Genesis 17: 17

According to the first book of the Bible, Abraham had two sons, Ismael and Isaak, the first one from the Egyptian slave Hagar, the second from his 90 year old wife Sarah. What Isaak is for Jews, Ismael is for Arabs. Now there is Abraham's mysterious quest: "O that Yishmael might live before thee!" "I hear you", says God, "God hears" is the meaning of "yishma-el" When I edited an anthology of interpretations from the working papers to the translation of the Bible by Martin Buber & Franz Rosenzweig, I loved Rosenzweig's comment to this quest: "For me this sentence weighs as much as the whole of the Torah." I am not only his biological daughter-in-law!

I, Azmeeyeh, am a Palestinian woman. This means, that I have been oppressed twice - as a Palestinian by the Zionists and as a woman by a developing society. But my parents gave me the name Azmeeyeh, which means "the determined one", and I will not play the victim towards anybody.

A victim has but one alternative, to succumb or to hit back. I, Azmeeyeh, have choices. I will not wait for others to let me determine my destiny. For me "SELF-DETERMINATION" means to choose my goals and to choose my ways and steps towards these goals.

"But enemies oppose your goals", says the victim, "adversaries stand in your way, even friends make your feet stumble."

That's how human life is. That's how the world is. We are always dependent on somebody. We shall be free, if we know how to come to grips with our dependencies.

*********

I was twelve years old, when the Zionists were attacking my village. Not all the Zionists, of course. But we did not know then, that they were members of two terrorist groups, nor would it have made any difference to us, had we known.

The fact is, that they came down on us one early morning before dawn. My father was with the guards of the village that night, so there was nobody to protect us. They dragged us out of our beds, out of the house, all of us, my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, even my great-grandfather, me and my three black-eyed, smart brothers and my two little sisters.

Today, knowing a little bit more about what makes human beings oppress, humiliate and kill others - I wonder, what had happened to these beasts that they could so completely forget what's written in their own book, that we too were created in the image of God.

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They made us stand against the wall and started to fire at us.
"Yamma!" I yelled, seeing my mother's feet stumble beside me. I grasped Baakisa, my smallest sister and managed to escape. I can't remember, how I did it or where I went. It must have been some hours later, when I see myself crawling from underneath the ruins of a house that had been blown up by them. Baakisa was dead. Knowing the neighbourhood well, I crept through the surrounding yards, yelling and screaming, corpses and wounded neighbours, mostly old people, women and children everywhere. I reached a house at the outskirt of the village. Leila, my best friend, and her mother lay crumbled in front of the doorway. "They will not come twice to the same house", a cold survival voice pounded against my brain. I hastily stapled the mattresses that were still spread on the floor and hid behind the heap.

I must have sunk into oblivion from exhaustion and horror, for what I remember next, was my own scream, when I felt burried under the mattresses. Dirty hands pulled me out, grasped me. Why should they be different from any other murderer on this earth? First let's have our fun with this fresh, cute apple. And so I was sacrificed on the altar of never-ending human oppression: a young girl, like Anne Frank, three years after their holocaust. Only that this time it was a Palestinian.

*****

I did not know then about this eternal elipse of oppression. The elipse with the two poles - one where each human being gets oppressed, humiliated, victimized, all of us as children, many of us as women, some of us as workers, as handicapped, millions because of their race or their religion or their nationality. And each one tries to reach the other pole as fast as possible, where he can oppress others, where he can weaken the power and the dignity of fellow human beings, so as by comparison to assert his own power, his own value. The eternel elipse of the big boss, who

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once grew up in the gutter, now oppresses his worker, who then goes home and humiliates his wife, who in turn pushes around her daughter, who takes refuge to the cat as the last victim to be tortured.

At that time I had no such understanding, nor could I think at all. I could not even feel. I don't know, how they found me. I only remember myself waking up on the floor of a shabby shack, somewhere near Jericho, while an awful cry detached itself from my throat: "Yahoud aleina!" The Jews are upon us.

Some people crowded around me, I recognized one of our neighbours. "You are alive, little girl, you are alive!" he murmured and I wondered why he cared.

I, at least, couldn't care less. I was brought up to believe, that womanhood was the most precious gift God had given us, and that we were supposed to pass on the gift to one man only, when the time would come. There she lay, besmeared, stinking Azmeeyeh, the gift stolen from her, she could give it no more. So what use was there in her? Why did they not murder her together with her beloved ones?

I sank back into merciful oblivion. It was unbearable to feel or to think or to imagine people staring at my defiled body. Once somebody came near me. I did not open my eyes. I felt a warm hand on my forehead, I shuddered. I heard a voice, strong and soft at once, saying something in a language I did not understand. I was paralyzed.

For days I would not eat nor speak. Was I there at all? In any case, my body squatting in a corner of the dusty shack did not even bother to push the flies away.

But after some days, - or were it weeks? - I felt my eyes following the doctor's quiet pace. People called him Dr. Martin, and the language he talked was English. I hated the English, they had brought the Zionists into our land. But I could not withstand the deep look of compassion in his eyes, whenever he leant over one of the wounded refugees.

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He did not talk to me again, nor did he touch me. But his eyes rested on me quietly, patiently, whenever he approached me with the nurse, giving her orders about how to take care of the cuttings and scratches that covered my body.

Very slowly something like a feeling was beginning to stir in me again, just like a tree, who got burnt down and seems to be completely dead, sometimes sprouts some tiny, crumbled leaves. It was a feeling of being drawn to these eyes, a feeling of pain. I remembered my father - was he still alive? - he loved his children, but there were six of us, and working in the quarries, which were the main source of income for the villagers, was an exhausting job. He did not have the awareness nor serenity to rejoice in his daughter's growing into a long-braided, big-eyed, though dark-skinned young girl, who, being the eldest, very early developed fine motherly qualities. Unlike my father, Dr. Martin gave me the feeling of being a valuable human being. He brought to life a faint sense of dignity.

*****

During the following weeks the refugee-camp got more and more crowded, thousands, ten-thousands of men, women and children were filling the air with weeping, lamenting and cursing, bitter fights were going on, whenever somebody brought some wretched bread or a tank of water. Tents were being erected, but the sun burnt pitiless, the mosquitoes were multiplying fast and the hunger and thirst were dehumanizing many.

Together with the delicate feelng of a hurt child towards a tender father, other feelings began to arise, - wrath and hatred towards those who had driven us into misery. Succumbing to my fate gave way to defiance, dreams of revenge started to haunt me by day and by night, and the meaning of "Azmeeyeh" became manifest for the first time.

Having grown up with three strong-headed brothers, who always tried to use me as their maid, priding themselves in their manly superiority, had taught me early, not to victimize myself by taking their orders for granted.

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I knew I was just a girl, I knew that my place on earth was to serve a man, to give birth to sons and to serve them too, when they would grow up. But I would not serve my brothers, I would rather get scolded by my mother, following a complaint by one of them, than let them treat me disrespectfully. I also knew, that they loved me for this. They were strong, and they loved strong people around them.

