Going Home

by Raja Shehadeh

  Where do thieves stay, I wondered, when they’re not stealing from others? Once we were visiting a place on the edge of town and someone pointed out across the valley and said all the thieves lived there. I wanted them to stay there always and never return to our house. But I was always afraid when I was alone at home with my sisters.

  My father didn’t like to stay at home in the evening. He worked hard and when his work was over he liked to go out.

  ‘Where shall we go tonight?’ he would ask my mother as soon as he came back from the office. He felt too confined and bored in the crowded house. When they didn’t go out they entertained friends at home. Then everyone got busy and the small trays of food kept on coming and being taken away and others brought in. My father played loud music, often opera, and the whole house would be full of laughter and noise, though my mother remained anxious. In the mornings the house was stuffy with the lingering stench of tobacco smoke and the embers from the previous night’s open fire.

  Further down the street I passed by Al Haq’s headquarters, which have now expanded to occupy offices on both sides of the street. I saw the impressive large sign: ‘Al Haq, Palestinian affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, Geneva’. As I looked at the sign, part of me felt proud that I had been instrumental in establishing this organisation. At the outset our work conditions were difficult in ways that those now running Al Haq can hardly imagine. Sending reports without a functioning postal service, fax or internet was an ordeal. Manuscripts had to be smuggled out, presenting great danger if they were discovered at the border points. Even getting a telephone line was problematic. And yet we pressed on. Sometimes I wonder whether all the massive amount of documentation and legal analysis the organisation completed over the years was of any real consequence. After fifty years the occupation has not ended and indeed has only become more entrenched. Still, it can be said that, through its work, Al Haq has guaranteed that Israel’s illegal practices have not gone unnoticed or undocumented. Reading what we have published will remove any mystery as to how Israel succeeded in bringing about the legal changes that now prevail. Information about Israeli practices is recorded in thousands of affidavits, copies of which have been sent to a safe archive abroad, so they cannot be seized by soldiers and destroyed. Part of me is proud to have been part of that struggle, but I remain sceptical that we might have deceived ourselves into thinking human rights activism had real promise, because the violations have only continued and indeed increased. In terms of stopping more human rights violations, our struggle has ended as a futile endeavour. All my work in human rights could not deter that soldier from killing seventeen-year-old Nadeem Nowara. So sure was his killer that he would not be prosecuted that he did not hesitate to publicly declare that he had killed this young man out of boredom. Nor did it deter the settlers from taking more Palestinian land and using it for agriculture, employing the very people they took it from, abandoning the oft-repeated fiction that Israel was taking Palestinian lands for security reasons.

  Al Haq is now preparing the case for presentation to the International Criminal Court against Israel for war crimes. If there can be success in one case this would make a huge difference and would surely deter more soldiers from so brazenly violating Palestinian human rights.

  As I walk down the road I can see that the metal covers of the manholes in the pavement have Arabic writing on them. A decade ago Ramallah finally got a sewage system and this has practically rid the city of annoying mosquitoes. In the past by law every house had to have a cistern to collect rainwater and a cesspit: two holes in the ground. The first was shaped like a pear. The second was a hole in the ground with an unsealed bottom, designed to enable water to drain from the sewage and then escape into the ground, leaving the solids to dry and disintegrate in a catchment area near the top. Depending on the size of the hole, every so often a sewage truck would come and pump out the smelly stuff.

  Prior to the occupation we had no mosquitoes. I often made the seemingly exaggerated claim that mosquitoes came to our city with the Israeli soldiers. Yet it is true. Before the war we would be sitting around in our saha (yard) when the small, narrow-shouldered, bespectacled man we called ‘the kerosene man’ would come swinging a small kerosene can he was carrying and proceed immediately, with a strong sense of mission, to our cesspit. Without uttering a word, he would solemnly lift up the lid and pour kerosene inside. The kerosene would float over the sewage and prevent mosquitoes from breeding. The disruption in municipal activities brought about by the war and the occupation meant that the little man with the kerosene can stopped coming and the mosquitoes proliferated, just like the number of Israeli soldiers in our midst, and for many decades this changed how we felt about the cool summer evenings and the possibility of sitting outside without being bitten. Now, with a better-functioning municipal council, Ramallah is a more well-organised and livable place, with many garden restaurants where one can enjoy the good weather without being bothered by mosquitoes … or soldiers.

