Now that I’ve achieved some of my ambitions and almost reached the age you were when you died, I appreciate that old age is a peculiar state of its own, like being in a liminal space. And this has helped me understand you as I never could before. I come back on this visit as an older, more emotionally mature man. Only now do I begin to understand what you lived through and how well you dealt with it. And how insensitive I was to your attempts to alert me to what was happening to you so that I would be prepared when the time came for me to go through similar experiences.
Your voice was muted by louder voices. It wasn’t, as I’ve always assumed, only in political matters, because of your unpopular views, that you were silenced. I too was guilty of trying for the longest time to silence you, to my deep regret now, because more than anything I grieve at having lost the opportunity to enjoy your company and your friendship.
I used to think that you and I had such different temperaments we could never get along. Now I realise how fundamentally similar we were and how much of what I became I acquired from you.
I was not there to protect you in your moment of great need. Perhaps I could have saved you. Perhaps it would not have happened had I been there with you, standing by your side. But I was away working on another of my human rights missions. During the Intifada I had the illusion that it would be possible to achieve personal justice for you through the collective struggle. It wasn’t to be.
As I stand on the street below and look up at the glass balcony, how I wish I could climb the stairs and go in with you and sit there together in the sun. I have so much I would like to tell you, not least how much I respect, admire and love you. And how anguished I feel at failing you.
As was his habit, my father rushed away before I could say more, and I was left alone on the pavement feeling slightly unburdened of what had remained unsaid for many years.
Ten
Leaving our old family home, I cross the street to look at one of the few remaining drystone walls. Constructed without the use of mortar by one of the experts in this dying skill, with stones skilfully selected and placed to ensure strength and durability, it demarcated the land above it from the pavement, a rare example of the most enduring method of defining territory. A pleasant sight and a reminder of what all garden walls in Ramallah used to be like. It stood alone, yet not long ago it was one of a series of walls that covered the entire hillside. Where once sheep grazed the area is now entirely built up. The sound of sheep and birds has been replaced by car horns. I pass my hand over its age-worn stones, green and black with lichen, as in a farewell, feeling certain it will not be there for long.
I have just left the street named after my paternal grandfather, Bolous Shehadeh. He was a poet and the editor of Mirat es Shark (Mirror of the East), a newspaper published during the British Mandate. Though originally from Ramallah, he left when he was a young man and resided for the rest of his life in Jerusalem, where my father was raised. Like me, he was a short man; perhaps this is why the municipality chose a short street to name after him. Nearby was the Bardouni Building, a new four-storey structure with a glass front, previously the site of a lovely garden restaurant where I often took my mother for meals. The new Ramallah buildings feature many of these façades, evidence that another stone-throwing Intifada is far from people’s minds and expectations, though maybe now they’re just using bulletproof glass.
I turn and continue walking up Jaffa Street towards the shabby Midan Es Sa’ah (clock tower roundabout), now called Yasser Arafat Square, in the centre of town. A sculpture has been placed there, showing a young man climbing towards the Palestinian flag, which is permanently hoisted. As I looked at it, I wondered how many had died through electrification or were shot by Israeli army snipers as they tried to raise the flag on an electricity pole in the Intifada days, and whether they had died senselessly. Yet raising a flag then was an act of resistance that cannot now be frowned upon. Could such thoughts, as I look at this memorial, be similar to what old-timers in Berlin feel when they see the remnants of the wall that caused the death of dear ones while it separated the two parts of their city? But they succeeded in removing the wall, while our struggle goes on.