There came the day, when a new wave of refugees poured in.
"They've proclaimed their state on our land", people lamented, "they are going to kill us all!" Where were our Arab brothers to take our revenge, to throw them into the sea, so that we could return to our houses? I had left my corner and started to walk around boldly. If no one would think of planning revenge, I, Azmeeyeh, was determined to initiate the planning myself.

Wild phantasies occupied my mind, inspired by the stories about the heroic fight of Abdul-Qaadr, to which I used to listen from behind the curtains in our house. Yah Abdul-Qaadr! Was it by chance, that the very same day when God let them take your life, he let me retain mine? I had seen him several times, when he came down from the neighbouring fortress to talk to our men, but they did not want to take part in any rebellious activity. You cowards!
I would mumble to myself furiously, thinking about the reward, they had received for staying peaceful and quiet!
I, Azmeeyeh, will not follow you, father! I shall be Abdul Qaadr's heiress!

There was no one to guide the young girl, no one even to discipline her. Would she fall prey to her wild phantasies of revenge? Sometimes she passed the kind doctor and a voice would point him out as her refuge. But she was too afraid and too proud to make use of it.

******

*****

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The weeks and the months passed by, some of our Arab brothers came to rescue Palestine, some didn't, some fought bravely and some ran away, some really wanted to help us, some were eager to get their own profit out of it. Life in camp was difficult. In winter, the rain swept the tents away and we slept in the mud and in summer there was no water. "In winter we drown and in summer we burn", people said. Still, nurses and other workers, sent by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency brought about some normalization of life. I had moved into a tent with other orphans, and one day I found myself sitting on the floor of a newly erected shack, together with other girls about my age and learning English among other subjects.

I had not had much of a chance to get an education in my village. Primary school was a dreary matter with regard to girls, and though I used the poor scholarly input the best I could, in order to compete with my brothers, my mind was starving for knowledge and understanding.

I grasped the language fast, I started to understand the nurses, I tried to get hold of every printed piece of paper, I even found a refugee woman who talked the language, and I kept pestering her with my questions about the translation of all the unknown words I came across in the material I read. There was a worthwhile challenge ahead for making this effort; I would need foreigners as my allies to carry out my revenge!

As time passed, rage built up in my heart, like a heap of ... awaiting the burning spark. Hope in the eyes of the people had not yet died, nor had the memory of how they were evicted by force or had run away out of fear. But I could watch, how most people were settilng down for a prolonged stay in this over-crowded, stinking place, doing nothing but complaining and waiting for others to liberate them. I could see them sitting there forever. But when would I, Azmeeyeh, be ready to take my destiny into my own hands?

One day I could bear the rage no longer. To whom should I turn for advice?

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It was out of the question to approach any of the camp's men. Nor could I spot any heroine among the women. Back home I had heard people tell about Nimra and Assya and Sadj, wonderful women who took part in the resistance movement. But where were they now? maybe killed, maybe in other camps, maybe imprisoned again in their families. Here I was all alone.

So one afternoon I saw myself knocking at the door of Dr. Martin's shack. "Come in, Azmeeyeh", he said, calling me by my name, without any surprise in his voice "I've been waiting for you to come!"

I felt embarrassed and awkward, while he was preparing tea for me. A grownup person calling me by my name, a man preparing tea for me, a powerful doctor relating to me as an equal , - and all my courage went down the drain. I could not say a word.

He watched me patiently, silently, while I was sipping my tea, trying desperately to find a way out of the trap.

"You know, Azmeeyeh", he said finally, "human beings are not made to carry their burden alone. We all need someone who can listen, even though everybody has talked himself into the belief, that he can handle his own grief, his own fear, his own despair."

I drew back even further. I felt confused, even angry. I had not come to talk about any burden. "I know, you have come here to talk with me about certain plans, not about pains."

"I don't feel any pains anymore", I blurted and felt, that my face showed a sulky expression. I wanted to run away, but at the same time something in my heart yearned for the warm caring that started to engulf me against my will.

I was sitting in a chair in front of his desk, avoiding to look into his eyes.

"It's alright to plan revenge, Azmeeyeh", he said softly. I gazed at him for a moment, flushing. Did he know everything about me? Feeling all this loving attention turned towards me, I suddenly felt the urge to walk

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around the desk, throw my arms around his neck and cry. But, of course, I stayed where I was, mistaking toughness for strength.

"But revenge is just one choice to help yourself and your people, and maybe, not the best one. There are other choices too--", he hesitated and, having caught my bewildered look, he added cryptically: "at least for those who are determined to take their destiny into their own hands!"

There it was, that simple word, which was to become the shining star of my life: CHOICE, khiyaar! There have been times in my life, when I felt stuck in a mess with no way out, or tyrannized by emotions that tried to dictate my actions. I then would pull myself together and take my car or any other means of transportation and run out into some deep valley and yell across the abyss: " khiyaaaaaar, khiyaaaaaaar!" waiting for the echo to reconfirm my deepest belief, that being free means to have always a choice, a choice of how to relate to a problem, a conflict, a choice of how or when to accept or to change a situation, a direction.

That afternoon, however, in Dr. Martin's shack, surrounded by lamenting crowds and silent deserts, not far from the river Jordan, a young girl was coping with a world of injustice, which seemed to have taken away all the choices except for one - to strike back against the evil-doers, in anger and in pain.

"I wanted your help for ...", I forced myself to stick to my point. But it was Dr. Martin, who now came around his desk, touching my shoulders from behind and saying tenderly:
"Asmeeyeh! You don't just want to survive, - you want to live! And you want to do something, so your people can live. You'll do both much more effectively, if you let yourself be helped."

The tension in my body had built up to the extent, that the tenderness of his voice and the touch of his hands had the effect of melting a hole into a dike. Tears I had not known since those ghastly events started to come out of my eyes, first slowly, then with an ever increasing speed

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and power.

"Let me be your father for this hour, my little daughter", I heard him saying, and this time, I just could not resist anymore, I did not want to be Azmeeyeh, the determined one, at this moment, I just wanted to be the little girl, I was never allowed to be. And so I jumped up from my chair and turned around and threw myself into the arms of the one human being I could trust in this world.

He let me cry for an endless time, while stroking my hair gently. He even seemed to encourage my crying, because whenever the flow of my tears slowed down, he said something, which gave me the feeling, that he knew exactly what I had gone through, and I started to cry again, not even knowing about what. Pictures in my mind were changing very fast, my mother collapsing by my side, me putting my hand on Baakisa's mouth to prevent her from screaming, the terrorist tearing open my pants ---

Finally Dr. Martin pulled me down to the chair again, and while placing his own chair opposite mine, he said firmly: "Tell me, little girl, what happened that day, when the Jews attacked your village."

I looked at him from under my tears, horrified by the demand to let my lips pass any word about my disgrace.

"I can't tell you! I can't tell you! Please, let me go!"

But he said, almost harshly all of a sudden: "You will survive, Azmeeyeh, but you can't live, unless you tell."

