Nakba #58 - George Baramki Khury och Laura Khury

George Baramki Khury (GBK): “My sister Laura and I lived in al-Quds, near the Mandelbaum Gate. We had two houses, one on each side of St. George Street. I attended St. George’s School. It was a boys’ school, with both Jews and Arabs.” Laura Khury (LK): “Our father rented out the upper floor of our house to some Jews. He heard strange noises—something was going on up there. It turned out they were printing counterfeit banknotes! They were later arrested by the British.” GBK: “The neighborhood was mixed, and shooting between Jews and Arabs on the streets became more and more frequent. In 1947 the situation worsened, and we were forced to leave our house. It was no longer safe to stay. My mother had a cousin in Talbiya, in al-Quds, a very beautiful and quiet Arab area. We moved there without bringing any of our furniture.” LK: “Talbiya was a very elegant neighborhood—like Fifth Avenue in New York. One day there was a terrible storm; it was pouring rain and hailing. We heard an awful noise that we thought came from the storm. But it turned out to be a bomb attack on the Semiramis Hotel in Qatamon. Entire families were killed.” GBK: “After we had stayed with our cousin for three or four months, a Jewish soldier was killed in the area. Just a couple of hours later, an armored vehicle arrived with a loudspeaker on its roof, announcing: ‘Residents of Talbiya! You must leave your homes immediately!’” LK: “The vehicle was a monster, with its headlights taped so that only a narrow beam of light showed.” GBK: “We were alone in the house. We were terrified. When our parents came home, we told them what had happened.” LK: “We couldn’t stay. It was already dark, it was raining, the weather was awful. We left as quickly as we could. The streets were in chaos.” GBK: “We fled to Baqa‘a, in southern al-Quds, to our uncle’s house. Only Arabs lived there. That was the second time we were forced to flee.” LK: “One evening, as I was on my way home, something brushed past my head. At first I thought it was a bird—but it was a bullet. If I had been wearing shoes with higher heels, I would have been killed. The shooting continued when I got home; bullets ricocheted into our house.” GBK: “At the end of April 1948, after only a few weeks at our uncle’s place, we fled to Birzeit. That was the third move. We rented a small house there, where we lived with our grandmother and our parents. Our mother contacted our neighbor in al-Quds, who was a British policeman. Our house was still untouched. He arranged the necessary permits to move our furniture from Mandelbaum to Birzeit. A few weeks later, the British Mandate ended.” “After the war of 1948, the border was drawn straight between our two houses at the Mandelbaum Gate. The houses stood on opposite sides of the street, and barbed wire was stretched between them. One house ended up in Israel, the other in al-Diffa al-Gharbia, which had been annexed by al-Urdunn (Jordan). Our house on the Israeli side became an army post. All the windows were boarded up, and through the gaps they fired at the other side.” “After a few months in Birzeit, our grandmother wanted to visit two of our aunts in Ghazza. Our father rented a car and we went along. We traveled via al-Khalil and Bir al-Sab‘a. It was a long journey, since the shortest route along the coast was now in Jewish hands.” LK: “I didn’t want to go to Ghazza. I cried to avoid it, but it didn’t help. I have never liked Ghazza.” GBK: “We stayed with my aunts for a couple of weeks. Then the Israelis took over al-Majdal, which had previously been occupied by the Egyptian army. We became trapped in Ghazza and could not return to al-Quds. That was the fourth displacement. We were lucky to be able to rent a new house in Rimal, a sandy area near the forest. We shared the house with an Armenian family. We had only one suitcase with us—no furniture, nothing. We used wooden crates and built tables, beds, and wardrobes.”