1946 “There were some Jews living in my village, and we were friends with them. In Akka there were more Jews. If I got sick, I used to go to a Jewish doctor in Akka named Nathan. As children, we did not distinguish between Christians, Muslims, and Jews—we were friends.” 1948 “The Jews began attacking us with heavy artillery, just to scare us. Then the aerial bombardments of our village began and people started to flee. Some families refused to leave Tarshiha; they hid with their neighbors, who were Palestinian Jews and Druze. Some of the children and grandchildren of those who hid are still living in Tarshiha today. There were about twenty people in my family who fled toward Lebanon. We loaded as many mattresses as possible onto one of our horses. I was barefoot, and I was given a pair of shoes, size 42. I was a child. I rode the horse for a while, then I got down and started running barefoot. I remember it clearly. We walked ten kilometers. I was afraid. My parents tried to calm me, but deep down they were also afraid. We were running to escape death.” – Who was it that drove you out? “The Jews, but not the same Jews we knew before. These were Jews who came from outside. I saw dead bodies lying in the groves. After crossing the border into Lebanon, we came to Ayta ash Shab. We ate the food we had brought with us. We continued on to Aleppo in Syria. There were seven of us in the family, and we lived in a barrack. The rooms were three by three meters and were divided with blankets. If someone had sex with his wife, everyone could hear it. The Nakba took everything from us. The only thing we had left was to study at school. I was good at my studies, but in order to study I had to go outside—there was no space indoors. I remember once in winter, when it was cold and snowy. I had to go out into the cold and sit on the snow to study. I was in the fourth grade.” 2015 “The first exodus, from Palestine, was very hard, but it helped us survive the second exodus, from Syria to Sweden. When I was 74 years old, in 2015, we were forced to flee from Syria to Turkey, crossing the mountains on foot. From Turkey we took a rubber boat across the Aegean Sea to Greece. There were 44 people in the boat; it was approved for a maximum of ten. Then we continued through Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Denmark, and finally to Sweden. For the journey to Turkey, my wife and I paid 30,000 kronor, and from Turkey to Sweden the same amount. I am glad that Sweden took us in, but this is not my father’s house.”

1948 “The Egyptian army was supposed to defend the village, but when the Jews attacked at night, the Egyptians abandoned us. My mother, my older brother, and I fled into the darkness to a field where our cows and sheep were grazing. All the men stayed behind to defend the village, but when the ammunition ran out, they too were forced to flee. Two of my uncles were shot dead by the Jews. They were in a field and were both shot in the chest. They were shot because they defended their land. Later my uncles were taken to the village, and I saw their bodies. My mother and I cried. She continued to cry until the day she died.”

1945 “Behind our house there was a large fig tree. I used to play in the shade beneath it. Behind the house there was also a cave. My mother and grandmother gathered firewood there. They lit a fire and cooked food, fried eggs, and baked bread. My mother fetched water from a stream that ran near our house.” 1948 “We heard gunfire in the distance. It went on for several days, especially at night. Rumors spread that the Zionist army was in Bayt Safafa, a nearby village, and that they were probably advancing toward our village. I lay on my mattress, frightened. My parents told us to get up, that we had to leave. My father had to carry my grandmother on his back. She had panicked and could not stand up. She was also old and weak. My father carried a small sack of flour in one hand. I held his other hand. I was four years old. My eldest brother, Mustafa, carried a container of olive oil. My mother carried my little brother, who was ten months old. Many families were fleeing. We walked until we could go no farther. Then we rested under the trees. When morning came, the gunfire had stopped. The men were then able to return to the village to fetch mattresses and pillows. We waited in the shade of the trees. My father returned the next day. By then someone had hired trucks that took us to ‘Amman in Jordan. The journey took a couple of days. I had difficulty understanding what was happening. I was in shock. I was silent, sometimes I cried. The only thing I understood was that the Jews had taken our land and our homes.” 2015 “Religious settlers took control of the stream that ran behind our house. The settlers used it for various religious rituals. At the same time, they prevented us and other Palestinians from going near the stream.” Afterthought “The Israelis never lived up to their promises. It was just ink on paper.”

