Överlevarna

1948

“The Egyptian army was supposed to defend the village, but when the Jews attacked at night, the Egyptians abandoned us. My mother, my older brother, and I fled into the darkness to a field where our cows and sheep were grazing. All the men stayed behind to defend the village, but when the ammunition ran out, they too were forced to flee. Two of my uncles were shot dead by the Jews. They were in a field and were both shot in the chest. They were shot because they defended their land. Later my uncles were taken to the village, and I saw their bodies. My mother and I cried. She continued to cry until the day she died.”

1945

“Behind our house there was a large fig tree. I used to play in the shade beneath it. Behind the house there was also a cave. My mother and grandmother gathered firewood there. They lit a fire and cooked food, fried eggs, and baked bread. My mother fetched water from a stream that ran near our house.”

1948

“We heard gunfire in the distance. It went on for several days, especially at night. Rumors spread that the Zionist army was in Bayt Safafa, a nearby village, and that they were probably advancing toward our village. I lay on my mattress, frightened. My parents told us to get up, that we had to leave. My father had to carry my grandmother on his back. She had panicked and could not stand up. She was also old and weak. My father carried a small sack of flour in one hand. I held his other hand. I was four years old. My eldest brother, Mustafa, carried a container of olive oil. My mother carried my little brother, who was ten months old.

Many families were fleeing. We walked until we could go no farther. Then we rested under the trees. When morning came, the gunfire had stopped. The men were then able to return to the village to fetch mattresses and pillows. We waited in the shade of the trees. My father returned the next day. By then someone had hired trucks that took us to ‘Amman in Jordan. The journey took a couple of days. I had difficulty understanding what was happening. I was in shock. I was silent, sometimes I cried. The only thing I understood was that the Jews had taken our land and our homes.”

2015

“Religious settlers took control of the stream that ran behind our house. The settlers used it for various religious rituals. At the same time, they prevented us and other Palestinians from going near the stream.”

Afterthought

“The Israelis never lived up to their promises. It was just ink on paper.”

1936

“My paternal uncle was 16 years old when he was killed by Jewish guards on horseback. They struck him on the head and he died the following day. My father’s employer, a Zionist named Dubel, offered my father a bag containing 10,000 pounds in banknotes as compensation for the murder of his brother. My father refused the money, but took four pounds from the bag and said: ‘With this money I will buy ammunition.’

A short time later, he and two relatives managed to set a trap for Dubel and his 16 bodyguards aboard his boat as it traveled through a canal surrounded by forest. My father hid in the woods and was only a few meters away from Dubel when he fired the fatal shot. The British issued a death sentence against my father, who was forced to go into hiding. A few months later, I was born.”

1948

“When I turned 14, I was allowed to carry weapons. I took part in capturing three Zionists. They were fishermen and had no right to be there. That is why my comrade and I acted. The Syrian border was one kilometer away, and it took us an hour to walk there with the prisoners and hand them over to the Syrian police. They were later used by Syria in a prisoner exchange.”

1967

“My village was located near the Syrian border on the Golan Heights. When it was occupied, we fled to the Yarmouk camp, outside Damascus. We could barely bring even a shirt with us. I joined the armed struggle and was trained as a commando soldier.”

1946

"We were farmers and grew wheat, olives, fruit and tobacco. Our tobacco was well-known, it was on a level with the Greek. We had different names for each area of land, depending on what we grew on it. Sometimes we slept in the fields. The land is our life, it is more important than the houses, better than working in a factory."

1948

"I was in fourth grade. We were used to the Zionists attacking us. We used to flee a bit away from the village and stay in an olive grove. When things calmed down, we returned to our house. We had received reinforcement from a volunteer Arab force from Syria. But after a while it got worse and the Arab force left us to our fate. We heard stories of how Jewish soldiers killed women and children in other villages.

I remember the planes that attacked the village. One of the pilots shot at a woman in a wheelchair. At the same time we were attacked on the ground by Jewish soldiers. Chaos and panic broke out among thousands of villagers. We fled on foot to Lebanon. We brought one of our horses and loaded some mattresses. I myself was wearing shorts. When we passed Safad we heard that the city had been occupied by the Zionists. Then we started running. We were attacked from the air and by Jewish soldiers on the ground. Even when we sat under the olive trees they came and shot at us. Some who returned to the village were killed. That's what we heard.

In Lebanon we sold the horse. We needed the money. We took a freight train from Tyre to Aleppo in Syria. At each station along the way, they emptied one or two wagons of refugees, so that not all refugees ended up in the same place. In Aleppo we were first placed in al-Nayrab, an old French military camp, which was next to the airport. Then we had to move into Aleppo. There we got to live in a building that had previously been a hospital."

Afterthought

- Doesn’t the feeling for your lost land disappear with the years?

“On the contrary, it remains, and we inherit that feeling from parents to children and grandchildren.”

- As a lawyer, do you want compensation for your lost land, or do you want the land back?

"I want the land (laughs). The land is a person's life. We don't sell any land, no houses. I am not a seller. I sell nothing. We inherit the land from generation to generation. I am still a refugee. I have no country, no passport, no rights. I don't know what happened to my schoolmates. I never got to finish fourth grade."

1948

"The Zionists killed my maternal uncle, Ahmed Shaban, and three others. They were shot in front of all the villagers. My uncle, who was perhaps 30 years old, was in the resistance movement, first against the British occupation, then against the Zionists'. After the executions, people got scared.

Half of my relatives fled to Syria, my paternal uncle fled to Jordan and we to Lebanon, on foot. The only thing we brought with us were the clothes we were wearing. I was four years old. During the flight, I heard gunfire and got scared. I wanted mum to carry me. My little sister started screaming too and wanted to be carried too. After al-Nakba my parents were sad."

1955

"In the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon I went to school. The teachers were very harsh. They hit us. Once I got a beating when I was standing outside the school smoking. I was eleven years old then. I was more scared of my teachers than of my parents. In the beginning I hated them, but then I understood that they wanted to take care of us. After school we used to go into Saida, a 20-minute walk. We pinched oranges from the plantations along the way. In Saida we went to the cinema. I liked everything with Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama. We were home again for dinner, at eight, nine.

My parents were offered to become Lebanese citizens, but they declined. They expected to be able to return to Palestine. Nasser and the Arab world promised that they would be allowed to return. They promised and promised. The Arab world is the Palestinians' worst enemy. It was a mistake to refuse to become Lebanese."

1961

"Me and my friends were politically active and organized demonstrations in the camp. We got in trouble with the Lebanese security police. Once a friend told a funny story that I laughed at. Then some Lebanese security police showed up and wanted to know what was so funny. We had to spend the night at their place. We were oppressed by the Lebanese security police. I left the refugee camp in 1964 and started at a UN school in Siblin, outside Saida. There, the Lebanese security police tried to recruit me as an agent. I would get 150 lira a month. That was a lot of money at the time. They would give me a pistol and promised to pay for my parties. All I had to do was snitch on my friends..

1967

"I was bullied by my Swedish colleagues. They imitated the defeated Egyptian soldiers who had fled barefoot through the desert.

One of them kept calling me a "fucking Arab". I took a stranglehold on my honor as a slut. To defend myself against the bullies, I joined the KPML(r)."

1995

"When I became a Swedish citizen, my family and I were able to go back to my home village. The only thing left was the mosque and the cemetery. The mosque was full of cow dung, so we started cleaning it. After that, six Israeli soldiers showed up and explained that there were too many of us in there.

"This counts as a demonstration," said one of the soldiers.

"It's not a demonstration, we're just cleaning the mosque. I'm a Swedish citizen and I was born in this village."

"Okay, don't let me go, don't let me go, let's say he left us alone."

Reflection

"At night I dream that I kill all the Arab leaders. I fly in a helicopter and shoot them. I hate them more than I hate Zionism. I respect the Israeli leaders because they take care of their own people."

1946

”My father owned a lot of land where he grew wheat and tobacco. He sold the tobacco to a company in ‘Akka. We had sheep, goats, camels, and cows. My father bought donkeys from Cyprus; they were strong.

