Tears for Tarshiha

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Tears for Tarshiha Page 16

by Olfat Mahmoud


  Alia also told me how she took her children with her when she went to the field every morning. She would make a swing for the babies and let the older children play in the fields. The babies were wrapped up and secured in the small swing and given a special dummy made by the women. This dummy, called lahive, consisted of a clean piece of material wrapped around a small piece of homemade Turkish delight and a mixture of ground herbs such as anise, cinnamon, almonds and crystal sugar. The children would love to suck this dummy. Alia told me she never had difficulties with her children as they were happy playing in the fields out in the open air.

  I would hear these stories of her life in Palestine and share with her the joyous memory but also feel cheated that my children would not feel the grass of Palestine beneath their feet and instead their playground was a squalid camp stalked by death and terror.

  Still sometimes camp life produced moments that were like a shaft of light in the darkness. Just after I returned to Beirut with Chaker, I developed a terrible toothache. It was early October 1987 around 6 p.m. There was then still a curfew at night, which meant no one was allowed to leave or enter the camp after 7 p.m. But with the pain becoming acute I desperately needed to see a dentist. As there were no dentists in the camp, I went to a checkpoint and asked the Syrians if I could leave, knowing there was no way I could possibly return within the hour. I didn’t care about the danger as I was in a pain so excruciating that it felt as if my face would explode. The problem was I was still breastfeeding Chaker so, of course, I could not stay out all night until the curfew was lifted in the morning. I had Chaker’s birth certificate with me as evidence of his recent birth, and the Syrians were sympathetic and promised to help me.

  But Amal had a second ring of checkpoints around the camp that I had to get past. They were not so helpful, insisting I go to their headquarters for permission. I knew if I did so, I would be longer than an hour; and there was no guarantee I would be given permission anyway. I silently said a prayer and decided to go straight to the dentist, a Lebanese Shi’a, and deal with the fallout later. My heart sank when I walked into his waiting room—it was full; I was the eleventh or twelfth patient at least. All I could think of was, ‘Oh my God, I will be here until 10 o’clock’.

  When the dentist came out, he told all those waiting that I had an appointment. I looked at him and said he was mistaken. But he insisted. Once inside his surgery, he said, ‘I know you are Palestinian from the camp, and I know about the curfew. You cannot wait here.’ He was so kind. He stopped the pain, put in a temporary filling and asked me to return in the morning. I was back in the camp by 7 p.m. thanks to this wonderful man.

  I stayed in Beirut with Chaker for three months, until December 1987, when Mahmoud returned from his filming assignment, and we could both go back to the Beqaa Valley. Life there was simple and people were pleasant and helpful. I resumed working in the School of Nursing, leaving Chaker with the neighbours the hours I was teaching because it did not have a childcare centre. Once, when it snowed heavily and Mahmoud was away, I became a bit frightened of being alone in the house with Chaker. The neighbours invited me over and I spent the night with them. I have good memories of my time there because of people like these. In fact, this is the kind of hospitality cultures like ours were famous for before the endless wars that have wreaked the Middle East.

  While there, I used to visit my parents and other relatives in Beirut from time to time, but then Mahmoud started to work in Beirut and he was only able to come back to the Beqaa on weekends. So, with mixed feelings, we decided to move to Beirut around October 1988. We had been in the Beqaa for 18 months and it had been the happiest of times.

  I was, of course, still teaching nursing students. The training project was very successful, and we graduated a number of nurses for the PRCS hospitals in Lebanon. I worked with our people in Wavell camp in Balbek, as well as with those Palestinians who lived in the local community throughout the Beqaa. We provided welfare services, and monitored pregnant women and newborn children, assisting them with clothes and other necessities. Through this community-based work, I gained a lot of knowledge about monitoring and managing projects funded by overseas agencies, and I learned about the financial management and reporting requirements necessary for such projects. Most importantly for me was the practical and immediate help we were able to provide for our people right there in the community, which helped to make their lives a bit better than it would otherwise have been.