I looked at him, appalled by the command, but his eyes were belying his voice, eyes so tender and knowing, - knowing in advance everything I would ever tell. I started to recite what had happened, in a mechanical way, as if I were someone else, who told an event that had happened somewhere, sometime.

"Look at me, little girl, all the time look at me!" He took my hand , for a moment his face transformed into that of my father, aghast at the ignominy committed against his daughter, and suddenly I myself could face that unfathomable abyss of horror and disgust, powerlessness

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and humiliation, that had swallowed me alive that day and kept so many parts of my being, my ability to love and to live, to fully feel joy and to fully feel pain, burried and imprisoned.

"I hate them", my cheeks were glowing.

"Talk to them, tell them" I heard him saying.

A new, horrifying picture emerged in my mind - the corpses of the family where I hid in the end --- the lobes of the ears cut off - - they must have looted their ear rings---

Now nothing could stop me anymore, I roared and I cursed, I spit and I vomited, I raged around and I shook, I violently hit and pushed the fists, that were stretched out towards me, until I collapsed on the floor, sobbing my breath out of my breast. Dr. Martin came down on the floor near me, put his arm around my trembling shoulders, saying nothing, until the storm had exhausted itself.

It must have been deep in the night, when I looked up to his face again, which all the time had been turned towards me, caring, loving, believing in my innate strength to recover.

"Crying is healing, Azmeeyeh", he finally uttered, "remember this! It takes out the hurt and the horror, and you can feel again, think again, live again." He kept stroking my head, while talking to me about my and my people's future, about the suffering that we would go through, before we would be able to restore to us our home and our freedom, but also about the strength and the power that we would develop by coping with this suffering.

I was leaning my body against his side, both of us still sitting on the shabby floor of a miserable shack, somewhere near Jericho, in the Middle-Eastern part of our globe, when he suddenly turned around, took my face in his hands and said, as if imploring me:
"Promise me, Azmeeyeh, that though you have been victimized, you'll not act as a victim. A victim has no choice but to succumb or to hit back. You Azmeeyeh, have choices."

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At that late hour of the night, I did not yet realize, that what I had set out on, was the way of liberation. Liberation, first of all, from feelings and concepts, that dictate our way of reaction and block our choice of action, - concepts sucked in from others and feelings generated by events in the past. The only thing I was faintly aware of, when I got on my feet - and freely embraced the doctor, bidding him "Good Night", was, that my heart was light and the world looked different. As I left the doctor's shack, a relief, an easiness in my body and soul made me fly rather than walk through the dark pathes betweeen the tents. I was not even afraid of the jackals' howling. Peace was within me.

**********

The following years were filled with studying from books and learning from teachers, from people, from life. The refugees around me either ran away, to build their lives elsewhere, if they had a drop of energy left, or they degenerated, sank into laziness and hopelessness. My heart ached. How many years of preparing myself would it take, until I would be ready to take part in their liberation? For the new aspect of reality that started to dawn on me that "leilat-al-qadr", as I liked to call it, " the night of my destiny", was that what my people needed, was liberation and self-determination and not revenge for injustice nor re-action to pain.

Life in the camp was dreary, and I grew up lonely, without a family and with friends, with whom I could share only little of the burden of responsibility I felt on my shoulders.

"You know, God has given us the ability to laugh, Azmeeyeh!" Dr. Martin used to say to me teasingly, when our pathes crossed. He would even imitate my frowning forehead and my lips tightly pressed together, to make me smile. And I did smile, "like the sun burst from between heavy clouds", he cheered and

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often he would invite me to come along and talk. He was the only one to understand, why I could not take part in the dreams about marriage and children of the girls my age. He knew that since my family had been wiped out and my virginity was gone, I saw the whole nation as my family, to which I belonged and which I wanted to serve.

Dr. Martin lived by himself, and never again I went there without taking another girl along with me. I respected the values of my society. I never allowed myself to come close to him again, nor did he expect it. But since I trusted him so deeply, I did allow myself to let go and cry sometimes, when he drew me out about my loneliness, my never ending mourning for my family, my sadness about the wretched life of my people. He also would ask me about whatever little happy experiences I had - the challenges and successes of my studies at school, the comfort I could give to the women around me, the imagination I developed in helping the children engage in creative games and handiwork.

At first I found it disturbing to think that I could be happy too. "How can I be happy while my people is miserable?" But Dr. Martin would tell me time and again: "Not suffering will redeem the sufferers, but joy - the joy of creative work and creative love."

"Joy" - I did not yet know, what that meant. But I learned to draw some satisfaction and some pride out of what I dild and lived. And I learned to be strong and determined without hiding myseslf behind toughness and rlgidity.

One day, when I was close to graduation from UNRWA high-school and preparing for my studies abroad, I was taken by an exciting surprise, when seeing Dr. Martin's broad-shouldered figure filling the opening of the tent. For though part of the refugees started to add walls of mud and wood to their tents, and cover them with roofs of tin, we orphans, of course, were still living in overcrowded tents.

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"Come to the clinic, Azmeeyeh, I need to talk to you."

The clinic tent had lately been replaced by an asbest shelter, and it was the only place in the whole camp, where one could enjoy the luxury of being in a room with just one other person only, the doctor. I wondered why he had not sent a messenger, and instead came himself to fetch me. But soon I found out, that it wasn't a matter of health he wanted to talk about.

Sitting across his desk in his white gown (?), he said;
"Azmeeyeh, I have listened to you for many years. I was like a father and you were like a daughter. Soon we'll have to part. Do you feel mature enough to make this an equal relationship by listening to me too?"

Though the nurses were bustling around in the other rooms, I immediately was on the alert. So far I had regarded him as all children regard their parents: he was there for me and for others, I needed him, but he did not need me. And if he needed me, it was as a man. He, of course, noticed the sucpicion and rejection in my eyes and looked at me in a way that made me feel ashamed. What a delicate thing trust was, that a simple phrase could dissolve in a second, what had crystallized over years. But Dr. Martin did not waver.

"I am a human being just like you", he said, "with pains and fears and loneliness, with pride and joys and dreams. Just like you, I need to share the latter and become free from the former. Would you help me?
"Who am I to help you?" I blurted, not knowing, if I distrusted him or myself.

This seemed to be too much for him. A shadow of painful disappointment fell over his features. It was only much later, that I realized, how much effort and courage he had needed in order to step out of his own isolation and reach out for another human being. Even today, when thinking of my disgraceful attitude, I bow my head in shame.

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He withdrew into himself, and when he finally responded to my rejection, it was as if from a great distance:

"Who are you to help me, little Azmeeyeh? You are just a young person, aren't you, - while I could be almost your father. You are a woman, while I am a man. You are a victim of the Zionists, while I am ---" he hesitated and added, "that's what you think of your poor little self, right?"

I had never heard him talk in so harsh a way, I felt bewildered, even frightened.

"You wanted to tell me something about yourself", I tried to make up for my docile reaction. But he had already concluded, that I was not ready for an equal mutual realtionship.

