Tears for Tarshiha

by Olfat Mahmoud

  I desperately needed to speak to someone so at every opportunity, I visited my Palestinian friends in London. Mostly the train journey was straightforward, but one evening they invited me to join them about five hours outside London. Once again, a friend’s family was visiting from Palestine. They’d bought fresh mulukhiya (a leafy green vegetable) and were making bisarah, a dish cooked with dried beans, lots of garlic and usually served semi-solid on a plate. It is very popular in summer and, as it is a vegetarian dish, it is my very favourite Palestinian food. The train journey took four hours. My friends met me at the station and I had dinner with them. Afterwards, because I had to be back at the nursing school for the morning, I went straight back. Eight hours of train travel, just for bisarah! But it was worth it.

  I had been in Epping for 10 days when there was finally a knock on my door. When I opened it, a sweet Irish student called Kerry introduced herself. When I told her that she was the first person to really talk to me at the school, she laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry, that’s the English for you. They’re very nice really, and eventually you’ll get to like them, but it takes time! I had the same problem when I came here—and I speak the same language.’

  We soon became good friends. One long weekend she invited me to her home in Northern Ireland. After we’d sorted out the visa issue, which took some time, I spent four wonderful days with her family; and quickly realised the Irish and the Palestinians had many things in common. When her mum made sweets, she gave Kerry a plate to take to a neighbour, and the neighbour in turn brought food to them. When we walked in the street, people would say hello to us. These neighbourly gestures and public greetings were redolent of our culture, too, and I felt welcomed and at home for the first time since arriving in the UK. On another occasion Kerry took me to a pub. When the locals found out I was Palestinian, I was instantly the star attraction and treated almost like a PLO leader. As they hugged me with their laughter and warmth, they told me they loved the Palestinians because they, the people of Northern Ireland, understood oppression and occupation. They were fighting for their independence, too, they said. It was a marvellous few hours of solidarity.

  On one of the days of my visit, the family decided to take me into southern Ireland. I was worried because I didn’t have a visa for that country, but Kerry was quite relaxed about it all. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘At the border they only ask for the car registration papers, not visas.’ Still I remained anxious. As we approached the border checkpoint, a familiar fear rose in my body, and all the feelings of anger and humiliation I’d experienced at similar checkpoints in my life came flooding back. Armed police hovered in the background and snipers were hidden behind brick towers that loomed above the road. I sat tense and rigid while the border guards checked the car registration papers. My relief was profound when we drove safely through. Kerry looked at me and laughed, ‘See, Olfat. No problem.’ Unlike Kerry, I knew as a Palestinian I’d be treated differently if my documents had been checked. Nevertheless, I relaxed quickly and was able to laugh, too.

  At a local festival in the south, thousands of people were out celebrating, the sound of music and singing spilling out on the street as hard to resist as an ocean wave. As I watched them I hoped we, too, might one day be able to celebrate like that. It struck me that this was the first time I’d seen so many people together looking so happy. I’d taken part in big demonstrations in Lebanon, but they were usually electric with anger and fear. But here were people singing, dancing and laughing. Here were stalls laden with food and beautiful things to buy. It was wonderful. I bought a small wooden object that looked like a hammer and had the words for ‘good luck’ written on it in Gaelic. I held it close and hoped for better times for my people. This lovely day was one of the highlights of my happy stay in Ireland.

  Although my time in England was generally a good experience, I faced some frustrations. UNIPAL hadn’t made any plans for me to formally address public meetings. This disappointed me because it meant we’d lost an opportunity to spread the word about our plight as Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Though I often spent pleasant weekends with UNIPAL people and would talk as much as possible to students, teachers and others in the nursing school about our situation, I felt this wasn’t enough. I wanted to tell many more people about life in the refugee camps. After I’d had one of my informal talks in the hospital, Nina Syrial, one of the psychologists there, phoned me in the nurses’ home.