From where I stand I can see Awda (the Return) Street, where Muhamad, one of the sons of Faik, a former employee who for a long time was a typist at our law office, was killed by an Israeli sniper as he fought in the second armed Intifada. Perpendicular to that street, reaching all the way south to the Water Works Department, is Hanna Mikhael Street, named after the son of one of the Ramallah families and a Harvard University graduate. In 1969 he left a promising academic career at one of the top US universities to join the PLO, first in Jordan and then in Lebanon. In July 1976, during the Lebanese civil war, he and nine of his comrades and two sailors disappeared while on their way by sea to the besieged Palestinian camps in northern Lebanon. To this day, his exact fate remains unknown. I can imagine that, like so many others, Faik and his family must avoid areas around Ramallah where loved ones were killed. The father was a dedicated parent and a hardworking man. He had two jobs, full-time at the Health Department and part-time as a typist at our office. That was before word-processing. One mistake with a legal document and he had to retype the whole page, as many times as necessary. He was already employed when I joined the office. Short and stocky, with a moustache, he would sit for hours in front of the manual typewriter without moving, diligently punching away at the keys in Arabic or English. I remember how he described his wife when he got married as ‘a healthy woman’. He did not say beautiful or attractive. He seemed more impressed with her plump red cheeks and was obviously thinking of the children she would give him. He was relieved when I built a house. When I asked why, he said, ‘Now I know you will not emigrate. You’ll stay here.’ It was an indication that he never believed in my commitment to Palestine. We were friends. When I tripped, fell and broke my nose during a busy time at the office, he took me to hospital to get me checked over.
Faik was a refugee from 1948, living in the Kalandia refugee camp, close to Jerusalem. But he did not want his four boys getting involved in politics, which is the fate of most of those who grow up in the highly politicised atmosphere of the camp. So he worked hard to buy a house outside the camp and moved his family there. But things did not turn out as he hoped. His eldest son, Amjad, began his activism when he was only fourteen. I defended him in the military court in Nablus when he was charged with throwing stones at an Israeli jeep. The hearing took place in the attractive Ottoman building that also served as a jail, which was sadly demolished in the late 1990s by the Palestinian Authority. I was proud to be able to get him a lenient sentence and released from detention upon payment of a small fine. But as we were leaving the court, I heard Amjad shouting from the window of the detention centre where he was being held, warning his father not to pay. This was before the first Intifada.
During the Intifada I was at the office with Faik when the Israeli-appointed mayor of nearby Beitunia, against whom the office had raised a civil case, came and began threatening me. He ended up beating Faik, who tried to defend me. It wasn’t too serious and yet Faik insisted that he get an apology and compensation, not through the courts, because with the perpetrator’s close connection to the Israeli administration it would be impossible to get a favourable decision, but through the traditional reconciliation process. He would not rest until they made a sulha (truce) and he was awarded compensation. This was how it was during the occupation. Without police or proper courts, the only protection came from one’s extended family and supporters and Faik had the camp and Fatah supporters behind him, even though he had moved out.
I realised the big difference between our standing when one day during the Intifada I was delivering books to a friend. I was in my red Peugeot, the very first car I ever owned, which was a present from my father after I qualified as a lawyer. I drove through Manara in the centre of town and down Chicken Street, where the Ramallah courts were. As I passed I remember hearing a
loud whistle but paid no attention to it. I parked my car on the slope next to my friend’s house, but just as I climbed out I heard a loud rumbling noise. I looked up and saw the trailer of a truck that had become disconnected hurtling down the road straight at me. I considered getting back into my red car and driving away. Fortunately, I didn’t, because all too soon the rushing trailer, which had gained speed, crashed into my car and rammed it into an electricity pole. Sparks flew from the car as it shot down the slope, finally coming to rest against a low wall, just short of falling into the garden of a house below street level. The car was a total write-off. But at least I wasn’t in it and no one got hurt.
The owner of the truck turned out to be a collaborator. Nothing could be done. It would have been futile to attempt to get compensation from him through the courts. I was never sure whether it was an accident or if someone deliberately unhitched the trailer in an attempt to kill someone. I never found out. There were no police then. The incident that could have killed me was never investigated. I knew better than to pursue the collaborators, but that incident made me realise how unprotected I was. I didn’t dwell on my own powerlessness, because what mattered then was the larger collective struggle that would change everything.
During the first Intifada we all acted in solidarity. At first I was such a novice. I remember the time I went to visit a client, the Fatah activist Ziad Abu Ayn, at the high-security Negev Desert prison called Naf ha. I was with his brother, Mahmoud. It was my first time there. We had a good session with Ziad and as we were leaving he leapt up and hugged me, which I thought was his way of thanking me for coming all that way to visit him. Then he gave me a kiss on the mouth and stuck his tongue in. When he withdrew it I felt something slimy in my mouth. I was horrified and disgusted by his behaviour.
