The House in the Valley
Memory can be a strange thing, be it the act of forgetting or the act of remembering. When it comes to difficult memories, our brains can go either way: they either protect us by forgetting an entire event, or they protect us by remembering its every detail. Often, even when we cannot verbalise a difficult memory, it impacts our bodies and minds in ways that can take years if not decades to untangle.
I tend to over-remember. My memories also begin at an unusually young age: just before my second birthday, after my parents and I moved from London to Palestine in 1993, encouraged by the small glimmer of hope that accompanied the Oslo Accords and drove some Palestinian families to return from abroad.
I have no memories at all of life in London, and yet I have many memories of our first weeks in Palestine. I suppose the move was such a seismic shift in circumstance that my brain jolted itself into consciousness, knowing instinctively that hyper-alertness was a prerequisite for adaption.
The majority of these early memories take place in and around the home of my grandparents, a house in the valley of a village called Surda, a short drive from the West Bank city of Ramallah. My grandparents had arrived there a few years earlier, following some of their children who had made their way from Gaza to Ramallah’s environs. Ramallah was a big city in the making, with job opportunities, new industries, and a nearby university. As a result, there had been a steady influx of Palestinians from smaller towns.
Little did our family know that in ten years, Israel would halt movement between Gaza and the West Bank, locking us in our respective locations, creating a Gaza and a West Bank branch - of our family and countless others. This remains the case today, and the two branches of the family haven’t seen one another for twenty-four years. But that’s a story for another time.
In Surda, my grandparents rented the ground floor of an old Palestinian house, which included a large garden. With the exception of their early days in the refugee camp in the late 1940s, I don’t think my grandparents ever lived in a house without a garden.
They took care of a few different trees in Surda - olive, citrus and apricot, from what I remember. There were also herbs, mainly parsley and mint. When my grandmother - Teta - wanted to make mint tea, she would ask one of the children to pick a handful of leaves from the garden.
Teta seemed to be in great harmony with the land around her. She took from it, but with a selfless moderation; never more than the land was able to give, and only to give to those around her. My grandfather - Sido - was in harmony with the land too, though he played a different role, perhaps a slightly rougher one. He watered the plants and kept the earth underneath them healthy, but he also battled snakes and scorpions, constantly delineating the boundaries between their living space and ours.
In this, he was aided by a magnificent, ancient gift: the prickly pear cactus, known as sabr in Arabic. For centuries, indigenous Palestinians had a pact with sabr. We would seek out the plant, take its flowers, and plant its seeds along the boundaries of our communities. In time, sabr would grow in dense clusters, side by side, forming a fence of sorts; impenetrable, keeping out wildlife without doing it harm.
By 1948, when half of Palestine’s indigenous population was forcibly displaced to make way for the State of Israel, sabr encircled most of our communities. It was unable to protect us from the outsiders, but it never forgot its pact with us.
The plant is resilient and stubborn - just like us. Its roots run deep and it is almost impossible to eradicate - just like us. For decades, it has been a thorn in the eye of those who live on stolen land; regrowing, forever redrawing the outlines of towns and roads that it was once tasked to protect.
Sabr has a ruthless sense of humour - just like us. And sabr remembers, regardless of how difficult the memory is.
Sabr is also the Arabic word for perseverance, endurance, and patience. Etymologically and physically, the cactus speaks to our past, present and future in ways it will never speak to outsiders.
What colonisers have never understood is that stolen land will always find ways to remind them of their original sin, even if its indigenous people are long gone.
The house in the valley is where my parents and I lived for the first months of our life in Palestine. It was a spacious house, or at least it seemed so to me at the time. It had a living space, a large kitchen and at least three bedrooms, one of which became ours. We shared one large bathroom that I remember vividly because of one structure: a bidet. I had never seen one before, and I remember staring at it for the first time, fascinated by what I thought was a bonus toilet. My mother always walked around the bidet in a wide circle and warned me to stay away from it.
The lush garden that wrapped around the house became my playground. One of my uncles had come over from Gaza temporarily with his wife and two children, Majd and Mahmoud, both of whom were close to my age. Majd had short and curly brown hair and sharp eyebrows, just like me. It was the first time I remember recognising my own features in another child.
We played in the garden freely despite its occasional hazards. One time, for example, we came across a snake nest underneath one of the trees we wanted to climb. We knew to go inside and fetch Sido, who would handle the danger as we looked on curiously from a distance. (In case you’re wondering: he smacked the snake nest a few times with his plastic slipper and declared the coast clear.)