  ‘Olfat, I was shocked to hear you speaking about Palestine as your homeland,’ she said. ‘I always thought the Jewish people were fighting the Palestinians because it was they who’d taken the land from the Jewish people, not the other way around. When you said your grandparents had been born in Palestine, and your mother too, I thought that you were lying.’

  I was a little taken aback by this and began to go over the historical facts with her again. But she interrupted me.

  ‘After your talk, I went to the library where my sister works and asked for a pre-1948 world map. When I looked for Israel I found Palestine.’

  Nina told me she was shattered to find out how ignorant she’d been and how she’d accepted information without question. She’d always believed people when they’d told her Israel was for Jewish people and the Palestinians wanted to take it from them. She’d never heard that Palestinians had been exiled from their ancestral land. I wasn’t surprised about her misunderstanding, but I was deeply saddened all the same. The need to educate people about our situation, our rights as refugees and our struggle to go home became even more apparent.

  I returned to my life as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon in December 1983. I had been away eight months, but it felt as if I had lived a whole new life. Yet in Lebanon the old life had continued as it always had—with war and death. Fierce fighting had continued in my absence. On one side was Israel, supported by the US, and at the same time supporting the Lebanese Christian Forces; on the other was Syria, backed by the Soviet Union, supporting the Lebanese leftist alliance, which included Muslim as well as Christian political and militia groups. Amal, a nationalist and mostly Shi’a leftist militia in West Beirut, had also entered the fray. And in the south, a growing body of Islamist Shi’a had formed the militant Hezbollah (Party of God) faction, which was backed by Iran. In West Beirut the Lebanese army continued to harass the Palestinians who had been disarmed since 1982. The US-sponsored Multinational Force (MNF) was still supporting the Lebanese government and had poured considerable resources into building up the army and training new recruits, mainly Shi’a. But the Lebanese army command remained dominated by ex-Lebanese Forces men. It was a recipe for continued conflict.

  During my time in England, attacks against US and French troops had increased. Throughout September there were multiple attacks on both the French and US military by the Islamic Jihad Organisation, culminating in the October 19 suicide bombings that killed 241 US marines and 57 French soldiers in attacks on their barracks in Beirut. For those nations, it was the last straw and by February 1984 the US marines and French MNF troops had pulled out of Beirut. The battle for control of the city began again in earnest.

  The Lebanese army attacked Lebanese Shi’a areas once more, causing considerable consternation in its own ranks. Nabih Berri, leader of Amal, now well armed by the Syrians, persuaded 60 per cent of the Lebanese army’s recruits, mostly Shi’a, to defect. Its numbers thus seriously depleted, the Lebanese army was routed from West Beirut. The US-brokered peace plan was in tatters, and Syrian and Israeli withdrawal talks had stalled. Beirut was once more divided, with Muslim Shi’a, Druze and leftist militia forces in the west, and the Christian Lebanese Forces back in the east.

  As in the past, most of the fighting was concentrated along the Green Line. The Israelis occupied Southern Lebanon, and the Syrians were in the Beqaa Valley. Lebanon was thus fractured into four cantons. There had been civil war for nine years, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians had been killed and
wounded, and the country was shattered and anarchic. Ironically for us, however, this upheaval for Lebanon was a time of peace for Palestinians in the country as it took attention away from the camps—with the Lebanese army leaving us relatively alone.

  On my return from England, I began teaching at the Palestinian Red Cross School of Nursing in Beirut but realised that I faced a major problem: all our teaching resources—anatomical models, diagrams and nursing library—had been destroyed. Without these facilities, passing on the experience and knowledge I’d gained in the UK to the students proved very challenging. Still, I did my best, and we made some progress.

  Like so many other Palestinians, my family was busy repairing their house, and the rest of their time was focused on the hardest of jobs—survival. As always, my grandfather continued growing food for his family; he was happiest when he was out working the land. As his children grew and got jobs, they urged him to stop his work, insisting his sons could now care for the family. But my grandfather would always refuse saying he would die of unhappiness if he couldn’t continue to work the land.

