A Tale of Three Brothers

I have practically absorbed my love for fairy tales together with my mother’s milk. She used to sing me to sleep when I was but a baby, and later would tell me stories of all kinds, including all the Grimm Brothers’ folk tales, the Hans Christian Andersen Tales, Hauff’s fairy tales, stories from 1000 and One Nights, and Lisa Tetzner’s collection of Tales for 365 and One Days, and many, many more. In fact, until I was about 10 years old I would not sleep without a bedtime story from my mother.

Later, when I had kids of my own, I would also tell them stories. But none of my boys was as interested in those tales as I had been.

As a young adult, I began collecting folk and fairy tales – among other genres – and now have a sizeable collection.

But this Tale of Three Brothers has nothing to do with any folk or fairy tale. It is the story of real people and has really happened. The names and some details have been changed so that they cannot be easily recognised, but the story is nevertheless true.


A Tale of Three Brothers

Once upon a time, in a country far far away, in the Middle East, in a place called Palestine, a family was forced out of their home, their lovely house in Jaffa , at gunpoint , by evil, armed terrorist groups, like Irgun and Stern Gang. They had to flee for their lives, together with tens of thousands of other Palestinians. They could not take anything with them. Only the key to the main house door and some paper documents could be taken on the long track to Baghdad, and other places of refuge.

In Baghdad, they were very poor. But their neighbors helped them to survive the first few years. They settled down and lead a normal life. They had a son, who was born and grew up in Baghdad, who later married a girl, who was also born in Iraq, but whose parents had also fled the evil terrorist groups in their home country of Palestine in 1948. All they really wanted was to go back to their homes in Jaffa, but the rulers of the world would not let them go back, although they gave them a promise called "Right of Return".

So the young couple settled down in Baghdad and had three sons: Amin, Basim, and Karim. The three sons grew up, went to school, started working in different professions in Baghdad, and married women from among the Palestinian community in Iraq. All three of them had several children of their own.

Then came the war. George W. Bush, the leader of the ‘land of the free’ had solid evidence that Saddam Hussein, the leader of ‘the cradle of civilization’ possessed weapons of mass destruction which could be used against the ‘free’ people. So George W. waged war on Saddam to topple and kill him. Saddam Hussein, since the early days of his leadership, had held his protective hand over the Palestinian refugees in Iraq.

The war turned power structures in Iraq around; Saddam was captured and killed. The new rulers despised and hated the Palestinians in their country. Palestinians were arrested, tortured, killed. They received death threats; some disappeared; they were afraid for their lives.

Amin, Basim and Karim decided to take their families out of Iraq to safety. Amin and Basim, who had held good positions and earned a decent income for the past 25 years, sold their houses, bought fake Iraqi passports, and travelled via India to Southeast Asia. They were in two minds about which country they should actually go to. So in the end, Amin decided to go to Thailand, and Basim took his family to Malaysia. Basim argued that they would be better off in Malaysia, a Muslim majority country, rather than in Thailand, a Buddhist country. Amin, Basim and Karim were Sunni Muslims themselves.

Amin and Basim, in their respective country of refuge, ‘lost’ their fake passports and went to the local UNHCR (United Nation High Commissioner of Refugees) office to register as refugees, so they could be resettled in a country, that would accept them as citizens, where they and their children and children’s children could and would not be expelled anymore. Just about any country would do, as long as they were accepted there.

Karim, who did not have enough money to buy passports or air tickets to leave Iraq had waited too long, and in the end he just managed to take his wife and children and his old, ailing mother to the Iraqi border with Syria. Syria refused them entry, as there were already hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in Syria. So Karim and family were stranded in no-man’s-land between Iraq and Syria, in a tent city, in the middle of the desert, without water, electricity, or anything else that is necessary for survival.

So, that was the situation of the three brothers three years ago.

What has happened since then? How is their situation today?

The first to find a country of resettlement for the family was Amin in Thailand. He was lucky. After the registration process to become a recognized refugee, which took about six months, he and the family had to wait almost a full year, before they were resettled in Norway. The UNHCR office in Bangkok, Thailand, is the regional hub for Southeast Asia. Amin was very lucky indeed, as many countries who traditionally accept refugees only accept refugees who remain in their geographical area. Non-Asian refugees in Bangkok, e.g. refugees from the Middle East or Africa, were out of their geographical area, and were only accepted for resettlement by a very small number of countries.

