Lubya a palestinian demolished Village in Galilee Memory-History-Culture-Identity Mahmoud Issa Preface
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Yusra: Life here is OK, but sometimes I find it difficult to adapt to the Danish way of life. Our customs and traditions are different and this makes any close relationship with them difficult.Luma: I find it is difficult to express myself clearly here. Yusra: There are a lot of good Danes, but there are also a few who don't respect Muslims. When we travel together a lot of problems arise from that. They think that we are not civilized. I have now been in a Danish school for two years, and I am still in the 10th grade. If I was in Lebanon, I would have been in the last year of high school. Luma: I am in the same class as Yusra. I find that the Danish teachers treat us the same as the Danish students. There is no discrimination in the classroom. Yusra: When we talk about war or Islam, we find ourselves on totally different grounds. A student asked me once to give him proof that the Qur'an is the book of God, and I couldn’t do that. Life is different here than in Lebanon. I would like to return there one day. Over there, one does not need to find answers to such questions. Luma: In my opinion, the Danes have to respect our customs and traditions, and we must respect theirs. This way, we can reduce the problems that exist between us. They received us in their country and we have to be grateful and respectful for that. Yusra: The Danes do treat us well. As Palestinian refugees, we are treated better here than we are by Arab governments. Akram: There is a lot of difference between here and Lebanon. For one, there was war there, while there is peace here, but our society is different from theirs. When we speak about Islam they laugh. We have a girl in our class who wears a head scarf and the students gossip about her and make fun of her. When I meet a Dane and a Muslim, I find that I am closer to the Muslim. Yusra: I don’t mix a lot with [Danes], and I refuse when they invite me to go out with them at night so they call me ‘abnormal’. They once told me that I needed to see a psychologist because I behaved this way. In Lebanon I would never hear such words. Luma: I have a few Danish friends, but our relationship is limited. I believe our friends must realise that no one emigrates from his homeland without good reason. Akram: Ninety percent of my friends are Danes, the rest are Turks and Arabs. I once went with them to Copenhagen, but it was clear that the way we behave is different. As a Muslim, I chose not to follow their lifestyle, but when I tell them that I don’t like to have a girlfriend and I don’t eat pork, they call me a ‘strange one’. In Lebanon I had more friends than here, which made me feel more comfortable. Yusra: I feel I am different, and sometimes when the others irritate me, I wish I could go back to Lebanon. Sometimes children tell me ‘go back to your land’, and I am sure that they learn that from their parents. Other times they do not say what they really mean. My teacher said to me once, ‘When you finish your studies, the Danes will prefer to employ a Dane rather than you.’ It seems to me that here the name Bettina is preferable to the name Yusra. Fifteen months later, Akram: I changed a lot of my ideas about the Danes. A year ago, my friends were Danes but I was not very happy, for their customs are very different from ours. Now all my friends are foreigners, from Pakistan, Morocco, Iraq and Palestine, and my relationship with the Danes is limited to greetings. In the classroom we are 4 foreigners and 14 Danes. The teachers sometimes ask us why we don’t talk to each other in the class. We cannot come to terms with the Danes on many levels. For example, if I ask a Dane about his relationship with his father, he would tell me ‘It is none of your business.’ Also, if a Dane had a problem, he would prefer to keep it secret. We, on the other hand, are used to talking about our problems without any barriers. The Danes are accustomed to drinking, and unlike us, they cannot bear not to drink. Also we foreigners have more vitality in our relationship with each other, and we are not racist. As a Muslim, I fast during Ramadan so as to feel with the poor in the world. This is a not only a religious duty but also a humane gesture towards others. Luma: In my class all the students are Danes except for me, but as long as I speak and read as well as they do, I have no problem. Therefore I feel that in the classroom, there isn’t really any difference between us. Sometimes they ask me about Islam, the veil and other subjects, but there are no social relations between us. I also think that my teacher is happy with my work, and I think that my teachers at the school are good and I am quite satisfied with that and with my fellow students. Most of my friends, however, are Arabs, and one is a Pakistani. Yusra: A few months ago, I applied for Danish citizenship and the police started to interrogate me as if I was a criminal. One of them asked me, ‘From where do you foreigners get all your money? If you became Danish you have to vote against the foreigners who take the money without doing the work.’ I didn’t say anything to him, for I did not dare to discuss the subject with him. Then when he knew that my father was unemployed he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning that your father is unemployed and lives on social security benefits?’ Again, I did not dare respond out of fear that he would stop processing my application. In the classroom we have nothing in common with the Danes, and the two groups are separate. Our school principal always sides with the Danish students and never hears what I, for one, have to say. He called me over to his office once and dismissed me from the class for two days because I didn’t go down to the restaurant. We are five foreigners in a class of 23 students and the teachers give the high marks to the Danes. The French language teacher told me once, ‘You should never expect to get more than 5 out of 10 on your exam.’ The principal once dismissed a student from Afghanistan only because he protested against the grade he got. We also always disagree in class whenever we discuss certain issues. I think that the teachers, and especially the principal, in this school are racist and I am seriously thinking of moving to another school. I fast the entire month of Ramadan because it is one of the principal pillars of Islam, and I am happy because this way I also maintain my traditions. Akram: Every time one of the foreigners makes a mistake and the teacher intervenes, we accuse him or her of racism. I think we should take from the Danes the positive aspects of their culture. For example, they have a better system and methods of information than we do. I once interviewed a police officer about violence among the refugees and he told me: ‘On the one hand, the parents are responsible, on the other, it is the system that does not give them the opportunity to find work. The society from which the refugees come is a troubled society.’ Yusra: I think that the aggressive behaviour of some refugees is a normal response to a society that does not respect them. Young people study many years only to end up unemployed. The age between 15 and 20 is a dangerous age, and the young think that they are always right. I don’t believe that the Danes are better than us. Danish society is disintegrating. Their children start smoking, drinking and even sometimes taking drugs before they are 15. Akram: I think that the best period of my life was here in Denmark. Why do you talk about the police here? Is the police where you come from better than it is here? Yusra: Didn’t you hear about how the police attacked a man two years ago and he is still in a coma? Why do you think they publish all the negative details in the newspapers and announce them on television when foreigners are concerned? Akram: This is not your country. Yusra: The law must be applied to all the people without discrimination. Luma: I believe that the Danish education system supports the student and helps him build a strong character. This is better that giving us high marks when we don’t deserve them. Despite the difficulties facing Lubyans in exile, and the absence of permanent solutions to their expulsion and dispossession, many are taking steps to integrate within the communities in which they live in exile, and, at the same time, remain part of a nation that still seeks to take its equal place within the community of nations. Social network communities are flourishing in Denmark, Berlin, Norway, Britain and Sweden while at the same time more and more right of return committees are also being established. Saleh tried to put his hands on the challenges that face Lubyans in Denmark and what are the urgent steps that should be taken by the refugees. “First we have to discuss the problem among ourselves before we discuss it with the Danes. For example, we should organise in unions and other types of social organisations and find a common means of communication. Second, all of us refugees should learn the Danish language in order to improve our chances of finding work. Third, we should continue to hold meetings with the Danes to keep them informed about our situation and our problems, and to support those among them who have sympathy for us. We have to take the initiative and not wait passively for others to act on our behalf. We have to learn from the experience of those who came to Denmark before us.” Chapter Ten The Future I would allow all the winds to blow in my house, but I would never allow the winds to uproot me from my roots. Mahatma Ghandi Despite more than five decades in exile, refugees from Lubya, whether young or old still express a profound attachment to their village. “Lubya can give us back our dignity. My mother and grandmother told me about the village and that intensified my passion and love for it,” said Khalil. “To me Lubya is the symbol of our nationhood and our identity. Even if we took this country’s citizenship, we cannot forget our connection to Lubya and to Palestine.” Lubyans I interviewed varied in identifying and formulating their own wishes and thoughts about the future. At the same time, one line transversed the entire landscape of the interviews: the emptiness left in their daily life because of the loss of the homeland. Whether rich or poor, whether Danish, German, or stateless refugees, the desire and wish to return, still prevails among Lubyans in exile. All rejected the idea of compensation as a substitute for return. Approaching his seventies, his hair gray, Ibrahim Shihabi, is full of energy. “When I started my work in Feek in the Golan, in 1959,” he told me, “I used to sit and look at Lubya, which was visible from this high area. This is when I was inspired to start writing my novel ‘Ala al-Darb (On the Road).” He told me that his only goal in life is “to live until I can see Lubya again and walk among its stones, valleys and trees before I die.” Those refugees who are able, because they have acquired citizenship of countries in Europe and North America, now visit the ruins of the village. At the same time, Israelis are still a long way from hearing the Palestinian narrative. When I raised the idea of refugees returning to Lubya, many told me I was not realistic. Some even said that such ideas would only destroy the