  I carry on down the street. This part has remained more or less the same as it was when I was a child. On the righthand side, going up to the centre of town, is the building owned by Ramzi Jaber. Here there is a spice shop managed by Saleh Khalaf and another building owned by the Order of St Joseph, both of which are as they were in the 1950s. When I reach Khalaf’s shop, which has been handed down from generation to generation, I am overwhelmed by the smell from the grinding of zaatar (thyme). Saleh inherited the shop from his father and has kept it exactly as it was, with the old herb grinders, sacks of different kinds of seeds by and outside the door on the pavement, and inside small drawers where he keeps different spices that are not marked but he knows immediately where each is. I stop to greet the owner and congratulate him on the many shops selling herbs that his sons have opened in other parts of town. They are among the few who went to the US and managed to return and start businesses in Ramallah. ‘My sons,’ he tells me, ‘have the bodies of Palestinians and the minds of Americans. That’s why they’re successful.’

  Most pedestrians scurry along as if they are being pursued. Except, that is, for old Karam of the button shop, who in 1948 was forced from Jaffa, where he also owned a haberdashery shop. He passes me on the way to his shop. His back is now completely bent and he uses a cane. Out of long habit, he is still one of the first to get to his shop, open it and then sit there all day, his drooping head leaning out of the door, almost falling into his lap. The whole day might pass without any customers entering to disturb his doze. I feel certain that he is a candidate for the next picture on the wall of another of Ramallah’s shops. Except for him, though, everyone is walking as if possessed. In the past people would dawdle, stop and chat, linger and enjoy their time on the street. The way the shop owners used to behave, the way they used to drive in the 1950s and early 1960s, conveyed a sense of belonging, a feeling that the city was theirs.

  I too used to charge briskly from my law office down to Al Haq, just along the street. I used to be full of energy and hope. I would look at the older people in town and think, I never want to be like that – sombre, bent, sad, defeated. I always wanted to look buoyant, smiling, surging through the streets to carry on with my next task, feeling a sense of great purpose that distinguished me.

  Much as I want to believe it, it’s not true that I walk invisible in the streets of Ramallah. I’m constantly being watched and observed by others. All eyes in such a small city are on everyone else, and this includes me. I have been walking these same streets all my life. The shop owners who see me passing by have all figured out how old I am. For many years they have been watching my progress, my process of ageing, my well-being, my health and how I’m keeping, as well as my pretensions and disguises, especially my hats. To others I might seem unable to decide who I am and how I want to appear, whether young, flamboyant, sombre, rich, neat, writerly or distinguished. Men my age here never appear in public except in suits. Jamil, my biology teacher at school, who, like me, was s
hort and frail, and his brother the lawyer, who was also small, never appeared without a dark suit with a long jacket to give them stature. But what others see is only the outside appearance. These days, my inside and outside are not in sync. Inside I think of my face as bright and relaxed, even funny; from the outside it appears serious and rather sad, not funny at all. I used to have a smirk on my face, a triumphant look. Then it dissipated and I was left with a forlorn countenance. This is my face now.

  The other day I went out to run some errands and I saw a man who used to work in a grocer’s where I shopped. He was walking very slowly, holding a cane. He had sunken cheeks and looked like one of the walking dead. Slowly, without moving his head, he turned and, with milky eyes, looked at me as if to remind me that now it’s him but some day it will be me.

  Another day I stopped by the Golden Thimble and left some clothes for mending. The energetic young son was not there. The no less energetic father took them and I gave him my name in case he didn’t know it. After I left I asked myself, if he forgets my name, how would he describe me to his son? Probably as ‘that older man, short, the one who wears funny hats’. Nothing about what I do is known to most of the people I meet on the street or with whom I do business in the shops nearby. Better that way.