1936 “My paternal uncle was 16 years old when he was killed by Jewish guards on horseback. They struck him on the head and he died the following day. My father’s employer, a Zionist named Dubel, offered my father a bag containing 10,000 pounds in banknotes as compensation for the murder of his brother. My father refused the money, but took four pounds from the bag and said: ‘With this money I will buy ammunition.’ A short time later, he and two relatives managed to set a trap for Dubel and his 16 bodyguards aboard his boat as it traveled through a canal surrounded by forest. My father hid in the woods and was only a few meters away from Dubel when he fired the fatal shot. The British issued a death sentence against my father, who was forced to go into hiding. A few months later, I was born.” 1948 “When I turned 14, I was allowed to carry weapons. I took part in capturing three Zionists. They were fishermen and had no right to be there. That is why my comrade and I acted. The Syrian border was one kilometer away, and it took us an hour to walk there with the prisoners and hand them over to the Syrian police. They were later used by Syria in a prisoner exchange.” 1967 “My village was located near the Syrian border on the Golan Heights. When it was occupied, we fled to the Yarmouk camp, outside Damascus. We could barely bring even a shirt with us. I joined the armed struggle and was trained as a commando soldier.”

1946 "We were farmers and grew wheat, olives, fruit and tobacco. Our tobacco was well-known, it was on a level with the Greek. We had different names for each area of land, depending on what we grew on it. Sometimes we slept in the fields. The land is our life, it is more important than the houses, better than working in a factory." 1948 "I was in fourth grade. We were used to the Zionists attacking us. We used to flee a bit away from the village and stay in an olive grove. When things calmed down, we returned to our house. We had received reinforcement from a volunteer Arab force from Syria. But after a while it got worse and the Arab force left us to our fate. We heard stories of how Jewish soldiers killed women and children in other villages. I remember the planes that attacked the village. One of the pilots shot at a woman in a wheelchair. At the same time we were attacked on the ground by Jewish soldiers. Chaos and panic broke out among thousands of villagers. We fled on foot to Lebanon. We brought one of our horses and loaded some mattresses. I myself was wearing shorts. When we passed Safad we heard that the city had been occupied by the Zionists. Then we started running. We were attacked from the air and by Jewish soldiers on the ground. Even when we sat under the olive trees they came and shot at us. Some who returned to the village were killed. That's what we heard. In Lebanon we sold the horse. We needed the money. We took a freight train from Tyre to Aleppo in Syria. At each station along the way, they emptied one or two wagons of refugees, so that not all refugees ended up in the same place. In Aleppo we were first placed in al-Nayrab, an old French military camp, which was next to the airport. Then we had to move into Aleppo. There we got to live in a building that had previously been a hospital." Afterthought - Doesn’t the feeling for your lost land disappear with the years? “On the contrary, it remains, and we inherit that feeling from parents to children and grandchildren.” - As a lawyer, do you want compensation for your lost land, or do you want the land back? "I want the land (laughs). The land is a person's life. We don't sell any land, no houses. I am not a seller. I sell nothing. We inherit the land from generation to generation. I am still a refugee. I have no country, no passport, no rights. I don't know what happened to my schoolmates. I never got to finish fourth grade."

