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Chuck Wendig of Terribleminds posted a new flash fiction challenge: go see 50 Completely Unexplainable Stock Photos No One Will Ever Use, pick one, and write a story of no more than 1000 words using that picture as an inspiration.
This is the part of the story where the patience of Carolina, my parents, and my brother really come into play. They waited patiently while I sought out and photographed these species, and even helped me in my endeavor. Carolina has a real interest in cacti as well, and she enjoyed seeing so many species in bloom.
We arrive in Austin on Friday afternoon and took the day to explore the city. While big cities are certainly not my thing, I really enjoyed visiting the Texas State Capitol building. Plumes of Cedar Waxwings danced and buzzed among the many trees that decorated the capitol lawn and the redbuds were just coming into bloom. Inside we marveled at the architecture and artwork, and took in the history of the place.
The story of the Tobusch Fishhook Cactus is an interesting one. In the late 1970s there were only four known populations in two Texas counties. In 1978 a flood hit and wiped out half of these populations in one fell swoop. Fearing that S. brevihamatus ssp. tobuschii would soon be lost forever, the government afforded them protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1979, designated them a Federally Endangered Species. At the time that it was listed it was believed to be restricted to limestone ledges and gravelly stream terraces adjacent to streams in just two Texas Counties.
My grandfather did not have an easy childhood. He was 5 when his siblings and mother died in a cholera epidemic, and 9 when his father died in the First World War. At that point, he had to fend for himself in a rather hostile world, shining and mending shoes while going to school.
He said that in those early years during the war, food was so scarce that no domestic animal was safe, and scavenging in trash dumps was a full-time affair for many children like him. Perhaps what helped him survive was that he was bigger than average for his age. His will was strong, and adversity only made him a more determined and methodical human being.
After the death of his parents, he felt that other family members had abandoned him and so when old enough, he dropped his family name and assumed his father's first name as his last. Thus he became Issa Atallah Atallah. Issa is the Arabic name for Jesus, and Atallah refers to being given by/of God (Allah). However, my grandfather was never religious. In his writing and frequent talks, he occasionally referred to how religion is so easily used to oppress other people.
Issa finished not only high school but attended a prestigious college in Jerusalem and graduated to become one of the first teachers in our village. He was progressive in his thoughts and his teachings, instilling in his students a passion for reading and an intellectual curiosity about people, culture and society. He also developed an interest in language and in just a few years was writing textbooks on Arabic grammar, publishing articles and brochures on history, and collecting proverbs.
His collection of Palestinian proverbs with commentary and explanation is the largest ever published.
He rose to become principal and later superintendent of all schools administered by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), the U.N. body created to help Palestinian refugees expelled by Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949.
His wife Emilia came from a respected family in Nazareth, and devoted her life to her large family of four sons and four daughters. Issa and Emilia had a unique partnership. His books were all dedicated to her as "my life's partner" (Shareekat Hayati). They shared all in life, good and bad, and he always said that he could not have made it without her. This included the bad economic depressions of the early 1930s, the brutal British oppression and Palestinian uprising in the late 1930s, the terrorism started by the Jewish colonialists in the early 1940s and the later Nakba (catastrophe) of expulsion of about two thirds of the Palestinians to make way for establishment of the nascent state of Israel.
I remember him taking me in 1963, when I was 6, to one of the U.N. schools in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. I felt so proud that my grandfather was helping such unfortunate people who had been forced from their villages and towns. However, I was ignorant of who did this to them and why. I do not recall my grandfather or my parents discussing Palestinian politics or history. Perhaps people in the West Bank (then under Jordanian control) were still in denial or perhaps they wanted to shield us from the pain.
Later I would find out that some relatives, even before I was born, had confrontations with the ruling Jordanian royal family. One of my uncles on my paternal side was jailed by the Jordanian government for advocating Palestinian nationalism. My mother delivered my older brother in 1956 during the riots in Bethlehem against Jordanian rule.
Yet, my grandfather Issa was a pacifist, believing in the might and power of only the pen. He never owned a gun and his love and respect extended to all people, and was usually reciprocated.
When I visited with him for that last time in 1994, he was more willing to explain to me what happened as Palestine succumbed to Zionism. He talked about how Zionists slowly took over Palestine in his lifetime, using means ranging from rules and regulations to deceit, outright expulsion and land confiscation. But he made a point to also explain how Christians, Jews and Muslims had lived peacefully in Palestine for centuries. His best friend in high school in Jerusalem was Jewish. Zionism then came about with a racist and apartheid ideology and practice, which caused tremendous suffering to the natives of all religions.
He also had no kind words for governments ranging from Britain to the Arab world, kings, prime ministers and presidents. Yet, he was certain that ultimately all are passing phenomena of corruption, dispossession and destruction. His faith was based on knowing that our people had lived through the oppressive rule of Romans, Persians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Ottomans and the British. Both sides of my family trace back to the ancient Nabateans.
