One hilltop after another was claimed as more and more Jewish settlements were established. Then the settlements were joined with each other to form 'settlement blocs'. Roads were built between these clusters and ever-expanding areas of land around them were reserved for their future growth, depriving more villages of the agricultural land they depended upon for their livelihood. Thus one bloc of settlements was created north of Ramallah, another to the east and many more to the south. And between the blocs to the east smaller settlements called outposts began to crop up so that when I looked at night towards the north I saw a continuous stretch of settlements and roads that were creating a noose around Ramallah. Then to make matters worse a 670-kilometre wall was planned, across the West Bank, that would further divide Ramallah from the villages surrounding it, complicating our life immeasurably and causing yet greater damage to our beautiful landscape.
How I envy Abu Ameen his confidence and security in the hills where he was born and died, which he believed would remain unchanged for ever. Could Abu Ameen have ever dreamed that one day the open hills to which he escaped the confinement of life in the village would be out of reach for his descendants? How unaware many trekkers around the world are of what a luxury it is to be able to walk in the land they love without anger, fear or insecurity, just to be able to walk without political arguments running obsessively through their heads, without the fear of losing what they've come to love, without the anxiety that they will be deprived of the right to enjoy it. Simply to walk and savour what nature has to offer, as I was once able to do.
Abu Ameen died when I was only six. His wife, Zariefeh, held on for much longer. Of her six sons and one daughter, one left for Central America and was never heard of again. Another, the eldest, was amongst the first from Ramallah to begin working on the oil rigs of the Arabian Gulf, where the temperature in the summer reached over 50°C and where there was still no air conditioning. He worked in catering and would pass through Beirut on his way home and spend most of the money he had made in the arduous and sweltering environment of the oil-rich Gulf. He was one of the most generous men I knew. In time he took two of his younger brothers to work with the same company. But the brothers could not work together. They were too individualistic, and they constantly quarrelled. Neither could they stand the bossiness of their elder brother. One of them emigrated to the United States and the other found work in Kuwait, but he did not last long there. The heat was too much for him and he yearned for the cool Ramallah weather. 'My father died when I was away,' he told his wife. 'I don't want the same to happen to my mother.' His wife, who had been hoping for a better life and had found a job in Kuwait, was dismayed. She did not want to return to be with his mother in the old house in the old city. I remember her when we went to welcome them back, sitting forlornly in a corner of the crowded old house with red-rimmed eyes and tears rolling down her pale cheeks. She blew her nose with rolls of soft paper that I had never seen before. I remember having the sinking feeling that this tissue now wet with her tears was all she had managed to bring back with her from the country where many had made their fortune.
And then there was Salameh, the youngest brother. He worked with glass, framing pictures. I would often come for the lunch break from school and find him there at my grandmother's house. It never occurred to me that a young man spending so much time outside his shop must not have much work. Then one day he began speaking about hujra (emigration). My grandmother tried to tell him all the bad things about the United States, she being the only member of the family who had travelled there to visit her son. 'It's not as you think, gold in the streets ready to be picked,' she said. She would boast: 'I crossed the Atlantic four times, I should know.'
When Zariefeh died none of her seven children were around except Ameen. He had been sent for at the last minute and managed to arrive from the Gulf before she let go. But he was so sentimental and sad that the only way he could endure her passing was by drinking heavily. By the time she gave up the ghost he was so inebriated that he had to be carried to her funeral. With Um Ameen's death the eldest member of our extended family was gone, a venerable, strong woman who spent the last few years of her life unwell, with her complexion becoming darker and darker, and her eyes losing their spark as the cancer consumed her liver. She was the last of the women in our family to wear the thob, the traditional dress, colourfully embroidered, with the head turban festooned with Ottoman coins.
After his mother's death Ameen could no longer motivate himself to return to his job in the Gulf. He decided to emigrate to the United States like his brothers. I remember my grandmother saying that with him gone none of our many close relatives would be left behind. She tried her best to dissuade him from emigrating to the extent of warning him sternly that his wife, who had a dark complexion, would be taken for a woman of colour, 'and they don't treat such people well in America,' adding 'they follow them in the streets and mock them and sometimes they even shoot them.' The way she put it made me wonder how on earth Ameen could consider emigrating when he would be risking the life of his wife.
These warnings didn't work. The couple emigrated anyway. Once in the US they worked day and night and made good money. Their children learned to speak English like American kids on television with that slur and intonation that made them sound foreign to their parents, not at all like the kids they had given birth to in Ramallah. When their parents addressed them in Arabic they refused to answer. They pleaded with them not to embarrass them before their friends. The children adjusted all too well to American society. But not their parents, who finished their days in dark rooms, silent and depressed, thinking only of the homeland to which the state of Israel would not allow them to return. None of the seven children, and their forty descendants, of Abu Ameen, who created Harrasha, were left in Ramallah. Of Saleem's descendants, my brother, Samer, and I are the only two still living here.
