Going Home

by Raja Shehadeh

  ‘At this point I found myself boiling with rage. I leapt at her car and began screaming at her. “You are here to get permits for your staff?” I asked.

  ‘“Yes,” she responded proudly.

  ‘“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I said.

  ‘“Why?” she asked, surprised. “I’m not responsible for the occupation.”

  ‘By now I was screaming. I pointed out that I wished the hundreds of people over there had this same privilege. But she had had enough of my outburst and was trying to escape. I wouldn’t let up, though.

  ‘I still don’t understand what brought about my outburst,’ Maha went on to say. ‘It was so unlike me to blow up like that and let all my anger and frustration out on this woman.’

  ‘You were right to give her a piece of your mind,’ said Muneer.

  ‘Maybe she was using her privilege, but her response was correct. She was not responsible for the occupation and I had no right to blow up. You should have seen me. I was screaming. She tried to get away from me but I wouldn’t let her. I, the quiet, usually polite Maha, was holding this woman hostage and wouldn’t let her go until I had poured out all the rage that had been building up from the heat, the injustice, the hopelessness of our situation and the clouds of dust that flew up at us every time one of her kind drove their car nearby, covering us with muck as though to emphasise our inferior status. My parting words to her were that she should examine her conscience and see if she was not perpetuating our agony.’

  ‘We all lose our patience with the situation at some time and let everything out,’ our gentle hostess told Maha. ‘Don’t let it bother you.’

  The new headquarters of the Palestinian Authority which I am now passing, built next to the old Muqata’a, are a sharp contrast to those where Yasser Arafat worked. Mahmoud Abbas, the present head of the Authority, operates out of headquarters built with clean, well-chiselled white limestone fronted by welltrimmed grass, suggesting a sombre, organised and orderly organisation, not one leading a struggle for independence from the occupier. As I pass this gleaming structure, I wonder whether the point of removing all remnants of the old Muqata’a was to make us forget the travails of the past and believe that a new, post-struggle era has begun. As a result of the levelling of the old Tegart, there is no place where the young can experience what our generation went through and endured. My nephew Aziz and his contemporaries can no longer visit the window in the small porch of what was called the Civil Administration, behind which we crammed day in, day out, waiting for one or another of the many permits needed for all sorts of activities, whether travel, driving or getting a telephone line; or see for themselves in the next part of the building the tiny cells where the prisoners were held in solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks and months; or see the torture chambers where the heroic fighters of my generation suffered, read what they scribbled on the walls and see at first-hand the conditions of their incarceration. Likewise the Ottoman building which served as the Ramallah police station, where so many suffered, was also destroyed by a large bomb dropped by an Israeli helicopter gunship. It is as though the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian officials have worked together to obliterate these sites of great suffering, stopping the young from experiencing what it was like under full Israeli rule.

  I decide to visit the Arafat Museum and Mausoleum, which have been built on the ruin of the old Tegart. A gleaming white walkway led to Arafat’s grave. There were pink and red sweet williams and a well-maintained lawn. The landscaping was good, with large boulders to break the level ground. A tower is topped with a gadget that is supposed to send a ray of light towards Jerusalem, the city that he failed to liberate. Perhaps it is meant to symbolise the unrealised hope of reaching it some day. The museum, which is next to the mausoleum, is well designed but tells the Palestinian story through a selective presentation of material, remarkable for what is left out. The story is told entirely from the point of view of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Palestinian history is presented as beginning with the British Mandate, as though we had no history prior to that. Totally missing is any representation of the sumoud (steadfastness) of those of us living under occupation for half a century or the solidarity and struggle of Palestinians living in Israel. The curator (who, I’m told, is Egyptian) could have easily chosen to highlight the life story of one of the heroic symbols of sumoud, such as Sabri Ghraib, who struggled from 1979 until his death in 2012 against the Jewish settlement of Givon Hadasha, established on his land and that of his village. Despite years of harassment and assiduous efforts to evict him from his house, he managed to hold on to some of his land and continued to live in his house, which the settlement eventually encircled. Or Muhammad Abdeh, who has held on to his house in Gush Etzion. Or Sa’deah Al Bakri, who managed for years to live in her house next to the settlement of Kiryat Arba, despite continuous attacks by the settlers on her, her children and their house. Surely these and many more heroes of sumoud deserve recognition.

  The main story is the doomed armed struggle. And yet the presentation is neither self-congratulatory nor valorous. So much so that the couple behind me, especially the woman, kept repeating, ‘Hasrah alena wain kuna u wain surna’ (‘For pity’s sake! Look where we were, and where we are now’).

  There are photographs of numerous leaders assassinated by Israel over the many years of struggle. The negotiations leading to the signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn are presented as a victory for the Palestinians, with endless photographs of Arafat’s travels to the capitals of the world, where he was met as a head of state. The fact that this encouraged countries like India, which had refused to have any relations with Israel until Oslo, is not mentioned.