life of the Palestinian people. Only a few have the courage to face the facts and consequences of the refugees fate. At the same time, the interviews with Israeli Jews also suggested that more reasonable debates on this fundamental issue are possible. Lubyans expressed mixed feelings about the peace process between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that began in Madrid in 1991 and continued in Oslo in 1993. Some felt that the process should be given a chance, Many, however, expressed doubts that the process would enable them to return to Lubya and recover their homes and properties. Belonging to Lubya Modern Palestinian identity has become a mosaic, a multiple foci of identities. Elements of this identity include overlapping familial, tribal, village, religioius, national, Arab, and regional loyalties. Whether one believes that identity is a “natural, God given way of classifying men” to use Gellner’s words, or an invented concept that coincides with the creation of the modern state as Hobsbawm and Ranger argue, Palestinian identity and the ongoing identification of refugees with their villages of origin, is far more rooted among the fellaheen than what scholars and other commentators have suggested.194 The relationship of the fellaheen with their land and their community, and the readiness to defend it, has proven to be as strong today, as it was under the banner of the modern revolution, and during earlier periods before the Nakba. After more than fifty years of exile, Palestinian refugees from Lubya still identify themselves as Lubyans. To the elderly, this belonging is both physical - e.g., land, house, fields, graveyards, etc., - and spiritual - e.g., honour, tradition, culture, etc.. To the young, the physical and spiritual aspects of belonging are fully integrated components of their identity as Lubyans. During the many hours that I spent interviewing Lubyans, young and old, from Dayr Hanna to Ramallah, in the camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and in the communities in Copenhagen and Berlin, they frequently used words such as honour, dignity, roots and origin to describe their attachment to Lubya. Many of those who were not born in the village and who had never visited Lubya attributed this sense of belonging and identification to the stories told to them by their parents. All spoke about the importance of memory and the passing on of stories about the village to their own children and grandchildren. “Lubya means my roots,” said Khalil. “We have suffered a lot because we lost our village. Our honour is at the core of our existence. Lubya can give us back our dignity. My mother and grandmother told me about the village and that intensified my passion and love for it. To me Lubya is the symbol of our nationhood and our identity. Even if we took this country’s citizenship, we cannot forget our connection to Lubya and to Palestine.” Jalal spoke about Lubya with nearly the sentiments. “For me Lubya is my nation,” he said. “I am totally influenced by what my parents have told me about Lubya.” “Personally, I don't know Lubya,” admitted Qassem. “I have never been there, but according to what I heard from my parents it was paradise on earth. I love Lubya because of my parents’ love for it. Over there they had everything they needed to live a good life.” Jawad used the words “honour, origin and dignity” to describe his attachment to the village. “I don’t know how life was in Lubya, but I recount its history to my children as if it’s a film, with all the details I learned from my parents,” said Adnan.. Adnan, who born in 1941 and his wife Najah, who was born in 1954 had similar views. “I was only six years old when we left Lubya. Nevertheless, it means everything to me and always did. It was our fathers’ and grandfathers’ land.” Like Adnan, Ahmad Hassan Ibrahim also stated that for him, Lubya “means everything” even though he never knew the village. “We want the land back.” said Ahmad. “The Russian and German immigrants have no right to it. Our grandfathers were born there. My father owned 150 dunums. They demolished the houses, but they could not demolish the land. My German citizenship facilitates my movement, nothing more.” When you ask Palestinian refugees where they are from, most will name their village of origin, and not the refugee camp, town or city where they are currently living. “When someone asks me where am I from, I answer from Dayr Hanna, but originally from Lubya. I don’t like to use the word ‘refugee’ in Dayr Hanna because we have excellent relations with the people in the village,” said Ahmad. “When people ask me, ‘Where do you come from?’ I always say ‘from Palestine’,” said Ahmad. “I taught my sons to do the same.” This sense of belonging to Lubya and Palestine, however, also runs parallel to a sense of estrangement that has grown out of a life of forced exile far away from a place that they still identify as home. “The longer one lives in Arab or European countries,” related Jawad, “the more one comes to see himself as a refugee. One starts to accumulate hate and anger towards the world as a result of psychological oppression, which is more potent than physical oppression.” “I have to add a question mark concerning my feelings towards Lubya,” said Saleh after seeing pictures of the village. “I feel uneasy concerning the issue. When I saw the documentary film about Lubya on Danish television, I was divided between two feelings: happiness and shock. Our homeland indeed exists, and yet we are obliged to live as refugees. It is tantamount to physical as well as spiritual oppression.” Some Lubyans also expressed anxiety about the loss of identity after such a long period in exile. Mahir Hamada