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Reflections of a Native Son: A Jerusalem Memoir Professor Fouad Moughrabi, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee.

I was born on a hill overlooking Ein Kerem. From the top of that hill, one could easily see the skyline of Jerusalem during the day and its shining lights during the night. My father managed a resort run by the Anglican Church atop Jebel El-Rab (the hill of God). On Sundays, dignified people (including many Jews and foreigners) would come there for tea and dessert. Down in the valley where the beautiful village, known for its greenery, gardens, and scenic landscape, was nestled, the fields would be dotted with groups of picnickers from Jerusalem, out for a relaxing day in the country. Ein Kerem is the birthplace of John the Baptist and Mary is said to have visited it before giving birth to Jesus.
It was a[n] (..) Arab village until 1948, with some Christians and some Muslims. It is now part of Jewish West Jerusalem, and no Arabs live there, the village having been emptied of its original inhabitants in 1948. Ehud Olmert, the right wing mayor of Jerusalem, wants to build more houses in the area in order to bolster the overall number of Jews in Jerusalem as a whole. The Jewish inhabitants, mostly highly educated professionals, prefer to keep it as is. Says Karl Perkal, one of the leaders of the residents' committee which is fighting development: "Ein Kerem is a magnet for Christians from abroad because they are pleased to come to a place that basically looks like it did when Jesus walked the land...This is also important to nature lovers because it is the last green space in Jerusalem. We've been fighting for a generation to keep developers out." (Christian Science Monitor, 9 February, 1998) I recall going with my grandmother to the pine forest atop the mountain and down near the Russian convent to pick mushrooms. She would take time out to show me the various flowers, which she called Hannoun. She had a specific name for each one and could tell me exactly what each was good for. Some were useful for an upset stomach and some for helping you go to sleep. For each ailment there seemed to be a remedy right there in those fields. And then there was the ubiquitous thyme (Za'tar) which smelled strong and which we picked in abundance. She would dry some and later grind it. Sometimes, she would add some to the bread that she baked in an oven (Taboun) made of clay.
I also remember accompanying my grandmother during her daily trek to work in the fields or to take produce or fruits, which she carried in a wide basket on top of her head and walked the few kilometers to Jerusalem to sell it in Katamon.
She was, it seemed, one with the soil and its fruits. It is only now as I write this down and as the memories flood my soul that I fully realize the impact she had on me. I love going to a market to marvel at the beauty of such things and I [handle] them with the same tenderness that she once showed me. My grandmother, on my mother's side, was a tall woman with an imposing presence. She single-handedly raised four boys and a girl while working the fields and selling the fruits of her labor in order to (make) out a modest living for her family. Her face was already wrinkled well before the age when such marks were supposed to appear. It almost matched the topography of the land that she so carefully and diligently cultivated in much the same way that her forebears had done for thousands of years. The color of her face almost matched that of the olives that she picked, pressed and ate.
On cold winter evenings, I remember falling asleep in her lap, next to a (.) kerosene stove, listening to the stories that I incessantly wanted to hear over and over again. She was happy to pass on the folklore that she had inherited. Years later, I discovered that many of these stories were in fact part of the Old Testament and the Koran. She was an illiterate woman but she knew her stories, passed on from one generation to the next, forming a common heritage and perhaps becoming part of the religious lore.
She was the matriarch of the family. Her husband played a peripheral role although he was granted the respect that a dignified elder was entitled to. But he was disabled and could not carry his share of the burden. Therefore, he often deferred to her in matters of consequence. But she never made him feel that she was the one who made these fateful decisions and she never let on to the outside world that she was the one who ran the show. She was feared and respected in the village because of her no-nonsense approach, her candor and her outspokenness about various issues. When my father came to ask for my mother's hand, fierce objections erupted among members of the extended family. Cousins lay first claim and argued against giving the young girl away to a foreigner who had no roots and no known relatives. My father was born in a neighboring village to a father who had migrated to Palestine from Algeria and to a Palestinian mother. Both of his parents died soon after he was born and he grew up in the Islamic orphanage in the Old City of Jerusalem. He learned a variety of skills including carpet weaving and ****ing. Later he got a job at the resort atop Jebel El-Rab where he spotted my mother.