1948 "The Zionists killed my maternal uncle, Ahmed Shaban, and three others. They were shot in front of all the villagers. My uncle, who was perhaps 30 years old, was in the resistance movement, first against the British occupation, then against the Zionists'. After the executions, people got scared. Half of my relatives fled to Syria, my paternal uncle fled to Jordan and we to Lebanon, on foot. The only thing we brought with us were the clothes we were wearing. I was four years old. During the flight, I heard gunfire and got scared. I wanted mum to carry me. My little sister started screaming too and wanted to be carried too. After al-Nakba my parents were sad." 1955 "In the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon I went to school. The teachers were very harsh. They hit us. Once I got a beating when I was standing outside the school smoking. I was eleven years old then. I was more scared of my teachers than of my parents. In the beginning I hated them, but then I understood that they wanted to take care of us. After school we used to go into Saida, a 20-minute walk. We pinched oranges from the plantations along the way. In Saida we went to the cinema. I liked everything with Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama. We were home again for dinner, at eight, nine. My parents were offered to become Lebanese citizens, but they declined. They expected to be able to return to Palestine. Nasser and the Arab world promised that they would be allowed to return. They promised and promised. The Arab world is the Palestinians' worst enemy. It was a mistake to refuse to become Lebanese." 1961 "Me and my friends were politically active and organized demonstrations in the camp. We got in trouble with the Lebanese security police. Once a friend told a funny story that I laughed at. Then some Lebanese security police showed up and wanted to know what was so funny. We had to spend the night at their place. We were oppressed by the Lebanese security police. I left the refugee camp in 1964 and started at a UN school in Siblin, outside Saida. There, the Lebanese security police tried to recruit me as an agent. I would get 150 lira a month. That was a lot of money at the time. They would give me a pistol and promised to pay for my parties. All I had to do was snitch on my friends.. 1967 "I was bullied by my Swedish colleagues. They imitated the defeated Egyptian soldiers who had fled barefoot through the desert. One of them kept calling me a "fucking Arab". I took a stranglehold on my honor as a slut. To defend myself against the bullies, I joined the KPML(r)." 1995 "When I became a Swedish citizen, my family and I were able to go back to my home village. The only thing left was the mosque and the cemetery. The mosque was full of cow dung, so we started cleaning it. After that, six Israeli soldiers showed up and explained that there were too many of us in there. "This counts as a demonstration," said one of the soldiers. "It's not a demonstration, we're just cleaning the mosque. I'm a Swedish citizen and I was born in this village." "Okay, don't let me go, don't let me go, let's say he left us alone." Reflection "At night I dream that I kill all the Arab leaders. I fly in a helicopter and shoot them. I hate them more than I hate Zionism. I respect the Israeli leaders because they take care of their own people."

1946 ”My father owned a lot of land where he grew wheat and tobacco. He sold the tobacco to a company in ‘Akka. We had sheep, goats, camels, and cows. My father bought donkeys from Cyprus; they were strong. I used to help with the milking. I would scoop the top layer of milk from the bucket with my hand and drink it. I ran around on our land. When I think about it now, it feels as if I was flying above ground covered with flowers. I was free. In winter we gathered firewood and loaded it onto camels. Deir al-Qasi lay high up on a mountain with a beautiful view and fresh air. People from ‘Akka and Haifa often came on weekend outings to our village. There were no Jews living in Deir al-Qasi. But Nahariya, which was nearby, was a Jewish village. We had good relations with them. They came to shop in our village, and we went to a doctor in theirs. Before the Nakba, I did not notice any tension between us and the Jews. However, there were strong tensions between the British and the Palestinian resistance fighters. We were constantly afraid of the British soldiers.” 1948 ”I had turned eight years old and noticed nothing about the war approaching. Suddenly people fled from al-Quds to our village. One day I was going to milk the goat. I was standing in the shade of a tree. Suddenly I heard a loud explosion. When I looked up, I saw three airplanes dropping bombs. I got scared and ran back to our house. I saw black smoke rising. By a well stood a man. His leg had been torn off. I felt pain and saw blood coming from my shoulder. My father, who was ill, was lying down resting. I tried to lift him up, but I did not have the strength. “The Zionists are coming!” my cousin shouted as he came running. My father slowly rose from the bed and we left the house. Outside, all the animals had been killed in the bombing. Even the dog was dead. The camels survived because they were with my grandfather. Everyone fled—men, women, children, and the elderly. We went to seek shelter in a nearby forest. My father leaned on my cousin for support. In the darkness I saw dead bodies on the ground. We continued walking toward the Lebanese border. We had no food and no water. At the border stood Israeli soldiers. They shot a young man before our eyes. “Dear ones, go to your leader, he will give you food,” one of the soldiers shouted to us. We crossed the border and arrived in the village of Ayta ash-Shab, where my father had a cousin. We were able to stay there. After a while, when things had calmed down, my mother and I returned to our farm. I brought some chickens with me from there. My mother also took some things from inside the house—I don’t know what. That was the only time we returned. Later, the house was demolished. We stayed with my father’s cousin for three days. So many refugees had gathered in Ayta ash-Shab that we decided to go north to a refugee camp in the city of Sur. There we hired a truck and everyone was driven eastward, toward the Syrian border, to the Baalbek refugee camp. Our family and five other families had to share one barrack. We remained there for twelve years, until the early 1960s.” Afterthought I make a distinction between Jews and Israelis. Jews and Arabs lived in peace in Palestine. But the Zionists who came from Europe destroyed my life. I hate Zionists, but not Jews. Every day I dream of returning to Deir al-Qasi, the most beautiful village in the world. But I have no passport."

