Monday, July 7, 2008

My new birthday


Areej Ja'fari writing from Deheisheh refugee camp, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 5 July 2008
(Areej Jafari is origionally from the village of Deir Rafat and was born and raised in Dheisheh refugee camp. She holds a BS in Computers and Information Systems from Bethlehem University and currently works at the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh refugee camp.)

"I am a third generation of the Palestinian Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland by Zionist forces. The Nakba is not just an occasion we commemorate on 15 May at the same time Israel celebrates its establishment -- but a constant memory. I now feel that I am a very lucky person. I never felt lucky before my new birthday: the day I visited my destroyed original village of Deir Rafat, where my grandfather and his family lived before they were forced out in 1948......

.....We continued by car to see olive groves and cacti on both sides of the small roads. Cacti and olives trees are signs of life and inhabitants in that area. We proceeded a bit further, walking and saw some Bedouin tents and their livestock. We climbed a little bit of the hill and some ruins of the village emerged. We saw part of a destroyed house. My heart was filled with strange feelings and my mind was going back and forth between Deir Rafat and Dheisheh. Why can't my family and I live here in Deir Rafat peacefully? Why can't my grandfather come back to his land to planet his olive trees as he used to do with his father before 18 July 1948?

I laid down on one of the ruined walls of a house and kept watching the clear blue sky. At that moment I felt the sky was very close and I wanted to hide in it to stay in Deir Rafat. As the clouds passed over, I kept breathing the air again and again as if I could not have enough of it.

I collected some flowers and za'atar baladi. We drove past the well to the other side of the village, with more of the olive trees on both sides of the road and saw a Bedouin tent. A woman there invited us to enter, she knew some of my relatives, and she also told us that they pay 2,000 shekels (about 6,000 USD) every 20 days to the Beit Shemesh Municipality for the tent they live in. I would pay anything and everything to live there, where I should be living. Instead, I am living in a zoo and struggling for my basic rights.

I planted three flowers that I brought with me from Bethlehem near the well. One was for my great-grandfather, the other for my grandfather, and the last one for my family. My village is already beautiful and my flowers will not add to it. Nor did plant them because I will return after 20 years to claim ownership of the land where I planted the flowers. I own the land now and I owned it then, I do not need any evidence. I planted them as a gift to the land I loved even before we met and as my guide to the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope my land liked the gift......."

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