Överlevarna

1930

“We owned 20 hectares of land and lived a good life. My father had six employees working in the fields. We grew cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and other crops.

We transported the produce to the port of Sidna Ali for onward shipment to Port Said in Egypt. In the 1930s the British closed the port. When my father came to collect our goods from the harbor, the British had already thrown them away. Despite this, they forced him to pay the port fee. My father’s cousin became so upset that he suffered a heart attack and died. For my father this was a severe blow—he still had to pay the workers’ wages.

The British tried to break us by forcibly relocating our leaders, sometimes to Akka, sometimes to Safad. Sometimes they arrested people, sometimes they killed some. They wanted to force us to our knees. Many farmers became poor and were forced to sell their land and begin working for Jews. My father, too, was forced to sell a piece of land for a pittance to a woman in Miska. She had become wealthy after selling her land to the Zionists. The woman promised to take care of our land. When my father could afford it, he bought the land back.”

1937

“I was almost 14 years old when the settlers came to the village. The Jews tried to act like the British; they spoke English, but they were known in the village. One of them was called Elimelech. A Palestinian man asked why they were speaking English. He received no answer.

They lined up seven men with their faces against the wall. Then they shot six of them in the back; the seventh lost his leg. I remember the names of some of them: Hassan Zreika, Muhammad Zreika, Ahmed Zreika, and Ali Harbiye. They also shot a man who had come from the south, from the village of al-Jura, and a worker from Syria. The Jews did it to spread fear.”

1948

“The rumor of the massacre in Dayr Yasin spread and people were afraid. Jaysh al-Inqad al-‘Arabi—we called them ‘the Syrians’—came to our village, and we believed they would defend us. But one of their generals explained that we were surrounded by Jewish settlements and that they could not protect us.

One day, while six other women and I were working in the wheat fields, we were summoned and forced to leave the village along with everyone else. We fled on foot eastward, from Miska to al-Tira, a distance of three kilometers. It was the darkest day of my life.”

”My parents lived in Hiribya. Two of my paternal uncles took part in the resistance when the Israelis attacked in 1948. One of my uncles was surrounded by Israeli soldiers when he returned to the house to collect some belongings. They shot him. Hiribya was occupied and my parents were expelled to Gaza and the Beach Camp.

My maternal grandfather was also active. In 1972 he was arrested and subjected to severe torture for a month. He never confessed to anything, so in the end they were forced to release him. I remember the day he was released. He could not walk. I was nine years old, and I felt hatred toward the occupying power for several reasons. First and foremost: in 1948 they took our land and expelled our people. Second: they attacked Gaza and the West Bank in 1967. Third: four of my maternal uncles were imprisoned; one of them spent 26 years in prison. His son was killed in a rocket attack in Gaza. Fourth: they murdered another of my maternal uncles and two of his sons, also in a rocket attack in Gaza. Fifth: all Palestinians are subjected to this oppression.

When I was 20, I joined a women’s organization. We organized lectures on Palestinian history. The Israelis did not like that. I was summoned many times to the security service, Shabak, for interrogation. Later I became a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Gaza. This was during the first Intifada, in 1987.

The first time I was arrested was on December 14, 1987, one week after the Intifada began. I was detained for two weeks. I was given only a piece of bread a day and weak tea. I was forced to share a cell with a group of criminals. They were dangerous and frightened me. They took drugs and became agitated. I kept to myself and hardly slept for 14 days. During that time the guards threatened me with long prison sentences, with deportation, and with punishing my family.

After two weeks I was released on bail pending trial. But there was never any trial. After five months I was arrested again. This time I was held for six months in Neve Tirtza women’s prison in Ramle, without trial. We were 36 Palestinian women divided into six rooms. After two months our situation became extremely bad. We were not allowed to read books or gather with the other women. When family members came to visit, they were forced to strip naked for searches. Mothers were not allowed to hug their children; they were separated by a glass wall. In my ward there were also criminal Jewish women. Every time we were taken out for exercise, they beat us and poured hot water on us. If we became ill, we were never given medical care. The only thing they gave us was Alvedon (paracetamol), regardless of the problem.

One woman had difficulty urinating. After two days her stomach was swollen and she screamed in pain constantly. They refused to call a doctor. Only after we protested loudly did they finally send her to hospital. Another woman was psychologically unwell. She discovered that she was pregnant. When the guards learned this, they demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, they gave her pills that caused a miscarriage.

After six months I was released, in exchange for payment, but without any trial. I resumed the struggle against the occupation.

In 2005 Hamas won the election in Gaza. Since then there have been four wars: 2005, 2008, 2014, and 2022. And unfortunately, I believe there will be a fifth war.