1947 “Lubya was a large village. The land stretched all the way down toward Ṭabariyya. We were farmers and grew olives, figs, and grapes. Some of my brothers were able to study in Ṭabariyya. For us girls, it was not considered as important. From the time I was seven years old, I began to pray—sometimes at home, sometimes in the mosque. Our God never forgets. He records both good and bad deeds. The Jews and we were friends. They could come riding on horseback to have coffee with my father. There was no conflict. Then the others arrived. They showed up during the harvest, and we saw that they were different—they did not look like our Jewish neighbors. Why had they come here? Worry began to spread. Then the war came.” 1948 “The men tried to defend us with their rifles. But what can a rifle do against an airplane? They attacked us and shot 24 people. I saw it myself. I know their names: Muhammad, Zaid, and Ahmad were brothers. Ibrahim was from another family. Their relatives came and collected the bodies. They could not dig graves, so they laid the bodies side by side in a room and closed the door. We fled on foot. My sister-in-law was carrying her baby boy, Hussein, whom she was still breastfeeding. He died along the way. She dug a small hole in the ground with a branch. We helped one another so that he could be placed in the earth." Afterthought "My father and my brothers worked for others, either in agriculture or in construction. Most of the men in my family later died of heart attacks. Being expelled and forced to leave everything behind brings a deep sorrow that is heavy to carry. What were we supposed to do?”

1948 “When the Zionists attacked the villages around Hamama, people fled to our village. Then our village was attacked as well. The attack came from the main road. Our men went out toward the road, but they only had old weapons to defend us with. My brother was shot in the arm. Then the Zionists began bombing us with airplanes. We left our house. We carried a little food and water with us. My parents took us to the coast to seek safety. There, they helped remove the bullet from my brother’s arm. When we reached the beach, my parents covered me and my siblings with blankets. Then they piled sand on top of the blankets so the airplanes wouldn’t spot us. In the morning, we returned to our house. This went on—back and forth—for several days. We hid wheat and corn for the day when we could return. Gradually, people began leaving the area. We went to al-Jura and stayed there for two days with a friend of my father. When we returned to Hamama, the village was completely deserted—everyone had fled. All the surrounding villages had been occupied by Zionist forces. The roads to the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were closed. The only road open to us was southward, toward the Gaza Strip. So we left. We children rode on donkeys; our parents walked on foot. They were barefoot. My mother carried a bundle of clothes on her head. After a while I became very thirsty and started crying: ‘I want water, I want water!’ When we passed a village, my father knocked on a door and I was given water. The villagers gave us food as well. We walked during the day and slept on the ground at night. Sometimes we saw the lights of the Zionist forces at night. Then we had to stay silent so they wouldn’t discover us and kill us. Eventually we reached Jabalia, in the Gaza Strip. The distance was maybe twenty kilometers. My uncle knew someone there, and we were allowed to sleep at their place for one night. We were supposed to continue to Rafah, where he had other friends. Meanwhile, my father, my uncle, and my uncle’s wife rented seven camels. Together with the camel owner, they returned to Hamama and filled large sacks with the wheat and corn we had hidden. They rested before setting off toward Rafah with the fully loaded camels. They traveled at night and had to be silent to avoid being discovered. My uncle’s wife was so sleepy that she had to hold onto the camel’s tail to keep from falling asleep. The camel owner hurried one of the camels along and tried to whip the animal, but missed and hit my uncle’s wife instead. She lost several teeth and began bleeding from her mouth. There was an argument with the camel owner, who blamed others. Eventually we were reunited in Rafah. There we lived a life of humiliation. We were nothing. We had no clothes, no mattresses, no blankets. We had no money. We had nothing. It was a very, very, very hard life.” 1967 “I sent the children to my brother-in-law. Our oldest child showed the way with a flashlight. There was an Israeli military camp nearby, and they noticed the light from the flashlight. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was Israeli soldiers. They ordered me to bring all the flashlights in the house. I answered that we didn’t have any flashlights. ‘You have twenty-four hours to evacuate the house,’ an Israeli soldier said. ‘Why? What have I done?’ I received no answer. The soldiers left and came back the next day. They explained that our house would be demolished and that we would be sent to al-Arish, in Egypt. ‘You demolished our house in Hamama in 1948. Are you going to do the same thing to this house?’ No answer. We were given twenty-four hours to empty our home. Then they demolished it. It had four rooms. There were two doors—one from the courtyard and one facing the sea.”

