From Beirut, we travelled to Damascus and stayed in a big hotel close to Al Hamidiyah Souq, a very big, beautiful market that can only be entered on foot and where one can buy every imaginable thing.18 We also visited Al Umayyad Mosque and prayed there. Once, after lunch, we bought ice cream at a shop where women and men were segregated. The women were very religious and strict, and when they saw me uncovered with my father, they said, “Look at that girl. She doesn’t cover her head and her father looks religious, like a sheikh. How can he allow his daughter to do this? It’s not good.” My father heard them, and before we returned to the hotel, he bought me a white scarf to cover my head while we were in Damascus. I was twelve years old at the time. While I was there, I also visited my grandmother, who was visiting her sisters and relatives. I spent a very nice time with her, and she gave me some gifts. Then we returned by train to Khan Younis.
In that year, I finished the fifth class and started to think about my future. I felt that I didn’t want to be another copy of the women in Khan Younis, sitting at home with my father’s wife cooking and cleaning, then marrying one of my relatives or a family acquaintance and having a family. I didn’t want to be imprisoned at home. I wanted to see other places, and because I had travelled and seen life outside of it, I always thought it would be a disaster if I lived the rest of my life in Khan Younis.
2 / School Days
IN MY HISTORY, there is a lie that changed the direction of my life and I hope that God forgives me for lying. My father was a very religious and strict man and he totally opposed my wish to study in Ramallah, because from a religious point of view, women were prohibited from travelling without a male escort for safety reasons. Even when a woman goes on pilgrimage to Mecca, a man should be with her to assist and protect her along the way. But I thought that these rules, which were applicable in the old days, were incompatible with our current time, when transportation had become faster, shorter, and safer than the camels and horses that people used to travel with at the times of the prophet.
The lie started when Mustafa Al Dabbagh, the inspector of education in Jaffa region from 1933–1940, came with the British head of education, Mr. Farrell, to visit our school. At that time, there were only two schools in Khan Younis, so they visited the boys’ school first and then came to my school and visited our class. The girls’ school went up to fifth class and the fourth and fifth classes were combined, with eight girls in the fourth class and four in the fifth class. There wasn’t a teacher for each class because there weren’t enough children, so we were divided into two groups and studied different material. Mustafa Al Dabbagh asked the headmistress to choose a girl to recite something from her studies for the guest and I was chosen, and because I was short and thin, I stood on the table where I could be seen. When I saw the Englishman, I wanted him to understand the glory, generosity, and shining history of the Arabs, so I recited a poem from the Palestinian classicist poet Isaaf Nashashibi about Arabs and their values. Mustafa Al Dabbagh translated my words, and they laughed because the meaning of my poem was about generosity. If a beggar visits Arabs, they quickly slaughter their camel to welcome him; they don’t differentiate between a rich or a poor man or an Arab or foreigner, because everyone should be welcomed in a good way. After I finished the poem, they lifted me from the table, and Mustafa Al Dabbagh patted me on the shoulder and asked my name. I said, “Madeeha Sheikh Hafez Albatta.”
He said, “Oh, this is why you are clever. Like father, like daughter.” Then they left the school. After they left, I had a strange idea, to convince my father to allow me to attend the teachers’ training college, so when I went home I asked him if the British head of education had visited his school. He said, “Yes, then they visited your school.”
“No, I asked whether they returned after they visited us.”
“No, they didn’t return.”
The school had two shifts, with a break usually between 12:30 PM and 2:00 PM before the next shift started, so I said, “Surely they returned but they didn’t find you because it was break time.”
He asked why, and I lied and said, “When they heard my poem, they said that I should go to the teachers’ training college because I am very good, but our headmistress said that you are very strict and would not allow me to go to Ramallah. The British man said that he had heard of the Sheikh Hafez Albatta and he is very educated. But the head-mistress said that he had told you from the beginning of the year that I should attend the teachers’ training college, but you refused because it is against Islamic rules to travel without a man. Mr. Farrell then said that there were no male teachers and even the porter was prohibited from entering the school, that the school is only for Muslim girls.”
It was true that this school was established to encourage Muslim families, especially religious families and those in villages, to send their daughters to study. There weren’t any Christians there because they had their own schools.
My father asked, “Is this right? Did he say this?”
I said, “Yes, this is right.” So, he said he would think about it. When he said this, hope began to grow in my heart, and whenever I sat with him, I reminded him of his promise to think about sending me to Ramallah, and how, God willing, I would study there. He told me to be quiet, but I persisted, “No, you said you would think about it. You promised me.” He said he would think about it if I continued to be the first in the class, so of course I was.
I began attending school when I was young, but many girls in Khan Younis started school at an older age, because their families lived in villages and delayed sending their children to school until they became mature enough to attend without being accompanied by a family member. Also, some students failed their exams and repeated the same class once or twice, and two girls in my class were engaged and soon to be married, so I was very young compared to other students. I was twelve years old when I finished the fifth class, and that was the highest level of education at that time.
