Nakba #52 - Muhammad Mustafa al-Najjar

1948 “The Egyptian army came to our aid. They were 6,000 men. Our house was located on high ground, and we had a clear view of the Jewish settlement of Gat. The Egyptian commander demanded to take over our house because of its strategic location. We had to move to another house. One day the Jews attacked our village with three airplanes. The Egyptians did nothing because they believed the planes belonged to the Egyptian army. After the air raid, my brother and I went out to look for our sisters. They were nine and three years old. But of my sisters, only a few small body parts remained. My parents buried the remains (begins to cry). Fourteen members of our family were killed in the air raid. Everyone was in shock. I remember a dead woman lying in the middle of the village. She had just gotten married and was wearing a beautiful wedding dress, richly adorned with gold jewelry. Her throat had been cut by shrapnel. The Egyptian army forced my father and all the men of the village to stay behind. Women, children, and the elderly—300 people in total—left the village. We set out on foot. We crossed the mountains and arrived in Beit Jibrin, my mother’s birthplace. We were supposed to spend the night there, but the Israeli airplanes appeared again and we were forced to continue. I had no shoes, and my mother had nothing to cover her hair with. We walked almost the entire night. We had neither food nor water. Some children died along the way. We kept walking until we reached the outskirts of Idhna late the following evening. In Idhna, which lies in al-Diffa al-Gharbia (the West Bank), my grandmother lived, but we were too exhausted to look for her house. My mother found a cemetery with an empty grave. My brother and I lay down and slept in the grave, while my mother sat and watched over us. In the morning, we met a man who showed us the way to my grandmother’s house. In the meantime, the Israelis had occupied Fallujah. My father fled together with the other villagers. After a few kilometers, a woman discovered that she was carrying a pillow instead of her baby. She began to scream and cry. My father told the woman to keep going while he turned back. He managed to retrieve the baby in Fallujah and brought it back to the mother (begins to cry). Only after a year and a half were we reunited with my father.” 1949 “The Red Cross built a refugee camp outside Idhna. My father did not want to stay with my grandmother, so we moved into the camp. The Israelis claimed that the camp was too close to their border, and after some time they attacked us. The Jordanian authorities cooperated with the Israelis, and in 1952 they moved us to the Fawwar refugee camp, which is farther from the Israeli border. We have lived here ever since. At first, we were supposed to return to Fallujah after a couple of weeks. Those two weeks turned into 75 years.”