  By April 1988, many PLO soldiers had returned to the camps to protect us after Arafat negotiated an end to the camp wars with the Amal militia leadership the year before. However much to my dismay this did not bring an end to the wars. Fighting in the camps re-ignited, this time between two PLO factions in Beirut, causing loss of life and yet more pain and suffering for the residents. I believed our focus was to liberate Palestine and to fight the Israeli occupation, not ourselves.

  Through this time, we had some news of our people in Palestine but no real contact. Not since my visit to England had I met anyone who lived in Palestine. What news we heard was via radio or TV. Email was not yet available and phone contact impossible. We did, of course, hear of the December 1987 Intifada, or uprising, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Like Palestinians everywhere, we supported our people inside the Occupied Territories who had risen up after 20 years of oppressive Israeli occupation, of land seizures and extensive construction of Israeli settlements on their land. I was proud of the role that women played in this uprising, helping with first-aid and relief work, and setting up makeshift schools so their children’s education could continue. I often thought of the friends I had met in London and prayed for their safety especially as young people of my age were confronting the powerful Israeli army with stones alone.

  In Lebanon, sectarian fighting had continued sporadically throughout 1987 and 1988 and the Lebanese Shi’a were actively engaging the Israelis in the south. By 1989, Lebanon effectively had two governments, one led by a Christian President, General Michel Aoun, based in East Beirut and the other led by Selim al Hoss, a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister, based in West Beirut. Amal and Hezbollah had been fighting for control of the southern suburbs of Beirut, and the Syrians had control over most of the central business district and all of the Beqaa Valley. In October 1989, attempts at reconciliation between the fighting factions by Arab states, in particular Saudi Arabia, led to the signing of the Ta’if Accords.23 These detailed a process of constitutional change that would lead to democratic and representative elections. Lebanon, it seemed, was finally on the road to recovery.

  When Mahmoud, Chaker and I returned to the camp in October 1988, we had no alternative but to live with my parents and my siblings, as there was no place in the camp for us to rent and very few buildings that didn’t need serious repair work. Nor could Mahmoud and I afford to build another storey on my parents’ place. This meant that there were 10 of us living in the tiny house. After six months, we were eventually able to get a small flat in the Fakhanie area, near the Arab University. Of course, like most of the buildings, this flat, had been damaged during the war – it took us more than two months to fix it sufficiently for us to live in it. We had brought all our furniture from the Beqaa and, with difficulty, our little family settled into the flat in March 1989. Chaker was 18 months old and by then I was pregnant with our second child. In spite of our difficulties in the camp, it was a peaceful and joyous time in my life.

  During these years we saw Helen regularly for 10 days or two weeks at a time, every six months or so. She would travel to southern Africa and then Palestine to review APHEDA projects there, and then come and see us in Lebanon. In February 1989, she undertook a one-month teaching assignment with Lebanese community health nurses for the World Health Organisation. Her work was right on the Green Line, previously a line of trees and vegetation that divided East Beirut from West Beirut at the Museum Crossing in central Beirut. She stayed with us during this time, which we r
eally enjoyed—when you are living such a confined life, it is refreshing to have an outsider bringing news and views from places of order and freedom.

  After the 1982 invasion, there had been few international development agencies in Beirut, since the region was considered unsafe for foreigners. There were even fewer agencies working with Palestinians. To their great credit, the Norwegian non-government agencies had stayed, and were supporting a number of our projects, but this was thinly spread. So APHEDA’s support to us through all those difficult years was greatly appreciated. I had two part-time jobs that were both funded by APHEDA: a childcare project at Mar Elias camp in Beirut, and my teaching in the School of Nursing at Bar Elias. Two days a week I would travel to Beqaa Valley for this, leaving Chaker with my sister Amanie.

