The next day, Israeli soldiers came asking about Ibrahim, who was still in Egypt, and searched our home looking for papers that might give them some information. They didn’t find anything, and as they were leaving, they said in Hebrew that they should go to the house of the old mayor of Gaza, Muneer Al Rayyis, who was a sick old man by then. The Israelis thought that because Ibrahim and he were Gazan leaders, they might have some important information. I understood what they said, so I quickly telephoned his home. I waited a long time and thought that the lines had been disconnected, when a Jewish voice answered, and I asked to be connected to the home of Muneer Al Rayyis. His daughter answered, and I told her, “Look, your cousins are on their way to your home to see your father, so prepare him for the visit. Do you understand what I am saying?”
The girl said, “Yes.”
I also told her that they had just left our home and if there was something not clean, or if things needed to be gotten rid of at home, to take care of it because her cousins should find the house clean. The girl said she understood, and I rang off. In fact, since the time that the radio announcements had accused Ibrahim of planning the attack against The Hebrew University, I had gotten rid of any papers related to the PLO and anything political that might harm us. So, when they came in 1973, they didn’t find anything.
When the war finished, Ibrahim returned to Gaza, coming back from Cairo through Cyprus. He phoned us from Cyprus to say when he would arrive at the airport, as there was no telephone communication between Egypt and Israel, so Adala and her fiancé and I went to collect him. On our way, we saw the Israeli cars, jeeps, and tanks full of soldiers and military equipment returning to Israel from the Sinai. This was November 1973, and Adala was married on November 30, 1973. So, in 1973, Adala found work, got engaged, and married, Aida completed tawjihi, and Azza was at school. Hussein also graduated that year and worked in Libya until 1975. Now he is in Riyadh, working as the manager of an engineering company that builds hotels.
At the end of 1978, I learned to drive, and I asked a girl who was being taught with me if she knew me. She said no, so I asked her whether she had ever heard my voice on the telephone, and she said no. Then I asked if she remembered a woman who had phoned in 1973, saying that her cousins were coming to her home. She said, yes, she remembered, and asked if I was that woman. She said that since then she had prayed for God’s blessings for me because of the warning, and she had wondered many times who I was because I hadn’t given my name. She thanked me, and from that day on we were friends.
The situation was getting more difficult, and Ibrahim and I decided that Hamed should leave Gaza and go to study in Egypt with his brothers or in Kuwait under the supervision of his uncle. So, Ibrahim went to the civil administration in Jericho and applied for permission for him to travel as he wasn’t yet sixteen and was still on his father’s identity card. He also organized a separate ID card for him to travel. I took Hamed to Amman, as Ibrahim was prohibited from leaving Gaza then because the Israelis thought he might meet with the PLO. We travelled via the Allenby Bridge. When we crossed over to Jordan, we obtained visas to Kuwait and went to his uncle’s home to arrange his studies. Hamed was very young and we felt it would better for him to be with his uncle’s family. Then I flew to Egypt, and from there I returned to Gaza with the Red Cross.
Hamed did not like studying in Kuwait and wanted to go study in Egypt and to be with his brothers and cousins, so his uncle, after consulting with us, sent him to join Moeen, who was studying medicine in Alexandria. Hamed shared a flat with him and his cousins and attended high school.
We highly value education and were worried that Hamed wouldn’t settle in while in Cairo as was the case in Kuwait, so the next year, when Nawaf and Nasser finished tawjihi, Ibrahim and I took them to Cairo for university and moved Hamed from Alexandria to Cairo, and rented a place for the three of them. We registered Hamed in a high school in Cairo in September 1976. Then we stayed with them for a year to get him settled, and when he passed his exams and finished the school year in May 1977, we gave him money and told him to concentrate on his studies and his future because he had already lost time. Hamed finished tawjihi and got high marks. Immediately, Moeen sent a letter for him to apply to the university in Buffalo, in the United States. At the end of 1981, Moeen sent word for Hamed to travel there quickly so he wouldn’t miss the new semester at the university. Hamed studied mechanical engineering in Buffalo starting at the beginning of 1982, and we visited him in 1985. He eventually moved to Canada in the early 1990s and got married in 1995.