  The story narrated by the museum ends on the ground level at Arafat’s ‘bunker’, the only section of the Tegart that has been preserved, where he was trapped during the six-month siege of the Muqata’a that began on 29 March 2002. Earlier we had been shown footage of the Israeli bulldozers demolishing parts of the Tegart after its bombardment. It is as though we, in the image of Arafat, remain hostages to Israeli intransigence and aggression, which neither wane nor show any sign of ending.

  Seeing the museum and how it portrays the struggle without giving due credit to the sumoud of those living in the occupied territories dampened my spirits. There is absolutely no recognition here of past mistakes. But then a national museum is hardly the place for that. It is generally the case that when a people’s struggle is over, one group represents how it was won. But in our case the struggle is neither over nor won, and what keeps it going is nothing other than our sumoud.

  There is no doubt that Arafat’s endurance of the bombardment in those last six months of his life was heroic. He presents an apt symbol for Palestinians under threat. But what is one to make of this symbol? Had the struggle succeeded, it would have been right to showcase it. But it didn’t. It is ongoing. What, then, is the point of overshadowing the ongoing endurance of the rest of the population, who are still suffering? Or is Arafat’s story meant to produce some form of catharsis in a long-lasting tragedy?

  His tragedy (or rather ours) – his legacy – is that he failed to leave behind a democratic system, a process by which the top man seeks and receives counsel and decisions are taken collectively. The Palestinian Authority which he left behind pays no heed to advisers who could help it build a more effective strategy in the face of the massive Israeli challenges. And look where we have got to: we are totally subservient, defeated and dominated by Israel in every way. The revisionist history of the Palestinian struggle has yet to be written. Hopefully, some day it will be represented in a more balanced national museum. Meanwhile in the streets of Ramallah I saw a banner on which was written: ‘If they should ask you which country you come from answer them: I come from a country whose history is Yasser Arafat.’

  My first impression upon leaving the well-groomed gardens of the museum and returning to Irsal Street is that the city is no longer involved
in a collective struggle against the occupation. Each of us is on our own. This is evident in the way people are driving. I can see no posters of shuhada (martyrs) on the walls – they are removed as soon as they appear. The only posters are for banks, advertising ‘How to Win a Million’.

  The city has aged and changed almost beyond recognition from the time I was growing up. In these past fifty years it has suffered two major invasions, in 1967 and 2002. It survived both and flourished and is now claimed by the young. They are more savvy and connected to the rest of the world than my generation ever was. This provides new opportunities for economic development and struggle. In the old days at Al Haq we tried to wage campaigns against widespread Israeli human rights violations, but without internet, mail or uncensored international phone lines our options were few. We understood what was happening but couldn’t do much to stop it. Now they can and have waged worldwide campaigns like BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) that might end up deterring Israel, as happened in South Africa. The Arafat Museum, built on the ruins of the Tegart, represents the past. It is the story of one aspect of our struggle leading to no heroic end, no climax. That phase of the struggle is over. Yet by no means is the struggle itself over. The words of Matthew Arnold in ‘Dover Beach’ come to mind:

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  A few months ago I went to the new cemetery for the burial of a friend’s mother. This cemetery is located on high ground at the very edge of town, not far from the wall separating Ramallah from the nearby Jewish settlement of Givat Ze’ev. From there the wall is visible, as is the separation of the city from its surroundings. It was a lengthy struggle to get permission from the Israelis to build it there. Israel even fears the dead. So crowded was the old cemetery that father used to say, ‘The way things are going we’ll not find a spot to be buried.’

  Standing there and looking at the settlement made me think of how all the exits from the city have been closed. The Beitunia exit from Jaffa Street is blocked by the Ofer prison and army camp. Only commercial traffic, merchandise brought from Israel for sale in Ramallah, is allowed through. The exit through Masyoun is also blocked at Jeeb and Bir Nabala, with a terrible maze of walls and tunnels for Palestinians driving below the settler road connecting Jerusalem and the settlements to the coastal cities. And so is the exit to Jerusalem at Kalandia. Ramallah has become like a city-state, its links to the rest of the West Bank severed by checkpoints. No wonder it acts like a bubble, unconcerned with or inattentive to what is happening to those living in the countryside around it, or to the suffering of those living in the Gaza Strip.

  It was my first visit to this new cemetery. I was surprised that there was a sign saying ‘Christian cemetery’. I thought this strange but later realised that just above was another sign for another part of the cemetery saying ‘Muslim cemetery’. So the co-religionists are buried side by side; they live and die together. But my resting place will not be here. It will be in the old cemetery, along with my family, fresh bones on top of charcoal bones. The graves of my grandparents and my parents are there. It is true that I never visit my father’s grave, but then I never believe this is where he is, or my mother. In death I celebrate them in my own way, as I always insisted on my own way of relating to them in life. Even though my grandfather Salim died in Beirut, he had asked to be buried in Ramallah. Continuity? Perhaps. With father there remains much that is unsaid, incomplete, unrealised. A relationship which during his life I managed badly. My visit today to our old houses has helped ease some of the burden of the guilt and regret that I have long harboured.

