An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba

by Doctor Nahla Abdo

  Field (2012) explains how oral history is not a supplement to historical research and research does not collect oral histories but creates them, so the stories are not waiting to be discovered by historians; the conditions of possibility that allow for negotiation of dialogues about memory are open-ended. Memories are reminiscences of the past that link people to their nation.3 Memory work is:

  the process of framing visual and emotional traces of the past into forms of memory, narrative, and other representations … Memory work has the potential to integrate thinking and feeling about one’s own past in an unattainable fantasy … “Imagining memories” in a form of memory work that frames sensory inputs and creates frameworks that are central to sustaining self-cohesion and identity formation over time. (Boyarin 1994: 179)

  Both “collective memory” and “collective identity” are the effects of intersubjective practices of signification that are constantly re-created within the framework of marginally contestable rules for discourse (Butler 1990: 145).

  This work analyses the self-reflexive awareness process women undergo when they narrate the Nakba, contributing to the movement of writing history from below – and it is a type of dialogue towards developing a new subjectivity. Precautionary premises informed this work: I avoid the faults of writing about national traumas, in psychological terms (like the memory industry), in which victimization becomes the overwhelming courier, but approach it as a socio-historical process in which the “Nakba” genre overwhelms the analysis. Against a uniformity of the tale, I sought the variety of lived experiences. I concede indigenous scholarly theorization that decreases Eurocentric system of thought.4 I employ the method of listening without engaging, aware of romanticizing memory (see Stoler and Strassler 2000), or the threat of “erasure” of sensual tales, but mostly aware that memory is shaped by the present (Dana 2017), and that nationalistic narratives silenced any uncomfortable memories, and acknowledge the inconsistencies of witnesses and testimonies when the memories have to do with massacres (for example Esmeir 2007 on the Tantura massacre).

  Methodologically, inspired by indigenous feminist research practices, I used “ground-truthing”5 to be able to explore women’s journey. This is the practice of using field observations and interpreting, analysing and verifying remotely sensed information about the physical features of an area (Carp 2009) to understand the different modes of relationships between women while they construct a reflexive critical knowledge. In particular, as they liberate their everyday routine lives, they act on their sensory knowledge and their experience in pre-1948 lived experience, and re-evaluate it based on the “now” of their lives. Also, exploring how women in fact perceive their roles as women as an extension to their previous village experience and the logic prevalent at the time.

  Lastly, “If we don’t expose the despotism against Indigenous women, then most non-Indigenous people would quickly dismiss Indigenous feminism as meritless” (Mouchref 2016: 90). Elderly Palestinian refugee women’s collective memories are rooted in indigenous feminism and embedded in the historical experience of colonization. It is an epistemology or a different way of knowing (Smith 1999). It values their voices and holds women in equal status with men. Collected narratives on Palestinian women as authority figures, as in the seminal volumes that Abdul Hadi (1999‒2001), have been produced in an attempt to change the traditional and stereotypical image of peasant women. This work supports the idea that they are able to make oppression visible, that they are authority figures, whether or not they are aware of this. Lastly, I adopt the premise that “collective memory of imperialism has been perpetuated through the ways in which knowledge about indigenous peoples was collected, classified and then represented in various ways back to the West, and then, through the eyes of the West, back to those who have been colonized” (Smith 1999: 1‒2).

  THE PERSISTENCE OF REASSIGNING A SOCIETAL LOGIC AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK

  How did women of the Nakba generation position themselves in their stories (see Table 6.1)? What were they fetching or coding as they recited their ways of doing things before the Nakba? How did they become the guardians of that social framework of the time? I identified many occasions when they saw themselves as strong, and that the whole family was dependent on them, though the chores they did were not easy to begin with. In this section, their narratives will speak of all that. Sayigh has long called for archiving and collecting Nakba narratives, but in her current work (Sayigh 2015), as she deconstructs the systematic silencing of Nakba sufferings, she posits that simple narrative collection may not be sufficient because what is vital and efficient is creating central collection mechanisms. The right of return requires a collective effort in order to achieve a holistic view of the Nakba experience and integrate it into public knowledge and school books. Sayigh wondered what women wish to pass on to their children. The following selected testimonies (before their discussion) suggest some of what women insist should be passed on and aids understanding of how important it is to truly integrate their narratives into public knowledge ‒ as marginalization of refugee-ism is increasing.

  Table 6.1 Wiped villages of interviewees: date, population at time, number of refugees created and amount of land lost

  “Deir Ayoob was facing the bridge”

  Umm Na’el, eighty-eight years old, from Deir Ayoob, has much to talk about, but her narration and nostalgia were spatially focused on what faced their destroyed village: the bridge facing their home:

  We are from Deir Ayoob (village). We used to sleep in Yalo and return in the morning to Deir Ayoob, spend the day then return to Yalo at night, from fear. I was a strong (qawiyya) girl. Yalo is so beautiful. It is near Bab al-Waad, do you know where Bab al-Wad is? Near Bab al-Wad there is a bridge, right in front of our village (baladna). We used to go by foot to al-Ramla, Al-Lydd, and Yafa to bring all types of things we need. I used to go with my girlfriends (rafikaty) to bring our market needs and come back. They used to bring the oranges from Akka ‒ west of us. The oranges from Aker were mounted as high as a car in front of the mosque. We used to buy every twenty oranges with one shilling. I remember most when I used to cut and collect timber and fallen branches (ba-hatteb) from the forest and I came back hungry and I ask my mom for food, she used to tell me here eat oranges! I remember that very well.