“We lived in a small house on Mount Carmel. It was a mixed area with Muslims and Jews. My father worked at a cigarette factory and also sold olive oil. My brother started working at Spinneys supermarket, which was owned by a couple of Englishmen. I had seven Jewish friends in the neighborhood who sometimes came over to our home. Cohen later became a police chief under the British. Another was named Shabbatai Levi, one was Spector, and a girl was named Sternheim. My mother invited everyone to eat. She baked bread, boiled eggs with onion skins so they turned brown, and served cheese and yogurt. We spoke Hebrew with one another. My grandfather made Arabic coffee that lasted the whole day. Cohen’s father used to come and drink coffee with my father. The girl Sternheim worked in a flower shop. ‘I will protect you,’ she said. ‘I will come and get you wherever you are. Call me and I will come. Don’t be afraid.’ I still remember her phone number: 3917.” (begins to cry) I had just turned 13 and worked at a café in central Haifa. The owner was named Siegel. He spoke only German. Jochanan also worked at the café, and we became friends. One day Jochanan was hit by a British military jeep. The driver was drunk. Jochanan was taken to the hospital but died four days later. I wanted to attend his funeral but couldn’t because I had nothing to cover my head with. I stood at the entrance to the cemetery and cried. ‘Is he your brother?’ a man asked. ‘No, he’s my friend, but he was like a brother.’ The man gave me a kippah with a Star of David on it so that I could approach the grave.” “The first time I noticed unrest was when the Stern Gang blew up a car outside the British police station in Haifa. That was in early 1947. We moved to Kababir in Haifa, where only Muslims lived. My brother-in-law Ibrahim drove us in his car. We rented an apartment. But after a while it didn’t feel safe in Kababir either, so we moved on to al-Tira, south of Haifa, where we owned a house. Al-Nakba began when the Haganah blew up 16 houses in al-Tira. Assad al-Bardan, one of our neighbors, went out at night with a lamp to see what was happening. He was shot. There were air raids at night. People were afraid to sleep in their homes and sought refuge in olive groves and caves. On the last day, before we fled, the shooting was constant. Only my brother and I were at home. My parents were hiding in a cave, but we didn’t know where. We went outside to see what was happening. ‘What are you doing here?’ a man asked. ‘Everyone has already fled.’” “We didn’t know where to go. We were from Mount Carmel and didn’t know the surroundings of al-Tira. We were afraid. We left our house when the moon had risen and saw about 50 Jewish soldiers entering al-Tira. We lay down on the mountain so as not to be discovered. As we continued walking, we met Muhammad and Afu. They showed us the way to ‘Ain Hawd. It was dawn when we arrived, but bombs were falling, so we continued south. After three hours we reached Ijzim. There we met our oldest brother, who gave us each a cigarette. Our brother paid a man to guide us out of Ijzim toward Nablus in the West Bank. There they gave us breakfast and water, and there we finally found our mother and one of her sisters. Together we continued to Jordan. There was little water. After a couple of months, a truck took us to Duma, outside Damascus in Syria. We and about ten other families were allowed to stay in a mosque. They divided a hall with blankets where we lived. We stayed there for four or five months. Then the whole family was reunited again—except for one of my brothers, Ahmed, who was imprisoned in Palestine. I lived in Syria for 36 years. I came to Sweden in 1980.”

