Nakba: A Time to Contemplate

A Palestinian woman holds a sign with the name of her former village written in Arabic during celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the 'Nakba' (catastrophe) on 12 May 2008 in the Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip.

13 May 2008

by HRM Deborah

When I was a very young girl, my grandmother use to open her house with a skeleton key and one day she told me to look at the key very close and never forget what that particular key looked like. Every time, even when I would see it on her key chain with other keys, I would stare at it long and hard. Eventually, the memory of that skeleton key became embedded in my memory.

When the event of the Nakba occurred, I was not born yet and my mother was about 19-years-old, but even though my family was already hostages in a foreign country and later many would be assassinated, as different events where occurring at home.

Nevertheless, like so many others we where still a family without a real home; not just people without a home; but the Diaspora.

Furthermore, this time of year, always brings very sad memories for me and it is usually very hard for me to talk about some of these memories, for one of the things I did learn from looking at that key so hard, was to think of others before myself and I have done this my whole life. When I was going through the many countless hardships, I always kept my eyes on Allah, along with finding that the care for someone else was more important then my own hardships.

While so many refugee’s and Diaspora people wish to return to their former home’s it is most understandable and while with the current demographics, some may find it impossible, but hopefully not all. It is a time of patience and a wait and sees what Allah has yet for us. While much of this situation is trying to be resolved to this best of everyone’s ability, everyone in Palestine has to be taken into consideration.

I cannot help thinking, what we are seeing now and I am thinking what would very well have happened if there had never been a war 108-years-ago. That we as Arab Palestinians, would still have shown compassion to the people that came to our country for a place of hope and peace, that my great grandmother wished to do those many years ago and that was to help the Jewish people. That this was the real situation, before outside interests created so many lies and was to cloud the truth all those years.

Even at this time, while the Jewish people are not celebrating a state actually, but from my understanding, a place of freedom and hope that none of us thought we truly had, for way to many years, but even for us as Arab Palestinians we now have a beacon of a free country and a very good future.

A hundred and one year Old Palestinian refugee Rahma Ali Abed shows her old house keys from her former village as a symbol of hope that she may return there one day on 11 May 2008 in her Al-Shati refugee camp, which is located within the Gaza Strip. Abed used to live in the village of Bet Daras before her family was forced to immigrate to the Gaza Strip in 1948. After sixty years Abed has hope of returning to her old village, which is now in the Jewish sector and is named Bet Azron.