After I came first in the fifth class exam, Miss Helen Ridler, the principal of the Women’s Training College and the inspector of girls’ schools in Palestine, told the headmistress to allow me to repeat the fifth class the following year, so I wouldn’t forget what I had studied and to prepare me for the exam the next year. So, I repeated the fifth class, and occasionally replaced any teacher who was absent during that time. I like reading very much, so when I was bored, I sometimes left the class and read any book I could find. I spent that year reading all the books in my father’s library, which was very big and covered an entire wall. I read those books I could understand, and many beautiful stories, and my father told me to put a question mark beside the words I couldn’t understand and ask him. So, when I attended the teachers’ training college, I was the strongest in Arabic amongst all the girls, who were all two or three years older than me. I was at the top of the class, and among the first top students in Palestine.
The next year was 1936, the year of the six-month strike, and there was no exam. In fact, there was no school during the strike. All of the schools were closed or stopped, except our school, because we had small numbers and nobody paid attention to our coming and going, and because the headmistress cared about education and encouraged us to come. There was an exam at the end of 1936, and three months later, in 1937, there was another exam, and I came first in both.
When she first met me, Miss Ridler said that I was good, but I was young, so I couldn’t be sent to a boarding school where I had to take care of myself. At that time, I had very long hair, which my aunt combed and plaited because I couldn’t do it myself. I saw that Miss Ridler’s hair was up, not down, and fixed in a bun, so at my next interview, in 1938, I did the same. When she met with me, she asked my age and realized that I was still one and a half years below the required age. She asked me who combed my hair and I told her that I did. She then asked why I did my hair like it was, and I told her that I wanted to be like her. She smiled and seemed to like my answer, and then asked who took care of me,
and I answered that I did. Then she asked why my mother didn’t help, and when I cried and told her that my mother had died, I felt that she sympathized with me.
Finally, I was accepted in 1938, even though I wasn’t yet fifteen years old. When I received the acceptance letter, the first thing I did was cut my long hair because I knew I would not be able to look after it. My long plaits were gone. I was sent a list that included everything I should bring to the school, and I had to embroider my name with red silk thread on every piece of clothing because they would all be washed together. So, every day, from the first prayer in the morning until midday, I worked on my mother’s small sewing machine to prepare my clothes and things to take with me, and at the beginning of September, everything was ready and packed. The night before I was to leave was the most beautiful night of my life, even more beautiful than my wedding night. I spent that whole night walking the corridors of our home in the moonlight. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even wait for the sun to rise. I was very eager to go and waited for the sunrise, moment by moment, until morning came, and the sun appeared, and then I travelled to Ramallah.
My father took me to the college, then to my uncle’s house, and left, and I stayed with them for three days. Then my uncle took me to the school. I was very clever in mathematics, Arabic, geography, and history. The only subject I wasn’t good at was domestic science. I cried when I cut onions and had to have a break before continuing, so the teacher always shouted at me and gave me very low marks, like sixty-five or sixty-seven out of one hundred; as I had achieved ninety-eight in Arabic and ninety-nine in mathematics, it lowered my average, even though I remained the top pupil. I did not like that subject and I did not like the teacher, who expected me to do everything perfectly. After a while, though, the domestic science teacher saw that I was in some distress, and she changed her approach and started to encourage me. I started to get better marks: seventy-eight, seventy-nine, and even eighty. In time, my relationship with the teacher changed and I began to like her. A few years ago, I saw her death notice in the newspaper and felt sad that she had died. She was from Bethlehem.
In 1939, while I was at the college, the Second World War started. All the windows were covered with blue adhesive plastic and it was forbidden to put a light on at night, because Haifa had already been hit and we didn’t want to be a target as well. We had to feel with our hands along the walls until we came to the toilet, and then turn on a light. Ramallah was mainly a Christian city then and had no mosques, so there was no muezzin to call the prayers, so after I prayed the fourth prayer, I kept the prayer mat beside my bed while I waited for the fifth prayer. I didn’t have a watch then. My father bought me one when I became a teacher.
The English used all their resources to fund their army, so there were shortages in everything because the money went to support the war. They distributed coupons for sugar, flour, tea, and oil—all the necessary things—but there were only limited supplies and not enough for the people. They even stopped people from fishing because they wanted to clear the sea for the English battleships, so there was no fish, and only brown sugar because the factories that processed sugar were used for the war effort. Then they built a big asphalt road that went from the east of Khan Younis through the Sinai Desert and the northern coast of Egypt, through Libya, Tunis, and Morocco, through all of northern Africa to the Sea of Gibraltar. This road ran parallel to the railway line and was used by military tanks and vehicles full of soldiers.
In 1941, I graduated from the teachers’ training college. My father was very proud when he received my certificate, which was sent to the fathers by post, and took it to the Agha family diwan to show them my marks. Our studies had been extended from two to three years, because there was no budget for employment after we graduated due to the war. We were the first group of teachers to study for three years, and even when we did graduate, not all of us were employed, but I found a job immediately because I came in first before thirteen other girls. After a few months, another three girls found work, but it wasn’t until almost three years later that the remaining graduates were employed.
