November 2006

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My Grandmother’s House
by Tarek Abuata

Editor’s Note: This address was delivered at the Twenty-First Annual Banquet and Meeting of the ICPJ, November 4, 2006. Tarek Abuata is a native of Bethlehem, Palestine, and the founder of Love Thy Neighbor, an organization which promotes nonviolence in Palestine/Israel . He is currently studying at the Lutheran Theology Seminary in Gettysburg.

What can I say to people who have worked for peace and justice for years if not for decades? How can I pass along my message of nonviolence work in Palestine/Israel?

I invite you on a time journey in Palestine through the eyes of my Grandmother’s House. It is a movie of passing memories through the years. It’s not an American movie, in that it’s a sad story and there is no happy ending, not yet at least, and not without your help.

At times while writing about my grandmother, I couldn’t stop crying, and at times I was so wound up on the inside full of anger that I had to stop. However, I tried my hardest to write a simple message from the heart. Is this a one‑sided story? It absolutely is. It is MY story; how can it not be one‑sided? Is this a one sided story of hate and anger? I have prayed that it is not.

My grandmother’s home: 1987 . I am 9 years old.

My grandmother’s house sits right next to the entrance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It is very close to Rachel’s Tomb, where the Biblical Matriarch, Jacob’s wife, had died while giving birth to Benjamin. It was a major thoroughfare as many Israeli tourists going to Bethlehem to visit Rachel’s Tomb are passing by grandmother’s house, and many Palestinian tourists going to Jerusalem are also doing the same. My father and uncle saw the opportunity for a grocery store, and they opened one right underneath her house, on the first story.

Fridays were reserved for lunch at Grandma’s house. It worked out perfectly for my family to gather in one place as my father was already there, working at the Family Market.

My mother and the three kids (brother, sister, and I) would go to her house for my mom to help her in cleaning in the morning. It was more fun for the three of us (the kids) to go to the grocery store downstairs, which we usually did. We would sneak around eating some chocolates and nuts until we were told to go to our grandmother and mother upstairs.

By that time, both of them would have started cooking in the kitchen and we could smell the food on our way up the stairs. From the smell we would guess, is it chicken stuffed with rice, Mah’shi and wara’ dawali (stuffed zucchini and Dolmas), Marma’oon (Kus Kus), or is it my grandmother’s famous dish, her warm delicious heart filling cheese spaghetti. It was a delight to the taste buds of all the workers in my father and uncle’s grocery store, who would at times gather with us for lunch.

I always looked forward to the night as I sometimes got to spend it in the same room as my aunt, where we would chat for a bit, and then she would put me to sleep. I remember that we had to keep the window and shutter shut as not to hear the heavy noise of the street full of traffic, and as not to see the street lights outside.

My grandmother’s home: 1989 . I am 12 years old.

This is two years after the Palestinian Uprising, the Intifada. There is a checkpoint set up about half a mile from her house. The checkpoint is to prevent Palestinians from reaching Jerusalem, and it also worked to cut off traffic from Israel into Bethlehem.

Our family business crashed, as there were few tourists going in and out of Bethlehem. It was a very sad year for my family, as on November 1st of that year, we left Bethlehem for good, and we left many empty places at my grandmother’s table. Little did I know that it would be 12 years later before I was to sit at my grandmother’s table again.

My grandmother’s home: 2002. I am 24 years old.

I arrived in Bethlehem through a more fortified checkpoint than when my family had left 12 years ago. The line of cars is endless as all Palestinian cars have to go through a search procedure, and the line of Palestinians trying to go from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to visit family, to go to the hospitals, to go and pray, was endless.

Despite the checkpoint hassle and the interrogation of the soldiers, I was excited, walking from the checkpoint to my grandmother’s house.

Once I got there, things looked eerily similar to when I had left them 12 years earlier. The same sad situation had been repeated all over again.

My uncle had re-opened the “Family Market” into a restaurant called “Balloons,” serving pizza and drinks, but with the second Intifada, he also had to shut down. Some visible remains of the restaurant, like the red awning and some chairs, were still outside. The sign on the front was replaced from “Family Market” to “Balloons,” but it had the same rust and brokenness as the Family Market sign had 12 years earlier. That was just the beginning of my visit to my grandmother’s house.

As the days went on, I heard some horror stories from her and I saw some for myself.

She told me of the time when some soldiers came to her house, almost knocked the door down because they wanted to go to the roof of the house, put a machine gun against her back and made her climb up the stairs.

She told me of the time when an 18 year old kid soldier screamed at her when she was standing in front of her own house yelling at her, “Get the hell upstairs, you have no business standing here.”

She told me of the soldiers pissing on the street outside her home

She told me of the times when the soldiers got a hold of my uncle coming home from work, and she had to go out in her nightgown. She is 80 years old.

I saw her every night for a month go stand at the window when my uncle came home to make sure that he was not being harassed by the soldiers on the streets.

I have also experienced the occupation in Bethlehem for myself.

The bedroom where I used to spend the night as a kid is also where I stayed while in Bethlehem. I also had to keep the shutters closed so as not to see the lights, but this time it was the lights of the army jeeps, and I had to keep the windows closed so as not to hear the soldiers screaming and harassing young Palestinian men throughout the night, which I could see when peeking in between the shutters.