My grandmother made the controversial decision to give her only daughter away to this man and managed to convince her immediate family to go along. I have a picture of my father and mother taken at a Jerusalem studio owned by an Armenian photographer shortly after they got married. He is sitting in a chair looking solemn, as befits the occasion, and she is standing next to him, with her right hand on his shoulder and a shy smile on her face. He is wearing a nicely cut western style suit, tailored in Jerusalem. Only his shoes are somewhat rough, and not polished, showing perhaps a person who walks long distances in the fields. She is wearing her wedding dress, a beautiful traditional Palestinian Thob that was the product of many hours of labor by the women in the family and in the village. He does not look like a peasant or even the son of a peasant. His hair is well groomed and his hands are soft. She, on the other hand, definitely looks like the daughter of peasants. He was twenty-four years old and she was only eighteen.
My father built a small house on a hill overlooking Ein Kerem. On the other side of the hill was the tiny village of Jorah where my mother's relatives lived. This small stone house was typical of village constructions, designed to be expanded as time goes on with one room added here and another added there. Outside, there was a small kitchen and an outhouse. On the eastern part of the house, a bunch of bougainvillea grew in a haphazard manner. I remember crawling underneath them to look for eggs hatched by our chickens. On the Western side, there were a couple of olive trees and a fig tree. And right next to the kitchen, there was a water well. I had a cat, a dog, and at one point, a sheep. One day, a sheepherder went by with his flock and I chased him and his sheep screaming that I wanted to have one. He gave me a sheep on condition that I would take care of him.
There were, however, moments of anxiety generated by talk about a vague and distant threat coming from the Jews. The only ones I had seen in those days were the distinguished looking ones who frequented my father's place of work and the pediatrician that my parents had taken me to in Jerusalem.
They were kind and cultured people and my father used to say that some day I will become educated and important like them. I do remember that one day my uncles joined a crowd of other men from the village and walked in a hurry to a nearby village called Kastal where a big battle was going on between the Arabs and the Jews. Abdul Kader Husseini was leading the Arabs in this battle. We laughed at Uncle Mohammed, the black sheep of the family, a simple man with no education at all, who was usually left in charge of the goats. He took an old hunting musket, which had not been fired in many years and joined [in] (.). A few hours later he came back while the others joined the crowd of fighters to Jerusalem to participate in the funeral of the fallen commander Abdul Kader. Meanwhile, the Jewish forces, which had been driven out of Kastal, simply walked back in and took it over, thereby controlling once and for all the main road to Jerusalem.
I was sent to a Kuttab in the village. This one room schoolhouse was run by a religious man who was supposed to teach us how to read, write and memorize the Koran. I memorized a small part of the Koran and learned to read and write. The few Suras came in handy on Fridays when my father would take me to the Mosque in Jerusalem.
Two things stand out in my memory: one was the awe-inspiring beauty of the Dome of the Rock. My father would explain to me its history and point out its artistic beauty. To me, however, what was most enjoyable was to sit on the clean stone pavement in the coolness of the shade and to eat the kinds of things I usually did not get to eat at home, namely Ka'ak and Falafel with a bit of Za'tar and a hard-boiled egg. The second thing that always struck me was the incredible crowd that filled the narrow streets and alleys of the Old City as the faithful departed following their prayers. As a little boy, I felt claustrophobic as I was pushed and shoved by people and carts. I remember being envious of the children who roamed the streets and alleyways of the city, joking, teasing and running skillfully through the crowd. To me, they seemed free and clever.
I always imagined myself joining their frolics in total abandon, watching the tourists go by, knowing every nook and cranny of the city. The city always seemed mysterious to me, enveloped in layers, with doors that led into courtyards, to other doors, and stairs going to upper floors at different angles. What do these people do behind these doors, in these courtyards, and in those dark alleys?. The women who hid behind dark veils and walked in groups, always clad in black added to the mystery. I never saw any women like that. I would follow them, and as they invariably walked in the fabric shops, I would sneak a look at their faces as they lifted their veils to look more closely at the fabric they were thinking of buying. Some of them would glance quickly in my direction and then turn away, reassured that this invader is nothing but a short and insignificant tot. Nearly always, I felt a kind of disappointment at the ordinariness of their looks. Invariably, my father would buy some things for the house depending upon what was in season: possibly some oranges and bananas and always some sweets like Baklava. He would also buy me some trinket and we would then head to the packed bus that would take us back to Ein Kerem.
In April 1948, following the massacre at Deir Yassin, the feelings of fear and anxiety, which used to be vague and distant began to appear more imminent and more real. I could still hear my grandmother and my mother hurling curses mostly on the British and often on the Jews. My mother packed some clothes in a long sack that she had sewn and left it in the corner of the house. At night, some of the men would go to the edge of the village and do guard duty. One night, everyone was awakened to the sound of one of these men who went through the village screaming : "Go !, the Jews are coming." I can still recall the voice and the ensuing chaos. Within a short period of time, the entire village was marching out, carrying bare essentials, some bedding on a mule, some clothing, and some food. We spent the night in the fields a few kilometers out.
