Memories of The Old Country

I was born in Jerusalem. My father was born in Hebron, and my mother in Nablus. I lived half my 31 years in Ramallah. My full name is Hani Yaser Amer Ali Ismaeil Obaid. The Ali Ismaeil part repeats 13 times. The last Ali-Ismaeil-Ali trio moved to Dubai a few years back. I have family in Egypt, UAE, Germany, England, Canada, and America. I have more aunts and uncles than i could ever count, but it is easy to count the 4 that still live in Palestine. As for myself, I now consider Jordan home. Are we destined to scatter ?

I tried to recount below some random memories related to my somewhat sheltered childhood under the occupation, and subsequently. They’re disjointed, and ordered by recollection.

My father’s family lived in a large multi-story house in Jerusalem which they were forced to leave at gunpoint. Several families of Jewish settlers now live in that house. Our house.

I sang (بلاد العرب أوطاني) (The Lands of the Arabs are my homeland) at school, and actually meant every word. As an adult, I reconciled such empty poetry with our harsh reality.

Occasionally the Israeli Army would announce a general curfew. We would hear the loudspeaker announcements on regular intervals (ممنوع التجول). it was terrifying in itself. I remember one time risking going out in curfew just to get to school. I liked school although i didn’t like homework. The only time I pretended to be sick so that I wouldn’t have to go to school. My mom came to wake me up in the morning and I just held my arm and screamed “it hurts it hurts”. I think my mom knew there was nothing wrong with me but let me stay anyway. Thanks mom!

During the Intifada, the general strikes became so frequent that at one point, we only went to school for 2 days a week. The leaflets announcing the strikes would magically appear on the floor all over. There were apparently real leaflets and fake leaflets, and the only way to decide which leaflets were real was if you agreed with what it said! Naturally different political factions would announce strikes on different days.

My dad fearing our education would suffer, and believing that a good education is the most valuable thing he could give us, moved us to an International school in Jerusalem. Due to the Israeli Army checkpoints, the daily commute to school took 1.5-2 hours instead of the actual 30 minutes of travel time. Each day our driver would try find a new shortcut around the checkpoints.

I saw an Israeli school bus carrying school children. The bus had metal wire mesh on its windows, and it was escorted by an army jeep. it looked more like a vehicle to transport prison convicts.

In my previous Arab school, I had only learned about Islam, in moving me to this International school, my dad didn’t realize that learning about Christianity, and contrasting it with Islam, coupled with later travels to different parts of the world along with the chance to meet all sorts of people of different beliefs would eventually lead to my current atheist/agnostic beliefs. I wonder if in retrospect,  he would have preferred my education to suffer the regular strikes instead ?

My father worked at a hospital in Ramallah, each day he would recount the intifada related injuries they would have to deal with. Everything from rubber/plastic bullets, tear gas asphyxiation, to full gunshot wounds, and worse.

No post about any place would be complete without mentioning food, glorious food. Whether it was Nabulsi Kunafeh/white-cheese, Khaleeli Qidreh/grapes, olive oil from the villages, or ice cream from Rukab in Ramallah. I will never forget the taste and smell as long as I live.

Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli Army jeep close to where I live. Soon dozens soldiers were canvassing the whole neighbourhood randomly arresting males. Our neighbours called to warn us that the soldiers are coming. My dad immediately asked my brother and I to go and put our pajamas on. When the soldiers rang the bell, we all stood there as a family so as not to give the impression my brother and I were hiding. 3 soldiers walked in, holding their rifles, fingers near the trigger. Without introductions, one of them looked at my dad, then looked at my brother, pointed his rifle, and told my brother to get in the jeep. My brave dad in a terrifying moment that I will never forget put himself between the rifle’s muzzle and my brother, and tried to reason with the soldier. The soldier argued with my dad. At that point I thought the soldier behind him looked in my mom’s eyes, and saw that she was terrified. He said something in Hebrew to the first soldier, and they left.