Sometimes Teta would come outside to check on us, or just to watch us play for a while. She enjoyed being around her children and grandchildren, and her warmth towards us emanated from her every movement. We also all spoke the same love language, which was food.
My father often tells the following story of our first few weeks in Surda. Teta had introduced me to many delicious dishes since we arrived, but I had loved none quite as much as bamiyeh: an okra and lamb stew made with a tomato base, topped with fried garlic and served with vermicelli rice and homemade pita bread.
I loved this dish so much that it kept me up at night. One night in particular, I struggled to sleep, restless and craving bamiyeh. My father woke to the sound of me crying. He asked what was wrong. Through tears and with my voice breaking, I answered: “biddi bamiyeh”. It was one of my first complete Arabic sentences: I want bamiyeh.
The next morning, my father told the wider family this story over breakfast. Everyone laughed, but Teta got upset: why hadn’t he woken her up? She would have gotten out of bed and made me bamiyeh!
Teta made me bamiyeh countless times in the years that followed, and she would always tell this anecdote, ending with the promise that if I ever wanted bamiyeh she would make it, no matter the time or place. After she passed away, my aunts continued this tradition, and they still cook me Teta’s bamiyeh recipe whenever I visit.
When we arrived in Palestine, I only spoke English, which was the language my Dutch mother and Palestinian father communicated in. Within only a few months of arriving in Palestine, I was fluent in Arabic. This, too, was thanks to Teta.
Every morning, she would wake up and bake fresh bread on a hot stone in a room adjacent to the kitchen. Soon after we arrived, I began to join her.
We would both sit cross-legged on the ground. First, she would prepare the dough. Flour, yeast and water formed the base, with a pinch of sugar and salt. All measurements were done instinctively. Depending on the type of bread she made, she might add some olive oil, too. I would watch as she mixed the dry and wet ingredients, and then as she kneaded the dough with her hands.
While she worked, she told stories. Of her hometown Isdud, which she was forced to leave in 1948. Of Khan Younis, the camp in which she made a new home for her family. Of my father’s three near-deaths. Of her parents. Of her siblings. Teta’s stories gave me two great gifts: they gave me roots, and they gave me language.
Soon, I was running around with other children, chattering in Arabic. They would make fun of my pronunciation and vocabulary, which took after my grandmother’s Gazan accent - distinct from its Ramallah counterpart, which seemed to think of itself as more elevated.
I think I struggled to adjust during the first few weeks I was in Palestine. I remember some sadness and a sense of loss, which is strange considering I have no recollection of our time in London and no clue whether I was content or not there. My parents tell me that I cried a lot in the first few weeks, and that I asked them if we could go back to London a handful of times. Children are adaptable though, and within a few months, I navigated the intricacies of toddler life as if I had never been anywhere but Palestine.
This wasn’t the same for my parents. I don’t think either of them anticipated how difficult it would be to settle in Palestine, my father after an absence of a decade, and my mother for the very first time. There were obvious obstacles such as building a social circle and my mother’s language abilities, but there was also an unexpected problem: it proved very difficult for my father to find employment, even as a medical graduate from Britain.
And then there was the political situation, which was not as optimistic as they had hoped for. The Oslo Accords had ostensibly been interim peace agreements that, amongst other things, gave the Palestinians a form of self-governance in return for recognition of Israel. The reality, however, was a far cry from self-governance, and the Israeli occupation was still felt daily.
Throughout the 1990s, Israeli military personnel frequently entered Palestinian cities, and their presence on Palestinian streets was far from an unusual sight. Whenever we left the house in the valley to go to the city centre of Ramallah, we risked encountering this presence.
Surda lies less than 3 kilometres (1.8 miles) north of Ramallah. They are connected by a winding road that makes its way from the valley of Surda to the hilltops of Ramallah. At the time, it was the only road that connected villages such as Abu Qash and Birzeit - all further north - to Ramallah. Immediately to the east of Surda lay a cluster of Israeli settlements.
Just before one of the sharp turns in the road from Surda to Ramallah, there was an Israeli checkpoint. Checkpoints were (and remain) scattered throughout the West Bank, often on roads connecting one Palestinian community to another. They were manned by the Israeli army, who had the power to stop and search, but also to completely close the checkpoint for an undetermined period of time. Surda checkpoint gained notoriety in the 1990s and 2000s because of the number of ambulances that were prevented from entering Ramallah, including those transporting women in labour.