"NO, Azmeeyeh, not yet. Not now." His voice became softer. "Sometimes you think big, you want to take part in the liberation of your people. But then all your internalized oppression takes over." His eyes were still sad, but the reproach against me had gone.

"Internalized oppression?" I asked, relieved to see, that he seemed to refer to a general phenomenon and not to a personal defect of mine.

"Yes, Azmeeyeh", he said, and he gazed through the window, across the desert, towards the purple-coloured horizon, where the sun of this day had just set. "You know, what the saddest thing about oppression is?"

"You taught me, that we all try to hurry over to a situation where we can oppress others, in order to alleviate the pain of being or having been opressed ourselves."

"Yes, that's what I taught you. But lately I've come to understand, that this is not the whole picture. Why can't anyone break out of this vicious circle? What prevents the victim from standing up to the victimizer?" And leaning over towards me: " What makes you, Azmeeyeh, feel, that you are not my equal? Is it not, that you have adopted, internalized the prejudices, the feelings of superiority of your oppressor? I am little, grownups know better! I am a woman, men lead society. I am a refugee, without

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any rights or power, while you, doctor, have been sent here to help us. This is it, what you feel and believe isn't it?"

I nodded, still wondering, how I could feel and believe differently.

He got up to show me to the door: "Alright then. You go out into the world and be the victim of grownups, of males, of Zionists. Play the victim role until you'll get fed up with it. Maybe, it will not be too late then for you to become aware of what you are - a human being equal to every other human being, in that you are unique and limited, just like everybody else."

Was there contempt in his words? This was the last thing I could bear. But he had already opened the door:
" Come to say good-bye, before you leave!" he said, and I found myself alone on the dusty street. The twilight was mercifully softening the ugly contours of the endless rows of shabby tents, even the stench from the open sewage-channels seemed to be less penetrant. "Unique and limited", my mind repeated, while I was heading "home", feeling, that there was still so much to learn about humans, about life, about the world.

******

The closer the time of departure drew, the more my excitement of leaving the camp and going out into the world changed into apprehension and anxiety. The doctor's words, uttered as a challenge, made no sense. I really was just a young girl and a refugee, who cared for my big dreams and my name Azmeeyeh?

Still, I was determined to win the doctor's respect. And so, when I presented myself for the last time, I stretched out my hand, looked boldly into his eyes and said: "Thank you for having been a father to me until now. From now on let me be your sister!"

He held my hand in his two hands for a while and said:"I have to thank you too, Azmeeyeh. You have helped me to grow too."

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Taken by surprise, I just stared at him, while he made me sit down.

"I have to tell you something, Azmeeyeh, which might come as a shock to you. But now you are strong enough to cope with it. Look at me!" I suddenly became frightened. "Did you ever wonder, what made me come to this dreary spot, fight sickness and apathy and raging emotions, of people who are not my people, speak a language that is not mine, have a culture and a religion which are strange to me?"

Again I felt ashamed about never really having given any thought to the person I so much loved and revered.

"I am a Jew, Azmeeyeh!" he said softly, as if trying to counter the blow. He waited, looking at me with dignity and compassion, until the images he had conjured in my mind would pass and I could focus my attention on what he would say next. My heart beat, but I kept my mouth shut and my eyes fixed on his.

"YOu see, how strange things are," he continued, while his gaze left mine and wandered around, "If it weren't for some of my people, who decided to stop relying on the Messiah, and to become again masters of their destiny, and who called themselves Zionists, you would not call yourself a Palestinian. There would be a Syrian nation today, maybe, but a Palestinian nation came into being only when the Zionists claimed the southern part of Syria as their territory, where they wanted to realize national self-determination. Now you, Azmeeyeh, - a victimized member of the new-born Palestinian nation have in turn reinforced my Jewishness."

"I don't understand", I said and I thought, what does he have to do with the Zionists anyway.

As if reading my thoughts, he went on:
"People try to define Jews as followers of a religion and to deny them their self-definition of being a nation. And so did I. In fact, I grew up with the notion, that nationalism was an expression of weakness and fear - people needed borders and armies to feel secure and flags and hymns to be sure of their value. I had no need for such symbols. I, being born in England, as the son of Jews who immigrated from Russia, wanted to be a citizen of the world, the brother of all human beings. I was twenty-one, when the war ended, and when coming in contact with some remnants of the holocaust who received treatment in the hospital in which I served as an intern, I tried to close my eyes to reality, deluding myself, that if they only had given up their stubborn Jewishness, there would have never been a holocaust."

He paused, while his head fell on his chest and weariness aged his face. I sat on edge. I did not want to hear this crap about the holocaust. I did not want my foster-father to have anything to do with this. But he went on , his eyes still wandering somewhere, talking to himself more than to me.

"To prove my universalism, I eagerly responded to the call of the International Red Cross to serve in one of the D.P. Camps in Germany. I had just finished my medical studies in London and had little idea about what men could do to men. But I was forced to learn fast". Again he paused, while staring at the wall, as if formidable images crossed his mind.

"There were human beings, or what once had been human beings, from 50 nations. While trying to rescue some of their humanness, helping them at least to survive, though most of them would never again be able to really live, my contempt for nationalism deepened even further. That's why at first I became outraged, when I heard that the United Nations had given their blessing to the birth of another nation, a Jewish nation out of all absurdities.

But when I saw dead eyes coming to a momentary glow, when I heard despaired lips whispering with hope: "No one will spit on a Jew there; nobody will crush Jewish babies on rocks there, nobody will need to hide his Jewishness there!" it started to dawn on me, that I might not be realistic. Maybe,

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my ideas about abolishing borders and national identities were premature. Maybe, I had to accept as a fact, that going through the motions of delimiting territories and hissing flags was a necessary transitory period for Jews - and now also for you Palestinians - just like a child needs to seperate and defend himself againt his parents in order to learn how to become responsible for himself. And just like parents are rarely aware of the necessity of this process of seperation and becoming independent, and resist it fiercely and both, children and parents get hurt, so nations resist this coming-of-age of other nations, and everybody suffers."

He looked at me and I nodded my consent, thinking of my own father. Was he still alive? Would I ever find him again? And if so, would he approve of his independent daughter? There was nothing but yearning for him in my heart, but I was sure - had life taken its normal course, the relationship between us would have become tense or even turned into open conflict. "Don't hate anything", I remembered my mother's favourite koranic verse, "for it might be good for you" ---

We had been silent for a whle. My tension had gone, I felt close to the doctor now that he had shared with me his struggles and transformations.

"But why did you come to a camp of Palestinian refugees?"

His mind seemed to go back to our first encounter, when he leant over the defiled, fly-pestered body, the remnant of the slaughter, that some of his people had committed.

"I still did not feel a part of any people. My place was with the oppressed."

"Yet you say, that after having helped me, a Palestinian, to live, you are more of a Jew than you were before!"