I went with my cousin Nader to see the Aqsa mosque, we wanted to get inside not to pray, but just to see what it was like. I had never been there before. The guard at the door talked to my cousin, I just shook his hand and then tried to follow my cousin inside, but the guard stopped me and insisted I speak Arabic to him first so that he can make sure I’m not Israeli. It seems that this was out of fear from some orthodox Jewish groups that were intent on burning down the mosque since to them it is the site of the Jewish Temple, and they had made such attempts previously.

Nader was arrested by the Israeli army. His crime ? He was seen by an Israeli Army jeep walking underneath a telephone pole that had the Palestinian flag on it. I think the sentence for this was 3 months in jail, but they decided to be “nice” to him because he was a kid. He told me that inside the jail, an Israeli showed him 8 canes which increased in thickness, and asked him which one he wants to be hit with.

Our school went on a hiking trip (can’t remember where now), part of the trip was hiking through the rocks and mountains. My friend Rami from Bethlehem was climbing next to me and we weren’t alone on the mountain as there were other tourist groups and people. An Israeli soldier needed to use both hands to climb a rock. Without giving it a second thought, he handed my friend Rami his rifle, climbed up the rock, took the rifle from Rami, then held out his hand to help Rami up. I assumed he did not know he was handing his rifle to an Arab. Then again, do we look that different?

My family owned a large share of the bus company that traveled between Ramallah and Jerusalem. The cool thing was that I could get on any bus say the secret word, and get to ride for free. I didn’t understand how this would prevent others from using the secret word they overheard since it never changed! In contrast whenever I rode an Israeli bus (Eged), I could feel the other passengers eyes looking at me and my schoolbag suspiciously wondering if I had a bomb in there. It wasn’t a nice feeling. I imagine it wasn’t nice for them either.

I was visiting a friend on the 6th floor of an office building in downtown Ramallah. Suddenly I felt a burning sensation in my eyes, and I found I could barely breathe. My friend opened the balcony door and took me there. We talked to the people in the next balcony who also rushed out for fresh air. We heard gunfire. It turns out the Israeli Army was chasing someone, and fired a tear gas grenade into the building. The kind of grenade that can be lethal when fired indoors!

My neighbour’s son asked me to go have pizza with him at a place in Jerusalem. He drove there, we had the pizzas, and left pretty quickly. Later, I found out the pizza place where we went was blown up not long after we left. As an adult I dwelled on the fact that the bomb would not distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli. It would kill us all.

I went to summer camp in the UK, and there I met a kid from Israel. The camp instructors had everyone draw their flag on a piece of paper and wave them. Foolish child that I was, I thought I could single-handedly bring peace to the world by handing him my flag to carry and holding up his. By the end of the camp, the Israeli Kid was calling me names like (dirty Arab). Nowadays, no matter how I answer the question (where do you come from), someone will get upset, so I developed an aversion to flags.

I met a Canadian Jew named Elliott in college. Despite our background, we became chums. Then one day, Elliott and I were reading the news, an Israeli Army Transport Helicopter crashed on its way to attack Lebanon killing all the Israeli soldiers on board. I said: “Helicopters are notoriously hard to fly, seasoned pilots have been known to crash in even perfect conditions”. Suddenly Elliott started shouting at me, he apparently detected pleasure in my comment about the helicopter. He proceeded to lecture me. I thought it amusing that a Jew who never lived in Palestine would feel so strongly about the subject. I later found out that he went to some sort of (find your Zionist roots) camp every few years as a kid. Apparently subliminal messages like (Arabs hate us), and (we must hate Arabs) were part of the indoctrination curriculum.

We always had interesting wall graffiti, anything from announcing someone in a certain house was a collaborator, to proclaiming a political group superior to another, or even religious symbols. The ones I liked, the ever rare calls for peace. I remember the first time I saw (Make Love Not War) on a wall, and how out of place it looked.

I hope our grandchildren grow up in a better world.

Thanks go to Za3tar for the (Blog about Palestine) idea, and Qwaider for inspiring it with the original (Blog about Jordan).