Tears for Tarshiha

by Olfat Mahmoud

  Unperturbed by the 1996 Israeli invasion, the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters intensified resistance to the occupation of their land. In 1998, the Israelis bombed Beirut relentlessly. One attack—on June 24—was particularly frightening. When it started in the late evening, bombs fell so near the camp that the children woke screaming. We all raced to my sister-in-law’s place, which was more sheltered than our place. Chaker, as always, was loudly expressing his anxiety, but Fayez was quiet, just sitting with his eyes wide open, seemingly numb. Andrea, a Canadian volunteer who was staying with us at that time, was understandably terrified. The bombing sounded very close to the camp. As we huddled together, we talked about Israel’s intention to destroy Lebanon’s infrastructure. During a lull in the bombing, Fayez turned to me and quietly asked, ‘Mum, what is infrastructure?’ I explained it was things such as electricity, water, roads and bridges, and that Israel was bombing these in retaliation for the Hezbollah’s attempts to liberate occupied southern Lebanon. With a big sigh of relief, he said, ‘Thank God, we do not have any infrastructure in the camp. It means they won’t bomb us tonight, doesn’t it?’ Amid fear and tears there was laughter.

  At that moment, I also thought of my grandparents and parents and everything they had lost. Instead of growing old in their homeland with the beautiful mountains in the distance and fresh air, sustained by food from their own farm, they suffered with chronic and painful illnesses brought on by the miserable damp, crowded, existence in the camps and the lack of proper health facilities.

  16

  LIFE AND DEATH

  My father had always worked and supported the family well, but during the civil war he became unemployed. Eventually he was able to get a job as an accountant with SAMED, a manufacturing enterprise run by the PLO in our camp. However, the factory was destroyed in 1985 during the Amal siege. With the PLO infrastructure largely dismantled after the 1982 Israeli invasion, and with no funds available for repairs, the factory workers and the 350 families they supported in Burj Barajneh camp faced a difficult time. My brother in the Gulf and all of us, supported my parents financially, but it was still not easy for my father to be unemployed and unable to support his family. He did, however, work with the popular committee, representing the Tarshiha people. This made him well known and respected within the camp, and of course it boosted his morale; but it was still hard for him not to be able to contribute to the family finances.

  Over the years my father had developed diabetes, which had become common in the camp. During our various wars and sieges, with all the stresses they imposed, it was not easy to manage his condition, although he was monitored by the UNRWA clinic since the mid-1980s. We all believed his illness resulted, not from poor diet so much from daily stress. My mother, too, suffered from a worsening arthritic condition which caused her considerable pain and eventually serious disability. As a family, we did our best to support our parents, and not a day would pass when I would not see either of them. When they were well they were a great help with the children, and my boys spent a lot of time with them in my family home and greatly loved them both.

  In 1997, I became pregnant with our fourth child. Mahmoud and I had always wanted a baby girl and the boys, too, were keen to have a sister. By late January 1998, I was in my eighth month of the pregnancy. As it is normally very cold then, it is not really a good time for spring-cleaning, but I wanted to get the house ready for the baby. As usual I was a bit obsessive about cleaning. It could have waited, but no, I wanted it done. One night after I had finished, I felt very ill and started to vomit. I began to lose my balance and had a severe headache. I called my sister-in-law, Nakeyah, who put my feet in cold water and prayed over me, which seemed to make me feel a bit better.

  Early next morning, Helen rang from Australia and said she’d had a feeling I was not well. I reassured her I was fine and sent the children to school as usual, before going off to the doctor with my friend, Suhair. I was shocked to find that my blood pressure was sky high—200 over 110. I was immediately admitted to Makassed General Hospital in the city, with a condition called pre-eclampsia which, if untreated, can kill both mother and baby. Helen, who had been planning to visit, brought her trip forward when she heard how ill I was, and was at my bedside within two days, staying with us for the next two months.

  Over the next few days, my blood pressure came down slowly, but not by very much. The doctors decided to induce the baby and for 24 hours I had contractions every two minutes. I was in so much pain and absolutely exhausted. Finally, the doctors decided I should have a caesarean despite my blood pressure being still dangerously high. We were all very frightened—I was very scared that I would die. Mahmoud came with me to the reception section of the operating theatre; he was very supportive, but we were both crying. When they took me into the operating theatre I became even more terrified when the anaesthetist, obviously thinking that I could not understand English, said to the surgeon, ‘Why did you call me? I can’t I give her an anaesthetic with such high blood pressure. Did you bring me here to kill her?’

  My doctor then spoke to me in English, explaining the various procedures and attempting to calm me. ‘We will give you an epidural but we cannot give you any sedation to go with this,’ she said. ‘So, while you will not feel pain, you will feel the sensations. Normally we give a sedative but as your blood pressure is high I cannot give you one. So be strong and as soon as the baby is delivered we will give you some sedation.’

  Then began the worst experience of my life. I was absolutely terrified. When they cut my abdomen, there was no pain, but I could feel the sensation of the retractors they used to pull the abdominal wall open to get the baby out. As they pulled, I cried out, ‘It feels like an earthquake in my tummy. Something is going thump, thump, thump in my tummy!’