When we returned to Gaza from Cairo in 1977, we found out that one of Ibrahim’s relatives, Anwar, had been arrested. I decided to go to visit him with his family. At that time, families were allowed to visit prisoners every fifteen days, while before we had been able to visit every month. Three adults and one child were allowed to go, so I visited with his mother, his wife, and his son. I drove them to the Ansar 2 prison in Gaza, which was beside the Israeli civil administration building, and we stood in line with others who were there to visit prisoners. I hate that place, so I always avoid looking at the area when I pass because I remember the thousands of Palestinian youth held there, the torture they undergo, and the suffering of their families. When we went to visit, we stood behind a long bench in front of the windows that separated us and the prisoners on the other side, and we spoke to them from a distance. Around 10:00 AM, they called us and we were taken to the place where the prisoners were waiting behind the wires of the windows. We walked toward Anwar’s window and his mother was in tears when she saw him. Anwar was happy to see us, and while we were chatting with him, I heard a woman weeping very loudly next to us. I guessed she was the mother of the prisoner who was standing next to Anwar. The prisoner was pale, and he stood bent over. The right side of his face was very blue, and his eyes were red. His mother could not stand like us, but kneeled on the floor, and she started to cry out in a loud voice, Yamma, Yamma, Ya Habibi Yamma (my dear son, my beloved son). The mother was asking her son what had happened, while the two young women with her cried and the child with them was silent, staring at the soldiers. I did my best to avoid crying, but at the same time I felt my heart was crying, in fact, bleeding, for the young man and his mother. At that moment I remembered my two brothers, Nadid and Hassan, who were killed in 1956. I remembered my father and how he bore that agony. I remembered Nadid and the feelings of his mother when he was taken and shot before her eyes. All these agonies came before my eyes when I was looking at Anwar, the other prisoner, and his mother and all of these young men held behind bars. The mother kept weeping, and naturally I, along with many other prisoners’ families, went to calm her down, but none of us could. All the people started to shout “God is great,” and ask God to avenge them. There was chaos and soldiers came in and the visit was cut short. When we got into the car, Anwar’s son kept asking questions about the situation in Ansar, and about why we were ordered to leave. He asked one question after another, and neither his mother nor his grandmother responded. I passed the boy a candy I had in my bag and asked him to tell me what sort of toys he liked so that I could buy him a present.
I was shaking from the horror of the injustice as we returned home, and I don’t know how I drove from the prison back home. That day, I was supposed to go to a party to celebrate my brother’s new home in Khan Younis. But all the happiness had vanished from my heart as I felt that man and his mother’s pain deeply. I don’t know how I dragged myself to Khan Younis and joined the party. On our way back to Gaza, I asked Ibrahim to stop at a funeral at a friend’s home, and as soon as I entered, I started crying. People tried to calm me. They said that even the daughter of the deceased was not so upset as I was, and told me that everybody has to die, that this is their fate. But I couldn’t stop crying, because I needed to empty myself of all the pressure I had been under the whole day. I cried for Anwar, I cried for my two brothers, I cried about the situation, the difficult life, the lady who had died, our people, and
all of the people who live under conditions of injustice. When Ibrahim saw me, he asked me what was wrong with me and why I was so sad, but I opted not to tell him, as I know the heavy weight that he carries on his shoulders. Ibrahim is very sensitive. He is the type of man who hides his feelings and doesn’t express them, while women have the patience and means of releasing pressure and expressing their feelings. I love him and didn’t want to add more to his full plate, so I preferred to hide what I saw in the prison and my own feelings, rather than make him feel as helpless as I felt. The next day, Ibrahim followed me around the house and eventually I told him the story and could not hide my tears, as doing that would have made him worry more. Ibrahim looked carefully at me and left.