  On February 6, 1984, my grandfather failed to come home from work. We contacted the landowner in case my grandfather had gone to see him, as he often did. But he wasn’t there. We then went to all the hospitals nearby, fearing the worst. Since the Amal militia dominated the area, we asked for their help. The fields where my grandfather worked were near the airport, in no-man’s land. But not even Amal could get in there at night; it was far too dangerous.

  None of us could sleep that night. We imagined him alone in that open space, perhaps sick or injured, or even dead. In the morning an Amal officer came to our house and told us our grandfather was in a nearby hospital. He had died alone in his fields. When we went to see him, we found a clump of grass and soil clutched in his right hand. Seeing that he wasn’t wounded, we concluded he must have died from a heart attack. We were especially distressed that he’d died alone, and that his body had lain outside for the entire night without any member of the family to tend it; but were comforted by the thought he’d died with grass and his beloved soil in his hand. We knew this land had given him strength, as had the land of Palestine.

  Thirty-six years after he had fled the Israeli attack on his home in the Galilee, Abu Ahmad died a refugee, an exile. We buried him in the Palestinian camp cemetery near Mar Elias, far from his beloved Tarshiha.

  12

  DOWN UNDER

  During my time in England I’d kept in touch with my friend, Helen McCue. By January 1984, true to her word, she’d formed the Australian People for Health Education and Development Abroad (APHEDA) with the help of Cliff Dolan, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). APHEDA became the ACTU’s overseas aid arm.22 Its first aim was to initiate health care and vocational training for refugees in camps such as those in Lebanon. Helen had also been able to raise money for various Palestinian nurse-training projects in Lebanon and Palestine.

  Helen returned to Beirut in April 1984 to select candidates for short courses in Australia in community nursing and other areas of clinical nursing. In the end the successful applicants were two male and four female nurses from Lebanon and two female nurses from UNRWA—one from Gaza and the other from Jordan. Because my English was good, I was appointed the group’s spokesperson and translator. When I told my father I was going, he was, of course, delighted. He surprised me by telling me that he had thought about migrating to Australia in the late 1950s to escape the civil war. As an accountant with good English and a young family, he believed he could make a good life in that country, but his mother had begged him not to go as he was her only son left in Lebanon. How my life would have been different if he had taken that journey.

  Having only UN refugee documents, my fellow Palestinian nurses and I faced mountainous visa problems and extraordinary travel restrictions. We finally flew to Australia in September 1984. At a stopover in the Persian Gulf, Palestinians on the flight weren’t allowed to leave the airport building, though the other passengers had a good night’s sleep in a hotel. We arrived in Australia exhausted after the long flight but excited nonetheless. Our language skills were improved by a month-long, English course with Donna Burns and other volunteer teachers. During our six months in Australia, three members of our group, including myself, were placed in community health centres; while the rest gained experience in various hospitals in Sydney. It was an incredible learning curve; and working in the community seemed a much better fit for our camp situation, and something I could help establish back in Lebanon.

  However, it was the second arm of my work in Australia that really inspired me. As part of APHEDA’s advocacy work for refugees, I’d agreed to combine my nursing work with community education about the Palestinian refugee situation. I’d brought a video and photos, and during my visits to different health centres, I was able to hold small informal sessions talking to people about our life and our health care work in the camps. I ran one of these sessions for staff at an inner-Sydney youth community centre where I spent a week. After I’d finished my talk, a young doctor in the audience angrily accused me of lying. He seemed particularly upset about my account of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. I told him I wasn’t lying, that all the facts were well documented, and my photos and video were entirely authentic. He wasn’t placated and remained angry, although the other nurses said they’d heard and seen the news about our situation and the massacre, so didn’t doubt me.

  The next day the doctor refused to speak to me. On my third day at the centre, he called me to his room where he was interviewing a teenager. After he’d finished, he discussed the details of the case with me. Then he offered me coffee. As we sat and drank our coffee, he brought up the subject of my talk.