has been the mayor of Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria since 1987. Lubya street (Shari’ Lubya) is in the middle of the camp, and is one of the camp’s wealthiest streets. “Until recently, people were still holding on to the traditions and customs of their grandfathers, but they are now facing a problem with regard to the education of the new generation. We should look for alternative methods to strengthen the new generation’s identity.” “The Zionists believe that the new generation will forget and the question of Palestine will be resolved with time. I am now preparing a program on the computer that will enable me to record the history of every village in Palestine and of its people. In the beginning, the streets of the camp had no name and there were only two main ones, Yarmouk and Falastin, but in 1987 we started naming the streets after villages and towns in Palestine. We should keep the new generation in touch with the history of their parents and grandparents in order to strengthen their right of return, which will happen no matter how long it takes.” For those living in exile in Europe, the challenges are different. They are living in a place that is both culturally and socially distinct from the camps spread across the Middle East, let alone Lubya itself. For many of the young generation, who grew up hearing stories about the village from their parents and grandparents, it was a shock to learn that Palestine does not exist in the geography and history books at school. This has compelled many of them to be more insistent in their attachment to the history, as told to them by their parents at home or their teachers in the refugee camps. “I am a Palestinian from Lubya,” said Yusra. “It is necessary to have a place you call your own. It shows your origin. When others speak about their homeland, I also feel like speaking about mine, especially about Lubya, but I was born a refugee and live as a refugee. It is true that I don't remember Lubya like I do Lebanon, even if my parents told me so much about it. All the same, I would like to know Lubya one day, but for me Lebanon is my other homeland after Palestine. When the teacher spoke about Palestine he called it Israel. It irritated me that he said Israel instead of Palestine.” Akram, Yusra's younger brother, is interested in biology and natural science. He had a slightly different sense of belonging to the village. “Lubya does not mean anything special to me,” he said. “It is just another Palestinian village, but it is better for one to return to his own homeland, and we, ourselves should also do that. When the others speak of returning home, I feel bad because I have no homeland of my own. The history they teach us is as if Palestine had always been Jewish.” Return Visits Today, Lubyans who never saw their village now return to visit. This is possible, as it was for me, only because they are naturalized Danes, Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Germans, etc. While I was conducting my research in Israel in 1995 I met with three Lubyans. None were born in the village. All three held different passports – German, Swedish and Danish. Yet, it was amazing to see these Palestinians from three far away countries returning to search for the debris of their parent’s homes and strengthen relations with remaining relatives. In less than two hours, more than fifty people from Lubya, many of whom were living as internally displaced citizens of Israel in nearby towns and villages, had gathered at the village site. Some of the men who were standing at the center of the ruins of the village started the traditional Palestinian dance known as the dabka. The old, women, and the young all joined in. It was a sign of both optimism and defiance against those who have denied them the right to return to and restore the relationship with the land that nourished their ancestor’s for generations. Yousef Issa spent the first thirty years of life in the village before escaping the ravages of the 1948 war with his young family. He was able to return to visit his village only after having obtained an Israeli tourist visa valid for one month. To obtain another, he would have to leave Israel and apply again. Visiting his birthplace for the first time in 46 years Yousef said that he would “never exchange the chance to pitch a tent on the ruins of my house here with all the palaces of the Queen of Denmark. If there is one wish I would want fulfilled, it would be to die here right now, where I am standing, rather than to leave this place again.” During his second visit in 1995, Yousef picked leaves from the trees and ate them, wrote his name on the tree trunk, and spoke about the personalities and places of his beloved and well-remembered village. He knew the owners and names of all the fields, the wells, the demolished houses, the mosque, the lake, the school, and the exact place where his house stood, recognizing even its cornerstone that is still there. “Nothing can replace one’s home. There one is a king. Abroad one is a refugee. I will teach my sons and daughters about their history and property. If it is difficult for us now to obtain our rights, the next generation will continue to shoulder the responsibility.” Khalid Sa'id visited Lubya for the first time in 1990. He was my teacher when I was child attending one of the UNRWA schools in the camp in Lebanon. Khalid later left to Kuwait where he taught for twenty-five years before his retirement. I met him again after all these long years of exile. His description of his approach to Lubya, his first arrival by boat at the port in Haifa, his first impressions of rediscovering the remains of his childhood play area unfolded like a