Miral

Miral

RULA JEBREAL
is an award-winning journalist who specializes in foreign affairs and immigration rights issues. She was born in Haifa, studied and worked in Italy as an anchor woman for many years, and now makes her home in New York.

 

JOHN CULLEN
is the translator of more than fifteen books from French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

T
hanks to my family for giving me the confidence to face the dark side of our memory. Thanks to Julian for going back there with me and helping me to connect my past with my future. I'd also like to thank Sophie and Jerome Seydoux for caring so much and nurturing each step of this journey. Thanks to Bianca Turetsky for her keen ear and kind manner. Thanks to Thomas and Elaine Colchie, my agents and my friends. A special thanks to Hind Husseini and my father, Othman Jebreal, whose humanity and love of education saved my life and put me on the road.

PART ONE
:
Hind

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

 

PART TWO
:
Nadia

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

 

PART THREE
:
Fatima

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

 

PART FOUR
:
Miral

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

 

PART FIVE
:
Hani

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

A
t dawn on September 13, 1994, a chill ran through the Arab Quarter of East Jerusalem, as word of Hind Husseini's death spread from house to house even before Radio Jerusalem broadcast the news. That morning, the rattling sounds that usually accompanied preparations in the souk moved from the narrow lanes and alleyways of the Old City to the edge of Saladin Street, along which the funeral procession would pass. Many shopkeepers kept their rolling shutters down and stood with folded arms in front of their places of business. The haggling and bargaining over goods had stopped as soon as word spread that the coffin was leaving Dar El-Tifel orphanage, the place, nestled at the foot of the Mount of Olives and facing the Old City, to which Hind had dedicated her life and that, ever since its founding in 1948, had become a symbol of hope for Palestine's present and future.

In the Arab Quarter, Palestinian flags hung from the windows of the houses, and those residents who had not gone down into the street stood on balconies, throwing handfuls of salt, rice, or flowers onto the coffin as it passed by. Everyone came out to honor a woman who had lived with courage and humility. Men had tears in
their eyes. A feeling of deep dismay settled over Jerusalem, a great sense of loss, as if one of its gates had suddenly been shut forever.

 

Hind Husseini was born in the Holy City of Jerusalem in 1916, when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire. She spent the first two years of her life in Istanbul, where her father was a judge. Her father died a few months before the fall of the empire, on the tail end of its defeat in World War I. Her mother brought the family back to Jerusalem. At the time, Palestine was making the transition from Turkish rule to its new status under the British Mandate, which lasted until the birth of the State of Israel in 1948.

Hind, her mother, and her five brothers moved into a house in the Armenian Quarter that had been in the possession of the Husseini family for centuries. Her mother and father had lived in the spacious five-bedroom dwelling after they were married, and its living room was still furnished with the same colored rugs and pillows that Hind's mother had embroidered in her neighboring village. In the center of the room, a hookah sat on a typical Arab table, a wide silver tray mounted on dark wooden legs.

Upon their return to Jerusalem, Hind's mother took charge of the farmlands and livestock she had inherited from her husband and his family, in the outlying district of Sheikh Jarrah. Early each morning, she would make her way to the farms to oversee the various workers. Her companion on those daily excursions was her oldest son, Kemal, whom she wished to teach the family businesses so she could turn them over to him one day. Early in the after noon, mother and son would return to the Old City, stopping along the way at the family's principal residence, Hind's grandfather's house, located a short distance outside the city walls. Hind would be playing there with her brothers and cousins, and they would all remain there until dusk, when they would return home. When relatives asked Hind's mother why they made this daily migration, she would unhesitatingly reply, “My husband knew that if anything were to happen to him, we would go back to our house in Jerusalem, so his spirit would know where to find us.”