  ‘You know, Olfat, it wasn’t easy for me to accept what you told us the other day,’ he said. ‘Since then I’ve been quite distressed so I visited my mother to ask her about Palestine.’

  The doctor’s mother had confirmed everything I’d said. It was then that he revealed he was Jewish and that it had been difficult for him to believe me. He was gracious enough to apologise for being rude.

  It was a painful encounter for both of us, but we ended up respecting each other’s position. He was a fine doctor and I understood that the facts of history are sometimes distorted. I understood, too, that facing the truth could sometimes be painful. Being an effective spokesperson for my people in public forums, and especially in another country, was fulfilling and deeply rewarding after all my years of feeling helpless and silenced within the tiny confines of our camp and my workplace. APHEDA organised many public functions where our group could talk to Australians about the Palestinian plight. Helen would ring me and say, ‘Olfat, there’s a meeting I want you to attend. Never mind that you’re not prepared; just say what you know and what’s in your heart.’

  There were some confronting moments, of course. The week after we arrived in Australia, we held a press conference. Dressed in black blouses with traditional embroidery and our black and white keffiyeh draped around our shoulders or covering our heads, we were ready to represent our people. I was taken aback, though, when a journalist asked, ‘If Israel wanted to give blood to the Palestinians, would you accept it?’

  After a moment’s thought, I said, ‘If they offered us blood I would ask them to stop the bombing so that we wouldn’t need to spill so much blood in the first place.’

  The other journalists clapped at my response and a surge of pride pulsed through me like a shot of adrenalin. This was my first press conference and I felt I’d represented my people well.

  Another time we travelled as a group to Melbourne to address a large gathering of trade unionists. Helen gave a speech about APHEDA and then I spoke about the Palestinian situation. When we’d finished, a trade unionist stood up and asked, ‘How can you guarantee that any material assistance we send will not be damaged by the war?’

  My first reaction wa
s indignation: the question implied that equipment was more important than our lives. I understood the need to be accountable, but how could we provide a guarantee of security in a war situation.

  ‘If I cannot guarantee my life, how can you expect me to guarantee your donated equipment and your machines? But we need this assistance desperately, and we will do what we can to guarantee its proper use.’

  The opportunities I had to put the Palestinian cause in Australia gave me great confidence and helped me find my voice and become an effective public speaker. When I was young, my father used to tell me I had a strong personality. While I was in Australia, I felt for the first time that I had the opportunity to express that personality in public in a way that helped my people. It was an experience that shaped and influenced me enormously.

  On the day I returned from Australia, April 11, 1985, my neighbour, a young male named Ahmed, was shot and killed in the street outside the camp. There were a number of what seemed to be random assassinations like these in and around the camp, but none of us knew who was responsible. There were no armed Palestinians in the camp, and West Beirut was under the military control of the Shi’a Amal Movement, who we considered our friends. We all lived in the same neighbourhood and I had gone to school with many of the young men who were in this Amal Movement. So, it is no surprise we were ill-prepared for what later happened.

  Within a month of my return, Lebanon’s Palestinians again became the focus of a power struggle between the different religious sects and ideological factions in that war-torn country. When the French created the modern boundaries of Lebanon in the 1920s, the Shi’a community was located in the south of the country, some areas of East Beirut and the Beqaa Valley. They were generally an impoverished, rural community but with strong religious links to the Shi’a in southern Iraq and in Iran. During the time of Lebanon’s economic growth in the 1950s and 60s, they were economically marginalised. In the 1970s, Imam Mousa Sadr emerged to lead the Lebanese Shi’a in the Movement of the Deprived (Harakat al Mahrumeen). Its military arm, Amal, was formed in 1974 and supported the Palestinian struggle for liberation. But by the end of the 1970s, concern was growing that the predominantly Sunni Palestinians might stay and that this population would increase Sunni numbers in Lebanon, thereby impacting on the country’s ‘confessional’ system where power is distributed proportionally among religious sects.