Overhead we could see streaming lights and we could hear whizzing bullets and explosions. From a distance, we could see other villages pack up and leave in the same chaotic and hurried manner. The next day, we resumed our trek in the direction of a village called Ras Abu ’Ammar. On the way, we could see some dead bodies and some scattered limbs where explosions had occurred and tore up human bodies that were left lying there. We spent a month in this village and then, when the Jews came again we resumed our walk in the direction of Bethlehem.(..)
Our exile from our homes was supposed to be for a short duration. People thought that they would be going back to their homes and land in a matter of weeks. Surely the Arab armies would enter Palestine and stop the Jews. The frame of reference, for most people, were the Arab conquests in the early Islamic period when armies swept through many lands and defeated enemies with superior force, or the battles waged by Salah Eddin against the foreign invaders.(..)
Shortly afterwards, however, as our exile began to get longer and longer, new stories began to emerge. They all focused on great conspiracies being hatched against the Palestinians. The Jordanian Arab Legion, we were told, did not fight at all. King Abdullah and his British commander Glubb Pasha handed Palestine over to the Jews. The Egyptian Army fought with empty bullets. Only the Iraqis and some volunteers from various Arab countries did any worthwhile fighting. But the Arab armies were no match against the superior firepower of the Jews and their generous British supporters. The British had for years clamped an iron fist over the Palestinians, severely punishing anyone who was caught with a gun or a bullet . My grandmother used to relate the story of how the British came to look for guns one day. One of my uncles had an old pistol. As they appeared on the scene, she was sitting on the floor kneading bread in the large wooden bowl that she inherited from her mother. She hid the gun in the mound of dough. They searched the house and left empty-handed. Later, she proudly related another story about how she gave one of my uncles a gold piece and told him to go to Jerusalem and buy a decent gun. He was unable to find one.
The British, we were told, disarmed the Arabs and gave the Jews whatever weapons they wanted. Years later, upon reading the work of Israel's revisionist historians ( Tom Segev, Benny Morris, Simha Flapan and Avi Shlaim) one discovers that this Palestinian narrative, culled from here and there by simple villagers, with some minor adjustments was in fact quite close to the truth. I cannot easily describe the feelings of hurt, and bitterness among the people I knew who weathered the first harsh winter in the Dheisha refugee camp outside of Bethlehem. But they made it, somehow, with the minimum necessities of life provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.
Tents and blankets were provided along with some basic foodstuffs. What sticks in my mind from those days is a bitter feeling of a cold chill that never went away and the mud that surrounded us after the rain. My father decided it was time to send me to school. He asked around and was told that the best school was one run by the Fréres, French Christian brothers, where kids learnt English, Arabic and French . He took me there one day and we saw the director, a brother who wore a black robe with a white collar around his neck. He spoke broken Arabic and was obviously a foreigner. When my father heard what it would cost to send me to school he promptly said: " Come, boy, let us go." My father could ill afford the expensive tuition fees. He had just lost his house and his land and had no job.
Whatever little money he had saved was frozen in Barclays Bank in Jerusalem near Bab El-Khalil. It was years later before my father was able to retrieve his small savings. The director then asked him how he got his name and my father told him that his own father was an Algerian who had migrated to Palestine. The director then asked my father if he had kept his father's identity card. The next day, we went back to the school and showed my grandfather's ID card which was written in a foreign language. The director then said that my father was in luck because this meant that we were descendants of a French citizen (because Algeria was [at the time] part of France) and as such we were considered French citizens overseas.
This, according to the director, entitled us to a free education because the French Government would have to pay our fees. And this they did for all the years that I and my two younger brothers attended that school. In those days, going to Jerusalem was a major undertaking. One had to take a bus from Bethlehem, which would wind its way up and down steep inclines. Very often I would throw up and feel embarrassed until I saw that other people were going through the same thing. The city had become truncated. A fence and a wall separated the Jewish part from the Arab part. Whenever I went there I would walk along the wall and see cars and buses on the other side. I often wondered what kind of people rode these buses and these cars. I hated them from a distance although I really never saw any of them face to face. All I knew is that they came and threw us out of our homes, took over our land and made our life miserable. Some day, I thought, we will drive them out of there and go back to our homes and fields.