During the 3rd century B.C., the Nabateans built their first four cities in Al-Naqab (today known as the Negev Desert) along the path of the trade route that crossed the desert to what is today Gaza: Avdat, Shivta, Halutza and Nitzana. Their tribes of Saba were the ones who first settled in what later became Beer Saba' (in Arabic, or Beersheva in Hebrew; Beer means well in both languages). Their capital Petra (now in southern Jordan) is a marvel of human construction and engineering.
Thus, Issa would cite the resilience of their lives and a persistence that transcends the power of empires. His faith was also based on his progressive ideals that younger generations learn and grow and will build a better life for all inhabitants of the Holy Land, present and dispossessed. His main and repeated advice to everyone was to break the chains on one's own mind to capture the great potential for progress and coexistence. His words still shape my life.
Chapter Three The Refugees
Before the Israeli occupation, my father was the only one in my family who was concerned with the politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict. After the war, in the presence of the Israeli military occupation, it became an issue for all of us. However, I personally was unaware of the human consequences surrounding the refugees of 1967 beyond those fleeting few days during the war.
My parents were teachers who gave us a good life and tried to insulate their six children from "unpleasant" experiences.
This sheltered life came to a halt, however, one day in 1976 when I was 19, and an undergraduate biology student at Jordan University.
As a class project, I was studying the bats of Jordan. On one of my field trips, I walked from the provincial Jordanian town of Jerash, with its ancient Roman ruins, to the Dibbine forest, where a friend said bats are common.
After a two-hour walk in the sun on a hot day in July, I came upon a group of children playing in a small wadi (dry valley). My first thought was that it was too hot to play outside. My second thought was to ask if they knew of any bat caves in the area. Village children usually do. To my pleasant surprise, two older children said yes and agreed to take me to this cave, and four younger kids decided to join.
After a 20-minute walk, and at the top of a hill, they pointed to a cave with a very small entrance. Crawling inside with a flashlight was difficult, but I was pleased to find a large room deep inside with a bat species that I later identified as new to the known fauna of Jordan. This was very satisfying to me. Dirty, hungry and thirsty, I asked the children if they knew where I could buy a drink.
With typical Arab hospitality, one of the two older children said there was no way he would allow me to do that and insisted that I come to his home. He pointed to the "town" below. I had not even noticed earlier, but now, with the sun and our location at the right angle, the town glittered. It was the Jerash Palestinian refugee camp, its hundreds of tin-sheet roofs reflecting the sun's rays.
The older child, who was perhaps 13, asked a younger one, apparently his brother, to alert his family that a guest was coming. I never saw a child run down a hill this fast before. I was exhausted, and walked slowly with the other children. On the way, we talked not about bats but about them and their lives. When I asked where they were from, their answers were of towns I never heard of, and to this day I feel guilty that I did not know or remember the towns they mentioned. These were Palestinian villages that their parents and grandparents had left in 1948. They talked of the bayyarat (citrus farms) the 'haquras (vegetable gardens), the large stone houses and so many other things that seemed so distant to their present reality. None of them had ever seen these places, but their descriptions were so vivid and real that you knew they were told these things in great detail repeatedly so that they committed them to their thoughts.
The "home" I visited that day was a two-room shack no bigger than 300 square feet. The walls were constructed from bricks with a peeling white covering, and the ceiling was a simple tin sheet. The room I entered was clean but crowded and served as living room and bedroom. A small, sorry-looking coffee table sat in the middle with fruits and snacks, a juice container, a teapot and cups.
My young energetic hosts were apologetic that they did not do more, while I was very worried to have caused them such trouble. We talked more about things such as their school, which was UNRWA-administered, their lives, their dreams and their aspirations.
For a while, I was in their universe and in their world, and I started feeling that I had been so sheltered, and that my life was so shallow. The joy of having succeeded in my mission of getting the bat specimens I needed was replaced with emptiness and confusion.
I asked why they thought they were in this place and not in Palestine. They simply answered, "The Jews wanted our land." The last question that I asked about their lives was the result of my own bewilderment and simplicity of thought: Do you think you will go back to those places in Palestine? An energetic and simplistic affirmative nod of the head accompanied by "inshallah" (God willing) was the answer.
Walking back at sunset, many thoughts crossed my mind, some, perhaps, a bit too much for a 19-year-old college student. As the years went by and the struggle continued between being involved and watching out for my own career and life, this experience slowly made its way into my conscience and forced me to think more about politics, injustice and human rights.
My color Kodachrome slides of the cave, the refugee camp and these children seem like black and white photos much older than they really are. I published the paper on new records of bats from Jordan in 1981 (my first scientific paper) to include the data those children helped me get. Meanwhile, many troubling regrets and questions remained unanswered.
Did I impose on them and disrupt their lives? (But they seemed anxious to tell me their stories.) Should I have offered them money (I had little to spare as a struggling undergraduate student) and would such an offer have been considered an insult? Why didn't I at least write their names or the names of the villages they came from? What do they remember of their experience with me? What happened to them? What will their future be like after these various "peace" moves?
After 25 years, my regrets are mixed with pride and hope, but most of all with gratitude. The challenges of my own life over the past 25 years all seem so mundane compared to that of the refugees.