-19-

A painful expression came into his face. "The more you resist something, the stronger you render it!" he said mysteriously. "There probably would not be a Jewish state, unless your fathers had resisted the Zionists so fiercely, and vice versa: if Israel should go on resisting the refugees' quest for returning home, it might soon find out, that the fedayeen, who are beginning to appear on her borders, will grow into a liberation movement, which will endanger, whatever the Zionists have achieved."

It was the first time, I ever heard him mention the term "Israel", and I shook a little. "You still seem to be on neither side!" I said.

The painful expression in his face deepened, his voice turned strong, determined: "I'll never support one side against the other! These two peoples are dependent on each other! Neither can achieve self-determination in this land unless the other lets him. Somebody --- you and me --- have to help them reconcile their interests. But", and there his voice became almost sweet, and I discerned some moisture in his gaze, "if I want to take responsibility for this, I have to belong to one of them. In fact, it was by helping you, Azmeeyeh, to pull you out of your victim-role and to prepare you for freeing your people, that I became more and more aware of my own identity. Memories from childhood suddenly became precious, my Russian grandmother lighting the candles on Friday night, my grandfather speaking the Hebrew blessing over white bread and sweet wine, apple and honey on NewYear Eve, the big fast and the crowded synagogue on the Day of Atonement, but the two festivals I liked best", his face had brightened up and was shining like that of a little boy, "were Sukkoth and Chanukka. You have never heard of these, have you!"

And without waiting for my response, he told me, bubbling like a spring of water, how at Succoth, the autumn-festival, they used to sit in booths, made of green twigs and coloured carpets, and eat and even sleep there for a whole week, in order to relive their fore-fathers' forty years of privation and insecurity, spent in the desert. - My eyes

-19-

wandered into the direction of my camp, it was all there - the sand storms from the desert, filling our mouths with dust, the winter rains whipping through the leaking tents, the khamsin-sun drying out our flesh to the bones. But the joyous excitement in my friend's voice swept away any trace of bitterness. I vividly imagined the little boy, who during the winter festival of Chanukka lit candles, one on the first day and one more on each succeeding day, until eight shining lights would dispel the darkness of night and heart. "How strange", he mused, "that 2000 years ago they did not want to celebrate the military victory of the Maccabeans over the pagan-greek Syrians. All they were interested in, was the cruse of oil which miraculously lasted for the lighting of the Temple, its seven-branched candelabrum...- --Ah, Azmeeyeh! It's to the candle lighters that I belong!" and he lifted his face towards heaven, as if the days of resisting his identity, of denying his heritage, were gone for ever and he could finally be at peace with himself.

The sincerity of his struggle with his Jewishness struck a deep cord in me. I felt at once elated and relaxed:

"Maybe, it's not bad at all, that you are Jewish and I am Palestinian", I heard myself saying, "for the first time in my life it occurs to me, that it is a wonderful thing, that people and peoples are different. That each one is unique, as you said, and by his uniqueness can benefit the other, just as each one is limited, and where he is limited others can benefit him." And I suddenly understood God's wisdom, as expressed in the famous koranic verse:

"Behold, we have created you
male and female, tribes and nations,
that you may get to know each other."

What a challenge! The world had opened up for me! I did not know, from where this vision came, but it overflooded me with light.

I saw my friend get on his feet and come over to me, tears in his eyes: "I've made you a responsible Palestinain, Azmeeyeh, and you've made

-21-

me a responsible Jew. We have to part now, and maybe we'll never see each other again, for there are terrible years ahead of both our peoples. The vicious elipse of oppression will take its toll, and both peoples will push each other more and more into the role of a victim, which only knows how to re-act, but not how to act."

He got on his feet, and stretching out both his hands, he ended: "Let's be allies, Azmeeyeh! Let's be allies in getting each one's people out of its victim-role, so they will finally become the masters of their destiny. Will you?"

"I will", I said firmly, while standing in front of him and taking his two hands. And I repeated as if voicing a vow: "I will , my friend!"

******************

Many years of living as a stranger in foreign country were to pass after that last encounter with Dr. Martin, until I once more would reach a similar clarity of awareness, a similar vision of what human beings could Accomplish, if they would learn how to become free. Free not only from being dominated by other humans, but even more so
free from their emotional tyrants, their fears and their resentment, their internalized oppression and their feelings of powerlessness.

What was worse, that in all those years of exile I never again met a person, who would match me, whom I could wholly trust, who shared with me the interest in my people's self-determination. OH where have you been in those dreary years, Anwar, where have you been?

*********************

Heading for a promising future, I left everything behind me - the miserable, though familiar camp, the troublesome country, the culture the beauty of which I had not yet fully grasped, and came under the influence of a society, that seemed to be so much more attractive than my own.

-22-

I enrolled in one of the universities in Germany as a medical student. I gradually came to grips with the language, the habits, the mentality of the people. But I never ceased to feel out of place. I was impressed with the cleanliness of cities and hospitals, but I had difficulties with the thorough structuring of time and the seriousness and preciseness, with which appointments and time tables had to be kept. In the camp I had not even possessed a watch. Now the over-all value "PUeNKTLICH SEIN", to be on time, to be orderly, to be reliable, came to hang over my neck like a sword. It was good schooling, however, and today, after having been able to balance Middle-Eastern easiness with European reliability, I am grateful for being a part of both worlds, without being the slave of either.

I acquired some friends among the students, the doctors, the nurses, but I was adamant in refusing marriage or any sexual relationship. I made myself well loved and appreciated, but I never pushed through the barrier of some deep-down, essential loneliness. For though my dreams of dedicating my life to the self-determination of my people, seemed to fade, and though I could watch myself being tempted to not only deny my commitment, but my very origins, the commitment obviously took care of itself - it did not allow me to get absorbed by a foreign society.

There were fellow-students and colleagues, who had gone through world-war's most hideous manifestations, others were refugees from the Eastern parts of Germany and had experience the horrors of slaughter, destruction, of looting and rape, that were familiar to me. One of my colleagues had a sister, who, on the day of the Russian occupation of Berlin, had got raped by sixteen soldiers, by one after the other, in front of her father and mother. When she was bleeding her future motherhood out of her martyred body, her father ordered her to go up to the attic and hang herself, since her honour could never be restored.

Fifty-five million human beings had been killed, starved, tortured to death, murdered in that apocalyptical outburst of human irrationality

-23 -

and it was natural that at that time everybody was preoccupied with his private life. The term "nation" had become discredited, and if I dared to use the word "mein Volk", my people, I would set people on edge. Realizing that the European nations and those of the Middle East were at two different stages of historical evolution, I stopped seeking understanding for the plight of my country.

I found comfort in Dr. Martin's letters, but after some years they suddenly stopped to arrive. I kept writing to him, three, four times, but when no answer came, I tried to file him away somewhere back in my memory, just as I had done with my father. Looking back, it seems to me, as if I once more put up a barrier between me and real living, just as I had done during the first months in camp.

