I started school in Beersheba in 1929 or 1930, and I used to go with my father. When I registered in the first class, I went with my neighbour and stood in a line in front of her. The teacher asked me my name, my father’s name, and my address, and then it was my neighbour’s turn. The teacher asked for her name, and before she came to her father’s name, I quickly said that she didn’t have a father, and asked how she could give her father’s name because he was dead? The teacher was very angry and told me to be quiet.
Once I was playing with my friends outside our home when we saw a very big black cloud covering the sky and thought rain was coming. It wasn’t a rain cloud but locusts, which attacked Palestine in 1930. When we saw the locusts, we ran to our homes. When I was home, my mother quickly closed the door because they were everywhere. The locusts ate the plants, trees, and everything green and turned Palestine into a desert, so the British organized campaigns with planes that spread chemicals over the land and killed them. Then they arranged a very big party to celebrate their success and invited the notable people of Beersheba, such as employees of the administration of the British Mandate, the mayor, makhateer, as well as the English officers and soldiers.12 The soldiers played music and organized a horse race with the Arabs at the party, while some Bedouin cooked a big meal of sheep and bread for the guests. It was a very beautiful party held in a place called Wadi Sabha, and it went from afternoon to midnight. I think it was in April, in the middle of spring, and it became very cold that night because it was in the desert.
The meal was served by the British Mandate administration’s employees, and among them were teachers from my school. As they offered food to my mother, they congratulated her on the recent birth of her baby. My mother was holding Hassan, who was then seven months old, and she was surprised and asked why they were congratulating her and who had told them. They answered, “Madeeha.” One teacher told her that I had cried at school because I had lost a bag of sweets that I had brought instead of my sandwich, and when the teacher had asked why I hadn’t brought a sandwich, I said I had brought the sweets that my grandmother had brought from Syria to celebrate the first week of Hassan’s birth. In fact, I had forgotten to bring my sandwich and had lied in order to get one. My mother was very angry when she heard this.
After lunch, there was an acrobatic display by the planes that had sprayed the chemicals on the locusts. When it became dark and we were about to leave, we were told that the program wasn’t finished, and a big screen was erected to show a film of how the planes had destroyed the locust plague, followed by a Charlie Chaplin film. I still remember it, and if I close my eyes, I can see what he was doing. Then we took a taxi home. There were a few taxis then, owned by Gazan people working in Beersheba. When we arrived home, I was punished for lying, and also by my teacher the next day.
My father, who was originally from Khan Younis, insisted on being transferred to his hometown, so, in 1931, the British agreed to transfer him as an Arabic teacher to the Khan Younis Boys’ School, the only school there. Boys studied until the seventh class (grade) and then went to Jerusalem if they wanted to continue on to high school. My father was very happy about returning to his hometown and bought a dunum of land situated in the most beautiful area of Khan Younis. At that time, it was almost empty, with only a few small clay houses. My sister Nadida was born in 1932, a short time before we moved to our new home. She was my youngest sister, and I raised her as my daughter when our mother died. Later, she became a headmistress. She just died a few years ago.
In 1932, my father built our beautiful sandstone house with the coloured glass windows he had dreamed of. Sandstone is not durable like mountain stone so our home only lasted fifty years, but my grandfather’s house in Nablus is over one hundred years old and is still standing. In Ramallah and Jerusalem, the houses were the same for a long time because the stone is so strong.
While the house was being built, the baker was busy baking bread, which he brought three times a day for the workers. I remember the donkeys, carrying one big sandstone block on each side, coming from Abasan and Bani Suheila, villages to the east of Khan Younis. It was the first house to be built of sandstone and was like a palace, a landmark of Khan Younis, and people passing by would always stop and look. It had red tiles on part of the roof, and balconies, and a big open area of white tiles in front of the house, with a separate entrance for men leading to the first floor and another area for women upstairs. When my mother entered, she covered her face and sometimes greeted the male relatives, which made my father angry. He used to tell her not to speak to them because when a woman is covered, she should not speak to men. My father was very strict, but later I succeeded in tempering his strictness, thank God. My mother liked gardening very much and planted the garden with many roses, jasmine, basil, orange trees, and many other fruit trees. I still have a photo of the house, taken from the balcony of my home across the street.
The weekend was on Thursday and Friday, but only in Khan Younis because there were only two Christian families, while the schools in the rest of Palestine had Friday and Sunday as their weekend. Also, Thursday was the main market day and it was important for people to buy and sell on this day. We gained a lot from those weekends of two consecutive days, especially if we wanted to visit my mother’s family or my uncles in Jerusalem or the West Bank. We would travel on Wednesday afternoons and return on Friday afternoons. I had been to Jerusalem, Nablus, and Jenin during the school holidays and on weekends with my mother because my uncle Fayez Beik Al Idrisi lived there. I had also visited another uncle in Ramallah, as well as a third uncle, who was a magistrate and lived in Tulkarm. But the first time I travelled outside Palestine was in 1934, when I went to Egypt with my parents.