In the spring of 2003, many years after I first discovered Harrasha, I decided to take my nephew, Aziz, Samer's ten-year-old son, to show him his ancestor's qasr and to have him sit on the a'rsh.
The Second Intifada, which began in September 2000, had led to an increase in internal migration into Ramallah from other West Bank cities such as Nablus and Jenin, where Israeli policies had made life unbearable. The city became one of the few in the West Bank with a mixed population of Christians and Muslims originating from the various regions of Palestine. It also became the unnamed capital of the Palestinian Authority, housing the seat of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the executive offices of the President of the Palestinian Authority and the High Court of Justice. But all these developments came at a price. As the city's population expanded more land was needed for housing. The wild and beautiful hills surrounding it began to be invaded, not only by the Jewish settlements which were being established all around its wide periphery, but also by the insatiable appetite of the city's inhabitants for expansion and growth.
The Palestinian police, established after the Oslo Accords, built its headquarters behind the Anglican school close to the starting point of my walks in the hills. This hexagonal structure was topped by a dome painted lemon yellow emulating the now unreachable Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, twelve kilometres away. Its discordant profile continued to dominate this part of the hills until the early years of the Intifada, when it was demolished by a one-ton bomb dropped by an Israeli F16 fighter jet.
Aziz and I walked around the bombed-out police station to get to Harrasha. He was excited about the prospect of seeing the qasr and the a'rsh about which I had long spoken to him, so we walked as fast as possible, taking the most direct route to get to it. When we arrived we found the qasr intact but some dull-witted stone thief must have tried to excavate the a'rsh, perhaps to take it to his garden or sell it. He had not realized that it was carved out of such a massive rock that it was impossible to remove. But in the course of his ill-conceived attempt he had managed to topple Abu Ameen's a'rsh on its side, rendering it unusable.
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sp; Aziz was disappointed. The a'rsh had been desecrated and displaced, becoming just another of the many rocks dispersed over the side of the hill. It was impossible to explain to my nephew how it had looked in its former glory standing straight, its large base buried in the earth. Or how good it felt to sit on it. It was now robbed of that magic which I had tried to describe when I convinced him to take the long risky trip with me through the hills.
We visited the qasr, using the spiral stairs to go up and stand on top looking out at the hills. But this was no compensation. Aziz had set his mind on sitting in the a'rsh as I had promised. We tried to return to Ramallah using a different route, hoping to find something exciting on the way that would compensate for the disappointment and take his mind off it. We ended up by the demolished police station, which Aziz said he was curious to inspect. We trudged slowly through a field speckled with the carcasses of destroyed cars, garbage, rubble, mangled metal, aluminium, pieces of yellow concrete, glass and parts of bombs and spent bullets, the detritus of years of neglect, dashed hopes, resistance and war.
Aziz wanted to run ahead in the ruts made by Israeli tanks that had come to inspect the bombed-out area. I walked one terrace below. I was continuing my search for the old path amidst the transformed hill when I heard him calling. I lifted my head and saw that he was holding up a long thick tube made of metal. 'What is this?' he asked. It didn't immediately occur to me that Aziz had picked up part of an unexploded missile. He stood there with the sun shining behind him, waiting for my answer. A moment of panic seized me and I felt myself going numb, deadened by the dreadful prospect of seeing my nephew explode before my eyes. Slowly but emphatically I said: 'Keep holding it. Do not throw it,' and I began moving steadily towards him. He must have heard the dread in my voice for he froze on the spot. When I got to him I eased the object from his hands, held on to it and told him to run. My heart was pounding but I was ecstatic to see my nephew escape a lethal explosion. Slowly I placed the object on the ground and whispered a quiet prayer.
Sometimes when I wake up early and look from my house at the hills, I imagine Abu Ameen standing in the morning on the roof of his qasr deep in the hills. He is drowned in the mist which has filled the valley and obliterated the folds of the hills, smoothing them out. Around him I can see how it has settled in every nook and crevice of the valley, creating numerous steamy lakes in the dry, baked hills. He remains standing in this transformed landscape, following the sun's ascent in the sky, observing it suck up the mist, empty the nocturnal lakes and return the undulating hills to their usual parched state.
If someone were looking for Abu Ameen from afar he would not at first be able to make him out. Then as the mist began to lift and the sun grew stronger, a luminous figure would start to emerge. The wisps of vapour surrounding him would light up with the sun. Iridescent sparks would illuminate his body, giving him wings with which he could soar over the valleys, an ephemeral figure like a wild fowl or a pale god of the hills.
I have often wondered about Abu Ameen as I stand in the early morning looking over the countryside. What would he have said had he seen the state it was now in? Would his spirit be brimming with anger at all of us for allowing them to be destroyed and usurped, or would he just be enjoying one extended sarha as his spirit roamed freely over the land, without borders as it had once been?
2
THE ALBINA CASE
Ramallah to A'yn Qenya
For the first two decades of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank I was still able to walk in the hills unhampered. Although a large number of settlements had been established in various parts of the land, the number of settlers living on our side of the border was small. We still believed that it was possible for the occupation to end one day and for peace to be established on the basis of the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank alongside Israel. But the changes that the Israeli military authorities were carrying out to the laws on the administration of land were worrisome. I was following them with deep concern.