One of my professors had become an expert in what he called psycho-somatic diseases. His clients were mostly Jews who had gone through concentration camps, and while working with the professor, the first thing I was able to watch with ever increasing amazement, was what Dr. Martin had called "internalized oppression". Many of the Nazi victims actually believed, that they were indeed inferior to their oppressors, that there was somethng faulty, some blemish in them which caused persecution. I also found out about an additional aspect of this nauseating phenomenon: instead of uniting forces against the oppressor the victims more often turned against each other, blaming or even killing each other on the charge that the other had endangered him by either "revolting" against the oppressor - stealing a piece of shoe-lace, for instance - or that the other had betrayed him by collaborating with the oppressor.

Later I wondered how I managed for such a long time to shut myself off from any emotional reaction to what I saw and heard from our patients. "You really hate the Jews guts, don't you!" said my professor once, when we had listened to one of those terrifying Accounts:

-23-

Three women were about to give birth in one of the concentration camps. The SS-officers who (yearned) for a tickling excitement, made them lie down on the concrete floor, directed glistening spot-lights at their tortured bellies and watched the wonder of birth with their defiling eyes. The babies died immediately, the women were taken to the gas chamber aferwards.

Indeed, nothing in my soul or face moved, when I heard the survivor who had shuffled the baby corpses away, telling the story. "Why should I hate Jews", I said, "when people do this to people, does it matter, to what nation, religion or race they belong?"

"But you are a young woman too, you could have been one of them!"

A sarcastic reaction jumped to my tongue: "Oh yes, of course, just as well as you could have been one of their slaughterers."

The professor bit his lips. "What's the matter with you! I just watch you day after day, and there is always this very clever, very scientific and very indifferent way of behavior of you!" and with a sudden outburst, "are you a stone or what are you?"

Flash-backs. My village, the camp, Dr. Martin, the girl on the attic, hundreds of stories I had and had not heard. I turned my eyes towards him, feeling an unfathomable sadness welling up in me and some words formed themselves beyond my own understanding and detached themselves from my lips: "I don't know why --- but I need to survive!"

It was then, that I felt the desperate need for my hair to be stroked and my body to be cuddled by someone warm, understanding, someone who would trust the sensitive human being that hid behind a wall of scientific objectivity. But the professor would not or could not understand this need. Most likely he was in need of this himself. But at that time the gates of warmth and compassion in me had not yet opened.

Still, some months later a rather insignificant incident - compared with the horrors we were exposed in our laboratory - opened up a path to

-25-

start coping again.

There was a man in one of the wards, lying paralized with multiplis sclerosis, one of the psychosomatic diseases, former inmates of concentration camps were stricken with. He was only forty, but he looked as if he was sixty, except for his shining, extremely kind eyes, which had retained even a spark of good humour. According to the testimony of others he was one of the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread, and proving ultimate freedom by giving meaning to whatever life was left to the doomed. He organized children to draw on pieces of paper if such could be found, or to colour the bleak walls of their ghostly abodings. He would make them sing or dance, letting them use tins as drums for a joyous rhythm. Grownups he would encourage to device plays and practise for performances, though everybody knew that they might not live by the time they would be ready for performance. While deprivation and the imminence of death caused many inmates to degenerate into mere corpses, stalking on ? legs - this man bore witness to the fact that dignity is not something to be given or robbed by the oppressor, and that freedom does not mean freedom from conditions, but freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.

A strange embarassment made me avoid the encounter with this man for a long time, until I was assigned by my professor to draw him out and take notes for our research project.

Sitting by his bed for the first time, not knowing how to start, my eyes fell on some small, brown, dirty envelope which he held in his hands, as if it was the most precious thing left to him in this world. Asked about its meaning, he fumbled with trembling hands until he pulled out a worn out strip of paper, covered with awkwardly scribbled Polish words.

"All these are little poems written by some of the orphans of whom I was in charge for some time at Auschwitz", he said. " Do you want me to

-25-

translate one of them to you?"

I eagerly agreed, being spared the onus of initiating the conversation. But then I don't know, why the simple lines - lacking even more in poetry because of the stammered translation - struck me like a lightening;

"NO, no , my God! We want to live!
you must not dilute our ranks!
For a better morning we strive!
there will be so much work to do."

It was the last of four verses, dotted down by Eva Pikova in 1943, before she was sent to the gas-chamber and her body thrown into a grave of tens of thousands, dead at least, and not alive like the bodies of little children, who, squeezed between the legs of the adults, could not inhale enough gas to die completely.

Eva was twelve years old, when this was done to her...

The young-old man in his bed said nothing, while I was sitting there in the ward of a German hospital with a Jewish patient, my head bent low and my eyes finally giving way to the flow of grace, --- tears. I could see her vividly, little Eva, stretching out her hand over time and space and the abyss of murder and rape and unfathomable horrors, man-made. She stretched them out to little Azmeeyeh, who was standing on top of the marble quarrries of D., where the corpses of her mother and sisters and brothers had been thrown.

The dark semitic girl lifted her tearful eyes to the other semitic girl, the bright-coloured, smiling one, and I heard her asking:

"You mean - - - it's my turn now, to take up all that work that needs to be done? The work, that you couldn't do? "

Her pale lips did not anwer, but the serenity in her face deepened. The vision was gone. I pressed the hands of the sick survivor and left the ward without a word.

Since there was nobody to share with what had happened to me, I did, what I always did, when my defenses and survival patterns broke down a little and I yearned to open myelf up to life, with all its joys and all its hurts; the hours during which I allowed myself

-27-

to be Azmeeyeh, - sensitive, dreaming, lonely, yearning for understanding, for closeness, for working together with others for the liberation of my peole; I took my bike and retreated into one of the endless forests which surrounded the town where I worked. I, a child of the desert, came to fancy these forests above everything else in my exile. For hours I would lie under one of the high vaults, created by huge (zameret) bending in the wind. I would listen to the music Accompanying this bending down and straightening up and bending and straigthening, and I would envision myself as one day living and working for my people in line with the rhythm of these trees. I would watch the sky beyond the (zameret), sometimes blue as in my home country, more oven gray, even rainy or snowy. No heat nor cold nor wetness would bother me, once I was lying there on the ground, in complete peace with myself and with the world.

It must have been druing these hours of peace, that my heart and sould matured, until they caught up with my mind. For my mind had always known, what the paralyzed man and murdered Eva bore witness to: that man determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them; that there were always choices to make, however restricted exterior freedom was; that every day, every hour offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether I would or would not succumb to those powers which threaten to rob me of my very self, my inner freedom, the freedom to determine what my existence will be, what kind of person I will become in the next moment.

But now a new energy flowed into my body, my mind, my heart; "Man I S self-determining", I yelled into the woods, jumping on my feet, and listening to the soft echo coming back to me, I added: "And a woman is too!"

********

Mind and heart were ready, but circumstances were not, or so it seemed to me.