Every year, the British gave their employees four free train tickets with which they could travel anywhere. After we moved into our new home, my father wanted to use these tickets to travel to Egypt, although my mother was then six months pregnant and hesitant about travelling. But he insisted, so my parents, Hassan, and I travelled to Egypt. I still remember that first trip to Egypt when I was nine years old. I couldn’t believe I was going on the train and tried to imagine how the trip would be. My parents laughed and spoke and smiled at me. We took the train that came from Haifa and went to Al Qantara, where we crossed the Suez Canal and then picked up the train again on the other side and continued to Cairo. We rented a suite in a hotel called The Modern Club in Al Hussein, one of the best areas in Cairo. There were no radios in the Gaza Strip, so I listened to the radio for the first time at that hotel, because in that year Egypt established the country’s first radio station. The hotel had a very big hall and the radio, which was the size of a sofa, hung on the wall. When I entered, I heard someone singing and asked my father who was singing. He said, “Look there, that box.”
I asked, “How can a box sing?”
My father explained about the radio, and said, “You are lucky that you saw it because this is the first time that Egypt has a radio station you can listen to.”
Not far from the hotel a shop sold boiled milk because there were no refrigerators, and I went every day to buy it. One day, I became lost because all the roads were similar, and I didn’t know which one led back to the hotel. So, I cried as I carried the hot milk and an old man asked why I was crying. I told him I was lost, and he asked me the name of the hotel and then pointed the way. When I returned late, my father was very worried and angry that I had lost my way because it wasn’t the first time I had gone to buy milk.
Two years ago, I visited Egypt, and after praying in Al Hussein Mosque with my niece and cousin, I searched for this hotel and asked a very old man what had been built in its place. I had assumed the hotel was gone because it was very old in 1934, but he told me it still existed, but that its name had been changed, and gave me directions. I didn’t believe him, but I went in the direction he told me. I then asked another old man, who was sitting and smoking an arqila, about the hotel. He told me it was two hundred years
old and had a new name and was at the end of the road. Nothing had changed except the big hall near the reception area, which had fallen down and hadn’t been rebuilt, but instead had been made into a parking lot for hotel customers.
I liked Cairo very much. I saw The White Rose, the first film at the cinema starring Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, the famous Egyptian composer, singer, and actor. We also attended a concert of Umm Kulthūm, and I was amazed at the jewellery she wore over her black dress, and her posture when she stood in front of the microphone to sing. I thought she was singing from memory because she wasn’t holding any paper in her hand, and as I listened to her voice, I told my father, “She’s really very clever in composition.” My father laughed and whispered something to my mother that I didn’t hear. Many times, I couldn’t understand what they said to each other. Then he asked me, “Why do you consider her good in composition?” I answered, “Because she sings in sequence. She sings that the whole universe shares her happiness: first the air, then the birds and trees, then the rivers and land.” He said I was very clever and was surprised that at my age I could understand the meaning of her song.
When we attended Umm Kulthūm’s concert, we had left Hassan with relatives who lived close to the hotel, because small children were not allowed. He had been asleep when we left him, but later woke up and cried because we weren’t there, so after my relatives tried in vain to calm him, they brought him to the concert. Sometime before the end, we heard noises and crying from the entrance of the hall, and my father saw the guards trying to prevent our relative, holding Hassan who was crying loudly, from entering. He quickly went and asked the guards to allow him to take Hassan to his mother, and promised that Hassan would not cry, and that if he opened his mouth, we would leave. Thank God, after my mother took Hassan in her arms under her veil, he immediately became quiet and slept. It was early morning, about 2:00 AM, and very cold when the concert finished, and people rushed quickly outside the theatre to find horses and carriages to take them home because there were no taxis. My father waited until the crowd diminished and then he found a carriage to take us to the hotel. The next night we went to the cinema, and the third day we went to the Egyptian museum and the pyramids.
We spent two weeks in Cairo and then travelled to Isma’ilia, where we spent three days at my uncle’s home. He was a road contractor for the English and had married an Egyptian. Then we travelled to Abu Hammad Al Sharqia to visit two of my father’s colleagues who had studied with him at Al Azhar University, and they killed a goat every day for lunch for us as a sign of their hospitality.
We returned to Khan Younis, and three months later my mother delivered twins: a boy named Abd Al Azeez and a girl called Radiyya. My mother contracted a fever after the delivery and died one week later because there were no antibiotics, ampicillin, or sulpha. The twins were sent to wet nurses; Radiyya went to one family and died at four months, and Abd Al Azeez went to another family and died nine months later from a fever. He was a very beautiful boy, and I remembered him and cried for him again when my brothers Hassan and Nadid were killed by the Israelis in 1956. That day, I cried for them and wished that Abd Al Azeez had lived so that at least one brother from my mother would be with us.
Everybody in Khan Younis cried when my mother died because she was good to everyone. She was the only one who owned a sewing machine, and she taught the women of Khan Younis many skills: knitting, crochet, sewing, and cooking. This made people even more sympathetic, and when we passed in the streets, they would say, “That is Madeeha, daughter of Rabia, that good lady. God be merciful.”