  We had just settled into our flat when on March 18, 1989, when another of Lebanon’s wars started. This time Aoun was fighting the left-wing Lebanese forces as well as the Syrians, who were dug in around the UNESCO area and the Sports City in downtown Beirut. Our flat was on the eighth floor of a building right between these two areas. The height of the building in Beirut at the time was always a problem, not just because of the lack of electricity, but because tall buildings always got hit when the bombing and shooting started. We were friendly with a Syrian family from Damascus on the fourth floor, so when there was fighting, we would stay with them. As the fighting continued, they (wisely) decided to return to Syria, leaving us the key to the flat and inviting us to use it any time, which we did.

  Now as a mother and wife, the situation put me in a dilemma. I was very fearful for Chaker but at the same time I did not want to leave Mahmoud alone in the flat. At that time there were no armed Palestinians in Beirut and there was no fighting around the camp, so we felt that it was safer inside the camp. Eventually we agreed that Chaker should go and stay with my family in Burj, though. We hoped he wouldn’t be too distressed as he had lived there before and he was used to my parents, brothers, sisters and cousins. I would go to the camp and see him every day after work and then come back to the flat. I was working in Mar Elias camp near our flat and would travel by service to Burj Barajneh and back to Fakhanie to the flat. Normally this journey would take 10 minutes or so but at that time, it could sometimes take 90 minutes because there were so many checkpoints and the traffic was congested. I did that for two months, from March until early May, but it was dangerous and stressful in this war situation. Also, by then I was nearly two months’ pregnant with Fayez. Poor Fayez, right from the beginning his life was filled with fear and violence.

  One day in the middle of this war there was a ceasefire. All was quiet. Teenagers from the flats were playing soccer on a playground nearby. Mahmoud and I were watching them from our balcony. Eventually, becoming bored I decided to go inside and read. I left Mahmoud on the balcony and lay down with a book. Sometime later, I was taking a break from reading and was looking towards the mountains when I saw a bright flash. I wanted to scream, but the scream stayed in my throat. I knew instantly it was a rocket, and I thought it had hit the balcony. I could not hear a thing. There was smoke everywhere. I cried out to Mahmoud and rushed out to see if he was still alive. Mahmoud thought the bedroom had been hit because of the smoke, and he was crying out as he came in to find me. Then it dawned on us—the rocket had hit the playground. We felt sick with fear for all the children and spectators. When the dust settled we ran to the balcony to see what we imagined would be carnage below. But by some miracle the rocket had hit a neighbouring empty soccer field and not the playground.

  Mahmoud looked at me and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, my dear. Just sit down.’

  I was surprised. He added, ‘You are fine. Nothing is wrong with you, just sit down.’ Then I saw that I was bleeding. I had on a long loose cotton dress and I was bleeding from my stomach. There was a lot of blood. I did not have any pain, but there were small cuts on my stomach and on my legs made by small shards of glass. I went to the hospital nearby, but my injuries were only superficial. Poor Fayez, though. More shocks for him—before he had even been born.

  Returning from the hospital, a few hours later, I went to lie down but noticed the pillow where I had been lying before the blast was hot. Then I saw that a large piece of shrapnel had cut through the pillow and had driven deep into the mattress, missing my head by millimetres. I kept that pillow for a long time—if it had hit my head I would have been killed instantly; and I thanked God I had lived. There has never been any doubt in my mind that I will leave this world only when God wants me to. That day, and other events in my life, just confirmed this profoundly. That day my time had not yet arrived.

  After this experience, Mahmoud and I agreed we should leave the flat and return to the family home in the camp despite it already being very crowded; now there were seven family members plus the three of us, in a tiny space. Of course, it was difficult to have any semblance of a married life, so we tried several more times to repair the flat and live in it. Twice we repaired it and twice it was shelled in various clashes. Then the war flared up again in earnest and again, the flat was shelled; this time many of our things were destroyed. The bombing was much heavier this time and many people were killed on the streets. I couldn’t even leave the house to go to work. On this occasion, the camp was not under attack because it was Lebanese Christians who were fighting each other and also fighting the Syrians.

