From the Notebook of Memories (5)

The writer

Ismail Al-Talawi

From Ain al-Hilweh to Al-Khalisa... A strand of hair preceded its owner.

Our story this time begins in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, located near the city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. This camp carries decades of exile in its memory and bears in its alleys and neighborhoods the names of more than thirty-five cities and villages in Galilee... from Safed, passing through Safouriya and Al-Zeeb to Al-Safsaf and Hattin, and so on. It has lived through war, shelling, siege, fear, and loss for decades, until its refugees named it (the capital of Palestinian diaspora)... Palestine remained present in it not as a distant memory, but as something that resides in homes, faces, and names... In its narrow alleys, the stories of Galilee's villages, cities, and towns gathered, making the camp a symbol of oppression and deprivation from being away from the homeland, and yearning and longing for it... The houses of the camp were adorned with the keys to their homes that they carried with them, and what their hands could hold, and what their memories could preserve.

In one of the camp's houses, (Esraa Al-Issa), a ten-year-old girl, moved lightly between her bed and her small bag, carefully folding a piece of her clothing, then reopening the bag, looking at it for a moment, and taking it out again. She placed a shoe inside, then hesitated and replaced it with another. She put a small notebook and a pen, then returned to place them elsewhere... She acted as if she were preparing for an ordinary trip... but, in reality, she was preparing for something she did not know how to describe, even to herself... For days, she had been hearing from the camp's children about a trip to Palestine, a trip that would gather children, youth, and the elderly from the camps in Lebanon, and from other camps in Syria and Jordan, and from various areas in the diaspora. The name Palestine echoed among them as if it were something very close, yet at the same time further than imagination... (Esraa) had not told her grandmother, Um Al-Abd, about this event that was closer to a dream!! She feared she would not believe her... and the truth is that she herself had not fully believed she would go... Every night, (Esraa) would ask herself before sleeping, will the trip really happen? Will I really see Palestine? And can a girl who has never seen her homeland in her life recognize it when she sees it? Her grandmother (Um Al-Abd) would sit in her usual place, watching her granddaughter from afar... A woman who had surpassed eighty, but her face retained something of a distant childhood, whenever her village (Al-Khalisa), her birthplace, was mentioned... That village where she lived her childhood, mixed in her memory with the details of the nearby Lebanese and Syrian villages: (Hounin, Hula, Al-Adisa, Markaba, Ibl al-Qamh, Arab al-Aramsha, and Al-Ghawarna) and others... (Um Al-Abd) spent her childhood and youth there, and its details remained alive in her memory, as if she had left it just yesterday... She still remembers her families... Khalil, Al-Dakhloul, Abu Zaher... and the Ali family and Faour... and Abu Tarboush... and the taste of (Ain al-Dhahab and Naba' al-Asal) in her village (Al-Khalisa) lingered in her mouth since she was forcibly displaced from it... While (Esraa) was putting a shirt in her bag, she suddenly raised her head and looked at her grandmother: Siti... Siti? The grandmother raised her head in fear: What, my dear? God bless you, my dear! Esraa pointed to the bag: What do you think, Siti? Do you think these clothes are enough? Um Al-Abd looked at the bag, then at the scattered clothes around her: Enough for what, my dear? (Esraa) hesitated a little, as if she were searching for a way to tell her grandmother: For the trip... for the trip, my dear! (Esraa) lowered her eyes to her bag: The trip I told you about... Did you forget, my dear? In a calm voice, the grandmother said: And what’s with you, my little one... What’s this trip that you can’t tell me where you’re going? And simply, like a child, she said it quickly: To Palestine, we are going to Palestine, my dear!! (Um Al-Abd's) hand stopped. She looked at her for a long time: What, my dear? What, my dear, do you see me as a child, my dear? Are you trying to fool me? It was not easy for (Um Al-Abd) to believe what she was hearing... She looked at (Esraa), then stared into her eyes, as if she were searching for a small smile that would reveal a childish joke, or for hesitation that would bring her back to the reality she had known all her life, that Palestine is far away... and those who left it one day did not know that the days they said were days would become years, and that the years could become a whole lifetime... But (Esraa) did not back down... She said it with the simplicity of children, and with a certainty that needed no proof: I am going to Palestine, my dear!!... And once again, her grandmother asked her, then asked her again, as if she did not want to believe, or perhaps she was afraid to believe... And when (Esraa) began to explain to her that the trip is real, and that she would be with a group of Palestinians from Ain al-Hilweh and coming from the camps and the diaspora, who would participate in the cultural gathering that would be held in Palestine... and that she would actually stand on the land of Palestine, her grandmother's face gradually changed... (Um Al-Abd) was no longer facing a child telling a dream... she was facing her granddaughter who would do what she could not do throughout her life... And suddenly, memories began to restore the place... the road... the houses... the springs... the orchards... the faces... the families of Al-Khalisa... (Khalil, Al-Dakhloul, Abu Zaher... and the Ali family and Faour... and Abu Tarboush)... She still remembers the details of her house (the contract) that she left and never returned to... even the small things that no one else knows but her... As if memory, when (Um Al-Abd) realized that (Esraa) would go, decided to open all its treasures at once... (Esraa) listened with passion, asked about everything, and gradually got closer to her grandmother until she found herself sleeping in her lap... Then she asked: Siti, I want to ask you... Is Al-Khalisa still there, my dear?? Is there anything in it? The question came from a child, but it fell into the heart of a woman who carried the village for eighty years... Um Al-Abd took a deep breath and said: My dear... Al-Khalisa is not far from here, it’s just over there... In an hour and a half, we will reach it, then she paused for a moment before adding: Your grandfather Abu Al-Abd, may God have mercy on him, returned to the country ten days after we left... He returned with your grandfather Abu Al-Rajeh and our neighbor Abu Fahmi, may God have mercy on them... He wanted to bring back his life savings... one hundred and fifty pounds, which he had hidden under the nummal in the big contract... And she smiled a painful smile and continued: They returned, my dear, and found no nummal, no house, nothing... Then her voice softened: Everything was destroyed and burned... and only the village mosque remained... and we later learned that they turned it into a museum... (Esraa) fell silent, but her questions did not stop... While she was bombarding her grandmother with questions, (Um Al-Abd) felt something else... something she could not name... For the first time, it seemed to her that the trip was not just (Esraa's) trip... (Um Al-Abd) fell silent and placed her hand on her granddaughter's hair, slowly running her fingers through its strands, then she held a small strand and examined it for a long time... As if she were seeing for the first time something that had been with her since she was in (Al-Khalisa), lived with her through the years of exile, grew with her in the camp, and remained a silent witness to a whole lifetime of absence... Suddenly, (Um Al-Abd) said: Siti... get up, my dear... bring me the scissors from the cupboard, my dear... (Esraa) got up from her lap and headed to the cupboard, looking at her grandmother with fear: The scissors, my dear? What are you going to do? Are you going to cut my hair? Please don’t, my dear! (Um Al-Abd) smiled: No, my dear, don’t be afraid... The grandmother took the scissors, then reached for her hair and cut a small strand from it... (Esraa) gasped: Why did you cut your hair, my dear? She did not answer her... And she took a small piece of cloth, carefully placed the strand in it, and folded it as if she were folding something precious... The grandmother's hand trembled as she pointed to (Esraa) holding the piece of cloth: When you reach Palestine, dig a small hole for it, my dear, and then cover it with dirt!! (Esraa) looked at her grandmother for a long time: Why, my dear? And with a sense of sorrow and pain accompanied by a tear of sadness, the grandmother said: So that something of me reaches there... (Esraa) said with complete innocence: But you, my dear, will go to it one day! (Um Al-Abd) smiled, and tears had preceded her to her eyes: I hope so, my dear... (Esraa) replied: Why do you say I hope? You will definitely go, my dear! (Um Al-Abd) looked at her granddaughter and kissed her, as if she wanted to preserve her face at that moment... Then she said in a faint voice, choked by decades of waiting: Oh, Esraa... I don’t know, my dear, if life will allow me to return to Palestine... But if I can’t return in body, this strand will reach before me... (Esraa) held the strand of hair to her chest and said: I will put it, my dear, in (Al-Khalisa)... (Um Al-Abd) smiled: If you can, my dear... put it in (Al-Khalisa)... (Esraa) said: I love Al-Khalisa, my dear... That’s why I want to bury it in (Al-Khalisa)... The grandmother shook her head: No, my dear... I love every inch of Palestine... The important thing is to touch my hair with the soil of the homeland... And she clasped her hand to her granddaughter's hand: You, my dear, will not bury anything... you will return it to its place... The words were too big for a ten-year-old girl to comprehend, but they entered her heart in a way she had never known before... (Esraa) closed the piece of cloth tightly and placed it in a safe spot inside her bag... Then she asked: When I reach Palestine... what should I tell it, my dear? (Um Al-Abd) smiled: Palestine will tell you about itself... And she paused for a moment before adding: And if you pass by a place... and feel that your heart stopped for a moment... know that there is something inside you that recognized the place before you.... That night, (Esraa) slept thinking about the trip... As for (Um Al-Abd), she did not sleep easily... She kept looking at her granddaughter's bag... and she knew that a ten-year-old girl would carry with her, in a small piece of cloth, something from an eighty-year-old woman, and something from the story of Al-Khalisa, and something from a homeland that has remained present in memory throughout decades of absence... (Esraa) left with crowds of children and youth returning to their homeland... (Esraa) arrived in Palestine... and for the first time saw what her grandmother had described to her all those years... She saw the land that had, until that day, been a tale... and walked on the soil that her grandmother (Um Al-Abd) would conjure up in her memory every time she closed her eyes....