For a couple of nights while in Bethlehem, we had to stay at home under curfew for several hours. Those two days were days of celebration of Rachel’s Anniversary for many Jews and Israelis. We were placed under full curfew in our own neighborhood. I will never forget that day as I was peeking from her window to see what was happening. Settler buses lit with colorful lights passed on the street in front of our house on their way to Rachel’s Tomb; they were in full celebration mode, and they had closed us off with a jeep that came by and announced, “You animals, you are now under curfew until further notice.” “You dogs, you are now under curfew.”

My grandmother and I would sit and chat and watch TV for hours; we had nothing else to do. We couldn’t even go across the street to buy food until we were told that we had an hour to do so, and then we had to go back home.

Besides all the bad times, which while reflecting on them have actually been good times, we did go out whenever I was there, and my favorite memories of my grandmother are when she would grab my arm when walking to the taxi. Even though she was able to walk fine by herself, she wanted to show off to people around her how much I cared for her, and how much attention she was getting from me.

My grandmother’s home: December, 2005. I am 27 years old.

I went back to Bethlehem for the first ever nonviolence conference. My grandmother’s neighborhood is a ghost town. Down the road from her is the 30 foot wall with sniper towers standing right in the middle of the street where the cars used to come in and out to go to my father’s Family Market. The neighborhood is completely cut off from Jerusalem except for a hole in the wall, a gate which fully shuts down at night. A hole in the wall is the only entrance to Bethlehem. The Wall encircles her whole house from the back, and it has confiscated most of the family lands.

My grandmother: 2006. I haven’t yet seen her neighborhood, and I do not want to call it a home anymore. Today I am 28 years old.

My grandmother had a stroke in August of this year. Leila is now sick and suffering. She can’t speak anymore. I hear that she sits in a chair all day, and all she can say is yes and no. She recognizes her family sometimes, but at other times, she doesn’t. She goes in and out of consciousness, and she goes in and out of frustration.

To me, she has become a mirror reflecting the sad tragedy of her neighborhood. She has also become a mirror reflecting my own anger that at times I don’t want to face. I am very afraid of seeing her. I am afraid of the deep emotions that will come up for me. I tell myself, she doesn’t need to suffer more than what she has already suffered. It’s depressing.

Leila used to have a favorite quote that she had read on the entrance to a cemetery in Santiago, Chile, where she had lived some of her life before getting married. The quote read, “If you are looking for those who are dead, don’t come in, but go out and search for them amongst you, for those who are truly dead, are the dead in spirit living all around you.”

Unfortunately, this is how most of us live. While my grandmother has become incapacitated physically from a stroke, many of us have incapacitated ourselves spiritually with fear and anger. I used to be one of those people, and I have been working through my feelings since 2002.

Some of the people I’ve run across like to completely avoid the topic of Palestine/Israel, afraid of what might come up for them. They like to hope that it would simply go away. I also wish that my grandmother’s whole situation would just go away, or that her house can be a home again. I wish that I didn’t have to face my own fears and anger. I know deep in my heart, however, that avoidance and ignorance are what engender more anger and more hatred, and in the process, more violence. Facing the situation is the way to heal. Educating ourselves and others about Palestine/Israel is also the way to heal the Holy Land.

You are my community and I need your help, the Palestinians and Israelis need your help. How have I been helping the Palestinians and supporting their nonviolence efforts? Along with a few friends, I started Love Thy Neighbor. It is a way of letting our churches, our families, our people know of what’s going on in Palestine/Israel. It is not as difficult to understand as people make it out to be. Yes, it’s complicated, but not any more complicated than Apartheid was in South Africa, than the Berlin Wall, than racial segregation in this country that some of you have witnessed, and they all ended. They all ended with people deciding that they had to end. They all ended after the word spread and education was let loose.

I ask you to help me in writing a happy ending to my story for it is not yet finished. I refuse to let it finish like this. I would like an American ending. My grandmother needs the help of all of those around her, I need her help and she needs my help, I need your help and the Palestinians need your help. We all need each other’s help in fighting evil.

In the US, we need to let people know what’s going on, and in Palestine we need to continue to nourish the nonviolence movement in the region. We need to continue educating our children in the ways of nonviolence. We need to spread our educational message to our churches; we need to tell the truth about Palestine/Israel; we need to believe.

I plan to go and see my grandmother next July. I have to face my own fears, my own hatred, my own anger, and I want you to do the same about Palestine/Israel in your own congregations because my story is one story among many and my grandmother’s home is one Palestinian home among many.

When I see my grandmother in July, I want to tell her, Grandma, the quote that belongs to my peace and nonviolence community reads: “If you are searching for those who are dead, don’t come into our community, but go out and look for them somewhere else for we are all alive.” We are alive with the spirit of our peace ancestors, and our mission is alive with the direction and power of God. We are a living breathing community lighting the way in the darkness.

To contact Love Thy Neighbor, call 301-915-7262, e-mail lovetn@gmail.com, or visit www.ltneighbor.com.

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Last updated December 5, 2006

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