Nakba #28 - Fatima Abu Sultan

1948 “When the Zionists attacked the villages around Hamama, people fled to our village. Then our village was attacked as well. The attack came from the main road. Our men went out toward the road, but they only had old weapons to defend us with. My brother was shot in the arm. Then the Zionists began bombing us with airplanes. We left our house. We carried a little food and water with us. My parents took us to the coast to seek safety. There, they helped remove the bullet from my brother’s arm. When we reached the beach, my parents covered me and my siblings with blankets. Then they piled sand on top of the blankets so the airplanes wouldn’t spot us. In the morning, we returned to our house. This went on—back and forth—for several days. We hid wheat and corn for the day when we could return. Gradually, people began leaving the area. We went to al-Jura and stayed there for two days with a friend of my father. When we returned to Hamama, the village was completely deserted—everyone had fled. All the surrounding villages had been occupied by Zionist forces. The roads to the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were closed. The only road open to us was southward, toward the Gaza Strip. So we left. We children rode on donkeys; our parents walked on foot. They were barefoot. My mother carried a bundle of clothes on her head. After a while I became very thirsty and started crying: ‘I want water, I want water!’ When we passed a village, my father knocked on a door and I was given water. The villagers gave us food as well. We walked during the day and slept on the ground at night. Sometimes we saw the lights of the Zionist forces at night. Then we had to stay silent so they wouldn’t discover us and kill us. Eventually we reached Jabalia, in the Gaza Strip. The distance was maybe twenty kilometers. My uncle knew someone there, and we were allowed to sleep at their place for one night. We were supposed to continue to Rafah, where he had other friends. Meanwhile, my father, my uncle, and my uncle’s wife rented seven camels. Together with the camel owner, they returned to Hamama and filled large sacks with the wheat and corn we had hidden. They rested before setting off toward Rafah with the fully loaded camels. They traveled at night and had to be silent to avoid being discovered. My uncle’s wife was so sleepy that she had to hold onto the camel’s tail to keep from falling asleep. The camel owner hurried one of the camels along and tried to whip the animal, but missed and hit my uncle’s wife instead. She lost several teeth and began bleeding from her mouth. There was an argument with the camel owner, who blamed others. Eventually we were reunited in Rafah. There we lived a life of humiliation. We were nothing. We had no clothes, no mattresses, no blankets. We had no money. We had nothing. It was a very, very, very hard life.” 1967 “I sent the children to my brother-in-law. Our oldest child showed the way with a flashlight. There was an Israeli military camp nearby, and they noticed the light from the flashlight. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was Israeli soldiers. They ordered me to bring all the flashlights in the house. I answered that we didn’t have any flashlights. ‘You have twenty-four hours to evacuate the house,’ an Israeli soldier said. ‘Why? What have I done?’ I received no answer. The soldiers left and came back the next day. They explained that our house would be demolished and that we would be sent to al-Arish, in Egypt. ‘You demolished our house in Hamama in 1948. Are you going to do the same thing to this house?’ No answer. We were given twenty-four hours to empty our home. Then they demolished it. It had four rooms. There were two doors—one from the courtyard and one facing the sea.”