I came to Sweden in 2005. My body is here, but my thoughts are in Gaza. If I were allowed to return to Palestine, I would first visit my family in Gaza, then al-Aqsa Mosque, and third Hiribya, my parents’ birthplace. I have very warm feelings for Hiribya, even though the Israelis destroyed the entire village—nothing remains. But when I was a girl in Gaza, my father rented a car every Friday and took us to Hiribya.

“We lived in a house in al-Hilwa in Jaffa, next to the Jabaliya Mosque. Jaffa was largely Arab, but we also had some neighbors who were Palestinian Jews. My parents have told me that people celebrated together and even married each other.

My father was a fisherman and had his own boat. We also had a citrus grove in al-Nabi Rubin, a village located eleven or twelve kilometers south of Jaffa. Our land was about 4,000 square meters and included a farmhouse. The orchards lay next to the river, so irrigation was never a problem.

Once a year, during the harvest season, pilgrims came to al-Nabi Rubin, to the tomb of the Prophet Rubin. Over time this developed into large popular festivals with up to 50,000 visitors. The Rubin Carnival lasted for three months, during which people celebrated honeymoons, got married, or circumcised boys. People came here to vacation. At the same time, commerce developed and people began trading livestock, carpets, clothes, furniture, and handicrafts.

After the Second World War, European Jews arrived in Jaffa. They wanted to take over. My father Muhammad and my uncle Faris helped organize the armed resistance, which guarded our neighborhoods at night. My younger brother Sobhi and I often brought food to my father and uncle at their defense posts. They were stationed at the front. Their post blocked the entire street with light-brown sandbags.

Once, when my brother and I had gone to the market, a man came running. In his hand he was holding a human head by the hair. I grabbed my brother’s hand and ran back home to our mother.

When we decided to leave Jaffa, my father and uncle dug a very large hole outside the house in the courtyard. They placed all our valuables there—gold, money, jewelry, and furniture. They expected that we would soon return.

We went down to the beach. There were boats there, and we boarded one of them. There were so many of us that the water almost reached over the gunwale. I was afraid the boat would sink. My father and uncle were not with us; they stayed behind at the front. We sailed south to Hiribya, where we had relatives. We stayed there for a few weeks. But the war followed us, and we were driven away from there as well.

We fled south on foot to Jabalia, a desert area in the northern Gaza Strip. We had relatives there too. They gave us tents so that we could live on their land. My brother and I played outside all day long. Men were constantly arriving. When Jaffa fell, many resistance fighters were killed. My father survived and came to us, but he was never the same person again. He was a broken man.

We lived in extreme poverty. For four years we lived in tents until UNRWA provided us with a house in al-Shati, north of Gaza City. That was in 1952.

In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, the Israelis took control of the Gaza Strip from Egypt. They imposed a total curfew on the camp for about a week. We heard gunfire. At one point some Egyptian soldiers fleeing passed by. They wanted our civilian clothes. My father took their uniforms and weapons and buried them behind our house.

When the curfew was lifted and I opened the door, a dead man was lying outside. I was shocked and screamed that there was a dead person outside our door. Some people helped remove the body.

Right next to our house there was a forest, which we passed through on our way to school. One day I discovered a blanket lying under a tree. A friend and I ran over and lifted it. Underneath lay two dead Egyptian soldiers.

My father was taken in for interrogation by the Israeli military. They wanted to question him about his activities in Jaffa ten years earlier. He was gone for fourteen days and returned even more shattered.

We heard that the Israelis had carried out a massacre in Khan Yunis, in the south. One of my aunts lived there, and we were worried about her and her family. My brother and I took a taxi there. Our aunt’s family had survived, but she told us that 200 people had been killed by the Israelis.”

1936

“At the beginning of the Arab uprising against the British, my father was shot in the back. A couple of years later, the British killed my uncle.”

1938

“My mother was called Husn, and she was a good person: wealthy, beautiful, and religious. Her first husband, Mohamed, was killed in 1938 by British soldiers during the Arab uprising. My mother decided that she would remarry. She asked her father to approach Khalil, her brother-in-law. When Khalil was asked, he began to cry. The memory of his murdered brother still haunted him. Finally, he replied:

‘Ask my first wife, Zahr.’

Zahr answered:

‘I have no objection to a marriage. If Husn comes to live with us, this will be her home. I will give her the protection of my wings.’”

1948

“I was born in 1948. I grew up with what felt like two mothers. I called my father’s first wife Mother Zahr, and my own mother I called Mama.

Husn and Zahr had a good life together. They lived like sisters.

After the massacre in Dayr Yasin, everything changed. In July 1948, I was two months old. The entire family was forced to flee, leaving everything behind and taking only a donkey with them. I know they expected to return soon. My father had difficulty walking because of a gunshot wound in his back. He and my two brothers rode the donkey. My grandmother was disabled, and my mother wrapped her in a blanket and carried her on her back. She carried me on her chest. It must have been terrible.

