Palm Sunday - 1948
(Extract
from Quicksand Oil and Dreams)
By Michael S. Ladah
My father…explained how he had been opposed to
leaving all along and thought that little harm would come to his family, but that today's
explosion changed his mind, especially when he thought of the children. My father told
everyone that if they decided to leave Jafa, he would agree to leave also, but that either
the whole family would leave or the whole family would stay. After many arguments, a
decision was made that everyone would leave within two days, to give my father a little
time to recover from his injuries. During the same meeting it was decided that all the
families present, ten families in all, would leave on my grandfather's truck to a small
Christian village called al Taibeh outside Ramallah in the Palestinian highlands. It was
therefore necessary, my grandfather emphasized, that no bulky belongings were to be
carried on the truck to ensure enough space for all the people. We would take enough water
and blankets and bring money and jewelry. The decision was made on Friday evening, and the
exodus was to be on Sunday, Palm Sunday 1948.
Palm Sunday in Jafa, like everywhere else, is
normally a very festive day. It commemorates the journey of Christ from the Mount of Olives to the city of Jerusalem, where the Messiah came riding a donkey with the
public cheering him waving palm and olive branches. In Jafa, as in most Palestinian cities
and villages with churches, the procession of Christ entering Jerusalem is re-enacted with parishioners carrying olive and
palm branches and circling the church, celebrating the coming of Christ to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. The night before we left,
the adults stayed up late talking about leaving and deciding what little they could do
before the journey. They talked about how to secure the houses and the belongings they
were leaving behind. That Palm Sunday in Jafa must have been the saddest Sunday my family
had ever known.
In the morning no one went to church. My uncle,
Michael, had prepared the truck; he wrapped a tarp around the sides and across the top, as
they do with army trucks, to protect the occupants from the weather. He also spread
blankets along the floor of the truck and placed pillows for people to sit on. He left in
the mid-morning to collect the families, starting from the farthest and working his way
back to our house. By the time he arrived back, it was the middle of the afternoon. We
were the last family to climb on board. As we left the house to get on the truck, my
grandfather and my older uncle bolted the front door of the house and nailed the doors to
the frame, just as they had done earlier in the day with the back doors. As my mother got
into the cab of the truck, she gave a loud scream because she did not know where she left
my baby brother whom she had been carrying in her arms earlier. She found him with one of
my uncles, took him in her arms and started to cry. When everyone was on the truck, we sat
there for one minute of silence as my grandfather said a prayer and asked the Lord to
bless our journey and make it safe. My uncle, Michael, was getting more restless with
every minute of delay, because he wanted to clear all the checkpoints along the way before
sundown. We were stopped many times at makeshift checkpoints along the way, mainly by
Jewish armed men belonging to one or another of the factions. Every time we stopped at a
checkpoint, my grandfather would stand at the end of the truck and open his arms, as if to
protect the others behind him in case there was shooting. We were all afraid that someone
might start shooting at one of the checkpoints, but, thank God, the trip went smoothly.
By the time we made it to al Taibeh, it was
starting to get dark. The challenge for the adults was to find places for everyone to
spend the night. As the adults managed to find one or two rooms for the ten families, we
unloaded our blankets and pillows and prepared makeshift beds. Every family claimed a
spot. Children snuggled next to their parents and, for a moment, there was complete
silence. There were two questions on everyone's mind. What has become of us? And when are
we going back? The children could not ask quietly. I could hear them crying, “Mom, I
want to go home.” or “Mom, it's time to go back.” Little did they know that
this was to be their home hereafter, for they had become Palestinian refugees.
Most Palestinians who left after us were even less
fortunate. Many would have no choice but to make the journey after the Zionist militia
made examples of those who wouldn’t leave. Even the women and children would be
forced to walk to areas of Palestine beyond the control of the Zionists. The Zionists
were now claiming the confiscated areas as their ‘national homeland’, including
the towns and villages where countless generations of Palestinians had lived for hundreds,
even thousands, of years. The Jewish national homeland would be founded on lands that the
Palestinians had been working for centuries. The fleeing refugees were allowed to take
only what they could carry and most of them left with their hands full: they carried their
most valued possessions, their young children who could not walk the tens of miles across
muddy fields and steep, rocky hills. Many of the expelled families arrived without their
children and without the aged, many of whom could not survive the ordeal.
Courtesy of and ©2001 by Michael S. Ladah.
The writer is an Arab American who was born in Jaffa, Palestine. He lived and worked
in various parts of the Middle East. He is the
author of “Quicksand, Oil and Dreams: The story of one of five million dispossessed
Palestinians.” This article is an extract from the author's book Quicksand Oil and Dreams.
VIEW A LIST OF OTHER ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR
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