As soon as we left, I took from my mouth what looked like a small capsule. I held it between two fingers and showed it to Mahmoud. ‘Look what Ziad left in my mouth,’ I told him. He asked me to give it to him, saying this was a kabsuleh (capsule). It was the first time I had heard of such a thing. Mahmoud took it, removed the plastic wrap and began to unfurl the thin, translucent paper with its tiny writing. Unwittingly I had participated in my first experience of smuggling messages from prison.
The time of hope and solidarity we felt then was so different from what followed the Oslo Accords, when the huge sums of money pouring in acted like scissors, tearing society apart and creating polarisation as never before. Prior to Oslo no Palestinian was willing to blow himself up to kill enemy civilians. The political factions involved in the struggle were mainly secular. The fight was against Israeli soldiers and settlers, the stone against the gun. As I stand in the Midan, looking up at the sculpture intended to memorialise a past struggle, memories of how the town looked during the first Intifada return to me.
Then, in the late 1980s, the public spaces in the city came to have a different feel. Whenever the army arrived, the streets were filled with warning whistles. There were no mobile phones or social media. Masked youth roamed the streets, distributing leaflets with instructions for the next mode of struggle. The ‘I’ changed to ‘we’ as the public began to express its collective will to liberate the land from occupation, taking great risks. The shuttered shops became our pride, the forced opening by soldiers a personal insult and attack on our collective will. The heroism and solidarity of the shop owners was carefully monitored and commended. No doubt some went along reluctantly, fearful of reprisals if they didn’t, refusing to share the collective hope and wanting only to be left alone to get on with their business. But for the majority, these years are often recalled as the best years of their lives. This is especially true now, when there is a dearth of hope. Going up and down the streets then, one felt oneself on the battlefield. Some streets were closed by the military, others by our own barricades. The city space was no longer a neutral marketplace but an arena of struggle.
All this made me feel a closer affinity with the people of my town than I have ever felt before or since. The occupation was an equaliser. It limited everyone’s freedom without discrimination and brought us all together as one, rich and poor, men and women. I interviewed the owner of the shop at the corner, Heliopolis Fashion, which sold fancy wedding gowns and evening dresses. The burglars who had come in the night to rob his shop were, he believed, backed by the army. I wrote about this for the Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper. He appreciated this and has been my friend ever since. After that incident neighbourhood watches were organised for protection against the army. I felt proud of the brave young men and women for their courage and drive. There was a great sense of solidarity that I have never forgotten.
The shop owners shut their premises when they were called upon to do so, even when they hated it. I found I was reacting to and viewing them differently. Traditionally they are the most conservative element in society. They display their wares in order to sell them and cannot do so if they have to close. Shops whose owners hid demonstrators running from the army were sealed by the Israeli army. Generally, whatever the conditions, they endure them. They hang around, stand by their shops anticipating customers, commenting on the action.
I was struck by the degree to which the shop owners on these streets were like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. They had their own views of things, their own wisdom, and ultimately all they wanted was to be left alone to lead their lives and conduct their business. Those who got angry and undertook desperate action were not among the chorus. In the first Intifada the shop owners took part in the struggle and were in fact its backbone. Not so any more. Now they only watch the action, comment on it and rarely take part. Despite themselves, some became heroes. Then, like many viewers, they just watched the footage of the war directed against them on television, becoming observers twice-removed.
We are all garrulous and our commentary is ongoing. We remain, we watch and we comment on the actions of the protagonists propelling the narrative line. We no longer take things into our own hands. The older ones among us are the guardians of history. We were there when the occupation first began, some when the Nakba took place. Some were around during the first Intifada and were still here when the change of guard took place and the Palestinian Authority replaced the Israeli army in the cities. The likelihood is that many of these shop owners will still be here when the Palestinian Authority is replaced by whoever comes next. The actors come and go, but the chorus remains.
