunities to emigrate to Europe legally, while his local friends yearn to insert their own names onto his official invitations. His memories of Imm and Abu Jihad, his mother and father, are here. Their presence was last known here.

            Here in another refugee camp home is Fatima, a mother and grandmother whose eyes are all warmth as her own father proclaims, "She is our firstborn. She is the one I made qurban/sacrifice [of a sheep] for, when she and her mother came through the birth in health." They named her after one of the daughters of the prophet Muhammad. He didn't wait for a son to thank God. The daughter and her mother are precious to the father.

            Another father explains how they named their son. I had assumed they borrowed the English name, Lawrence. But Lurans, he and his wife tell me, is the name of a sea bird: "You see how we love the idea of freedom? We named our son for the sea bird that can fly freely." They live high on a hill in a small, uncrowded refugee camp which has recovered from some of the decimation and depopulation wrought by Israel's concentrated attack on its homes. Here the eye drinks in the blue of the sea and the green of rolling knolls with lines of olive trees. You can follow the olive trees to Palestine. The sea bird will fly freely abroad and home. The returner/`a'id will return to his home.