  Because our homes were in front of the bridge they demolished them all. The British demolished the whole line of homes because they were in front of the bridge. The revolutionaries used to come from that bridge. We saw the revolutionaries who cut the telephone wires next to Bab al-Waad. The English men said: “common common fuck in”. Deir Ayoob is very tiny, there were about only fifty families. So, we went to Yalo and we were dispersed since that time. The English kicked us out like sheep to Beit Sira ‒ at the borders of Deir Ayoob ‒ and said: “Yallah common to Beit Sira”. They drove us out like sheep. God destroy their homes. Like how did they know about Beit Sira. There were traitors!

  After Yalo, came the Jews, right by the main entrance of Yalo, they appeared. We were still girls in Yalo but Yalo was a tabooed area. For a while we used to go to Yalo at night to sleep and spend the day in Deir Ayoob. All other areas were taken: Beit Nuba, Yalo, Deir Ayoob, they all were taken. The women from al-Ramleh and al-Lydd were kicked out too with us, I swear they were barefooted. I saw a woman with only one sock on one foot. But we left with our clothes on, we were not barefooted like al-Lydd women. We were humiliated. We all sat under the olive tree, tightly because the place was so tight. We took the keys with us but we do not know where they are now.

  They kicked us out and we went to Beit Nooba, we did not stay long there, then we went to Kharabtha, and we stayed long there, my mother, my brothers and one sister she was forty days old only. People were scared. They put all the people under the olive trees. We would put a blanket and sleep there. Everyone, all the people from all over were there: from al-Lydd, al-Ramleh, plenty of people were there. They were not our relatives. We were on one side and they were on t
he other.

  We went back and forth between Yalo and our village. Deir Ayoob was beautiful, it was in front of the bridge. There were grapes and figs. Our village was beautiful as it stands in front of the bridge. I swear, I still remember it until this day. We used to take the basket and go bring figs, the fig was that big [she opened her hand and showed how big it was]. We went to visit recently, now it is all made out of streets and cars go back and forth, it is near Imwas and tourists go there. They took our homes. God break their homes.

  “Water springs make anything alive”

  Umm Shadi, an eighty-three-year-old widow from Beit Tool, constantly emphasized how water was fundamental to their daily lives. As she tells of the dispossession of their land and village, first by the British Mandate, then by the Zionists, she relates every aspect of her life to the need for water:

  I left when I was old from our county, I was fifteen years old. Then, we stayed in Yalo, near al-Latroun. My brother left to the United States and sent us some remittances so we built a house and stayed there. Yalo was better than Beit Thoola twenty times. Our village, Beit Thoola, was very mountainous, you cannot find a piece of land without rocks on its pasture. There was very little land for people to grow plants due to the rocks, and lots of cactus and there is no water spring. I remember it well. I remember everything.

  The Jews began demolishing our houses. The town that they entered they demolish its houses and do the things that are not right and immoral just like what they did in Deir Yassin [massacre] but even much more!!! Abu Ghosh was adjacent to our village about 6 kilometres. They told us not to run away but from the nearby village they used to say take your girls and run away. We also fled to al-Mizra’ al-Sharqyeh [north of Ramallah].

  After four months we returned to Yalo and my father wanted to get some figs from Beit Thoola but the land was planted with bombs. He left with his cousin on a donkey but the road was evil. The camel broke its leg and my father’s leg was broken too. He started screaming until his uncle heard him but he told them to be careful as the land was planted with bombs.

  Later the Jews colonized Yalo, Umwas and Beit Thoola in one day, so we returned to al-Mizra’ al-Sharqyeh and stayed there 3‒4 years then again back to Yalo. We stayed one year but they came to us and we ran away. We went to Beit Anan and I was nineteen then. But, there was no place for us to stay and we stayed near the oil machine ‒ God saves you from this evil. We did not find water wells or water springs, so after a month we went to Haret al-Yahoo inside Jerusalem walls. In there in the Hosh with our cousins, the family of X, the family of Y, the family of A and the family of B [she recalls the families’ names] were all stacked next to each other.

  Until today, I still go to Yalo and I pick almonds, oregano and everything. There are trees of all kinds because there is water there. In front of the house we have a pomegranate tree, grapes, apple tree, almond and I pick from all of them every year when I go. We had all sorts of trees. It is beautiful, water makes anything live.

