The obligation to remember…

While I was talking to the 1rst generation of women refugees, listening to their stories and trying to cheer them up, my little new friends - 3rd and 4th generation -were standing around us, listening religiously to the stories told by the elders. While other children grew up listening to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty fairy tales, the unique tale these kids knew was named “Palestine”. The tale of a beautiful land torn down by endless battles between the “cousins”, metaphor often used in the region to describe the conflicts between Jews and Arabs…

“It is the obligation to remember” affirmed one of the women “Those kids need to know who they are and where they come from, it is the only way justice could someday be done to us”.

The fact that Palestinian refugees used a similar concept - "the obligation to remember" - as Jewish Holocaust survivors did to describe the sad episodes of their respective history is quite interesting. The Nakbah (forced exile of 700 000 Palestinians from their land) and the Shoah (extermination of around 5 million Jews in European death camps) are 2 different historical realities but they seem to have strongly shaped the collective memory of the 2 people the exact same way.

I didn’t want to get into politics… I had a lifetime to do that but a few hours only to spend with an absolutely adorable group of kids and to try to have them forget their burdensome status of eternal refugees for a little while.

I sat with them in circle nearby the health centre and started asking each one of them what s/he wanted to be in the future. Rama, a cute little blondie wanted to become a doctor, “to heal her grandmother” she said. M’hammad wanted to be a doctor too, but he specified that he wanted to be a paediatrician, as “old people are not nice”. My emergency shifts at the Paediatric hospital were none of my best memories as a Medical Intern but I found his spontaneity so cute! Yunis, Rama’s cousin, wanted to be a teacher, Elias a pharmacist, to “give free drugs to all the inhabitants of the camp”. Cute boy! Maissa wanted to be a teacher too, but a sports’ teacher as she imagined it would be the only career that wouldn’t make her spend her time in a classroom. Smart girly! I told them a bit about my cheeky monkey years, my hanky pankies at school,my passion for "Captain Majeed", famous cartoons'character, my flamenco dance lessons...

Time to leave again…and again, I didn’t want to leave.

Rama took my hand “Don’t go! Stay with us!”.
Habibtiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
I really wished I could…

After a few more pictures, they all threw their arms around me, repeating “Don’t go! Don’t go!”

“Study well kids! And be good! You are the hope of your homeland Palestine”

It’s the only thing that came to my mind while kissing them goodbye. I turned my back and left, as they started singing Fairuz famous goodbye song “Zuruni kole sana mara, Haram tensouni” (Visit us every year that passes, don’t forget us”)

How could I forget them?

I didn’t want to look back…and as we were leaving El Husseiniah at the end of the day, the tears that I have been holding back rolled down my cheeks.

The Nakbeh wasn’t anymore a cold historical fact. It had a face now.
The face of the old men who offered us coffee, of the women who shared with us their stories and of hundred of children like Rama, Maissa, Mhammad, Yunis and Elias who were cultivating hope…and waiting…