The road from Filastin to Lubnan was rocky and hilly, making it very difficult to walk. At one point, my mother dropped me on the ground without noticing. After some time, she realized what had happened and went back to look for me. In the end, she found me among some rocks.

We reached Kana, on the Lubnan side of the border, my grandmother’s birthplace. We stayed there with relatives who took care of us. We remained in Kana for a year and a half.

When I was a year and a half old, I suddenly became paralyzed. It happened one day while my father was playing with me. He noticed that I had lost strength in one hand. He lifted me from the ground, and suddenly I could no longer stand on my legs. The doctor told my parents to give me nutritious food.

Eventually, it became difficult to stay with our relatives. My parents heard about refugee camps in the Beirut area. We went to the Burj al-Barajna refugee camp. That is where I grew up. We lived in tents—nine people together. In the summer it was hot, and in the winter it was cold. When it rained, water sometimes ran into the tent. Most of the time, we cooked food outdoors. My happiest moments were when I sat outside the tent and talked to people who came and went.”

1982

“The attack on Sabra and Shatila in Beirut began with Israeli aircraft bombing parts of the city. When I came home, all the neighbors had gathered at Mama’s place. Some even slept overnight in our apartment. Most people stayed indoors, both men and women. Some went to hospitals to help.

I volunteered at Haifa Hospital in the Burj al-Barajna refugee camp. The management had moved all the equipment to safety in the basement. I worked in the emergency ward. People arrived with severe injuries.

One girl had serious burns to her face and body. I helped wash her. She had been my student, but she was no longer recognizable. She died, as did her entire family except for one brother.

Another time, a man arrived covered in dust from collapsed buildings. I could not recognize him either, even though he was my cousin. Much of one of his forearms and one foot had been destroyed.

One morning there was a knock at our door. When my mother opened it, a man asked for me.

‘There is a massacre going on in Sabra and Shatila. You must come.’”

1934

“I was born in Irbid, in al-Urdunn, but my family comes from al-Nasira. We have lived there for 300 years.

I was a wild child. When my father had guests, I would go outside and take one of the guests’ horses. I always chose a calm horse. I was wild, but I was also smart. That way I was never thrown off. I would ride away for an hour or two. That is how I learned to ride. To gallop on a horse is like swimming in the air. You lose yourself.”

1939

“I studied at a boarding school in al-Quds. The Second World War had begun and the food was not very good. But the teachers got better food than we did. At night, a few friends and I used to sneak into the teachers’ kitchen and steal maqluba, their favorite dish.

I smoked, which was forbidden, but fun. My favorite cigarettes were British, Craven ‘A’. They were very hard to get.

The headmaster appointed me as one of the school prefects. Our task was to maintain law and order at the school, something I did not take very seriously. I suppose I got the position because I was a good athlete.

My friends and I used to go to the cinema two or three times a month. During the Second World War, al-Quds was the entertainment center of the Arab world, not al-Qahira, not Bayrut.”

1941

“Near the Arab College in al-Quds, where I lived, was the Jewish settlement of Talpiot. A golf course lay between us. When we arrived by bus from al-Nasira, we always crossed the golf course on our way home.

In the forest in Talpiot we saw Jewish boys and girls, women and men, being trained militarily. It was like an army. At the same time, the Jordanian army had been sent to al-Quds. Tensions began to build.”

1947

“Anyone could see what was about to happen. Many realized that the conflict would lead to waves of refugees. The Zionists were clear about their goals. They had been ever since the days of Herzl. There was no place in Filastin for both Arabs and Jews. Arabs would have to be expelled from Filastin to make room for the European Jews.

It was in the air.”

1948

“I was studying at the University of Edinburgh while my family was fighting against the Israelis. Even though my father was old, he joined the struggle. My older brother was an officer in Jaysh al-Inqad al-‘Arabi, a conglomerate of soldiers from several Arab countries.

My cousin was mayor of al-Nasira when the city fell into the hands of the Israeli army. The Jewish commander summoned several of the city’s leaders, including my father, to sign the peace agreement. My cousin insisted that the Arabs of al-Nasira be granted the same rights and privileges as Israeli citizens. For some reason, the Jewish commander agreed.”

1967

“I was only allowed to visit my home in al-Nasira for one day at a time, from early morning until late in the evening. The military governor in Nablus never gave me permission to stay overnight. But at my own risk, I always chose to stay a couple of extra nights, without permission.”