The second brother to find a ‘third country’ was Karim. After staying in the tent camp in the middle of nowhere in the desert for a year, together with hundreds of other families, the deplorable, most miserable and inhumane situation they were in finally resulted in the UNHCR office in Beirut, in charge of resettlement of the Middle East region, issuing a special emergency call to countries imploring them to accept these most unfortunate people for resettlement. Some South-American countries accepted a few hundred, including Karim, Karim’s wife, his mother, and all of his children.

And what has happened to the third brother, Basim?

He is still in 1Malaysia-truly Asia, waiting to be resettled with his family.

His eldest child, a daughter, has given up on ever going back to university to complete her studies. She had studied three semesters in Baghdad, but the Malaysian universities she applied to continue did not accept her papers and told her that she would have to start from scratch. She had no money anyway to go to any university.

Basim’s second child, a teenage son, began working illegally in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Refugees and asylum seekers are not allowed to work in Malaysia and cannot get work permits. So the son had to work longer hours for lesser pay, as he was in no position to argue with his boss. About a year ago, he was detained and sent to a detention centre for illegal migrant workers; but because he was a recognized refugee with a UNHCR card, and because someone with connections intervened on his behalf, he was released after a few weeks.

The whole family was so shaken by this experience, that they were scared for a few months to even try to go out into the city to earn a living, and had to depend on food aid from an NGO and other alms, until the necessity of survival kicked in again.

But the biggest worry of Basim was his youngest child, a fragile, shy, beautiful girl, who had just turned 6 when the family had arrived in Malaysia. “She should be going to school!”, he repeated often to everybody who was there to listen to his worries. “She should be going to school!” This sentence would turn and turn in his mind when he could not sleep, because the humid heat was too stifling in the small room they all shared at night.

“She should be going to school!”, he thought again, “what will ever become of her without an education?” He suffered remorse worse than torture. It was his fault that they were stranded here, that their lives were suspended for almost three years now!he thought. If only he would have listened to his brother Amin and go to Thailand; if only he would have listened to his brother Karim and waited with leaving Iraq; if only; if only; if only.

Tomorrow he would go out again, looking for a job, any job; begging from Arab businessmen or tourists some contributions to pay for his daughter’s school; going again to the nearby mosque to ask for money. Last week they had given him RM 50.00. He had felt insulted, but the cheapest school for his daughter was RM 2000.00 per year, payable in advance. He needed any money he could get. He needed to forget his pride. He had no pride left.

How will this story end? Will this true fairy tale have a happy end?

Yesterday, Basim was informed that the ‘land of the free’ has shown an interest to accept him and all his family members. He was told to expect a phone call from the embassy soon to make an appointment for an interview.

Basim has now hope beyond hope. If they accept him and his family, he, his children and his children’s children will finally be free in "the land of the free"!

Yes, most probably this fairy tale will have a Happy End.

THE END

T*

When you come around the corner of the long corridor and enter ward 4C at the Selayang Hospital, you can hear some of the patients moaning. In that ward you can find men who are in great pain, some dying. It is a ward where “pain management” is the cornerstone of medical treatment.

So when I went there to visit one of “our” patients, I could hear the long drawn-out moaning long before I could see that T* had the curtains pulled all around his bed. The nurse asked me if I wanted to talk to T* and then pulled the curtain away from the bed to announce me, a visitor.

Apart from MSRI’s interpreter/translator Mohammad, T* had no visitors during his whole stay at Selayang Hospital. He has no family here, only very few friends, he is a Palestinian refugee who suffers from Buerger’s Disease.

We had come to know about him in the course of a survey that MSRI is doing among the refugee community in Kuala Lumpur. One afternoon in July, I got a phone call from our researcher, who told me with agitation in his voice that he has just met one of the people he was supposed to interview and found that that man, T*, had gangrenous feet and fingers.



I immediately phoned one of the doctors who extend medical care to people referred by MSRI to them. He suggested to bring the patient to a private hospital. We did that, and T* was seen by three specialists there. He was then referred to Putrajaya Hospital. From there he was referred to Selaying Hospital, to Dr. Mary Cardoza, a pain specialist.

Buerger’s disease is a relatively rare disease which is very little known. It is thought to be an auto immune disease which is triggered by a substance in tobacco. The initial symptoms are pain induced by insufficient blood flow in feet and hands, which may radiate into other parts of the body; numbness and tingling in fingers, toes, hands and feet; extremities turning white when cold; skin ulceration and gangrene of the fingers and toes. Pain may be very intense in the affected limbs.