“My father was a farmer. He grew, among other things, potatoes and tomatoes. I used to tend his sheep.” - What do you remember of your home village? “Your question is wrongly put. You should ask who kicked me out of my land. When the Israelis carried out the massacre in Dayr Yasin, it terrified many people. The rumor spread throughout all of Palestine. Our Arab leaders came to our village and told us to leave so that we would not experience the same thing as in Dayr Yasin. They told us we didn’t need to take anything with us, because we would be able to return after one week. But now 70 years have passed. Many of the Palestinian villages that were abandoned became settlements for Jews from Yemen. I was engaged to my cousin Maryam when we left Palestine. Everyone left—not only us, but also all the surrounding villages. Some fled to Jordan, Syria, or Iraq. My village was close to the border, so my family and I walked on foot to Lebanon. My family stayed in Tyre, while I went on to Bint Jbeil to sell my sheep. I had managed to bring 84 of them from Palestine. I didn’t want to sell them, but I had no choice.” - Did you like your sheep? “Being a shepherd is like therapy for the soul. I still cry over my sheep. After selling them, I continued to Yater and then on to my fiancée, who was in Tyre with her family. We married there and she bore me children. When time passed and we were not allowed to return to Palestine, we continued to the Burj al-Barajna refugee camp in Beirut. I had twelve children with her. The most important thing is to have a country. More than 70 years have passed and we still cannot erase the word ‘refugee.’ I do not belong here in Lebanon. I do not own the house I live in, I am not allowed to work, I have no rights. I had twelve children, but I was given no land.” - Who bears responsibility for your situation? “The conspiracy.” - Who is behind the conspiracy? “How should I know?”

1947 “Near us was the Jewish village of Nesher. They visited our olive groves and we visited their homes. We were almost like siblings.”

1948 “Men, women, children, and the elderly arrived in Nablus by truck. They had been expelled from villages and towns in the surrounding area. The refugees were housed in a school. Inside, many families were gathered in one large hall. The hall was divided with pieces of cloth so that each family was given a few meters of space. It was horrible. The children cried, the women did not know what to do, and the men were very angry. Later it became even worse. First the rain poured down, and then the snow came. To me, snow was something wonderful. I stood in my room and looked out the window. I saw a boy from the camp’s daycare playing in the snow. Shocked, I saw that he was barefoot. After taking a few steps, he collapsed and began to cry.” 1950 “Of my nine siblings, I had the darkest skin in the family. That is why I was called ‘the brown one.’ My skin color was considered beautiful. My grandfather was the only person in the Nablus district who owned a radio. His friends used to gather in his house to listen to it. I would sneak in as well to listen. I was amazed at how large the radio was, like a cabinet. I tried to look for the announcer behind it. All I found were some tubes and a large battery connected to the radio. They listened to a radio station broadcasting from Cairo, Egypt. They played music from Sudan, which I loved to listen to and sing along with—something my grandfather noticed. ‘These are your relatives,’ my grandfather said, laughing.” 1967 “Abdel Nasser promised that we would be able to return to Palestine. We believed him; he was like a mountain to us. But the Israelis defeated him. We realized that we had to organize ourselves. At that time, I was studying at university in Cairo. I secretly joined the Palestinian liberation struggle. We formed small cells of three to five people so that we could join Fatah. Some of us received our military training in Syria.” 1968 “Israel attacked the PLO camp in al-Karama, in Jordan, under the leadership of General Moshe Dayan. Dayan regarded the attack as a picnic and invited Israeli journalists to witness the victory. They attacked with 15,000 men, fighter jets, and artillery. The goal was to kill all the fedayeen in the al-Ghor area, where Karameh is located. But together with the Jordanian army, the Palestinian fighters managed—for the first time since 1967—to defeat the Israeli army. For me, it was a turning point.”