  I have now walked to the end of Irsal. At one corner, the road going east leads to the boulevard that dignitaries visiting the Palestinian Authority drive along after crossing the Israeli checkpoint called DCO, in reference to the District Coordination Office there. Another of the Ramallah exits which is blocked. The government spent a lot of money to make the road leading into the city from that checkpoint as impressive as possible, following the practice of most impoverished countries in making every effort to keep out of sight any evidence of poverty from the main artery leading from the airport to the posh hotels where they stay. After Oslo we had high hopes that Palestine would have an airport of its own. The DCO is all we got. When dignitaries come to visit our president in Ramallah, Palestinian soldiers can be seen with their armoured cars parked at the corner leading to the checkpoint, unable to venture any further, as though they are waiting at a proper border of their state, when all it is is a border that isn’t a border. The DCO separates Palestinian territory from other Palestinian territory within the West Bank. When the dignitaries arrive these soldiers accompany them in an impressive parade, while other foot soldiers line the streets of Ramallah all the way to their hotel.

  To my left as I face the road leading downhill to Birzeit, north of Ramallah, is a grand building in the shape of a ship, hence its name, Al Safineh. It is narrow in front and tilted up like a bow, with round windows on the side and a chimney on top flying the national flag. In this ‘ship’ there is a Caribbean restaurant flying the Jolly Roger with its skull and crossbones. The front is directed towards the horizon and the Mediterranean Sea as though ready to sail. It made me think of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’: ‘Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”’ This strange structure confirms my impression of Ramallah as a city of illusions inhabited by aspirants, poised to take off but prevented by the forces of circumstance and misfortune. As I look at this building the conversation with the taxi driver who drove me home the other day came to mind.

  ‘There are no horizons,’ he told me. ‘Life here is beginning to feel more like life in a prison. I drive around all day in my car yet feel so confined, as though I am going in circles, in a world that keeps on shrinking. I yearn to drive long distances, use the fourth and fifth gears of my car for a change, to speed along a highway that stretches to eternity with empty space on both sides and not a single human being in sight. Is this asking too much? But I know that the confinement is only going to get worse. Soon the wall around Ramallah will be completed and we will have to enter and leave through a gate, same as in a prison.’

  ‘Why, then, do you stay?’ I asked provocatively.

  He answered in a serious manner, indicating that he had given much thought to the matter. He said, ‘I have considered my situation very carefully and decided I am much better off leaving. This is no life. But where can I go? There is no country that will accept me. This is the only reason I stay.’

  At the ship I turn back. When I reach the crossroads near the new Muqata’a, I turn right and walk down Ayn Musbah Street, which circles the centre of the city, passing by the old spring from which the people in this part of Ramallah used to fetch water before there was running water. When I pass Dar Sa’a in the old city, I remember the exhibition, entitled Pattern Recognition, that I had visited there last year. The new Ramallah has an impressive output of culture and art, which had been rare in the old Ramallah I grew up in. One video stood out. It was called Yamm (Hebrew for sea) and was by Ruba Salameh, who was born in Nazareth in 1985. It showed people waiting for a minibus with traffic passing by against a poster of the Gaza Sea, animated with an insertion of film fragments shot from the beach at Tantoura in Israel. It was accompanied by the following text: ‘Shown in Ramallah, the work ties together the fragmentary nature of Palestinian geography: Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the territory of 1948. For many Palestinians, travelling the route of this very map has become an impossibility.’

  As twilight descends, filled with hope and misgivings, I now walk home with hurried steps.

  Twelve

  The streets are clogged with traffic as people rush back home before the evening call to prayer that indicates the end of the day’s fast. Some are just cruising around, exhibiting their new cars bought with loans from the bank, playing loud m
usic. Such a cacophony. There is too much light to be able to see the stars. I try to remember how it used to be when I walked home with my grandmother from the Grand Hotel. Then there were few street lights, many broken by bored children throwing stones, competing over who had the better aim. The stars would be visible and there would be almost total silence, with only the occasional car passing. As we walked home together I could hear our footsteps and the click-click-click of Tata’s wooden cane on the paving stones.

  ‘Muffle up. We don’t want your tummy to get cold,’ she would say as we struggled against the wind from the distant Mediterranean coast that always hit us as soon as we turned the corner from Main Street to Ahlia Street.

  I walk faster, trying to make it home before dark, thinking how the city I grew up in has remained with me. I am able to see both the old and the new, how it was and how it has become. When I was younger I was unable to see myself the way people saw me. I looked at the older people around me and felt dismayed at how they had aged. Now that I have neither ‘youth nor age’, I feel more tolerant and loving. I only hope that the time will come for me, as it did for poet Derek Walcott: