Nakba 2009

I commemorated 61 years of Nakba together with Palestininian friends from Bourj al-Barajneh Refugee Camp in the south of Beirut. For the first time, the commemoration was held outside of the camp, in the centre of the roundabout in an underpass of an elevated highway. The event began with the opening of a small exhibition, including photographs from 1948, posters, and paintings by the camp children.

Six Palestinian NGOs working in Bourj al-Barajneh were selling handicrafts: all kinds of practical and decorative items adorned with traditional or modern cross-stitch motives.

The Palestinian map was everywhere; Handzala, the little fellow turning his back to you, barefooted and in tattered clothes, who was invented by the famous Palestinian cartoonist Naji Ali to represent the Palestinian Right of Return, decorated many paraphernalia; and like everywhere in the Westbank, there were a lot of items decorated with the famous portrait of Che Guevara, the revered freedom fighter. The third symbol you can see everywhere where Palestinians live is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.


One person from each participating NGO held a speech; journalists from Lebanese dailies and a TV station were filming and photographing the event and interviewing participants.
The children were playing and dancing to the loud music blaring from two giant loudspeakers.

Old men and women had come, some hobbling on their walking sticks across the busy road passing between the camp and the place where the event was held. They are the last witnesses to the actual Nakhba in 1948, the last of their generation to tell the now fourth generation of the loss of their homeland.

In one corner, sitting on dusty cushions on the ground, some old women were demonstrating old household appliances used by them in Palestine before, such as a coffee roaster, a hand-mill to grind corn, a stone with a wooden club for mashing food items, a mortar with pestle, etc. The hand-mill and the mortar could also have come from rural Malaya.

Many children were trying out these household tools, struggling and laughing and having a good time.

A woman brewed the freshly roasted and ground coffee and we all tried a few sips; the coffee was fragrant, most delicious and refreshing.

The tantalizing rhythms of Palestinian music got everyone dancing, whipping with their feet, nodding the head, moving shoulders, arms and hands with the rhythm. Even small children who could barely walk were dancing.

I watched the kids drawing on huge white papers which had been put up on some of the walls: they were drawing the Palestinian flag, houses, tanks, people, explosions, bombs, helicopters, and other things from their collective memories.

Then I had a closer look at the exhibited photographs of the Palestinian exodus in 1948, as well as the victims of Zionist violence in British Mandate Palestine.

The pictures immediately reminded me of pictures of Palestinian victims in Gaza 2009. It seems that nothing has changed in 61 years. Palestinians are still being slaughtered, burned, and torn to pieces by the Zionist colonial war machine. To the collective trauma that affects Palestinian refugees until today, my friends in Lebanon and elsewhere have to deal with the collective trauma that years of civil war in Leban, total depravation, dispossession, and complete disempowerment for generations have heaped on them.



How many more generations are the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and elsewhere not allowed to go back to their land in Palestine where they, their parents, grandparents and ancestors before them had been born and were living, while Jews from whatever country in this world, many of whom have been completely assimilated and culturally integrated and are full citizens with all citizens’ rights in their country have the right to hold Israeli citizenship and live in Palestine.

After having written this, I actually feel the urge to do some research on the statistics regarding the Jews and the Palestinians. Are the Palestinians the ‘new Jews’? Persecuted, gassed, burned, exterminated? The Palestinian people have the right to live peacefully in their own land. But peace cannot be achieved without justice. So what does ‘justice’ entail in the context of the conflict in Palestine?

More on this at a later date.