In My Mother's Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home

by Mona Hajjar Halaby

Two years earlier, in July 1946, the south wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British Mandate had its military offices, was blown up by the Irgun, a paramilitary, Zionist organization.

It was a terrible time, the beginning of the “changement,” you know, the change of our lives as Palestinians.

“If your side wins, will you take me in and protect me?” I immediately answered, “But of course, Esther, you don’t need to worry; you’re my friend.”

“Esther, and if your side wins, will you hide me and protect me?” “Oh, no,” she said, looking sheepish, “I couldn’t take the risk of endangering my family.”

They asked me, “When did you convert?” I always have my answer ready, “We never converted. You did. We’re the original Christians. Where was Christ born after all?” And then they smiled sheepishly.

After Daoud was kidnapped at gunpoint from our home, Israeli soldiers and civilians looted it. All of our belongings were stolen—Papa’s leather-bound books, Mama’s paintings, the furniture, even the pots and pans.

The exhibit focused on the richness of life in Palestine before 1948, displaying photos of Western-looking, urban Palestinian life under the British Mandate with automobiles and beautiful villas, intermingled with the beauty of the rugged rural life—its

Whenever I look at this photograph, I feel a sense of nostalgia for what was and isn’t anymore. But what isn’t doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.

For me—a Palestinian in the Diaspora, whose mother has been denied the right to return to her home lost in 1948—my coming back and living in Palestine was a way of reinstating my connection to the land of my mother and grandparents.

“David, I need a place to meet you after you’re gone.” A conversation I never imagined I would ever have with my beloved. He looked at me intently. “Where do you want to meet?” “How about on the moon? And every time I need you, I’ll look for you in the sky and talk to you. How’s that?” He nodded sadly. “You promise?” I asked. “Yes, I do.”

In the war of 1948, many Palestinians had locked their houses and taken their keys with them when they rushed out the door seeking refuge away from the bombing. And the key has since become the Palestinian symbol of return, of unflinching determination,

No one in my family had locked the door. That was why the key was left behind.

“But the house was paid in full when it was sold by Arabs in 1948.” Ah, that convenient story many Israelis hold onto of Arabs selling their houses, when in fact they were confiscated, stolen.