After fifty years of trying, we have not succeeded in forcing Israel to end its occupation of our land. This would have required a stronger, more sustained struggle and much greater sacrifices. All we could do was to bring Israel to self-destruct. The country that occupied us half a century ago bears little resemblance to the Israel of today. By forcing them to justify the unjustifiable, that which is patently illegal, we have helped them destroy their legal system and, through their open discrimination, the rule of law and respect for international law. We have also helped destroy the socialist aspects of their system by providing them with cheap labour. We have certainly not won, but neither have they.
Having walked up to the busy Manara roundabout, with its four plastic lions, from which six roads lead to different parts of the city, I continue north towards one of them, Irsal Street, so called because it led to the four Mandate-built radio transmission towers, which had been out of commission since 1948. Once they were the first markers of the city one saw on approaching. A few years ago three were bombed to smithereens by Israel, so now only one remains. I planned to walk along Irsal and then take a left at Ayn Musbah Street back to my house. It would be a long walk of several hours but it would get me home before dark.
As I suspected, there is no public gathering or collective activity anywhere to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the occupation. Instead the centre of town is crowded mainly with young men, cars and shoppers. There is no enthusiasm for commercial strikes any more: people have to work hard to repay bank loans. With the Israeli economy dominating ours, we all have to
work much harder just to keep up. Many talk into their mobile phones or use them to check stock exchange prices as they walk.
Except for the branch of the Arab Bank, which was careful to keep the same front when it, along with all the other banks that had operated before the occupation, was reopened after twenty-five years of enforced closure, most of the buildings around Manara are new, hastily built structures that sprang up immediately after the signing of the Oslo Accords.
I cross the roundabout that is busy with cars and people and, with hurried steps, walk along Irsal Street just as a Palestinian police car is passing. I notice that its windows have bars just like the Israeli military vehicles that used to roam our streets during the occupation of the city. I wonder how our police feel about having to ride in cars resembling those that our enemy had to barricade themselves in?
Fancy shopfronts line both sides of the street, which is swarming with shoppers. Two generations have been born since the first Intifada. They have no memory of how the city looked when news came that a peace deal with Israel had been struck. Most have no experience of that time at the end of the Intifada.
As long as the resistance was going on, we who were living through it did not see what had become of our city. It was only after it came to an inglorious end, when the Oslo Accord was announced in 1993, that we began to look properly, and what we saw was not pleasant. Anyone visiting Ramallah then would have been shocked. Israel’s rule was weakened by our persistent struggle but we were punished and not allowed to impose an alternative. All we could do was wait and hope for the results of the negotiations taking place in Washington and later in Oslo.
Thinking of this now, I realise there is always a price to be paid for every struggle. With no local authority taking care of the city in the last years of the Intifada, it became so desolate: grimy, darkened and tortured, like an abandoned battlefield; dishevelled, chaotic, disorderly, crumbling, neglected and depressed. The streets seemed to have narrowed. The Manara roundabout was removed by Israeli soldiers, who said this was necessary for security reasons. They then replaced the attractive Corinthian column and the seven stone lions at its base with a tall lamp post and the depressing sort of yellow fog light used on highways. Many side streets were barricaded with cement barrels and barbed wire to block the path of escaping activists. The tarmac was pockmarked and the pine trees lining the roads were felled, all in the name of security. The old smooth paving stones were removed and sold to Israel to be used in antique quarters of Israeli cities. One wall, now known as the Wall of Blood, was smeared with the blood of young men captured on the streets and thrown against it by soldiers. Shop awnings were in tatters, their sides punctured by bullets. Frayed banners hung unevenly across the street. The street of the Mikhael café, where the Red Rose flower shop now stands, was turned into a shoddy pedestrian area, creating havoc with traffic flows. All of the changes were designed for maximum manoeuvrability of army jeeps in pursuit of demonstrators. Ramallah looked as if it had been smacked and battered into submission. We shuffled through this gutter of a town going about our daily lives, managing as best we could, averting our eyes so as not to see. How else could we survive in this grime and gloom when we had been used to better conditions?
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