I used to help with the milking. I would scoop the top layer of milk from the bucket with my hand and drink it.

I ran around on our land. When I think about it now, it feels as if I was flying above ground covered with flowers. I was free.

In winter we gathered firewood and loaded it onto camels.

Deir al-Qasi lay high up on a mountain with a beautiful view and fresh air. People from ‘Akka and Haifa often came on weekend outings to our village.

There were no Jews living in Deir al-Qasi. But Nahariya, which was nearby, was a Jewish village. We had good relations with them. They came to shop in our village, and we went to a doctor in theirs.

Before the Nakba, I did not notice any tension between us and the Jews. However, there were strong tensions between the British and the Palestinian resistance fighters. We were constantly afraid of the British soldiers.”

1948

”I had turned eight years old and noticed nothing about the war approaching. Suddenly people fled from al-Quds to our village.

One day I was going to milk the goat. I was standing in the shade of a tree. Suddenly I heard a loud explosion. When I looked up, I saw three airplanes dropping bombs. I got scared and ran back to our house. I saw black smoke rising.

By a well stood a man. His leg had been torn off. I felt pain and saw blood coming from my shoulder. My father, who was ill, was lying down resting. I tried to lift him up, but I did not have the strength.

“The Zionists are coming!” my cousin shouted as he came running.

My father slowly rose from the bed and we left the house.

Outside, all the animals had been killed in the bombing. Even the dog was dead. The camels survived because they were with my grandfather.

Everyone fled—men, women, children, and the elderly. We went to seek shelter in a nearby forest. My father leaned on my cousin for support. In the darkness I saw dead bodies on the ground. We continued walking toward the Lebanese border.

We had no food and no water. At the border stood Israeli soldiers. They shot a young man before our eyes.

“Dear ones, go to your leader, he will give you food,” one of the soldiers shouted to us.

We crossed the border and arrived in the village of Ayta ash-Shab, where my father had a cousin. We were able to stay there.

After a while, when things had calmed down, my mother and I returned to our farm. I brought some chickens with me from there. My mother also took some things from inside the house—I don’t know what. That was the only time we returned. Later, the house was demolished.

We stayed with my father’s cousin for three days. So many refugees had gathered in Ayta ash-Shab that we decided to go north to a refugee camp in the city of Sur. There we hired a truck and everyone was driven eastward, toward the Syrian border, to the Baalbek refugee camp.

Our family and five other families had to share one barrack. We remained there for twelve years, until the early 1960s.”

Afterthought

I make a distinction between Jews and Israelis. Jews and Arabs lived in peace in Palestine. But the Zionists who came from Europe destroyed my life. I hate Zionists, but not Jews.

Every day I dream of returning to Deir al-Qasi, the most beautiful village in the world. But I have no passport."

1947

“Lubya was a large village. The land stretched all the way down toward Ṭabariyya. We were farmers and grew olives, figs, and grapes. Some of my brothers were able to study in Ṭabariyya. For us girls, it was not considered as important.

From the time I was seven years old, I began to pray—sometimes at home, sometimes in the mosque. Our God never forgets. He records both good and bad deeds.

The Jews and we were friends. They could come riding on horseback to have coffee with my father. There was no conflict. Then the others arrived. They showed up during the harvest, and we saw that they were different—they did not look like our Jewish neighbors. Why had they come here? Worry began to spread. Then the war came.”

1948

“The men tried to defend us with their rifles. But what can a rifle do against an airplane? They attacked us and shot 24 people. I saw it myself. I know their names: Muhammad, Zaid, and Ahmad were brothers. Ibrahim was from another family. Their relatives came and collected the bodies. They could not dig graves, so they laid the bodies side by side in a room and closed the door.

We fled on foot. My sister-in-law was carrying her baby boy, Hussein, whom she was still breastfeeding. He died along the way. She dug a small hole in the ground with a branch. We helped one another so that he could be placed in the earth."

Afterthought

"My father and my brothers worked for others, either in agriculture or in construction. Most of the men in my family later died of heart attacks. Being expelled and forced to leave everything behind brings a deep sorrow that is heavy to carry. What were we supposed to do?”

