Shattered Dreams: Leaving Jerusalem


	The Palestinian passport of the author’s husband, Emile (Courtesy Hilda Tarazi.)

THERE WAS no catastrophe like the Palestinian catastrophe, and so it became known that when you say catastrophe it means the Palestinian displacement and refugees from 1948, when the armed Jews of Palestine were shooting at the Arabs, displacing them and creating the Israeli nation atop our bodies.

Who can forget the time the day and the year we were driven out of our homes and became homeless overnight, leaving our belongings and losing our identity and our basic human needs and income. I remember distinctly how we had to collect ourselves quickly, packing only the necessary items and clothes, to just run for our lives under a shower of bullets, fearing one of us might be shot and killed, because we did pick from the pole in front of him a live bullet aimed at my father. We hid our valuables in the attic, thinking, we have the key, we can always come back—but we never did.

There were 10 of us in the family, my parents and eight children ranging from 5 to 18 years old. The middle child, I was 14 then, and I remember throwing stones at the Jewish buses that passed by, which eventually were secured like tanks.

My father ran a school for boys in Jerusalem called Al-Nahda College. The four-story building housed boarding students from all over Palestine, Haifa, Jaffa and Gaza. Then the students started leaving and there was no one attending the school, so my father’s dreams were shattered, because it had taken him 10 years to establish himself and become well known throughout Palestine. He wasn’t able to sleep nights, worried about how to survive and feed his eight children. When we left Jerusalem to go to Birzeit, where we had a summer cottage, instead of the regular 30-minute drive it took us six hours.

I would still like to know what happened to our piano and pictures and the rest of the valuables that were left in our home. I still remember the catastrophe and how it impacted our lives. Who can forget?

By Hilda Tarazi (formerly Khoury), Lancaster, CA.