The Flame Will Never Die

By Samah Jabr

On one of those days when Israel’s “security” required not only torturing people entering Jerusalem but demanded harassing those leaving it as well, a poignant scene took place in the main street of Beit Hanina. The soldiers had stopped all cars and ordered all the passengers out. Young men were made to stand against the walls to be searched and interrogated, while the rest were forced to continue their way on foot. One cab driver objected to this, hoping to be allowed to drive his passenger to her home: “She is very old and sick,” he pleaded. “She cannot walk all that distance.” But the Israeli soldiers merely shouted at him, and would have hit him had not the elderly passenger painfully dragged herself out of the taxi to save the young driver. I saw that woman wracked with arthritic pain as she struggled to get out of the taxi, and felt my blood rise to a boil when I recognized my own beloved grandmother.

I curbed my anger and hurried to carry her belongings and assist her in walking the mile ahead of us to reach the Al-Ram checkpoint. Once we crossed that, we could take another cab to her home. I’ve never seen grandma as vulnerable as she was on that day. She looked very frail and hurt by the hostility she had experienced.

Sweating and short of breath, she remained silent as we walked very slowly to our destination. I did not say a word, either, but I was burning with rage at what had happened to grandmother—and what is happening on a daily basis to our dear and revered elderly people. I was so ashamed of my helplessness, and of the fact that I could do nothing to prevent her humiliation or alleviate her pain.

Finally she broke the silence for a moment to say: “Their day will come. It happened to the Pharaohs and to all other haughty oppressors of this earth.” As her eyes reddened with tears, I hoped against hope that she would live long enough to see that day come.

My culture places a great value on caring for the elderly. Senior members of the community are considered embodiments of our honor and our blessings. After a lifetime of hard work, after fulfilling all their responsibilities and sacrificing much to provide for their offspring until they can fend for themselves, people finally reach their golden years, the autumn of their lives, when they derive warmth from happy memories, and enjoy a well-earned rest from toil and trouble. This is the way the elderly should be cherished: with love, reverence and the respect of all of those around them.

But this is far from being the case for the elderly of Palestine. Despite great attempts by vigorous adults to guard their families against the prevalent suffering, the occupation’s cruel reality manages to afflict everyone. Our elderly are the most victimized and exploited among the Palestinians, especially those who live with the two unhealed wounds: the Nakba, the catastrophic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, and the Naksa, the fall of the remainder of Palestine under occupation in 1967. Oppression has been thrust on the entire Palestinian nation; for the elderly, it greatly aggravates the ordeal of aging, assaulting their dignity and violating their basic rights. For too many of them, life seems a fate worse than death.

By its nature, aging is a difficult process, both for those who experience it and for those around them. The elderly are fully conscious of the proximity of their own mortality. Some feel that they are unworthy shadows or empty shells of who they once were. They can become extremely sensitive and vulnerable to the least of hardships, and consequently are prone to frequent mood swings and cycles of depression.

But aging in Palestine is characterized by far more regression than the natural decline experienced by the elderly in areas of the world far removed from oppression and occupation. Our seniors suffer an unusual degree of ill-treatment and abuse. Their minimal rights to life and liberty are violated, their hearts are broken by the loss and misery of their nation, and their safety and security are constantly threatened by rampant violence, poverty and Israel’s deliberate destruction of Palestinian life. The aged are the most needy, yet the most deprived, class of our community. They are denied food and medicine during recurrent Israeli curfews. They are prevented from going to the hospital when ill. They are even deprived of the solace of communal prayer at the mosque, or visiting their grandchildren whenever they feel like it.

Recently a job interview took me to al-Eizariyah. There, at Ras Kubsa junction, a wall has been built to cut off the Abu-Deis and al-Eizariyah neighborhoods from the mother city of Jerusalem. The young and fit students of al-Quds University, located in Abu-Deis, find ways around that wall: they jump over fences, or crawl through barbed wire fences, or else go the long way around over the hills. I had to scale a high fence to reach my destination, and I testify that it would be impossible for the elderly, the sick and the weak to do the same thing.

A few years ago I worked with an American student on compiling the oral history of the Nakba. I interviewed elderly refugees who lived through and remembered the experience. Those wrinkled and toothless faces, freckled with age-spots, spoke as if they had lived several lives and died several deaths. Their pain is unending—but so is their faith and pride. I saw the far-away look in their eyes and listened to their deathly appeals. Their eyes were teary with longing when they spoke of “better times,” the days before the Nakba, and showed us the large, rusty, old-fashioned keys, all that they have left of their stolen homes. Their hands trembled with relived terror as they spoke of the expulsion and the war. While translating their words into English for my colleague, I prayed that their hopes would also be translated into reality during the little time they had left to live.

Many of our elderly feel that they have failed their children and grandchildren in bringing us to life in an occupied land. For our part, we young people also feel sad that our elderly have had to live this tragic situation to the end of their days, and we feel we have failed them in not restoring them to freedom and justice during their lifetime. Despite all the disappointments, however, neither they nor we have abandoned the Palestinian cause or lost our commitment to the liberation of our land and people—and that is all that really matters.

David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, said, “We should do whatever it takes to prevent the Palestinians from coming back to their homes. The old will die and the young will forget.” Ben-Gurion was wrong. Several generations might die before liberty is achieved, but the flame will never die and Palestinians will never forget. Despite all difficulties, our elderly have built worthwhile and meaningful lives over ruined dreams, and we will follow in their path. Along with a commitment to freedom and justice, our parents and grandparents have bequeathed us the truth of what happened. We have borne this commitment and this truth, and we shall pass them on to the coming generations. Ours shall not be a legacy of guilt or victimization, but rather a mature sense of responsibility, well-organized action, a sincere will and an effective strategy to end this tyranny.

This is what we Palestinians can do. We will maintain the steady fire that has never been extinguished, that loyal flame that remains in the soul of each Palestinian. Nevertheless, much remains to be done to stem the tide of the occupiers’ abuse of the elderly, and of every Palestinian, in order for human rights to be restored and our dream of true peace to be realized. It might take a while, but, as Grandmother says: “The day will come.”

Samah Jabr is a medical resident in her native city of Jerusalem.