- 27b-

Some painfully frustrating years were to follow, though I felt much more alive than before. I now was a doctor myself, practising in one of the hospitals, while aspiring for the ---- of a psychiatrist. My intellectual potential was constantly challenged, my salary allowed me a high standard of living and going back to my country and its misery stricken refugees seemed to be a crazy thing to do. I tried to discuss it with my compatriots during one of the meetings of the Arab Students' association, which I continued to attend. They were very generous in offerng slogans about how to burn out the Zionist furuncle from the heart of the Arab world, but none considered doing the dirty job himself. It became clear to me, that I would have to fight on two fronts, that of the enemy and that of my passionate but impotent brothers.

The 1967 Israeli aggression shook me out of my comfortable, but frustrated existence.

If Dr. Martin could have left everythng in order to stand by the side of the oppressed, who were not even his people, I certainly could do the same. All that pinned-up yearning for serving my own people instead of servng foreigners, suddenly tipped the scales. I resigned from my work, I gave up my flat, I did not bother to say good-bye to my sterile friends, and off I was on one of the first planes, that brought foreigners with Western citizenship to Tel-Aviv.

I held my breath when we landed on what my emotional being registered as "the enemy's territory, stolen from us". But I had learned how to not act on my emotions, and so I went through the stages of bureaucracy and security searching, passing suspicious officers who frowned at my name, Dr. Azmeeyeh Abu..., and at the birth-place mentioned in my passport. Provided with the best of recommendations from the International Red Cross I immediately turned to the UNRWA authorities and got escorted to the camps in the Jordan valley.

The first thing I found out, was, that my own cmap had been dissolved, all the inmates had fled for a second time with the outbreak of war.

-27c -

Nobody had heard of Dr. Martin, nor of my father. I was determined to find them, but for the time being there was a lot of work to do . I was admitted to the clinic of one of the overcrowded camps near Nablus, as an employee of UNRWA with a temporary resident's visa from the occupying authorities. This was a rare....

For a long time I needed every reserve of energy in order to adjust to a mentality which I had become totally estranged to. I was harsh with myself, did not indulge in longing back for the comfort and smoothness of my former life and tried to make coping with my own and the people's situation in the camp a challenge to my creative powers. The meaning of my name emerged again, the image of my foster-father inspired me once more, and I felt myself finally living, finally growing into what I was meant to be, as Dr. Martin would have said, - a woman taking responsibility for her people.

From the beginning I was aware, that I would have to constantly wrestle with two main emotional tyrants, one being the victim-attitude of my people, which always vascillated between apathetic succumbing to their situation and purposeless emotional outbreaks, the other being the military authorities whose demeanour at that time was often marked by an air of contemptuous superiority. Knowing that my task wasn't just to support the underdog against the oppressor, but to bring about a political situation, where these two peoples would finally become aware of the mutual dependency between them and then work towards the reconciliation of their interests, I used my leisure time for studying the enemy's values and needs, strengths and illusions, failures and dreams.

Going through Zionist history I came across one of their thinkers, who said, when he first came to visit the early settler in the nineties

-28-

of the last century; "Wooh to the slave if he gets a chance to reign!" Wasn't this the attitude that characterized what they called "the most humane military government that ever existed in history?" And was that early Zionist thinker's observation any different from what Dr. Martin used to call "the vicious circle of oppression?"

True, compared to many other slave-rulers, the Israelis at least did not repeat the mass-slaughter that I had gone through, and, except for some martyrs who were shot during demonstrations or tortured near death in prison, people's bodies were not affected. But there is more to a human being than his body. Especially for us orientals - more important than life is what we call "sharaf", honour, dignity, self-respect.

It is there, where the Zionists perpetuate the vicious circle of oppression. In time I came to know many an Israeli Jew who was angry and bitter about policemen who in entering a bus sorted out Arabs and humiliated them by forcing them to show their identity cards. "We should be learning from the sufferings, we have gone through ourselves more than anybody else in history, as our Bible tells us to:

"You shall not oppress the alien (sojourner)
for you know how it feels to be an alien;
you were aliens yourselves in Egypt."

Instead we go on inflicting sufferings on those, who are not even aliens, but have lived here for centuries.

But if the vicious circle of oppression was a law of human nature, there was no use in moralizing or getting bitter. I wondered who would be the victim that we Palestinians would choose, once we would get the chance to reign! What affected me more - I gradually became sensitive to the manyfold ways, my people jumped from the pole of being oppressed to the other pole of oppressing others even today: the Muslims the Christians, the fellaheen the beduoeen, the feudals and other so-called respectabilities their tenants and subjects, and, of course, the men their wifes, and the parents their children.

-29-

It was in the clinic, when one day a man beat up his wife in front of my eyes, until I stopped him, gently, doing as little damage to his self-respect as possible, when I, for the first time, was overwhelmed with that deep compassion for us fallible human beings, that later became one of the sources of my strength and a barrier againt bitterness and despair. "Who will be the first to break out of this vicious circle and how?"

This was the main question that challenged my thinking for the next seven years, and if it weren't for Anwar, I might have never found the answer.

Yet, Anwar had not yet come into my life.

In those first years of being a temporary resident, an 'alien' in my own country, having difficulties to prolong the visa every half (?) year, I had many chances to practise an attitude of dignity, self-confidence and self-determination, that bore no marks of either the oppressed or the oppressor's role.

Whenever I had to deal with the Israeli authorities, I took a very firm, though cautious stand. I would not provoke them - always having in mind, what I wanted to do in the future - but I would convince, and sometimes manipulate them, to respect my short-term demands, so that I could at least alleviate the situation of my people, not only in matters of health and physical rehabilitation, but also with regard to housing, uniting of families, jobs, troubles with the Security Forces etc.

My clients I treated with utmost respect, not discriminating nor allowing others to discriminate between different kinds of people in my presence ever. I was efficient in my work and I loved it, but with the passing of years I started to feel in some remote corner of my heart, that I was again loosing touch with what I was meant ot be. It was so comfortable to cope with daily problems, which were but the symptoms of the

-30 -

basic disease, the diagnosis of which I did not know then. I drew satisfaction out of my small successes and won appreciation from those I could help. I also improved in integrating my oriental heritage with the Western values I had adopted, and I felt at ease with almost everybody I had to deal with, and most people felt at ease with me.

I had not yet hit the track of my vocation, or - using a term, I prefer today, - I had not yet discovered, what my own, unique, what Azmeeyeh's "creation" was supposed to be. There was a danger in the fullness and evenness of my life in those years, the danger of loosing sight of my original commitment. A sign for this fact was, that I always postponed getting clarity about three things that had to do with my past and that were following me like shadows on the walls:

Where was Dr. Martin? What happened to my father? What was left of my village? In hindsight, it seems to me that I was afraid to face the fact, that the sources of security of my youth had actually been lost long since. Instead of using part of my energy for building up new relationships, that would give me support and security, I unconsciously stuck to the illusion, that I could always count on Dr. Martin, always cuddle in the arms of my father, always belong to my family, to my village, if I only wanted to return to them.

