The Ordeal of Leaving Jaffa (excerpts)
 Memory lane becomes selective, as one probes into its earliest stages. As young as I was, my memory hasturned into short flashes. It is well known that years can elapse from one's memory, but it cannot erase important events that have molded one's life. These events are important, even by a child's own standards. I cannot forget the small street in the al- Manshiyyah section of Jaffa where I was raised, close to Tel-Aviv.

I still remember the high tower with the huge clock at the top and how I, as a child, used to play with other children on the dirty street worrying about being admonished by my mother every time I dirtied my clothes. At the end of the street on the corner was the bar-restaurant owned by my father - the Palestine Cafe. My father had a good command of the English language, which helped bring in the British clientele. Once when I came to the café to bring my father a message from my mother a British soldier gave me a chocolate candy. I remember how he looked in his khaki uniform sitting on the barstool sipping his drink. I was proud and confused as I listened to my father talking to the British soldier in a foreign language.

 

 It was in the late forties, when the Arab- Zionist violence started. I still remember the loud instructions coming from the British mobile loudspeakers on the streets urging people to stay indoors to avoid the dangers of the violence that had been escalating from day to day. One day my father came early from his work with a panicked look on his face.

He took us all into the house and told us that my mother had suddenly gone away for a few days to visit her relatives in another city and that she would be back soon. I was annoyed and objected to her sudden visit since she had promised to cook something special that particular day. I found out later that she had been injured in the market by a bomb. As a child, this incident scared me but it also createdwithin me resentment to the status quo. Why would somebody throw a bomb in the market place? So many people were around and so many were injured. A few were killed. The Arab news later accused the Zionists of the bombing; the Jewish news denied it.

  It was in the early days of April 1948 that things began to get worse. One day my father came to the house in a hurry and told us to get ready because we had to leave. The fighting in Jaffa had already started. Jewish terrorist  rganizations simply killed people on sight. Bombs were exploding everywhere and people were getting killed. The glorious Arab armies were still deciding, however, whether or not to enter Palestine.

Corpses lay at the end of our street surrounded by pools of blood. A civilian truck later came to collect them. I wondered later why there was no ambulance to do the job, unless there were too many corpses to be picked up. My father told my mother that he had seen a truck parading through the streets of Jaffa, filled with dead bodies and a loud speaker warning the unarmed civilians to run away before it was too late. Why were they doing that? I thought the Jews were nice and friendly.

 My father employed some Jews from Yemen to work in his restaurant and they were hard working and friendly; I could not forget the times when we used to tour Tel-Aviv which was very close to Jaffa. We used to enjoy such trips. Why did they ask us to leave our homes? We did nothing to provoke such terrorism. Why couldn't they simply live and let live? There was ample space for everybody.
Why should any of us leave; we had livedtogether before and without any real problems. I remember when I stayed for a few days with my older sister who lived near the Lod airport.

She was married to a communications engineer who was working at the airport and they lived in compound with other airport employees, many of whom were Jews. I used to play with the Jewish children in the compound. They were very nice; they sometimes exchanged chocolate candies for my falafel sandwiches. They did not look different and they even played the same games as us. That was why I could not understand the reason for the conflict with these people. What had happened?

My father was not able to answer any of these questions. He simply wanted us to get ready to leave before it would be too late. He assured us that our departure would only be temporary and we would be back very soon. Now I know that he did not know what he was talking about, but neither did anybody else. Listening to the radio, my father kept reassuring us that we would only be gone for a short time, like a vacation, since the Arab armies would get rid of the Zionist gangs in a few days. There was no reason to trouble ourselves by taking with us all our possessions.

I enjoyed helping my father load the  truck. I did not understand why my parents were sad. My mother sat next to my father in the front truck, while the rest of us climbed on the back and chose a place to sit amid the few things from our house. Thus began our trip, out of Jaffa and into the unknown.

Exodus from Jaffa

As soon as we got out of Jaffa, I was surprised to find that we were not the only family on the road. News of the killings had spread fast and practically everybody was on the road. It was not simply mistaken judgement on my father's part that had made him decide to leave. There was a mass departure. Most of the people took the long walk out of Jaffa since they had no means of transportation. Inhabitants of neighboring villages were all walking in the same direction on the road leading east. We were lucky to own a small pickup truck.

Many of the evacuees carried all kinds of personal possessions. The men carried things on their shoulders, the women on their heads. Some walked fast while others were very slow because  of the old men and women in the group. Fathers carried children on their shoulders. Others rested on the side of the road. You could hear the children crying, maybe because of hunger, thirst or exhaustion from the trip. We stopped many times to pick up older people on the road and drop them off at well-known places close to Ramallah, where they would later be picked up by their relatives.

It was not a very pleasant trip, even for us children, since we had to stop many times on the way to pick up these miserable evacuees. Strangely though, we did not encounter any armed patrols except once when we came across some British soldiers. No questions were asked and no ID's were checked. This was strange because even under normal circumstances the British used to stop people, ask questions, and check IDs. Since there was no Palestinian army, it was the job of the British Mandate troops to defend the country,
but they obviously had instructions not to inter-vene. At that time there was no miltary units on our side only some police force hired by the British to enforce local law and discipline.

We also encountered some irregular armed men who were carrying rifles and moving in the opposite direction. We later found out that these
were volunteers who were joining other groups in order to try to defend the country. Most of the irregulars were not trained for their mission, because the outburst of violence was sudden and people were caught off guard.