  But for now I can say that I’ve never felt better. Now that I’m on a gluten-free diet, I feel so much healthier. It has worked wonders. To think how long I’ve suffered in ignorance, blaming nuts for the bloating in my stomach. But the ravages of age are beginning to become evident, in the weakening eyesight, the veins and who knows what else.

  As I ponder these thoughts I meet a former classmate of mine. He looks like an old man, with large jowls, some front teeth missing and eyes that lacked brightness.

  ‘How is your health?’ I ask.

  ‘As long as I can walk and breathe, I thank God, and consider that I’m all right.’

  ‘That is all you hope for?’

  ‘That is all,’ he says.

  Then he complains about the high price of everything and tells me that his son had been working in Saudi Arabia but is back now. For a year and a half he’s been sitting at home without work. ‘He needs to work to find a wife. Who’ll want to marry an unemployed man?’

  I ask him about his brother Nabeel. He says he’s been in the US since 1976. ‘Why would he want to come back? What’s there to come back for? What’s good in this country?’

  ‘What about the weather?’ I say.

  ‘What about the high price of everything?’ he retorts.

  Then he begins to complain about the internal migration, which he says is destroying the city.

  ‘Can you blame them for wanting to leave Jenin after what happened there?’ I ask.

  ‘The civil servants take a supplement over their salary for living in Ramallah because they’re supposed to be living in Jenin. They use it to take out a mortgage to buy a flat here. On Thursday they go back to Jenin and return on Sunday, having done all their shopping there where it’s cheaper. What does the city get? Nothing. Look at the child’s dress in this window. Here it’s sold for fifty shekels. In Jenin it’ll be twenty and that’s because the shop owner in Ramallah has to pay much higher prices for everything.’

  I leave my former classmate, who seems to have become a grumpy old man, and continue walking down a narrow street where there are some old craft shops. I turn left on Issa Ziadeh Street, named after the mayor of the late 1990s, who was also my brother’s father-in-law. At the corner I pass what is called the Ottoman Courthouse, a renovated Ottoman building dating from the mid-nineteenth century. It was first used as a clinic, then as a khan (a building that functioned during Ottoman times as a trading centre and hostel, with stabling provided) and finally as a court of law headed by the regional director, Ahmad Murad Haken, appointed by the Ottoman government, with the lower floors serving as stables. Before its renovation in 2002, a single horse used to be kept in a dim, humid room on the ground floor. Penny and I would stop and greet it.

  I walk on, passing the lower gate of the Friends School and then an attractive pub called Berlin, which occupies an old building. Opposite the pub is a large sign that’s lit up at night and proudly asserts the inclusive nature of the city. It is written in red letters with a white ‘R’: We Ramallah. No one stops to ask why a sign for a Palestinian city should be written in English rather than Arabic. But then people seem to like it, judging from the large numbers who come here to have their photos taken. Certainly Ramallah has become welcoming of different sorts of people, who arrive from all over Palestine and abroad and feel accepted.

  I stop at the crossroads. The Roman Catholic church is on my right, at the corner of Kamal Adwan Street, named after one of three PLO members who were murdered by the Mossad on 10 April 1973, Adwan in his flat in Beirut, in front of his wife. Ahead is the Ramallah municipality’s recently expanded building, now dubbed City Hall. On the lovely open terrace overlooking the small but attractive Ramallah municipal park, I stop by the stiff and ugly compact statue of Rashid Haddadeen, the purported founder of the city, with his wife next to him and six children representing Ramallah’s founding family.

  The jacarandas are plentiful in the southern part of the city and I want to have a look before their blooms vanish. But now I have to rush because I don’t have much time left before my meeting. I cross the long Jaffa Road, which begins at Yasser Arafat Square in the centre of town. In the late 1930s the road connecting Ramallah to Jaffa was completed. It now leads to nearby Beitunia, beyond which the road is blocked by the Ofer checkpoint where Nadeem Nowara was shot dead.