Afterthought

“Today I live in Amman, but as a Palestinian I cannot travel to al-Nasira to visit my family’s house. I am a Jordanian citizen, with a Jordanian passport and a Jordanian personal identity number, but the Israelis do not recognize me as a Jordanian citizen. If they had recognized me as Jordanian, I would have been granted a visa, since there is a peace treaty between al-Urdunn and Israil. But because I also have a Palestinian ID card, I am not allowed to travel to al-Nasira. It feels terrible. It feels deeply sad.”

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.”

- Min pappa Jerry föddes 1939. När han var sex månader övergav farfar familjen. De sågs aldrig igen, säger Mattias Sackrén.

- Pappa kom att jobba med reklam, bland annat åt sin morbror, Nathan Sackrén, som startade klädkedjan Hollywood på Götgatan 54-56.

- Min pappa var född i Sverige och vi bodde på eleganta Östermalm. När jag kom till judiska lekskolan så minns jag att de här föräldrarna såg annorlunda ut, dom såg liksom rädda ut och kunde inte tala ”riktig” svenska, säger Mirjam Ettlinger Frajnd.

1945

“My mother milked the sheep and sold the milk in ‘Akka. Just a few days after she had given birth, she started working again.

Our house was always full of people. We had enormous wedding celebrations. The bride wore a white, glittering dress. The bride and groom rode forward on a white horse and we followed them, singing songs. In the song for the groom, we sang that the barber would shave his beard with a golden razor.

My mother fell ill and died. Then my father married my mother’s sister.”

1948

“One day, when my aunt as usual was baking bread and then spreading the finished loaves out in the room, the army attacked our village and some soldiers entered our house.

‘Either you leave here or we will kill you,’ the soldiers said.

We immediately left our house and fled barefoot. The bread was left behind in the house.

Many people were fleeing. My father brought our sheep with him. We passed through Druze villages and asked for food and water. There was no time to stop so that the sheep could graze. Half of the sheep died of hunger along the way.

My father cut up the meat and shared some of it with the other refugees.

We arrived in Srobbine, in southern Lebanon. There my older sister died. The flight had terrified her. She felt pain in her chest and her heart stopped beating. She was 18 years old. We were forced to bury her in a cemetery for non-believers.

In the end we reached the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut.”

Afterthought

“My daughter died less than a year ago. After that I got several infections on my body—on my arm, my hand, and my eye. After several treatments, only this infection on my cheek remains. I have been like this for seven months now; my cheek burns.

Here in the Shatila camp I wake up broken. I get tired even after sleeping. Back in Palestine everything felt holy, even the sand. If you touch the ground you are comforted. The smell of the cucumber in my home village used to break my heart. Palestine is my lover.”

1946

“There were some Jews living in my village, and we were friends with them. In Akka there were more Jews. If I got sick, I used to go to a Jewish doctor in Akka named Nathan. As children, we did not distinguish between Christians, Muslims, and Jews—we were friends.”

1948

“The Jews began attacking us with heavy artillery, just to scare us. Then the aerial bombardments of our village began and people started to flee. Some families refused to leave Tarshiha; they hid with their neighbors, who were Palestinian Jews and Druze. Some of the children and grandchildren of those who hid are still living in Tarshiha today.

There were about twenty people in my family who fled toward Lebanon. We loaded as many mattresses as possible onto one of our horses. I was barefoot, and I was given a pair of shoes, size 42. I was a child. I rode the horse for a while, then I got down and started running barefoot. I remember it clearly. We walked ten kilometers. I was afraid. My parents tried to calm me, but deep down they were also afraid. We were running to escape death.”

– Who was it that drove you out?

“The Jews, but not the same Jews we knew before. These were Jews who came from outside. I saw dead bodies lying in the groves.

After crossing the border into Lebanon, we came to Ayta ash Shab. We ate the food we had brought with us. We continued on to Aleppo in Syria. There were seven of us in the family, and we lived in a barrack. The rooms were three by three meters and were divided with blankets. If someone had sex with his wife, everyone could hear it.

The Nakba took everything from us. The only thing we had left was to study at school. I was good at my studies, but in order to study I had to go outside—there was no space indoors. I remember once in winter, when it was cold and snowy. I had to go out into the cold and sit on the snow to study. I was in the fourth grade.”

2015

“The first exodus, from Palestine, was very hard, but it helped us survive the second exodus, from Syria to Sweden. When I was 74 years old, in 2015, we were forced to flee from Syria to Turkey, crossing the mountains on foot. From Turkey we took a rubber boat across the Aegean Sea to Greece. There were 44 people in the boat; it was approved for a maximum of ten. Then we continued through Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Denmark, and finally to Sweden.

For the journey to Turkey, my wife and I paid 30,000 kronor, and from Turkey to Sweden the same amount.

I am glad that Sweden took us in, but this is not my father’s house.”