  “The place was a butchery”

  Although the significance of this massacre has not been a focus of attention, Umm Nidal, from al-Dawaymeh, remembers the butchery in al-Dawaymeh. She remembers the exact day that it happened (29 October 1948). She stayed in touch with the only woman who miraculously survived the massacre with her two children. She remembers seeing butchered bodies too:

  It was a Friday the 29th of October 1948. All what the Arabs had was a “mikanizm” [Turkish word for a gun]. They had real guns. What do you expect? They butchered everyone. The massacre was worse than Deir Yassin’s massacre.

  Al-Dawaymeh was very spacious, people from all over come there. They used to come to the market on Fridays. There was something called Friday’s Market. From al-Lydd to Ramleh, from the north and the south meet there, in Friday’s Market day. They shop because everything was cheap there.

  The only survivor that day was a woman with her two kids as they hid under the hay with her. She heard everything and saw everything.

  People come from all over, were one family from every county. Al-Dawaymeh used to gather people from all over. We met many people there and made friendships. In fact, when we were kicked out from our village my father went to a friend that he met in the Friday market and we lived in al-Khalil for few years with them. People loved to come to al-Dawaymeh as they can socialize there. Women used to go to the market every Friday and they would sell their products.

  al-Dawaymeh was about to become a municipality on its own. It was too wide of a land. They built all the infrastructure for the roads, it was all planned, it had a future in the market, all what was left then was just the asphalt road. al-Dawaymeh would have become a big city by now. A beautiful city. Everything was all set and prepared just the asphalt. This is why the Jews took it, they do not want it to become a big city.

  Not even one person remained alive, they killed every man and woman, there were 203 people slaughtered in the butchery of al-Dawaymeh. Many tried to walk there but were killed because they infiltrated bombs on the way there, we used to see bodies butchered, the place was a butchery.

  DISCUSSION: WHAT DO NAKBA-GENERATION WOMEN WISH TO PASS TO THEIR CHILDREN?

  Umm Nidal was a bit younger than both Umm Shadi and Umm Na’el but her story describes the hopes of the village to become a city. Also, other women liked her because she was from al-Dawaymeh, which was about to become a big city. What has she carried with her all these years? She has carried the idea that she had lived in a place that made little distinction between men and women, as they all went to the market and they all socialized with other villagers, and their role in transmitting not only goods, but also values and traditions. This was cultural capital for a large village that was on the verge of becoming a city. The reputation of al-Dawaymeh with its popular markets and wealth and community ties is what Umm Nidal wished to transmit to her grandchildren.

  Reading al-Aref (1956), the renowned historian of the 1948 war and battles of Jerusalem, it is evident that the bridge which Umm Nidal highlighted was not just a bridge, it was where the fighting was most intense in 1947. It was a lifeline for the colonizers. He writes:

  this passage in Bab al-wad was tying the valleys of Palestine with the mountains of Jerusalem. There was a need to capture this bridge and the areas surrounding it of villages, highlands to save Jerusalem [from the enemy] … This passage has throughout history a strategic significance and whoever controls it dominates Jerusalem … fighting there was the fiercest in all Palestine. (al-Aref 1965: 491‒492)

  Umm Na’el knew very little about history and facts about the revolutionaries; however, in her description of the bridge, she explained that there were always young men there, though she probably could not exactly identify why they were always there. What she wished to pass to her children was how things weighed at the time, how it felt like colonization, and the pride in these young revolutionaries without exactly knowing what they accomplished at the time.

  Women and younger girls travelled to cities like al-Ludd and al-Ramlah to go to the market. They did things together as rafayek (good friends). Their visits to the city were memorable to them, as were the oranges piled as high as the car. For example, Umm Shadi recalled going to collect wood. There was clearly a strong appreciation of nature, the forest, water springs, figs and grapes. Umm Shadi has shared many stories with the women who constantly visit her. Umm Shadi is well known for telling Nakba stories and she intentionally brings women of all ages together so they can hear and retell stories. I return to this point below.

  Umm Shadi told the story of how qawyah she was; she meant that she did all the necessary work (t-hatteb) in the fields and later when they were dispossessed she worked as a water transporter in Haret al-Sharaf. She had a history of skilled labour. It is not clear if she picked up other types of work and became skilled again, but having many children tied her to housework. Umm Imad also told us that she was qawyah when she was young. When she grew up and after she was married she remained stron
g-willed:

  We stood in front of the buses in Bab-al-Amood. There were buses taking people to Beirut, al-Sham (Syria), and Jordan. The bus driver would call out and Abu Imad said: “Come let us get on the bus with the people”. I told him: “you want to go God ease your way. I do not want to go, you go; I want to stay in the country”. Bus drivers wanted to fill their buses and go. I had two kids and I refused to go. Many years after, when Sabra and Shatila massacres took place, I told my husband: “You see, if I agreed to go we would be killed by now”.

  Umm Imad was determined to decide where she would live. In times of despair and loss, she knew what she wanted. Umm Imad being the only daughter, was treated like her brothers, and thus grew up making decisions just like a boy. She said she even controlled the kind and amount of food in the household.