1948

“When the Zionists attacked the villages around Hamama, people fled to our village. Then our village was attacked as well. The attack came from the main road. Our men went out toward the road, but they only had old weapons to defend us with. My brother was shot in the arm.

Then the Zionists began bombing us with airplanes. We left our house. We carried a little food and water with us. My parents took us to the coast to seek safety. There, they helped remove the bullet from my brother’s arm.

When we reached the beach, my parents covered me and my siblings with blankets. Then they piled sand on top of the blankets so the airplanes wouldn’t spot us. In the morning, we returned to our house. This went on—back and forth—for several days. We hid wheat and corn for the day when we could return.

Gradually, people began leaving the area. We went to al-Jura and stayed there for two days with a friend of my father. When we returned to Hamama, the village was completely deserted—everyone had fled. All the surrounding villages had been occupied by Zionist forces.

The roads to the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were closed. The only road open to us was southward, toward the Gaza Strip. So we left. We children rode on donkeys; our parents walked on foot. They were barefoot. My mother carried a bundle of clothes on her head.

After a while I became very thirsty and started crying:

‘I want water, I want water!’

When we passed a village, my father knocked on a door and I was given water. The villagers gave us food as well.

We walked during the day and slept on the ground at night. Sometimes we saw the lights of the Zionist forces at night. Then we had to stay silent so they wouldn’t discover us and kill us.

Eventually we reached Jabalia, in the Gaza Strip. The distance was maybe twenty kilometers. My uncle knew someone there, and we were allowed to sleep at their place for one night. We were supposed to continue to Rafah, where he had other friends.

Meanwhile, my father, my uncle, and my uncle’s wife rented seven camels. Together with the camel owner, they returned to Hamama and filled large sacks with the wheat and corn we had hidden. They rested before setting off toward Rafah with the fully loaded camels. They traveled at night and had to be silent to avoid being discovered.

My uncle’s wife was so sleepy that she had to hold onto the camel’s tail to keep from falling asleep. The camel owner hurried one of the camels along and tried to whip the animal, but missed and hit my uncle’s wife instead. She lost several teeth and began bleeding from her mouth. There was an argument with the camel owner, who blamed others.

Eventually we were reunited in Rafah. There we lived a life of humiliation. We were nothing. We had no clothes, no mattresses, no blankets. We had no money. We had nothing. It was a very, very, very hard life.”

1967

“I sent the children to my brother-in-law. Our oldest child showed the way with a flashlight. There was an Israeli military camp nearby, and they noticed the light from the flashlight. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was Israeli soldiers. They ordered me to bring all the flashlights in the house. I answered that we didn’t have any flashlights.

‘You have twenty-four hours to evacuate the house,’ an Israeli soldier said.

‘Why? What have I done?’

I received no answer. The soldiers left and came back the next day. They explained that our house would be demolished and that we would be sent to al-Arish, in Egypt.

‘You demolished our house in Hamama in 1948. Are you going to do the same thing to this house?’ No answer.

We were given twenty-four hours to empty our home. Then they demolished it. It had four rooms. There were two doors—one from the courtyard and one facing the sea.”

“We lived in a small house on Mount Carmel. It was a mixed area with Muslims and Jews. My father worked at a cigarette factory and also sold olive oil. My brother started working at Spinneys supermarket, which was owned by a couple of Englishmen. I had seven Jewish friends in the neighborhood who sometimes came over to our home.

Cohen later became a police chief under the British. Another was named Shabbatai Levi, one was Spector, and a girl was named Sternheim.

My mother invited everyone to eat. She baked bread, boiled eggs with onion skins so they turned brown, and served cheese and yogurt. We spoke Hebrew with one another. My grandfather made Arabic coffee that lasted the whole day.

Cohen’s father used to come and drink coffee with my father.

The girl Sternheim worked in a flower shop. ‘I will protect you,’ she said. ‘I will come and get you wherever you are. Call me and I will come. Don’t be afraid.’