There is no known cure for the disease, only some treatment for the symptoms. As the illness has a ‘tobacco connection’ any further primary or secondary contact with tobacco has to be prevented as this would aggravate the situation. Ultimately, if the progress of the disease cannot be stopped, the affected limbs have to be amputated.

T* is a young man who just has turned 30 this year. His family is originally from Gaza, but he grew up in Jordan. He is a Palestinian refugee.

The last time he was discharged from the hospital, on the way back to his squalid little room, he told me: “You know, before I had many dreams for my life. Now I have only one: to be able to walk again!”

What lies ahead for T*? How will his future be? Does he have a future?

He left Jordan, the place he was born and grew up in, because as Palestinian with a temporary passport T* did not qualify for medical treatment. He came to Malaysia because it was the only country for which he did not need a visa. But his ultimate aim is to be resettled by UNHCR to a third country, if possible, to Germany because there is a doctor in Germany who has assured T* that he could cure him of his disease. And that is T*’s one remaining dream. Can it be fulfilled?

On 8 December of this year, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East will be 60 years old. This agency was set up as a response to the suffering of the Palestinian people displaced and disempowered after the partition of Palestine - in UNRWA’s own words: “UNRWA is unique in terms of its long-standing commitment to one group of refugees and its contributions to the welfare and human development of four generations of Palestine refugees. Originally envisaged as a temporary organization, the Agency has gradually adjusted its programmes to meet the changing needs of the refugees. Today, UNRWA is the main provider of basic services - education, health, relief and social services - to over 4.6 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East.” (from: http://www.un.org/unrwa/overview/index.html).

Where there is no UNRWA office – like e.g. in Malaysia – the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is responsible for Palestinian refugees. And for a better understanding of the situation of Palestinian refugees it must be said here that UNRWA does all of the above mentioned, but does not have a resettlement programme. Through UNRWAs work, the misery of Palestinian refugees in the Near East is – in a way - perpetuated indefinitely, as the money invested for education, health, relief and social services is just enough to maintain the status quo, not enough to change their situation.

It is only the UNHCR that will help Palestinian and other refugees to find a new home in a third country, where – usually after a number of years – they will become full citizens, a dream for any refugee. However, will resettled refugees forget about their ultimate dream to return to their place of origin? I don’t think so.

So how does T*’s dreams for the future look like realistically? First, to be resettled and become a healthy, painfree, able-bodied man again. This might yet happen. Even though he still lives in utter squalor and poverty, and in constant pain, with only a minimum of financial and medical support, he might get resettled in a developed country that not only provides him with a home and citizenship, but also sophisticated medical treatment which can completely cure his illness. With the fulfilment of this dream, the life of T* would again be whole. With his newfound health and a passport from his new home country he might even be able to travel to his place of origin, Gaza. What are the chances that by then Gaza will be a free and independent country, part of a nation called Palestine? Very slim indeed.

But I have been proven wrong before. So don’t lose hope, for Hope is Born of Lack of Hope (Sufi proverb).

1st of August 2009

The 1st of August 2009 has been a special day in so many different ways for me.

The First of August each year is the Swiss National Day, and as you know, Switzerland is my place of origin. On that day in 1291 – yes 1291 – 718 years ago, the ordinary Swiss people of Uri , Schwyz and Unterwalden (three Cantons in today’s Central Switzerland), farmers, traders, craftsmen, afraid to become subjects again of the House of Habsburg after Rudolf of Habsburg, the first German emperor had died, swore an oath to help each other against anyone attempting to subjugate them.

The legend goes that on that day in 1291 they ousted all overlords, chased them from their castles, their land, and as a sign that they had freed themselves they lit fires on mountain tops to signal to the others that they had succeeded. So Swiss people for a little more than a hundred years have been celebrating this day in Switzerland with huge bonfires on each hill, mountain top, in village places and other places where people usually congregate, and nowadays also sometimes with splendid fireworks, particularly in the cities, to reaffirm their freedom from all overlords.


http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/21083210.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21083210&usg=__RybuR8xD4OfHN12LEEoACxP0T80=&h=950&w=1388&sz=1076&hl=en&start=12&sig2=S_4PJyDvALOIXvOHCSnunQ&um=1&tbnid=psghuYTLS1xJ9M:&tbnh=103&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3D1.%2BAugust%2BFeier%2Bpictures%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-my:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7SKPB_en%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1&ei=lwevSqGmN5TW7AP5kKDqDA

That much for Switzerland.