 Later on the road we came to a sudden stop. My father rushed to the back of the truck in a hurry and asked us to come down immediately and run to the side of the road and hide behind
some rocks. It was near a little village called Latroun where a Jewish armed group was shooting at Palestinians. We were caught in crossfire.

Two British jeeps full of soldiers came to the scene and started to shoot at both sides while using loud speakers warning the parties to stop shooting. Once the shooting stopped, the British soldiers escorted us past the village. A few hundred yards ahead we were stopped again by some Palestinian irregulars who asked us to help them transport a wounded man and drop him off at a hospital in Ramallah. We loaded him on the back of the truck together with another man who looked after the wounded fighter. I could not forget this scene. The wounded man was bleeding all over the place and screaming with pain. Some of my clothes were used to cushion his bloody head.

Arrival to Ramallah
It was late afternoon that day when we arrived in Ramallah, a city located 16 kilometers north of Jerusalem. After asking for directions we drove to the hospital located at the top of a hill. It had an iron gate and was guarded by a man who was very reluctant to allow us in to unload our wounded guest. He insisted that there was no space for the injured man. After some heated discussion, the guard finally opened the gate and the man was taken to the emergency section for treatment.

My father  helped carry the wounded man into the hospital and I, being very curious, followed them inside. I wish I had not, because I came across one of the most horrifying scenes I had ever witnessed. Huge numbers of wounded people lay everywhere. Bleeding bodies were arranged from head to toeon both sides of the long corridor. The place was filled with screams of pain and agony. Every single room full with wounded of all ages, including children with bloody bandaged heads. Everybody was pleading with us to help them. I could not take it and I ran immediately outside to the truck. I was practically paralyzed with fear and I buried myself under our belongings on the back of the truck. I could not think of anything else except the ghastly scene I had just witnessed.

After that we continued to drive around Ramallah, only stopping to unload some of our passengers who we had picked up on the road. Ifelt bad when we said goodbye to them, since we knew they might have to sleep on the street that night waiting for their relatives. We could not keep them with us on the truck since we did not know where we were going and we did not want   to risk their separation from the rest of their families.

After we finished our humanitarian mission, we continued to drive around the town. I thought it was part of our trip, to take a sight seeing tour of the city. Later I found out that my father was looking for a temporary place to stay, since it was too cold to stay in the pick-up. The two hotels in town were very crowded and expensive. No wonder we saw so many families sitting in the barren hills and under the trees. They had no place else to go. How could they survive the cold weather without a shelter?

People were everywhere on the streets and in the hills. Tens of thousands of refugees. We stopped on one street to look for some temporary shelter in a field full of pine trees. Another family already occupied the space under the tree next to us. They were removing stones and smoothing the ground for their stay. We tried to do the same, but when my father saw that we we e shivering from the cold he changed his mind. We re-loaded our truck and headed back to Ramallah.

At that time Ramallah had a Christian majority, and being Christians, my father thought that he could solicit help from the church. When we arrived at the church we were amazed at the multitude of people crowded in and around the church. When we asked the priest for help and he told us to find a spot, but there was no room inside the church and the churchyard was already occupied. We ended up getting back on the truck to look for another place. Finally we stopped at a garage, and after a discussion with the garage owner, my father came back with a smile on his face. For a small fee the garage owner allowed us to stay indoors, where we occupied one of the corners of the garage. We were not allowed to stay at the garage, however, during the day.

This marked the first day of being a refugee outside our home in Jaffa. That first night, spent at the garage, dimmed my initial excitement about the trip. It was not exactly the kind of picnic I expected. The floor of the garage was cold and hard compared to my bed in Jaffa. Toilet facilities were non-existent. Going around the corner to accommodate nature's call was humiliating for all of us. It was not long before everybody went to sleep listening to my father assuring us in Arabic al-Sabah Rabah, which meant things would be better in the morning - he hoped! Early in the morning before the garage opened for business, we climbed back into our pick-up truck. My father parked the truck near the market, while he went on an errand that took him the entire morning.

We spent the time simply loafing around. At the end of the day my father returned to tell us things would be better. He explained that he had just attended a mass rally, along with king Abdullah and the head of the army, held at the local theater. Very soon we would be on our way home, once the army had liberated Jaffa. It was very good news but how soon was soon? Nobody would even dare to ask, let alone speculate. In the meantime, we had to watch out for ourselves and soon we would be home! Later my father brought us some bread,  white cheese, and a bucket of water for lunch.

That day turned into a routine that lasted weeks, in which we would leave the garage in the morning and spend the time driving around, returning to the garage at the end of the day. Meanwhile more refugees arrived in Ramallah from other areas in Palestine.
Over 800,000 Palestinians found themselves without homes or shelters. Ramallah became very crowded and immediate humanitarian assistance became urgent. The UN sent supplies and set up food centers and camps to accommodate the daily needs of the refugees. UN officials told us that facilities had been established to accommodate all the refugees and we were directed to a UN camp, hurriedly prepared, in order to have a temporary place to stay until we returned home. It was not difficult to find the camp, since at that time roads in and out of
Ramallah were few.

The trauma of the human drama unfolded in front of our eyes when we reached the camp.  Hordes of people, thousands, were all waiting in line. Everywhere people were shouting. Mothers were looking for their sons or daughters, husbands were looking for wives, or mothers and  sisters. Crying children were looking for their parents. Everybody was looking for somebody. Nobody knew what was going on, or what to expect. At the entrance to the camp, people were registered, assigned a tent, issued a special ID card, and given some blankets and cooking
utensils. We had to wait long hours in line before we reached the desk set up in front of the camp. We were now officially refugees