I was employed at the same school that I had attended in Khan Younis, and my salary was nine English pounds. Later, when I became headmistress, my salary increased to thirty-five pounds. Salaries were raised a little during the war because everything became very expensive. My salary was a great help to my father, and he gave me one Palestinian pound to spend, which still bought a lot of things. When I became a headmistress, he gave me two pounds from my salary. Every malleem I took from my father as pocket money I used to buy milk, eggs, and fruit. Every day, I ate four eggs and drank no less than one litre of milk. I didn’t care about clothes because that was my father’s responsibility, and in fact I didn’t care if he bought me clothes or not. I always drank all kinds of juice—tomato, orange, grapefruit—from our garden, so my health is still good, thank God. My weight was low, but my health was good, and I rarely caught colds and flu like other people.
It was unusual to buy milk in Khan Younis because people who had cows or other animals gave milk to those who didn’t. We drank milk every day, and my father arranged with the bus driver who travelled daily to Gaza City to bring us milk in gallon pots. When I became a teacher, my students brought me milk, but when I wanted to pay them, they refused and said that their mothers had sent it as a gift. They became shy when I offered money, but I told them I wanted milk every day and not as a gift, and if they didn’t take the money, I would not take the milk. But they kept bringing it, so I threatened that if they didn’t take the money, I would fail them at school, so then they accepted the money and every day I received fresh milk.
When I became a teacher, I not only taught but was also active in the women’s community. I met women and girls in their houses during the reception days they organized for drinking coffee and tea and gossiping, and I used these opportunities to read and explain verses of the Quran to those who didn’t understand. I also helped people solve their problems. Once a group of nine girls came to register at the school, but they were refused because they were older than the enrolment age. When I asked the headmistress the reason, she said that they were eight and nine years of age and the acceptable age for the first class was five or six years, so she couldn’t put them with the small children. I became very angry and told her that these girls were from my town and it was the fault of their families that they had not been registered before. I was teaching the first class and told the headmistress that I could include them in the class and work with them, and I assured her that their level would be better than the rest of the class. Although she was doubtful, I registered them in my class.
I taught those girls and seven of the nine were very clever, more intelligent than my other students. Every lesson was usually forty-five minutes, but the lessons for the first class were thirty minutes, with a fifteen-minute break between each lesson. So, I took my chair and sat with these students under the orange tree in the schoolyard and gave them extra lessons, encouraged them, and checked their homework. By the end of the year, they were the first in the class, and they succeeded year after year until they reached the seventh class. By that time, the last two classes had been added to the school. Two of the girls later left for family reasons, but I thought of the remaining girls when the refugee girls were registered and teachers were needed, and these girls later became headmistresses in girls’ schools in Khan Younis. Things like this made the education department consider me as a headmistress, even though I was very young. They heard about my role in the community and how I was helping and taking initiative.
When I was first nominated as headmistress of my school, I refused, because I didn’t want to be in charge of my former teachers, who weren’t even happy that I was their colleague. I expected many problems, so I refused. However, my father and those who nominated me—Basheer Al Rayyis, the education inspector of the southern area—insisted, and in the end, I couldn’t refuse the offer. Their argument was that the school
’s level had decreased because of bad administration, and they wanted to hire someone from the school who knew the situation and was clever enough to administer the school and raise its level. A telephone, the first in Khan Younis, was installed at the school, and I was to phone the education department the moment I had any problems.
On my first day as headmistress, I went to the assembly and was so afraid that some of the teachers would physically attack me, which they could easily do because I was small and thin. I was correct in my expectations of the teachers’ behaviour. They started lobbying against me in the same way they had done with the previous headmistress, finally causing her to leave, but a committee from the education department helped me to get rid of the ringleader when it saw that she was disturbing my work. The committee went to her father and told him about the problems she was causing at school and said that there were two options to solve the problem: she would be fired, or she could marry and resign. Female married teachers were not allowed to work during the British Mandate, and anyone who wanted to marry had to inform the department one month before, so a replacement could be found. Her father arranged a marriage for her because gossip in the community would certainly result if she was fired. She left the school, and this was a warning for the other teachers to stop causing problems because they knew the consequences. So, they kept quiet, and I was able to administer the school easily and the standard began to rise again.
I became headmistress in 1946. Before 1947, we taught in a rented house, and then the English built our school and a boys’ school. At that time the Partition Plan was decided by the United Nations, and according to this plan, the English would finish their mandate and leave Palestine on May 15, 1948. At the opening ceremony for the boys’ school, which was called ’Izz Al Din Al Qassam—named after the revolutionary Arab leader who stepped up for Palestinian rights, challenging the British—the English head of education made a speech in which he said that he knew all of us were waiting for May 15th and the end of the British Mandate, but that he was sure that after this date we would cry for these days.1 And this happened. By then we had moved to the new school in Khan Younis City, and in 1948, the war, and the problems that forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes and lands, started. Many people from Jaffa city, Al Majdal, and other nearby villages found refuge in Khan Younis or passed through on their way to Rafah or the Sinai. I saw them clustered everywhere in the Khan Younis streets, and under trees, in mosques, and near the beach. These scenes of the displaced families and their children had a very big impact on me, and many times I cried about their situation.
A White Lie Page 7