In Malaysia, on the 1st of August 2009, other significant things have been happening. As many as 20,000 people have been demonstrating against an oppressive law, the Internal Security Act (ISA), a law that allows for incarceration of anyone without trial. The Government tried to suppress the demonstration by setting up roadblocks on roads leading into Kuala Lumpur and arresting people who had t-shirts etc. with slogans against the ISA even before any demonstration had begun. A group of NGOs also had announced their counter-demonstration, in support of the ISA. The Abolish-ISA demonstration was brutally squashed by the police with teargas and water cannons; but the demonstrators had made their point!



On the same day, in the Songket room at Damansara Specialist Hospital, another event took place. MSRI had organized on that day (without having known of the demonstration when organizing the event) a forum with four medical students from Universiti Islam Antarabangsa, who had done their elective posting at Haifa Hospital, in Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp in the south of Beirut, Lebanon, in May and June. They had chosen to go there in response to the attack on Gaza in early 2009. MSRI had supported their stay in Lebanon financially as a part of MSRI’s programme of medical aid and other support for Palestinian refugees. The forum was to inform interested Malaysians on the situation of health care in the refugee camps in Lebanon and the kind of life Palestinians have in those camps.



The event was not well attended. Just a dozen or so people turned up. Did potential participants join the demonstration instead, or were they just too scared to come out of their houses? We will never know.



In the Welcome Speech, I quoted from a book, published by MSRI titled: “I painted the snow black, because we are afraid of the days”, which contains many stories of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. In the preface, written by the late Dato’ Dr. Alijah Gordon, MSRI’s founder and chairman, all medical volunteers who went to serve in the camps from 1987-95 in Lebanon were mentioned. I wanted to show at the forum that MSRI has a long history of sending medical volunteers to the refugee camps in Lebanon, was in fact the first Malaysian NGO to do so.

So, let me quote here the same passage I had chosen for the Forum:

“On Hari Raya, I [Dr. Alijah Gordon] sat in the home of a Malay journalist with Bernama. But I could not share the day. The more I saw Malaysians cheerfully eating and laughing, oblivious to what was happening in the camps (in Lebanon), the more soul-sick I became. I told my host I had to leave, which disturbed him and he insisted on knowing why. When I shared with him my revulsion, he asked what I wanted to do about it, and I said I had the feeling to go to the press and beg support from the Malaysian people for the besieged Palestinians in the camps. Zulkafly Baharuddin’s response was that on the next day he would organize a Press Conference so that I could do precisely that. From the time of the television coverage our phones never stopped ringing. … Malaysians poured in empathy and financial support to send medical volunteers and medicines to the camps. …

By July [1987] we were able to put our first team on the plane: four Malaysians: Staff Nurse Dolly Fong, Hospital Assistant Tengku Mustapha Tengku Mansur, Nurse Hajah Rosnah Nayan, and Staff Nurse Mathina Bee Ghulam Mydin. At the time journalists were not allowed into the camps, so we sent Zulkafly Baharuddin in as an ‘ambulance driver’ that he might feed back information to the Malaysian people. The second team, dubbed the “Magnificent Seven” left for Beirut on 30 August, included Staff Nurse Pok Looi, Acupuncturist Hor Fah Thye, Budik Busu, an ex-army Medical Assistant, Staff Nurse Hamidah Ghazalli, Dentist Dr. Mohd Yusuop Ali, Hospital Assistant Dr. R. Naidu and ex-army Medical Assistant Ahmad Bakri.
When all foreign aid workers were ordered out of Lebanon, Dolly Fong and Pok Looi opted to remain in Burj al-Barajneh, as did Hamidah Ghazalli in Rashidiyeh, the most southern camp. [They did not leave their medical posts even when coming under heavy military attack.] Staff nurse Pok Looi remains to this day working in a camp clinic. She is married to a Palestinian and has a Palestinian son, Jihad.

19 Malaysian volunteers served over the coming 8 years [in the refugee camps in Lebanon]. Eventually we opened our own free Dental Medical Clinic in Bar Elias. No one in need was turned away, be they Palestinian, Lebanese, Roma, or even a Syrian soldier. The volunteers were Buddhist Chinese, Muslim Malay, Hindu Indian, and later a Christian Chinese. When I went to visit the volunteers I found them with their arms wrapped around one another, closer than any family. There was no divisive race or religion, only humanitarian unity.”

What comes to mind when reading the above excerpt is that ultimately it does not matter what colour of skin or religion or political affiliation we have; ultimately, what counts is how we treat our fellow human beings who are suffering, the unfortunate and poor, the downtrodden, and the suppressed. A good way to begin is by honoring the tenets of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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.