The data is sporadic, but in 2005 the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women conducted an in-depth study of this issue during the Second Intifada (2000-2004) in Palestine. The findings of the study are harrowing as they show the immense impact of restrictions on mobility imposed by the Israeli army.
During the intifada, stillbirth rates in the West Bank increased by 500 per cent.
The number of babies born at home doubled.
At least 91 women gave birth at army checkpoints between 2000 and 2004.
At least 19 women and 29 newborn babies died at military checkpoints between 2000 and 2002.
These problems were well known amongst Palestinians and a great source of anxiety for us all. I remember passing through Surda checkpoint and thinking about the women who had been forced to give birth there, in a vehicle on the dusty tarmac road, with enemy soldiers armed to the teeth looking on. I wanted a baby sister, but I was scared to tell my parents. What if I lost my mother? What if I lost my baby sister? What if I lost both?
What is perhaps hard to imagine for those who have never lived under occupation is that life goes on, despite the risks. People don’t sit in their homes all day avoiding danger. People have to work. Children have to play.
Despite the checkpoint, I enjoyed going to Ramallah’s city centre, with its bustling streets, its colourful markets, and its high buildings, all branching out from a central square with gigantic lion statues.
My first memory of real danger was in the middle of Ramallah. It was perhaps a year or two after we had arrived, which would have made me three or four years old. My mother had taken me shopping, and we were wandering in one of the city’s main streets when we heard sharp whistles, followed by metallic bangs, followed by the acidic smell of teargas. People began to run down the street as an Israeli military jeep appeared, chasing two young Palestinian men. My mother grabbed my arm and looked around, unsure where to go.
A tall middle-aged man emerged from a nearby shop door. He beckoned my mother towards him. “Madam, please,” he said in English, the second “a” in “madam” elongated, his pronunciation of the word almost French.
My mother and I followed him into his shop quickly. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a second army jeep approaching. Shots were still sounding, and my eyes and nostrils had begun to sting from the teargas. As soon as we were inside, the man locked the shop door and began to lower the white shutters that ran across the storefront. It didn’t do much to quieten the noises outside, and though it was a safety measure, it made me even more frightened not to be able to see where the soldiers were.
“Madam, please,” the shopkeeper said to my mother again, this time pointing to a chair. She took a seat. They talked a bit, my mother using some of her newly-acquired Arabic, the shopkeeper showing off his English in between puffs of his cigarette.
I looked around. I was surrounded by shoe boxes, stacked in neat pillars along the walls and arranged in a square shape in the middle of the shop floor. Each pillar consisted of six to ten boxes, and on top of each stood a singular shoe, a different model for each pillar. I had been taught not to touch other people’s stuff, but the shopkeeper and my mother were talking intensely about the political situation, and I took my chances. I picked up a smooth leather pump, black except for a white cap by the toes. Its heel was square and heavy, twice the size of my hand.
I thought of the kind of woman that would buy a shoe like that - sophisticated, elegant; a woman like my aunts, who presented themselves to the outside world immaculately, with flawless hair, gold jewellery, and high heels.
In the middle of an empty, barricaded shoe shop, hiding from the violence of occupation, I formed a fantasy of a woman in black heels with white tips whose life somehow transcended all of this. I don’t think this was aspirational as much as it was a yearning to be in control of something - anything. This is, after all, how people often cope with immense powerlessness: we find the small things that we can control, and we master them to perfection.
Emotionally, the memory of hiding in the shoe shop feels no different to me than the memory of baking with Teta or playing with my cousins. In my mind, they are part of the same ecosystem, one in which the good and the bad are so closely adjacent to one another that you move between them seamlessly.
Much like the stubborn roots of sabr, memories of life under occupation that stay with you can sink deeply into your being. They regenerate relentlessly, tricking your senses, branching outwards, their reach seemingly endless. Memories become more than just information stored by the mind as narratives; they become information stored by the body as operating systems.
With time, your emotions become flattened and your senses cross wires. You smell teargas while your grandmother bakes and you smell fresh bread as the military jeep approaches. You hear bullets while you play with your cousin and you hear your cousin’s laughter as you cross a checkpoint. Other memories you forget entirely, presumably because your brain chooses to protect you against them.
Yet what I have learned is that, while it is true that memories of violence seep into every fibre of your being, the same is true for memories of family. Of Teta’s bamiyeh, of Sido’s battle with the snakes, of playing with Majd and Mahmoud, of the house in the valley.
Because it is not just our trauma that is generational; it is also our strength and our love.