Nakba #8 - Adnan Abu Odeh

1933 “My father worked in the soap industry. The olive oil season runs from November to March. Father used to work for four months. Then he would rest until the soap had dried and could be wrapped in paper. Nablus lies in a fertile area and is surrounded by olive trees and an abundant supply of water springs. Olive oil and water are two prerequisites for making soap. For thousands of years, soap has been made in Nablus.” 1938 “I was the only boy in the family, surrounded by seven sisters. I was the prince of the family. That shaped me. But my father was religious and never spoiled me. Once I was playing with my sister. I was five years old. At one point I pushed her and she began to cry. My father came running from the kitchen and asked her what had happened. ‘He hit me,’ she said. (She didn’t say that I had pushed her.) He slapped me and said a sentence I will never forget: ‘Boy, never believe that just because you are the family’s only son, you are better than any of your sisters.’ I began to cry.” 1940 “I used to rent a bicycle—five minutes cost half a piastre. A friend and I rode around the city. I never learned how to swim. Every Easter my father rewarded me with a visit to a Palestinian city. I knew every city: Haifa, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Acre, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, and Tiberias. - What did you do when you arrived in a new city? My father was a traditional man. The first thing he did was take me to the mosque. Then we would walk around. In Haifa and Jaffa we went down to the sea. He used to smoke the argileh, the water pipe, outside the ‘Casino’ in Bat Galim in Haifa. On one trip he took me to the zoo in Tel Aviv. After the visit we ate lunch on the beach. I noticed that the women were wearing swimsuits. The bikini had not yet been invented, but I could see their armpits. When I came home, all my friends were impressed that I had visited a zoo. My mother wanted to know where my father had taken me. To the zoo in Tel Aviv, I answered, and added: ‘And then, Mother, on the beach I saw women who were almost naked.’ My mother looked very sternly at my father.” 1948 “When I was about to start school again, it was closed. Why? Because Palestinians from Jaffa had fled to Nablus, which was under Jordanian rule. The refugees were to live in the school. My father rented out a room in our house to a refugee family of six people. Ethnic cleansing had begun. Many of the refugees were poor. They kept to themselves. To us they were foreigners, from the outside. We did not mix.” 1949 “UNRWA had begun distributing milk to the refugees in Nablus every morning. One morning in February, as I was on my way to school, I noticed a refugee girl who was seven years old. She wore only sandals on her feet; her red toes stuck out. She was crying and carrying a bucket of milk on her head. What was I to do with her? I had to arrive at school on time. My duty was to get to school. I left her. I began to cry as well.” “Nakba has three dimensions. First, we lost our homeland. Second, we became refugees. Third, we were forced to turn away from the Mediterranean and its civilizations. In Palestine we had been neighbors with Greece, Italy, and France. When the border to the Mediterranean was closed, we were forced to turn eastward and southward. We were forced to orient ourselves toward the desert. That is the deeper meaning of the Nakba. I become angry when I think about it. I would rather forget it.”