Nakba #37 - Amin Awayda

1948 “After the massacre in Dayr Yasin, which was a suburb of al-Quds, we were forced to flee. Most people were afraid of suffering the same fate. But my grandfather and his brother refused; they said they would stay and guard our house. The others arranged a couple of trucks for the family and drove us to al-Khalil. There were about 70 of us, and we arrived at two houses located in large groves. Some slept indoors, others outdoors. Al-Khalil was considered the safest place in Palestine, a place the Jews would never reach. They had once been slaughtered there and therefore would not dare return. That was what the rumors said. When the situation calmed down, the family returned to al-Quds, but not to our house in Abu Tor, which was still considered too dangerous. Instead, we rented an apartment with my cousins in the Haret al-Sadieh area, near the al-Aqsa Mosque. We could hear the call to prayer. That year I got a little brother. We called him ‘the refugee.’ After living for some time in another apartment in the Old City, we eventually moved back to our house in Abu Tor. My grandfather and his brother had survived. We heard that some people had tried to break into our house to steal things, but they had been beaten back. After the war, al-Quds was divided into a western part annexed by Israel and an eastern part annexed by al-Urdunn. The border ran through the Abu Tor neighborhood. Our house was on the Jordanian side, 300 meters from the demarcation line. My father lost his job because his workplace was on the other side of the border. Along the border there was a no-man’s-land, with many abandoned houses. We made ugly faces at the occupiers, at the Jewish boys, and they made faces back at us. We could see and hear them clearly. A few times, a friend and I crossed the border and stole some newly planted trees. We were shot at, but we survived.” 1967 “The Israelis built a tunnel through Mount Jabel Mukaber, south of al-Quds, on the road toward Bayt Lahm. My friends were there throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers. I was not involved in that particular mischief, but I was still summoned for interrogation by the Jordanian police. It did not help that I insisted I had not been involved. The police did not believe me and only released me after bail.” 1950 “Al-Urdunn introduced a mandatory national guard force for all adult Palestinians in East al-Quds. Its task was to guard the border with Israel at night. There were posts every thousand meters. Guard shifts lasted between six and eight hours, and the task was to stop any Arab planning sabotage against Israel. I often made tea and brought it to my father so he could stay awake. Al-Urdunn had equipped him and his friends with old rifles and the occasional machine gun. When the shift was over, they were not allowed to take the weapons home. They were handed over to a Jordanian superior who locked them away. Al-Urdunn never paid my father for guarding the border every night. The Palestinian home guard was merely a show put on by al-Urdunn, all to appease the Israelis.” 1961 “I became a Jordanian citizen when I was 16. A couple of years later, I received a scholarship to go to Sweden. And that is how I came to Sweden and ended up in a refugee reception center in Malmö.”