  By now I was around six months’ pregnant with Fayez. We went back to my parents’ house around July 1989 and stayed there. On December 25, our second boy was born. In contrast to my first pregnancy, this time I gave birth within the bosom of all my family. A long ceasefire was holding; we hoped this meant the war was finally over. A month after Fayez was born we repaired the flat yet again and with my sister Ghada to help me and the children, we returned to live there. My mother begged me to stay in the camp, but I insisted we were leaving. The day after we moved out, the Lebanese President Renae Mowad was assassinated, so fighting broke out again and we returned to my parents’ house.

  More than ever we needed a place of our own. Mahmoud’s brother, who had recently migrated to Sweden, offered his place above my mother-in-law’s small house in the camp, which we accepted with alacrity. Finally, we had a place of our own near all of my family. It was a huge relief. Of course, that house, too, had been damaged during the war and needed to be repaired, but we felt secure back in our community. Throughout this whole time of war and repairing places to live, and having babies, I was also working full-time managing the APHEDA-supported childcare centre in Mar Elias and another centre we had established in Burj Barajneh. My skills in project management were improving and increasingly I started to move away from nursing to work more in the community, focusing on the needs of women and children in our camps. I was well-known in all the camps in Beirut and in our community in the Beqaa, and I was beginning to develop my skills in community leadership. Mahmoud and my family, especially my father, were most supportive of my work, and Helen encouraged me as well. I felt the voice I had found in Australia in 1984 was re-emerging after years of trauma and war.

  My two children went to the Burj Barajneh centre, which was close to my parents’ house. So if I were delayed, my father would collect the children and take them home—no doubt telling them all the stories he used to entertain us with, especially those about his life in Tarshiha. We had also started a small maternity shop and a cooperative where women could buy baby clothes, nappies, milk powder, toys and such things, as they needed. I continued to go Bar Elias to teach, but as there were now other teachers there, I was only going once a week, since it was a long and tiring day: I used to leave the house at 6 a.m. for a 9 o’clock start, then would leave at 3 o’clock to be back in the camp by 7 p.m. At that time, we had to go the long way through the Druze-held areas of the mountainous areas of the Shouf. The three-hour trip each way by service was exhausting, but the highway from Beirut to Damascus was still controlled by the Christian Lebanese Forces so t
here was no way we could risk that. In fact, that route was closed to us for 15 years, from 1975 until 1990.

  Life in the camp was still difficult, even to undertake the simplest tasks. For instance, we needed permission from the Syrians, who at that time controlled the camp perimeter, to bring our furniture into the new house. And the actual process of moving was laborious, mostly because we could not bring our car into the camp, since all the entrances were blocked. Mahmoud had a small car he used for his media work, but the closest he could get it to our house was the checkpoint on Airport Boulevard which was about a a five-minute walk from our house through the narrow lanes of the camp.

  By the middle of 1990, we all thought the civil war in Lebanon was over but, towards the end of that year, the tensions between the Christian factions in East Beirut and the Syrians that had been simmering for more than a year, erupted again. The day this happened, I was packing lunch for the children and preparing to go to work. Fayez was less than a year old. I was holding him, and Chaker was standing next to me when I heard military aircraft overhead. Then the heavy bombing started. I screamed, and of course, the children started to scream too. Grabbing both of them in my arms, I ran to Mahmoud, who was resting in the bedroom, and shouted, ‘They are shooting and bombing the camp’. I ran downstairs to Mahmoud’s mother. The fear I felt was unlike anything I had felt on previous attacks; it was an overwhelming fear for my children. As it rose inside me, to the point of hysteria, I crushed them to me, terrified they would be harmed. Our house was on the border of the camp, which left us exposed to any fighting. Above us the Syrian air force and Lebanese planes of General Aoun were fighting each other. In the meantime, my father had rushed to our house and helped take the children to my family’s house in the middle of the camp. As we ran, the planes passed right overhead tailing and shooting at each other. I was screaming. The children were screaming. All of us hysterical with fear.

 

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