I still remember her phone number: 3917.” (begins to cry)

I had just turned 13 and worked at a café in central Haifa. The owner was named Siegel. He spoke only German. Jochanan also worked at the café, and we became friends. One day Jochanan was hit by a British military jeep. The driver was drunk. Jochanan was taken to the hospital but died four days later.

I wanted to attend his funeral but couldn’t because I had nothing to cover my head with. I stood at the entrance to the cemetery and cried.

‘Is he your brother?’ a man asked.

‘No, he’s my friend, but he was like a brother.’

The man gave me a kippah with a Star of David on it so that I could approach the grave.”

“The first time I noticed unrest was when the Stern Gang blew up a car outside the British police station in Haifa. That was in early 1947.

We moved to Kababir in Haifa, where only Muslims lived. My brother-in-law Ibrahim drove us in his car. We rented an apartment. But after a while it didn’t feel safe in Kababir either, so we moved on to al-Tira, south of Haifa, where we owned a house.

Al-Nakba began when the Haganah blew up 16 houses in al-Tira. Assad al-Bardan, one of our neighbors, went out at night with a lamp to see what was happening. He was shot. There were air raids at night.

People were afraid to sleep in their homes and sought refuge in olive groves and caves. On the last day, before we fled, the shooting was constant. Only my brother and I were at home. My parents were hiding in a cave, but we didn’t know where. We went outside to see what was happening.

‘What are you doing here?’ a man asked. ‘Everyone has already fled.’”

“We didn’t know where to go. We were from Mount Carmel and didn’t know the surroundings of al-Tira. We were afraid. We left our house when the moon had risen and saw about 50 Jewish soldiers entering al-Tira. We lay down on the mountain so as not to be discovered.

As we continued walking, we met Muhammad and Afu. They showed us the way to ‘Ain Hawd. It was dawn when we arrived, but bombs were falling, so we continued south. After three hours we reached Ijzim. There we met our oldest brother, who gave us each a cigarette.

Our brother paid a man to guide us out of Ijzim toward Nablus in the West Bank. There they gave us breakfast and water, and there we finally found our mother and one of her sisters.

Together we continued to Jordan. There was little water. After a couple of months, a truck took us to Duma, outside Damascus in Syria.

We and about ten other families were allowed to stay in a mosque. They divided a hall with blankets where we lived. We stayed there for four or five months. Then the whole family was reunited again—except for one of my brothers, Ahmed, who was imprisoned in Palestine.

I lived in Syria for 36 years. I came to Sweden in 1980.”

“My father was a farmer. He grew, among other things, potatoes and tomatoes. I used to tend his sheep.”

- What do you remember of your home village?

“Your question is wrongly put. You should ask who kicked me out of my land. When the Israelis carried out the massacre in Dayr Yasin, it terrified many people. The rumor spread throughout all of Palestine. Our Arab leaders came to our village and told us to leave so that we would not experience the same thing as in Dayr Yasin. They told us we didn’t need to take anything with us, because we would be able to return after one week. But now 70 years have passed.

Many of the Palestinian villages that were abandoned became settlements for Jews from Yemen.

I was engaged to my cousin Maryam when we left Palestine. Everyone left—not only us, but also all the surrounding villages. Some fled to Jordan, Syria, or Iraq. My village was close to the border, so my family and I walked on foot to Lebanon. My family stayed in Tyre, while I went on to Bint Jbeil to sell my sheep. I had managed to bring 84 of them from Palestine. I didn’t want to sell them, but I had no choice.”

- Did you like your sheep?

“Being a shepherd is like therapy for the soul. I still cry over my sheep.

After selling them, I continued to Yater and then on to my fiancée, who was in Tyre with her family. We married there and she bore me children. When time passed and we were not allowed to return to Palestine, we continued to the Burj al-Barajna refugee camp in Beirut. I had twelve children with her.

The most important thing is to have a country. More than 70 years have passed and we still cannot erase the word ‘refugee.’ I do not belong here in Lebanon. I do not own the house I live in, I am not allowed to work, I have no rights. I had twelve children, but I was given no land.”

- Who bears responsibility for your situation?

“The conspiracy.”

- Who is behind the conspiracy?

“How should I know?”