He drove very fast and I heard the car hit something, and then a few minutes later, our neighbour came and asked what was wrong with Ibrahim. Before I could answer her, another neighbour came and asked the same question, and I asked them why they said this. They said that he usually said good morning, but this time he didn’t even look at them and his face showed he had received very bad news, and he had even hit the side of the garage with the car. So, I told them the story of the prison and about my own feelings, as I felt their sincere worry about Ibrahim. Our neighbours cried.
8 / Waiting for the Curtain to Rise
IN 1976, Nasser was already studying medicine in Alexandria. Also in that year, Ibrahim was given ten university seats to be allocated, at his discretion, to deserving Palestinian students who did not meet the high admission requirements, or whose social and economic circumstances were such that it was vital for them to get a university education and hence a better future for themselves and their families. Ibrahim allocated the ten seats according to the criteria and based on his knowledge of the potential candidates and their families’ circumstances. Two examples from that group of ten students stand out. One was a top student who had obtained very high marks and whose sole ambition was to study medicine, but his marks were not high enough to get him into medical school. He is now a well-known physician working as a department head in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The other candidate wanted to study law, but his marks did not meet the cut. Ibrahim gave him the last available seat because nobody in his family had ever gone to university, and his family was still mourning the recent death of his oldest brother who drowned in the sea. He is now a successful lawyer in Gaza.
In that same year, Nawaf got accepted to study at the school of business, but his heart was set on studying engineering. He pleaded with his father to allocate one of the available engineering seats to him, but Ibrahim refused and went on to award the seats to deserving students rather than to his own son. Ibrahim is a very good man with a heart of gold and a loving father who wants the best for his children, but his principles and his sense of public duty would not allow him to award a university seat to his son at the expense of a more deserving student. Nawaf took the option of repeating the school year in order to improve his marks, and he was eventually accepted in September 1977 into the Engineering Department at the University of Alexandria.
Madeeha Hafez Albatta on a trip to Egypt in 1980. The photos were taken in Alexandria. Photo courtesy of Madeeha’s family.
While Nawaf and Nasser studied in Alexandria, they lived in an apartment with Moeen. An American exchange student named Mary lived in the same building, and Moeen got to know her and invited her to meals and occasions organized by the Palestinian student council to raise the awareness of foreign students about the Palestinian cause. Over time, Moeen and Mary fell in love with each other, and Moeen told me that he wanted to marry her. I said that it was his decision, not mine. He wanted to meet her family in America, and we agreed that if he passed his exams, I would help him by giving him the money to visit them, so in 1978 he passed his exams and met her family. The family liked him, and he and Mary got engaged. The same year, I went to Mecca to perform pilgrimage and while I was there, my sister phoned me from Riyadh and congratulated me on Moeen’s marriage. I told her that he and Mary were only engaged, but she said she had spoken to him two days before in Alexandria and they had been married there. I thought she was mistaken. When I returned to Gaza, friends welcomed me, and one of them, whose daughter was studying with Moeen in Alexandria, congratulated me on his marriage and said the wedding party had been very nice. When I heard this the second time, I felt it must be true, so I phoned Moeen and he confirmed it. While this was a surprise to me, I understood their rationale. They were young, in love, and freshly out of university, and on top of that they did not want to stress us financially. Although he is our third son, Moeen was the first to marry. In 1979, they travelled to America to have their son Ibrahim, and returned to Cairo while I was there, so I organized a party for my new grandson. In 1981, after Moeen graduated and finished his training year in Egypt, they went to Mary’s hometown of Buffalo, New York, near the border with Canada. Moeen trained in hospitals for four years there before he was licenced to practice medicine; during this time, he was supported by his uncle. He is now a gynaecologist/obstetrician at the Buffalo university and teaching hospital. They have three children, and he sends me money every month.