From that day, I stopped being a child and became responsible for the family. You could say I went instantly from childhood to adulthood and became a mother to my brother and sisters. With my pocket money, I bought chocolate and sweets and was very happy when I gave them to my brother and sisters. My father remarried one year later in 1936, the year of the Arab Revolt and the six-month strike against the British and their support for the Zionist movement, and in protest of the Jewish immigration to Palestine that undermined our rights to our country; the strike lasted from March to September.13 After the end of that revolt there were many negotiations between the English and the Arabs, which resulted in many agreements, but at the same time treachery started. Anyone suspected of being involved in actions against them, or even attending meetings to discuss the political situation at the time or how to mobilize and protest against their policies, had their house blown up by the British as a punitive demolition. Village houses were built of clay, so it was not such a big thing to blow them up. The British also sent thousands of those involved in activities against them to a place called Al Sammakh, close to Tiberias. Their brutal suppression of the revolt left many killed, wounded, and deported. They also hunted and arrested many Fedayeen, among them Mohammad Jamjoum, Ata Al Zier, and Fouad Hijazi, who participated in the 1929 uprising that started in Jerusalem and then spread to the rest of Palestine. These three young men were among the Fedayeen who led the protests against British Mandate rule and the colonization of Palestine in 1929. They were imprisoned in Acre Prison and hanged in front of thousands of people in a big square.14 The executions, which took place in June, were intended to silence the resistance. The English wanted Palestinians to understand the message that anyone who resisted would be killed. A famous poem, titled “Min Sijjin Akka” (“From Acre Prison”), that later become a popular song, was written to commemorate these heroes. It continues to be recited and sung by Palestinians throughout Gaza and by those in exile, especially on June 17th of each year, the anniversary of the execution of these three martyrs. This song was the beginning of my awareness of the Palestinian cause, the Zionist project, and British colonization.
The Fedayeen attacked the police station, post office, and railway station in Khan Younis and regularly attacked trains carrying English soldiers, so the British began the practice of putting a large number of Palestinians on a small motorized cart in front of the train. If the line was mined or they were attacked, the Palestinians were killed, leaving enough time to warn the following train. I know of many Palestinians who were killed because the cart was blown up, and of course the train stopped before it reached its destination.15
The second time I travelled outside Palestine was in 1937. As I said earlier, my mother died in 1934, three months after we returned from Egypt, and my father remarried one year later. That year, we spent our holidays at the Khan Younis beach because we couldn’t go anywhere due to the strike. My father loved the beach, and we spent the whole summer in the area now known as Al Mawasi.16 We had canvas shelters with roofs of palm fronds, and the people of Al Mawasi were our friends and helped us a lot. We gave them a sack of flour when we arrived, and every day, they brought us freshly baked bread. We brought a kerosene burner and pots to make tea and coffee, and kitchen equipment for cooking, and every week we sent someone to the town market to buy meat, vegetables, and fruit. So, we spent almost three months at the beach, from the day school finished until one or two days before school started. I consider that holiday one of the best times of my life. I have travelled a lot outside of Palestine, and I can say that this beach, with its clean white sand, was the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life. A lot has been written about the beautiful beaches of Tunis, and I have been there, but they didn’t look like the Khan Younis beach at that time. Al Mawasi changed after 1967. Now most of the beach area is occupied by Israeli settlements and the rest has become neglected and dirty.17
In 1937, my father took his wife on a late honeymoon to Lebanon and Syria, together with Hassan and my half-brother Nadid, the martyr, who was born in September 1936, and me. We took the train from Khan Younis to Haifa, with the free tickets my father received as an employee of the administration of the British Mandate. I had my notebook in my hand and wrote down everything that happened on the journey, such as the time we left Khan Younis and the names of the stations along the way. In Haifa, we had lunch in beautiful restaurants, and I remem
ber a restaurant called Khairazan, which was situated over the sea and still exists today. We spent three nights in Haifa and visited Mount Carmel, and then went to Acre where we prayed in the Al Jazzar Mosque and spent a very nice time.
After we left Haifa, we rented a taxi, and I wrote down the names of places and information about the area that I got from the driver. We were travelling with two of my father’s friends from Khan Younis: one was a merchant and the other knew the area very well. At that time, the borders between Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria were open, so we didn’t need a visa or special permission. We were included on my father’s Palestinian passport along with his wife, because a wife and children under sixteen were registered on the man’s passport, and my father only needed to show the passport to the border guards as we moved from area to area. Before crossing from Palestine to Lebanon, we saw a girl selling watermelons by the roadside. My father’s friend offered her five qersh for one, but she asked for eight; after some bargaining, she went to ask her mother. She returned a short time later and accepted the money, but when my father’s friend took the watermelon, he shouted angrily at her and said she had exchanged it for one that was smaller and not as sweet. He knew because he had scratched a mark with his fingernail on the original watermelon.
In Lebanon, we stayed in a big hotel in the mountains. There were only two hotels, and a long asphalt road with big tall trees on both sides led to them. The place was very, very beautiful and the scenery was amazing. My father and his wife slept in the afternoons, and my father sent Hassan and me to play in the park of the other hotel, because it had swings for children and he didn’t want us to become bored. We played there until late afternoon when they came and met us.
A White Lie Page 6