Nakba #23 - Mahmoud Abdulatif by Överlevarna

1936 “I don’t know exactly what year I was born. We didn’t use dates or years. We were illiterate. We used to say that someone was born the same year someone else died.” 1940 “My mother died when I was three or four years old. I don’t remember her. My father took several new wives. He was a shepherd, so he was away from home for long periods. His new wives beat me. They cursed my mother, even though they had never met her. Once, when we went to fetch water from a stream, his wife grabbed me by the neck and pushed my head under the water. She tried to drown me. Her brother appeared and started beating her. He saved my life. I survived by God’s grace. I never told my father how badly his wives treated me. That would only have made my situation worse. My sister and I lived as if we were orphans. I was never taught to read or write, but I memorized the entire Qur’an by heart.” 1948 “I was married when I was twelve years old. I didn’t know him. I didn’t want to marry, but my father forced me. My husband often beat me, even while I was eating. My father will never see even a glimpse of heaven for what he did to me. We lived a normal and simple life in Palestine until the Jews came to our village and killed our neighbors. It happened at night. They shot many people, including children. I heard gunfire and screaming. We fled, but the Jews pursued us. My father carried me on his back and ran for his life. Many of us were fleeing. We ran for two hours up into the mountains, where we hid in caves. We hadn’t had time to take any food or water with us. We had nothing. I can still feel the bitterness today. After a few hours, the Jews withdrew and we were able to return. Some of the village men buried the dead. We sat in our houses and waited, without food or water. When the Jews returned, we fled back into the mountains. This happened several times.” 1967 “We were forced to leave the country and came to Jordan. First we lived in al-Ghor in the south, then they built a camp for us in the north. After that, we continued moving from place to place. Finally, we came to Husn refugee camp, north of Amman. Now I have a Jordanian passport. We bought a piece of land and built this house. What more can we do? I don’t know who is responsible for my situation. Maybe our leaders, I don’t know—only God knows. We don’t have enough knowledge to judge it. They took every piece of the land.”

21. Lee Mousa by Överlevarna

1943 “Palestinian Jews and Arabs lived side by side, like one family. Arabs married Jews and Jews married Arabs. They were our friends, our relatives—we protected them.”

Nakba #19 - Fatima Abdurahman Steti by Överlevarna

Nkba #18 - Hayat Dawud Muhammad al-Qawasmi by Överlevarna

1946 “My father owned a lot of land where he grew grapes, figs, olives, and other crops. We also had livestock. Many people worked for us during the harvest season. My father died when I was three years old. I remember the olive harvests. The men stood on ladders picking olives, and the ones that fell to the ground were gathered by the women and carried back to the village. There were no Jews living in our village. They lived in the neighboring town of Nahariya. There was a doctor there whom one of my sisters-in-law visited. She underwent a minor eye operation there. We had many Jewish friends in Nahariya: Shlomo, Auerbach, and Jitzchak. They worked together with my brothers. They were Palestinian Jews, not like the Jews who came from Russia and Poland.” - Did you go to school? “No, we did not have a school for beginners in the village, only for older children. There were only four girls in my village who studied.” 1948 “The Israelis demanded that the village mukhtar surrender. If he did not, we would be expelled. Auerbach, my brothers’ Jewish friend, advised us not to leave the village. But if we were forced to flee, he promised he would help us return. When the mukhtar refused to surrender, the Israelis attacked the village with heavy artillery. The men defended the village for a week against the Israeli army. One of my brothers sought out Auerbach to ask him to keep his promise. He objected, saying that because they had fought the Israelis for a week, his promise was no longer valid. The Israelis killed 45 people, mostly elderly people and women. Kuwaykat was surrounded and eventually fell. The Israelis gave us safe passage eastward so that we could flee in that direction. We fled during the night. Young resistance fighters returned the next day and found elderly people killed in the streets. Their bodies were dragged to the well and lowered into it so that wild animals would not eat them. One old man was found killed in his home. He was buried outside the house. We walked on foot to the other side of the Lebanese border. After a month, some kind of ceasefire was declared, so we returned to Kuwaykat to collect our belongings. But the Israelis broke the agreement, and we were forced to flee a second time. Once again, we fled on foot. Again, we arrived in a village on the Lebanese side of the border. My brother bought three fig trees from a man so that the Lebanese would not say that we had stolen their trees. The trees became our homes. A few years later, we moved to Beirut and to Burj al-Barajna. At that time, it was nothing but desert. I have lived here ever since.” - Who bears responsibility for your situation? “It is like the story of Yusuf in the Qur’an, where his brothers conspired against him. Arabs, Jews, and the English—all of them conspired against us. In the past, we lived with dignity and honor in our land. We used to invite Jews into our homes and share our food with them. If Israel were to open its borders, I would want to return and work the land. I want to sit in my own country and build my own house. I do not need electricity. I have hidden an antique oil lamp that I could take with me. I would rather be eaten by snakes than remain here. Lebanon is not our land. We want our land back.”