One day in 1979 I went to the Land Registration Department in Ramallah, as I often did at that time, to check the details of a client's property. The usual crowds waiting at the door were not there. The place looked deserted. I knocked and waited. Eventually Ghazi, the Land Registrar, opened the door and asked, as though surprised to see me, what I wanted. I told him I needed to check the Land Register.
'You can't,’ he said.
'Why not?' I asked.
'New instructions,' he answered.
'Then perhaps you can check it for me.'
'No chance,' he said. 'We are all very busy. We have orders to make a survey of the different types of land and it is taking a lot of time. No one can help you today, perhaps not tomorrow either, not even in a few weeks.'
Until then the records of the Land Registration Department controlled by the Israeli military government and its 'civil' administration were open for inspection by the public as they had been under Jordanian rule. Since that day in 1979 they have been out of reach, secret. The Israeli official responsible for the Palestinian Land Authority, with the help of his Palestinian employees, was conducting a survey of the types of land to determine what percentage was registered and what sort of registration documentation existed. This information was vital for the success of the settlement project and it was carefully guarded. Since that day the Palestinian public have been denied access to the land records.
I went back to the office and applied myself to preparing the summation of the Albina land case. I was contesting before an Israeli court a declaration by the Israeli Custodian of Public and Absentee Property on land in the village of Beit 'Ur near Ramallah. I thought this would take the whole day. But before noon I had finished and decided to go back home. I had to walk because my brother had borrowed my car. When I got there I found that I did not have the key to my house. It was with my car keys. I had forgotten to take it off when I gave Samer the car.
I sat on the steps leading to the garden and considered what I should do next. It had been a tiring morning. I so much wanted to go inside and relax. My house was a small two-room structure which I had rented three years earlier, a simple structure with a small garden that had a fig tree growing out of the rocks, shading the side entrance which I used as the main door. The room where I slept and worked had one window overlooking the garden. It was not a particularly charming house and it got very cold in winter. I had chosen it because of its proximity to the hills.
I had not left these two rooms that last weekend. I had shut myself up in the house, writing and listening to the rain thumping down on my roof. I got such a sense of relief from hearing the water pouring down from the heavens, running down the pipes to the cistern situated close to the fig tree. When it doesn't rain during the winter months I get anxious. I begin to feel something is terribly amiss. Then when the rain returns a feeling of well-being comes over me. This was a good house in which to listen to the falling rain. Could this obsession with rain be related to a primordial anxiety passed on from my ancestors, who depended on agriculture for their livelihood? Living in a dry land which gets all its water from the few months of winter rain must have ingrained a fear of drought deep within me, though I've never experienced one myself. What other hidden fears do I have, fears I'm forever trying to discover so that I can free myself from them? How I have thought of becoming free! But are my endeavours futile?
Perhaps the paucity of rain is what makes us, the inhabitants of this land, Jews and Arabs, so anxious and temperamental that peace continues to elude us. It was here that prophets thought they heard God imposing punishment by withholding the rain or rewarding His people with fertile fields. Such a small land with an outstanding variety of topographies: one snow-capped mountain, which belongs to Syria, one desert, one freshwater lake and another very salty one, and one proper river. One of everything. And so little water that we've had to live with our eyes constantly turned up to the heavens.
The previous night, after several days
of heavy showers, the rain had stopped. The heavens cleared to show a fresh turquoise sky. It was much too beautiful a day to wish to be indoors. What was I waiting for? I had my book. I didn't need any special clothing or shoes to walk in these hills. I simply turned up my trouser legs to avoid muddying them and thought I would walk to the enormous pine tree midway down the hill and read. There weren't many pines in the hills. I didn't know who had planted this one or whether it had seeded itself. I often took my book and went there to sit and read. When I returned home my brother would have brought back my car. He would put the keys underneath the loose tile to the left of the door, as agreed.
I was expecting the path to be still muddy but found that the surface soil had dried and it was soft to walk on without being sticky. Built many years ago by the owners of the land, the path was a few metres wide and bordered by stone walls. It sloped gently along the side of the hill then turned and headed downhill. It had been carefully designed. Had it followed a straight line down it would be washed out in winter, unusable, more a canal for water than a footpath.
When the path began to turn downhill, I jumped over the terrace wall and walked a few metres to where the pine tree to which I was headed stood. As I brushed aside its needles, a whiff of the familiar pine odour hit me. I entered the fragrant cavern created by the branches of this fifty-year-old tree. It was dim inside, for the tree shaded the sun. It was most unlikely that this tree had been cultivated. No farmer worthy of the name would have planted it here. It had no function and only made the soil acidic. A seed must have been blown accidentally with the wind or transported unintentionally by some hapless farmer, getting stuck in the folds of his clothes and then, as he passed here on his way to check on his olives, had fallen to the ground.
Palestinian Walks Page 5