Hind's mother loved that man for most of her life, having married him at the age of fourteen, in accordance with a matrimonial agreement arranged by their families. Since she was of noble birth and her future husband belonged to a clan whose members occupied the most prominent civil and religious posts in the city—from governor to mayor to mufti—the wedding ceremony turned out to be quite a spectacle. The bride arrived on a white horse, a purebred Arabian, followed by her entire family. She brought as dowry three tracts of land and two houses, while the groom, in keeping with an ancient Arab custom, gave her a copper chest lined with red velvet overflowing with gold jewelry especially fashioned for the occasion: bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and rings. Despite their beauty, Hind's mother rarely wore her gold ornaments, for she considered displays of wealth vulgar. The celebration took place in the house of the groom's family, where the women had prepared grilled lamb spiced with cardamom and cinnamon; basmati rice with pine nuts and raisins; squash, carrots, and leeks sautéed with onions and nutmeg; yogurt; and various trays filled with mixed fruits. The dancing began toward evening and didn't end until long past midnight, when the parents of the bride and groom accompanied them to their new home in the Armenian Quarter. The young couple's relatives waited outside the house until the hills of Jerusalem turned pale pink with the first light of dawn. Only then did the groom reappear to present proof that his marriage had been consummated and his bride was truely a virgin.

A certain tranquility still reigned in the Jerusalem in which Hind took her first steps. Even though she was a Muslim, as a child she spent every Christmas Eve at the American Colony Hotel, which was once the palace of a Turkish pasha. Every year its owner, Bertha Spafford, a rich and eccentric American, threw a Christmas party in the hotel for the children of the quarter, who were served a turkey dinner with bread and raisin stuffing, followed by dessert and the distribution of presents. In a corner of the main lobby stood a Christmas tree, a gift from Hind's mother, who with the help of her sons had dug it up from her property. At the end of the festivities, the children would follow Bertha outside to witness the transplanting of the tree to the hotel grounds, “because,” as Bertha would tell her young guests, “if we let the tree die, then the Christmas party will have served no useful purpose.” Following dinner it was customary to sing Christmas carols in Arabic, after which the Christians would attend midnight Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Bertha and Hind's mother eventually established a small infirmary for the farmers who worked the Husseini lands. One day when a newborn was abandoned at the infirmary door, the two women, helped by a volunteer physician, immediately took the baby in and cared for it until they found a farmer and his family who were willing to adopt it.

Hind and her brothers received an excellent education. Their mother expected them to spend at least a couple of hours each day reading. Their books of choice included some novels in English, acquired with Bertha's help. Hind's mother was particularly insistent on her daughter's instruction, because, as she said, education elevated a woman's social status. Hind was sent to Women's College in Jerusalem, while her brothers, like young men from other important Palestinian families—Husseinis, Nashashibis, Dijanis—completed their studies at prestigious universities in Damascus or Cairo.

Hind was privileged to spend her adolescence in one of the most fascinating cities in the world. Although some signs of the disasters to come were already evident, in those days Jerusalem was still a place where children could grow up in peace. Hind's mother would have liked to marry her off in grand style to one of her cousins, but Hind was intent on continuing her studies in Damascus. The Arab revolt against the British Mandate in 1936 interrupted both the mother's projects and the daughter's dreams.

 

To the two women who washed the body before it was wrapped in a shroud—so that the deceased would stand before God perfectly pure, as prescribed in the Koran—the features of Hind's face seemed as serene as when she was alive, unblemished by the excruciating agony that had afflicted her in her final hours.

Hind had awakened the previous morning drenched in sweat, and although she tried to hide the pain her illness was causing her, her daughter Miriam decided she should go to the Hadassah Hospital, where the physicians who had her in their care were based. In the end, Hind allowed herself to be persuaded, but she asked first to pass by Dar El-Tifel. She wanted a last look at the grounds of her beloved school.

At that time of year, the garden was no longer graced by the marvelous blossoms that spread their strong perfume to the surrounding lanes and courtyards at the beginning of summer. That fragrance accompanied Hind's happiest memories, evoking the flowering season, when sunlight pours down on the hills of Jerusalem so intensely that the houses blend with the sky.

Hind remembered how bare the spot had been before the school was established, without the rose garden, the olive trees, the lemon trees, the palms, the jasmine, the pomegranates, the grapefruit, the magnolia, the figtrees, the little grapevine, the cinnamon and henna trees, without the mint, the sage, and the wild rosemary. And without the little fountain she had built in the center of the courtyard, exactly like the one her family had when they lived in the Armenian Quarter. Her thoughts dwelled on the memory of that place as it once was—before the fragrances, the bright colors, and the laughter of little girls as they chased a ball on the playground, safe from the tragedies that were taking place outside its walls.