  When all my other babies had been delivered normally I never cried out. Now, even with the epidural I was hysterical. The doctor, who was gentle and kind, said, ‘Take it easy, my dear, take it easy. When we take the baby out we will make you comfortable’.

  Finally, when I heard the baby cry I, too, cried with happiness and relief. Hani had been born. Immediately after I was sedated. It was 13 February 1998. I was moved to the intensive care unit where I remained for the 10 long and difficult days that it took for my blood pressure to come down. Hani was in the nursery, having been born three weeks’ premature. When I first saw him I nearly fainted as he was so tiny and covered by too many tubes. The day I left the hospital, he could not come with me, which left me very miserable. The whole episode had been a terrible and terrifying time for all the family, but we later joked that I must still have something to do on earth; the angel of death had come visiting again, but we asked him to go away one more time.

  As Hani and I gained our strength, everyone fussed over our little survivor. As is our custom after a birth, we slaughtered two sheep. I really dislike this practice as I am a vegetarian, but it is a custom that is widely practised. We distributed meat to the poor people in the camp and barbecued enough for the family celebration. We also made karawaria, a special dish made by all families after a baby is born: a mixture of rice flour, caraway flour and water. This mixture is stirred all through the cooking process so as not to go lumpy, and is served cooled in small plates, with a variety of nuts, mainly pistachio and walnuts, and coconut sprinkled on top. Traditionally, the sweet is given to everyone who comes to visit—which in this case, felt like half the camp! Helen, who stayed on to help me in my convalescence, became an expert at making this sweet.

  Eventually I was strong enough to return to work and we continued to develop our programs within the Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organisation. By 1999, PWHO’s contacts with international aid agencies and support groups had increased considerably. The Norwegian group PALCOM, which had been sending volunteers to the camp since the mid-1990s, invited me to Norway that year to speak about our situation to non-government agencies, the government aid agency, univers
ities and church support groups. I travelled all over Norway and saw how proud people seemed to be about the country’s role in the Oslo Accords. This was not surprising, given that their government had acted as a midwife to the deal. They were all under the illusion these Accords would help solve the Palestinian problem. But when I told them of our situation post-1993 and showed them how the Oslo Accords had done nothing for us, many people were surprised. They were quite unaware the agreement sought to deprive us of our right to return to Palestine, as guaranteed by international law and by the many UN resolutions passed on the issue. I see our role in making people aware about the situation of the 1948 refugees, as one of the most important things that we Palestinians can do.

  As in Australia, there were moments of frustration, especially with government officials. I often felt, when talking with them, that our projects were the victims of international aid fashion trends, whereas for us, they were a matter of survival. For instance, one year we would be told the focus was on income-generating projects, which of course we supported. But the next year the focus was on women, which we also supported, though really we wanted both income-generation and a better life for women. Often when we tried to determine our development priorities in a given year, we would learn that the international focus might be on something else. I feel that government agencies need to understand our material situation.

  Regardless of these frustrations, I was glad to seize the opportunity to visit Norway and, alongside my work in raising awareness, I was able to secure funds for our aged-care program from an organisation called Focus working through PALCOM. PWHO also developed a relationship with a nursing school in Norway that ran a program of overseas work experience and sent students to us for experience with our aged-care program.

  Soon after my return from Norway in 1999, I began to have trouble with my voice. Numerous tests and scans revealed thyroid cancer. Fortunately, with radiotherapy and respite in a Catholic convent in Damascus where the nuns cared for me wonderfully, I went into remission. But I found the necessary separation from the children and family very difficult. Again, I thought that death had come searching for me and still, it seemed it was not yet my time. All these near-misses in my personal life increased my faith in God but also made me realise I was still alive for a reason and that my work for my people had not yet ended.

  In September 2000, our people were again provoked when then Israeli Opposition Leader, Ariel Sharon—despised by Palestinians for his role in the Shatila massacre—and a Likud delegation, protected by riot police, provocatively entered the Temple Mount complex in the Old City of Jerusalem, which houses the Al-Aqsa (Dome of the Rock) mosque—the third holiest site in Islam.26 The al-Aqsa Intifada inside Palestine started soon after this incident, and another bloody chapter in our fight for our rights began.

  By then, without progress on the peace front and with the occupation becoming more brutal and settlements construction escalating, support for Hamas had spread throughout the Occupied Territories. In Lebanon, political change has been obvious too. I observed the posters and wall slogans supporting the nationalist parties: the PLO or PFLP or DFLP, had given way to posters and slogans that were more religious in tone. As people’s hopes of a return to Palestine were dashed over and over again, many lost hope in the political process and turned to religion, both Islam and Christianity. But among our people only a few turned to extremism. Among Muslim women, as an outward expression of their faith, many started to wear the hijab, or scarf, and more conservative codes of dress. The slogans and posters on the wall now referred to Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and to our other Islamic holy places. Lebanese-based Palestinians, banned for many years from undertaking the Hajj due to the troubles in Lebanon, were finally given permission by the Saudi Government to make the religious pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. People now felt only God could solve their problems.