And in the land of Jenin, at the cemetery of the Iraqi army martyrs, (Esraa) sat for a while... She took the piece of cloth out of her bag... opened it... looked at her grandmother's strand of hair for a long time... perhaps she remembered her face... her hands... her voice... and that sentence she did not fully understand when she said it to her: (You will not bury anything... you will return it to its place) (Esraa) dug a small hole... placed the strand in it, then covered it with dirt... And when she wiped her hands, something of the dirt remained stuck to her fingers... She looked at it for a long time... And at that moment, the strand was no longer just a strand of hair... it was a missing woman... and it was a village and a memory of a house... and it was mothers and grandmothers, who carried with them when they left the country, the keys to their homes, pictures of their loved ones, and stories of oranges, lemons, olives, and thyme... And they carried in their chests a fetus of a homeland in which their children were not born... (Esraa) placed her palm on the dirt... she said nothing... but she remembered her grandmother's advice (Let Palestine tell you about itself) And for the first time, perhaps, (Esraa) understood why her grandmother did not say: (I will return)!! She would say: (I hope)!... And she understood that the strand of her grandmother's hair that she carried from Ain al-Hilweh camp wanted to return a part of her grandmother to the place she left one day... As for (Al-Khalisa), it was waiting for her somewhere, in memory and in the land, as if it had never been absent... and it would return to her inevitably... Thus, the strand of hair preceded its owner to it.