Nakba #16 - Fayza Abed Bayrakji

1946 “My father owned a lot of land where he grew grapes, figs, olives, and other crops. We also had livestock. Many people worked for us during the harvest season. My father died when I was three years old. I remember the olive harvests. The men stood on ladders picking olives, and the ones that fell to the ground were gathered by the women and carried back to the village. There were no Jews living in our village. They lived in the neighboring town of Nahariya. There was a doctor there whom one of my sisters-in-law visited. She underwent a minor eye operation there. We had many Jewish friends in Nahariya: Shlomo, Auerbach, and Jitzchak. They worked together with my brothers. They were Palestinian Jews, not like the Jews who came from Russia and Poland.” - Did you go to school? “No, we did not have a school for beginners in the village, only for older children. There were only four girls in my village who studied.” 1948 “The Israelis demanded that the village mukhtar surrender. If he did not, we would be expelled. Auerbach, my brothers’ Jewish friend, advised us not to leave the village. But if we were forced to flee, he promised he would help us return. When the mukhtar refused to surrender, the Israelis attacked the village with heavy artillery. The men defended the village for a week against the Israeli army. One of my brothers sought out Auerbach to ask him to keep his promise. He objected, saying that because they had fought the Israelis for a week, his promise was no longer valid. The Israelis killed 45 people, mostly elderly people and women. Kuwaykat was surrounded and eventually fell. The Israelis gave us safe passage eastward so that we could flee in that direction. We fled during the night. Young resistance fighters returned the next day and found elderly people killed in the streets. Their bodies were dragged to the well and lowered into it so that wild animals would not eat them. One old man was found killed in his home. He was buried outside the house. We walked on foot to the other side of the Lebanese border. After a month, some kind of ceasefire was declared, so we returned to Kuwaykat to collect our belongings. But the Israelis broke the agreement, and we were forced to flee a second time. Once again, we fled on foot. Again, we arrived in a village on the Lebanese side of the border. My brother bought three fig trees from a man so that the Lebanese would not say that we had stolen their trees. The trees became our homes. A few years later, we moved to Beirut and to Burj al-Barajna. At that time, it was nothing but desert. I have lived here ever since.” - Who bears responsibility for your situation? “It is like the story of Yusuf in the Qur’an, where his brothers conspired against him. Arabs, Jews, and the English—all of them conspired against us. In the past, we lived with dignity and honor in our land. We used to invite Jews into our homes and share our food with them. If Israel were to open its borders, I would want to return and work the land. I want to sit in my own country and build my own house. I do not need electricity. I have hidden an antique oil lamp that I could take with me. I would rather be eaten by snakes than remain here. Lebanon is not our land. We want our land back.”