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  • Making Refugees
  • Nadia Latif (bio)

I was at the house of my dear friend Haji T. I had just finished recording a reluctantly given interview by one of her friends, whom she had persuaded to help me “succeed in my studies,” when one of her relatives, Imm H., dropped in for a visit.

Haji T.: Good you are here. You must tell her about how you fled Palestine.

Nadia: It’s alright. Perhaps the Haji is tired. Let’s have the coffee [instead].

Haji T.: No. No. She remembers everything. She is older than us. She was already married. She can tell you everything. Tell her.

Haji T. has a strong personality. In the neighborhood she is known as “al-Thabit” (the Officer). Imm H. was persuaded. [End Page 253]

Imm H.: We were farmers. We planted wheat and harvested it and ground it into flour. We baked bread from it like the bread you buy in the market now. When we left Palestine, we left with only the clothes we were wearing. We weren’t able to bring anything with us. We left with our clothes. We fled from the Jews to a village. We stayed there for three months. This village was in the mountains, so they said that the Jews wouldn’t reach it. We spent three months there. One day the Jews came at night. You know Tareeq al-Matar?1 They were as close to where we were as Tareeq al-Matar. We begged them to allow us to leave. We walked in the mountains. My mother was with us. She was still strong, so she went and bought a big sack of wheat and a can of olive oil. We had a mattress. The people with whom we had stayed in the village had given us a mattress and a pillow and a blanket. How to carry all this stuff? So we hired a camel.

We walked. We started walking at fajjar and kept walking till we reached Lebanon. It was maghrib. We left Palestine in the morning, and at sunset we reached the South. Not here [Beirut]. We reached a village in the South called Be’eza. It was a Druze village, and it had a river. It’s still there because the Druze are still the same. We slept under the olive trees. It was night, and there was nowhere to go, and the owner of the camel wanted to return because he was worried about his family. He said to us, “The Jews might come and take away my family.” So he left us under the olive trees. But we weren’t the only ones. There were many families there. So he left us and returned to Palestine, and we were in Lebanese territory. We wanted to sleep, but it wasn’t possible. We had nothing so we had to sleep on the ground. Then at night shooting started, and it sounded close. Where could we escape to? We were terrified. After sunrise the Jews would leave, but they usually attacked during the night. So my husband went and brought a camel for us and our friend. He brought two camels. We put our stuff on the camels and went on. But I don’t think that you know the name of the village.

Nadia: It’s alright if I don’t. But you were still in the South?

Imm H.: Yes. We were still in the South, so we went to another village. I was able to continue my journey because they brought us from Be’eza to Suhmata. No. Not Suhmata. We came to Dair. So the owner of the camel said, [End Page 254] “I can’t continue this journey.” The distance we had covered was like from here [Bourj el-Barajneh camp] to Beirut. So as I said before this man left us under the olive and fig trees. Not only us but there were many people with us. Then he returned to Palestine. So my husband and my neighbor went to find someone who could show us the way to the South. They went to a village called Fastoota. It...

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