Stolen Lives

January 11, 2007

by Housewife4Palestine

I write the following with thoughts, memories and a sad heart:

It is strange the things that pop up in life, my friend who I had not seen for over thirty years happened to find me as I had looked for her just as long.

She reminded me of many things about my mother that after a person has passed away and time goes on you tend to put in the back of your mind for safe keeping.

The main thing most people seem to remember about my mother was her extreme kindness and how she cared so much for others.

Nevertheless, this particular friend remembered something that has always been the most heartbreaking thing in my family, that fact that we wanted to go home. Even when my mother was running out of time on the bed she would pass away in, she told me that more then anything she just wished for me to go home.

While my mother sometimes had troubles talking in ways people could understand her, my friend remember parts of things she said and after all these years, what did they mean.

As she put it, she knew she came from “over there” meaning the Middle East, she could not truly understand that home was Palestine, until now. She could now understand why we couldn't go home. The problem was that even for a visit it was thought at one time that if you were a refugee you would never see home again, forced to live in the far reaches of the earth more wearing out suitcases then furniture. For some of us it is still this way.

While I admit I loved my mother’s advice and she was smarter then many people may have given her credit for, she lived in a world that was so foreign to her that she lived her whole life for lack of a better word lost, tormented by all the strangeness and hardships.

The few people in our travels that had been able to understand us made us happier then I wonder if they ever knew because even before the blow up of 9/11, refugee families like mine roamed the earth and many settled in so many different places sometimes never seeing family or friends ever again.

I never realized I guess because I have always had a problem with shyness, how much I have been appreciated in my life even now because I have always thought the kind of person I am was more towards humility and I am the person that Allah made to be just the way that I am. And as my father liked to remind me, I am too like my Mother.

It also a strange thing to tell and old friend that you are fighting of all things, peace. That all the injustice in the world needs to stop so we can all be happy again and I will even have to admit the wish my mother had for me to be able to go home and stay without someone shooting at me would be a blessing within itself.

I wonder how things have gotten so bad that we have gotten pitted against each other and with so much hate in the world this within itself is a crime. I am amazed how people’s religion, origin has came so much into play in my lifetime, when what should been most important is friendship!

As for all my mother’s hope and dreams, I too wish someday the world will be happy and Palestine will be a free country where we can all be friends and neighbors again.

For all my mother taught me and those who remember her, she was a great woman and I know in my heart she is in Paradise telling her poor jokes with her unusual laugh.

People think a lot about the stealing of land in Palestine, not that they also have stolen lives.