Fawaz finished high school in Egypt, and in 1971, he obtained a scholarship to study law in East Germany, where he completed his bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a PHD. When he had finished his master’s degree, he returned to Gaza and registered at a lawyer’s office for training, and at the same time was offered a scholarship for his PHD. At first, he refused the scholarship and when we asked why, he told us that he had a girlfriend named Anke and that they were in love with each other. He said that if he returned, he might marry her. Now, since Moeen had married an American woman, Fawaz thought that we might be unhappy if he too did not marry a Palestinian woman, but instead married a German woman. I told him that Anke’s nationality didn’t matter, and the most important thing was her manners. He said that she was a very good and very clever young woman. I told him, “How could it come into your mind that we might disagree with you marrying a German? Aren’t you afraid that in the future your own daughter might go abroad to study and meet somebody who might leave her because she is an Arab and do the same thing that you are doing to this girl? I believe that whatever you do, good or bad will happen to you, so go, start your studies, and marry this girl you love and who loves you.” Fawaz travelled to Germany, and we followed a month later, taking many symbolic Palestinian gifts. We met her family and celebrated their wedding, where she wore a Palestinian tawb I had brought as a gift. Fawaz and Anke now have three children.
In 1979, Ibrahim had an idea to help unemployed university and college graduates who were also registered refugees. The families of these graduates would have spent all their savings to put them through higher education and would be eager for them to start working to support their families, and, in turn, pay for the higher education of their younger siblings. These graduates couldn’t get jobs in rich Arab oil countries because they did not have the necessary work experience. Ibrahim wanted to help them and their families. He proposed to the PLO that it start a program to pay for the salaries of two hundred graduates to be employed by the UNRWA every year, and his proposal was accepted. Then he spoke to the UNRWA, which adopted this initiative and began to give graduates work in different fields in the Gaza Strip for two years before replacing them with the next group. The project continued, with the PLO paying the graduates’ salaries through Cyprus, from 1979 until the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in the Palestinian territories in 1994. During that period, Ibrahim acted as a liaison between the UNRWA and the PLO; he contacted them when money arrived and worked with different areas of refugee affairs. It was known as the Abu Sitta Project for Refugees.
Ibrahim had worked with the PLO without a salary, and at the beginning of the 1980s, one of the PLO members spoke up on his behalf about this. He hadn’t returned to work under the Israeli administration after resigning from the PLO and had never taken any money from the PLO fo
r his work, and thus he deserved compensation. So, the PLO office agreed to give him a pension every month, and this still continues to come.
I love Ibrahim. I love his strength, courage, fairness, and patience. He is the light of my life, so I try to make him happy, and when we are together, I feel that we are the happiest couple in the world. He always tells me that he likes to see my face first thing in the morning because I wake up smiling, and I am never sad or angry like some people. Many people have asked me why I don’t look my age, and I always tell them it is my strong belief, trust, and faith in God. I am also an easy-going person who doesn’t cause any problems for others that could stay on my conscience and keep me awake at night. I have been through many difficulties in my life: losing my mother and brothers, marrying a political figure who was always engaged in public duties, and raising young sons during wars, and Israeli occupation. I thank God that I was able to raise my children and save them from the brutality of the military occupation. I also took care of my health because when I lost my mother, I had to take care of myself. As a child and later in my life, I drank milk and juice and ate good food and exercised.
I was good with Ibrahim’s family. I love them because they are very good to everyone and to me. I loved my mother-in-law, who died when she was one hundred and five years old. She was very good, generous, honest, and religious, and never ever turned away anyone in need. She always gave and was always smiling. When her son, Abdallah, was killed in Jordan during Black September and women cried and shouted in loud voices, she told them to calm down because it was God’s choice and that what they were doing was unacceptable. God gave her patience and she accepted the news as a believer in God’s choice.
A White Lie Page 14