Miriam, the school's vice-principal, a robust woman of imposing stature—broad shouldered and nearly six feet tall—raised Hind to a sitting position in the backseat of the car. Consumed by her disease, Hind had grown extremely thin, and her voice was faint. “When you came to Dar El-Tifel, I was the one who took you in my arms,” Hind said, her eyes smiling as they always did. At the age of one and a half, Miriam had lost both her parents: her father, a fedayee, had fallen in battle, while her mother had been killed in an ambush. The imam of the mosque in the child's village had brought her to the school. She was undernourished and had pneumonia. Hind received her and put her in the care of the school physician, her cousin Amir. Miriam grew up inside the walls of Dar El-Tifel and decided to remain there even after she graduated. Her affection for Hind was that of a daughter for her mother, and during the long months of Hind's illness Miriam looked after Hind with loving care, pushing her in her wheelchair around the school grounds for several hours each day and, when needed, lifting her up in her own strong arms. She washed her, too.

As the automobile passed the school gate, Miriam watched Hind turn to cast a final glance at the Mount of Olives, which was vibrant with silvery reflections as its trees shook in the first fall breezes.

Hind saw her Jerusalem with different eyes now, saw it rooted in soil drenched with innocent blood, and under that soil were its tunnels dug under synagogues, crypts, and secret passages. Simultaneously, however, Jerusalem reached upward, its minarets and steeples jutting into the sky. She thought that contradiction mirrored the history of this vexed land, of the tragic destiny that had made it at once the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of hell. As the car left the Old City behind, she was dazzled for an instant by the light reflecting off the houses built of gleaming white stone, as if to signify hope and peace, despite everything, despite everybody.

Hind thought back to the most difficult moments of her life, which were associated with those that were most tragic for her people: the massacre at Deir Yassin, Black September in Jordan, and then the outbreak of the war in Lebanon. She thought of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Each of those moments had signaled another defeat, the reenactment of an unchanging script in which the Palestinian people invariably ended up losing.

Gazing out the car window, Hind landed on a thought that was never very far from her mind: the Palestinians of Jerusalem were obliged to fight on two fronts, one internal and one external—mostly against themselves, first, to avoid falling into an absurd spiral of violence that would surely lead to their defeat; and then against unscrupulous political forces ready to serve up their land on a silver platter, like an exchangeable commodity.

She thought about the First Intifada, about all her efforts to keep Dar El-Tifel's schoolgirls away from the demonstrations, and about how she had succeeded in saving a few lives. Many well-to-do Palestinians had left the country, hoping to make new lives somewhere else; Hind, on the other hand, had decided to stay and to do something for her people. More than a conscious decision, it had been her destiny, which she fulfilled without wavering. In her vocabulary, the word
privilege
had a unique significance: it meant the condition of being able to help others. Although she never married, she was, as she often laughingly told her girls, “the woman with the most daughters in all Jerusalem.” Indeed in 1948, not long after her thirtieth birthday, when Hind was an elegant open-minded young woman, a poet had compared her to Jerusalem, “the bride of the world.” As the car pulled up in front of the hospital, she wondered, “How will they manage without me?”

After completing her studies, Hind taught in the Muslim Girls' School in Jerusalem. Later she founded, with several colleagues, an organization dedicated to combating illiteracy in her country. As one of the group's most active members, she had traveled the length and breadth of Palestine, promoting the opening of new schools in even the most remote villages. She would drive to refugee camps in a large school bus and come back with children whose mothers, poor women unable to provide their offspring with an education, were more than happy to entrust them to her. At the time, Hind was convinced that the salvation of the Palestinian people would depend on the cultural liberation of its youth. The organization she helped to establish put out a magazine whose goal was to make people aware of the conditions facing the most disadvantaged children.

After the end of World War II, just when the world seemed to have found peace again, Palestine began its descent into a nightmare. It was as if questions unresolved elsewhere had suddenly exploded in its midst, like a fatal firestorm. This time the walls of the Old City, an ancient symbol of security, were unable to defend its inhabitants, because the war was already inside.

All her life, Hind had nourished the conviction that religion was not the sole or even the main cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was mostly based, as she saw it, on politics. But her voice was like a whisper compared to the incessant din of weapons spreading death and pain in its name.