  Near the top of the road, I stop at the house of the late Aziz Shaheen, a true philanthropist who lived thriftily, walking everywhere, never taking a taxi, in order to save money, all of which he gave away to worthy causes and institutions. He was a kind, frail, unassuming man, single-minded with a will of iron. Such a man, I thought, deserves the longest street in his name. But these are reserved for those who took part in the nationalist struggle. The municipality, instead, named a roundabout after him.

  I continue southward behind Jaffa Road and sure enough the streets there are lined with the flowering purple trees. I decide to wander around a little enjoying the blooms before turning back.

  Eight

  In that low-lying section of Ramallah that was once a cultivated valley, behind Aziz Shaheen’s home, there are still some of the old houses with their gardens. One of them belongs to two American friends, Susan Rockwell and Sharry Lapp, who have been living here for the past twenty years while volunteering their services for various projects in Palestine. They are both dedicated gardeners. Their single-floor house is surrounded by a large garden which I have always admired. On the wire fence along the pavement, the morning glory with its cerulean-blue flowers is in full bloom. On their porch, jasmine planted in a pot is studded with white flowers that drape themselves languorously over branches that catch the light from the midday sun and shine like a swarm of butterflies. On the side and to the back of the house, the garden is full of rabbit-ear irises, rose bushes, lupins, kumquat, plum and apple trees and a number of established olive trees. The seating area rests on the exposed rock amid the flowering plants by a drystone wall.

  I have often been for dinner here. It is a veritable paradise. And yet this oasis is slated to be destroyed. Soon the bulldozers will get to work, a large hole will be dug and an ugly multistorey building will be constructed by the investor who has bought the land and wants to evict my two friends. Negotiations were protracted and bitter as he expressed resentment that, despite the law, he – a local – should be having to compensate foreigners for leaving land that is now his. He has not the slightest appreciation that these two women have done more in the service of justice in Palestine than he ever could, as he was busy making the money which he is now using to buy and destroy an attractive house and render Ramallah so much less pleasant. I stand by the metal gate, enjoying the scent that fills the air, and bid farewell to anothe
r of the old Ramallah houses and gardens. If this process continues only a shrinking minority of households will have a garden.

  The tenants’ law is a relic from the time when there were few houses available and it gave maximum protection to the tenant, though this did not apply to foreigners. Only in the last few years has it become possible for a landlord to raise the rent of new tenancies. Old tenants became like owners and so held on to their lodgings. To evict a tenant, the new owner would have to pay a lot in compensation. Many of the old houses with gardens are occupied by long-term tenants who are still holding on, but they are often old or dying, widows or unmarried daughters, with the rest of their family either already dead or long since emigrated to the US. If the new owner is not in a hurry to get returns for his investment, he waits for the tenants to die so he can acquire the property without paying compensation.

  The streets with the flowering jacarandas are mainly lined with tall blocks of apartments, occasionally punctuated by those lingering single-floor stone houses roofed with red tiles, their gardens surrounded by drystone walls, that are dwarfed by the high-rises all around them. I lament the changing nature of this city, remembering how Ramallah used to have the charm and atmosphere of the mountain villages of Lebanon. Most of the pine trees have now been replaced by a kind of ficus brought in from Israel that is inappropriate for the city’s harsh winters. The jacarandas that flower so gloriously in late spring lose their leaves and remain bare the entire winter.

  Except for unhappy thoughts like these, my stroll is pleasant, but when I look at my watch I realise it is time to start making my way to the office.

  Walking back, my thoughts turn to the many emails I receive from owners of old houses now living in the US who have sold their family homes, only to regret it later. In one of these the owner informed me that she had ‘become aware that an historic family property in Ramallah, which was sold under dubious circumstances, is now slated for demolition despite the historical preservation law. I found out about it on a Facebook post from Riwaq [the centre for the conservation of cultural heritage] I am wondering if it may be possible to halt the destruction of this house as it is an important part of my family.’