  As my family was more secular than religious, these pilgrimages did not hold any interest for us—and by then my parents were to ill to travel anyway. By the late 1990s, my father’s health had begun to deteriorate. After Hani was born in 1998, my father developed a serious wound on his foot that due to his diabetes quickly turned gangrenous. We did everything we could to try to save his leg, but eventually, in May 1998 it was amputated. He had difficulty adjusting to this as there were few rehabilitation facilities and no physiotherapy in the camp. We tried to get him to use an artificial leg but it was too hard. Getting around in the camp either on crutches or in a wheelchair was impossible in the small alleyways filled with obstacles.

  During the later years of his illness he was mostly confined to a small room upstairs in our family house. Still he continued to be a member of the Tarshiha committee helping all people, whether in the camp or overseas, to maintain links with the village’s community. In addition, he wrote down all his recollections of his life, his family, his community and the history he had lived through.

  A year after his first amputation, he bumped his other foot and again the toes became gangrenous. At first he refused to have anything done. By this time my father just wanted to die. Eventually he consented to having the toes removed, but of course this did not help, and ultimately, he had to have the second leg amputated above the knee. It was a terrible time for he and my mother, as by now quite crippled by her arthritis, she found it difficult to care for him.

  Our family was scattered around the world and during this time we felt deeply the pain of our separation from each other, laid on top as it was, of our exile from Palestine. My parents missed their children greatly. Nader was in Dubai, Amer was in Sweden, Hanadi and Amernie had married and were in the US with their husbands and children, and my aunts were in Syria, Cyprus or Germany. Samir was still at school.

  My father was very special to me. He taught me to be strong and independent and he treated me as an equal to my brothers. This was so different from the experience of many of my female friends from more traditional families. He was a wonderful role model, teaching me to love, not hate. He taught me to think for myself. Even as a teenager he gave me freedom to live my life as I wanted to, all while helping me develop an ethical and moral framework to make the right decisions in life. This framework remains with me and helps me live my life today.

  As I watched his health failing I remembered the good times we had spent together—how we would play, eat and pray together as a family, and he would tell us, ‘Palestine ma daa’t ma bedea’. Hak wara mtaleb’—so long as we keep struggling, our right to return to Palestine will not be lost.

  My father was the rock of the family whom I loved dearly; so, to see him suffering was extremely heartbreaking. Eventually, as his health deteriorated further, and he lay dying, his mind wandered. He was not always aware of us, or of who we were. At this time, he talked about Palestine and Tarshiha, his village, not as though he were remembering it, but as though he was really there. He told us he was picking figs, catching birds, and he was talking to friends who had died before him. He was walking about his farm, enjoying being there, almost as if the past 54 years had not happened.

  Despite being grief-stricken I was happy for him. His last days were spent back in his homeland, in his village. And no one could stop him—no soldiers, no checkpoint could prevent his soul’s journey back to his beloved Tarshiha.

  My father’s death was the beginning of an ending. Six months later, on November 10, 2002, my mother died. Now only my grandmother remained as the family’s last physical link with Tarshiha. Our parents had been born in Tarshiha, we were the camp children who had been raised on memories. My mother’s death, however, crystallised for me my role as a spokesperson for my people. I had been meant to travel to Australia on November 11, but when my mother fell ill I postponed the trip. The day my mother died I slept in and missed her last moments; maybe subconsciously, I didn’t want to see her die. Although I was full of grief, my family urged me to go to Australia. My aunt told me how prou
d my mother was of my work overseas and my role as the voice of our people. I came to see her death as a message; she died so I would go. I boarded the plane just hours after her funeral and cried all the way across the Indian Ocean to Sydney.

  17

  WOMAN ON A MISSION

  In the years after my parents’ death, my commitment to serve my homeland and my people deepened. I felt a desperate need to keep hope alive within our community and to keep the path towards peace open. It made for an interesting marriage and family life as I began to travel more frequently, speaking at international events and being sponsored to undertake training to further the work of our NGO.

  In the first decade of the new millennium I told my people’s story too many times to count, travelling to Australia seven times and Sweden five times; speaking at conferences in Paris, Cairo and at pro-Palestinian rallies in Austria, the UK, Norway, Sri Lanka and wherever I was invited. At the same time, I participated in workshops and courses on the plight of refugees, gender-based violence and women’s issues; but always my travels were inspired by the desire to have our voice heard in the world.

  It was during a 2004 visit to Australia that my family’s last living link with our homeland was lost. My grandmother was 95 years old and in great health—but her life had in many ways stopped when she left Tarshiha; her stories were always of the time before the camps. When I was having children, she would talk to me about her own experiences in giving birth. But she only ever spoke of those babies born in Palestine as if by denying her life in the camp she could deny history. On my second night in Sydney, I was lying awake in the early hours of the morning when I saw my grandmother at the end of my bed smiling at me. I immediately rang my family back in Lebanon, but when Chaker answered, he assured me my grandmother was fine. I went back to bed and slept. In the morning, Chaker rang to say just moments after I had hung up, he had received a call from his uncle to say grandmother had died. Although the news saddened me, I felt at peace knowing she had travelled to be with me to say one last goodbye.