dream. Standing amid the ruins of his family’s house, only his father’s comments, and his mother’s weeping diverted his attention. “You may ask how I found my family’s home when I arrived in Lubya on the morning of the 5 August 1990. I left Lubya when I was eight years old. I asked my companions to take me to Bir Joudi (Joudi’s well) and the flat big rock beside the well where I used to play marbles with my childhood friends. I asked them to leave me alone to discover my grandfather’s house, which I found easily. If you ask me how I could remember, I would say that there was something in me through all my life that persisted and insisted that I’ll come back one day. It was a great dream. It became a reality.” Sa’diyya Ali, Yousef Issa's wife, refused to be photographed during her first trip to Lubya. She did not want to reveal her inner thoughts and emotions to the others, especially amid the ruins of Lubya and her childhood. During most of the visit Sa’diyya wept. Sometimes she attacked us for convincing her to come back to see Lubya. “Why did you bring me here, to torture me by seeing the ruins of my house? To hell with all the Arab leaders who didn’t move a finger to help us.” Only after she had seen the documentary about Lubya on television Sa’diyya expressed her wish to be interviewed. The sisters Um Ali and Um Majid195, who both reside in Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, visited Lubya for the first time in 1994. Um Ali proceeded to recount step by step her emotions at the first encounter she had with her native land after forty-six years of absence. At first view she lost consciousness, and her sister who was with her was not able to help her. (The photograph shows the house of Um Ali, Saada Ali Shihabi, and Husayn Ali Yasin Shihabi in Lubya, two rooms with blue windows). For some, however, the pain of visiting the village and yet not being able to return permenantly is still very painful. Abu Khalid, who visited Lubya in 1989 with his son Khalid, mentioned how once he saw woman from the village, Zinat Tawfeek (Um Abdel-Halim), holding a kharroubi tree and weeping as if it was her own daughter. When I asked Um Hassan, who was living in Dayr Hanna, if she visited Lubya frequently like the rest of her family she said, “Only once. When I saw how Lubya became, I wept, and I said that I will never visit Lubya again.” When asked about her feelings when she saw Lubya again after the long years of exile Zahra Ibrahim Khalil, Abu Tal’at’s wife, told me that she “visited Lubya in 1970 and again in 1989. On each visit I wept until I lost touch with my surroundings. Our cousin Abed had called us from Dayr Hanna to inform us that his father was terminally ill with cancer and he wanted to see us. So we made the trip over, and immediately upon our arrival, our uncle drove us to Lubya, although we eventually stayed in Dayr Hanna for twenty days. I was not able to recognise the main outline of village. I looked at the oven, sat beside Joudi’s terrace, and went to see the Azzam’s kharroubi tree.” “It seemed to me that this tree, which was once very big, had been cut by someone but had come to life again. The place where they piled the rubbish (mazbala) was totally different, but the wells of my uncle Khalil, Issa, Raja, Husayn al-Ali, and the Bakrawi family, were still there. Before that, we saw the wells of the Ammouris, and the Hamadis, as well as that of Husayn Issa in the narrow lane. Then we walked up to the graveyard, Karem Issa, in which were buried malahmi (immediate relatives), my father, and my uncles Dyab and Khalil, before going up to al-Kaf where my uncle owned the biggest olive tree in the village. People disappear, but the land remains.” It took Abu Sameeh twenty-six years to summon the courage to visit Lubya for the first time even though the village is only a 15-minute drive from Dayr Hanna where he now lives. Now that he is retired he has more time to wander through the fields and ruins of Lubya. “I didn’t go back to the village since 1948,” he said. “I was afraid, but once there, I went directly to the fields. The next time I visited, I was also afraid, but in 1990 I bought a tractor and every week visited the fields of Lubya, Sarjouni, which is now called Zir’eem, of al-Hima plain and other places.” Abu Sameeh swears that no one in the world visited his deserted village more often than he has, almost 400 times, if not more. Return The majority of Lubyans I spoke with also indicated their desire to return to their village. When I asked Abu Hassan if he like to return to Lubya some day the answer was swift: “One hundred percent. If you could help us we will walk behind you.” Abu Muhammad Kilani replied with similar conviction: “Allaho akbar (God is Great).” Many of the elderly generation, like Abu Muhammad told me they would by happy living in a tent or a cave if only they could return. “We may build palaces in al-Makr, but if we ever have the chance to return, I would be content to live in a cave. It would be better than the palaces in al-Makr. I was born here.” “Of course I would like to return. Today would be better than tomorrow,” said Subhiyya Muhsin Gouda. “A tent there is better than the house we are living in now.” When asked if he would go back to Lubya if that became possible, Abu Majid told me that as a Lubyan he “would like to return to Lubya, but not alone. I would not like to visit Lubya as a tourist, definitely not, though I want to show my children everything there. I totally refuse to be compensated for my land. Even if it takes another one hundred years, we will never accept any solution other than to return to our homes. I am a Palestinian, and my children are Palestinians. This is our identity.” |