A painter needs to paitn, a healier needs to heal and Azmeeyeh needed to dig up the wells of strength and self-determination of her people. But how could she do that, not having connected her own well with the underground aquiferous arteries, that would yield water continuously and as (richly) as she would need it?

My well, my strength, was self-sufficient, or so I believed. I was extremely proud of needing nobody, of being independent, of being what I mis-called "free". I pitied the girls and the women my age for perceiving but one life-style - being married, having children. I had discovered another choice and I adhered to it with as much rigidity and exclusiveness as those who saw only the old way. What an illusion of freedom!

I was blind, I was in prison, but liberation was close.

When I married Anwar, I had already passed the middle of my thirties.

Our beginnings were far from beng spectacular. He was a colleague of mine, running his general practice in the city of Nablus. He used to keep track of those of his patients that had to be sent to specialists, and since in the beginning of the seventies I started to function as a consultant on psychiatric matters in the local hospital, I had a chance to meet him occasionally.

What had never happened before, started to happen now - unnoticed even denied at first; I found myself attracted to this man. The inner peace, the "wholeness", as I would call it today, which he radiated, carried me away. He was deeply rooted in himself and in what he was doing and therefore had no need for feeding an avaricous ego at the expense of others, as most of the men had, whom I had encountered so far. I, one of the few highly professional women in the area, was not forced to dwarf myself in his presence in order to not threaten his sef-esteem. I could be - simply Me.

Since Anwar was a widower with two children and had outgrown his clan's influence and I was on my own anyway, it did not take long until we arranged an unnoisy marriage and I moved into his little, decent villa situated on the northern slopes of Mount a-Tour. Rushdi and Aisha, then in their early tens, received me with as much reservation as could be expected, but Anwar said:"Just don't push, just let things grow by themselves."

I would have lied to myself if I would have said that this change in my life was easy. Still it put an end to the major part of my lonelyness. And then - it brought out a completely unused potential in me - the capacity to cope with the problems and conflicts of a relationship and grow by it.

Even today I wonder, how I managed to proceed that far in life withut having exposed myself to the wonderful, though dangerous and often very painful challenges inherent in any deep relationship with another human being. There had been this deadness in me, this having put up with a sort of a veil between me and life, which I only now became fully aware of. My love melted the veil away, and at first it seemed to me that I was experiencing much more pain, much more anxiety than I had known before. Every little misunderstanding, every sign of a clash would throw me out of balance. I would either panick, that Anwar would be disappointed by me and withdraw, or I felt the almost irrestistable urge to run away myself, back to my secure self-sufficiency. I, who had helped hundreds of patiensts to live, I was now in dire need of help for myself.

Anwar, my beloved husband, friend, brother, father, son, anything to me - who sent you to kindle the hidden lights in me?

One day, when Aisha refused to help me with some kitchen work and ran over to her father, hugging him and demonstratively turning a sulky, haughty face towards me, I could not restrain myself anymore. Tears started to fall over the materials I was mixing for "kubbeh" and though I had not uttered a sound, Anwar must have felt my anguish. He came over, close to me, stroked my hair and said tenderly: "Now, that's a good girl, finally crying it out!" Something in me wanted to revolt against the "good girl", but the relief the long-absent tears brought, was so immense, that I decided to put myself into Anwar's hands and to just let go.

-18-

.... I needed the illusion, that I could always count on Dr. Martin, always cuddle in the arms of my father, always return to the familiar environment of my childhood, if I only wanted to.

The first illusion dissolved, when some relatives of my husband came to visit us from Amman in the framework of the permitted annual summer visits. Their son had taken part in the "Black September" some years earlier and was thrown into a Jordanian prison like the rest of his fellows who survived. They told, that in prison he met an old-timer, an English doctor, who obviously had become weird by years of not very humane treatment. Listening to the story my heart ached physically, I could suddenly see him, like the appearance of a dead person, quiet, pale, with hair turned white before time, with that strong look of compassion for all suffering creatures in his eyes, but with his spirit broken, his mind confused. I had to leave the room, overwhelmed by tears and feelings of guilt. They must have imprisoned him as an Israeli spy shortly after I had gone. Once he had found his way back to his Jewishness, he, sincere as he was, must have talked about it not only to me. I imagined that, since during his years of denial of nationality he had refused to own a British passport and had gotten along with a nationless passport only, nobody in

-19-

the world took notice of his disappearance, nor were there any relatives to claim him. And I, his foster-daughter, I had been busy with myself. I after all had refused to make it an equal relationship. I needed him, he did not need me.

The peace within myself was gone. I went to the military governor and demanded to let me find out for myself, what had happened to Dr. Martin. They knew about him, of course, a Jew collaborating with the enemy, "the famous self-hatred of Jews", he mumbled with contempt in his eyes. But they let me go. I was furoius, I was ashamed, I hated everybody, the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, the British, myself. It took me weeks to find out. I used every possible pressure, my German passport, my connections in Europe, my story of rape, orphanage and eviction, and I finally found out the truth....

But the truth was nothing but a farce. Brought to trial several times, Dr. Martin could never prove his innocence, so they just let him rot away in prison. Nobody could tell me, of course, what went on in his mind during all these years, before and after the '67 war. But one day, after having shared life with the Black September prisoners for some years, he yelled: "Viva Palestine!" He yelled it over and over again, he must have gone out of his mind, - until the Jordanian guards grabbed him and whipped him as was the custom in Jordanian prisons. His vigour had gone long before, his body could not take the torture, and his mind did not care anymore. He faded away, slowly, unnoticed, and it was only a month before I had come to Amman, that they had covered him with soil.

I fell numb. I had never cared much about religion. People used God as an excuse for not coping with their problems and conflicts. I did not deny him, but I felt, that He had created us in a way, that we had to do without Him. We had to take total responsibility for shaping our own destiny. But at that time I entered one of the mosques, and I would sit there on the floor in some corner among some old women praying for their husband's favour or their childrens' well-being. I would sit there for days on end, not praying just being with myself, trying to come to terms with the meaning of Dr. Martin's death for my life. I sent a message to my family and to the people I worked with, telling them, that I needed to stay in Amman and would not be back for another month or two. Being on the crossroad between past and future, I was determined to find out about my father too.

The time of Ramadan came, and this time I rejoiced in taking part in the fast. My awareness grow clear like a crystal

-20-

and the explosion called the October War, the repercussions of which were felt even in the peaceful atmosphere of my mosque, worked as a catalyst in starting (?) a process of thinking which in time would mature into a crucial decision...

When the war ended, people on the street would say, "now we are sauwa-sauwa", now we are even. The high brow of the Jews was lowered, the self-esteem of the Arabs was boosted, and the most formidable obstacle to people's reconciling their interests - the gap in self-respect - seemed to have disappeared. I remembered one of the Israelis university people , who sought dialogue with the Palestinian elite, mentioning the story of Cain and Abel in the version of their Bible as containing the main key to understanding human conflict; "Cain slew his brother not because of land, or a woman, or any material need or greed", he said, "but because his brother's gift - his uniqueness, his creating was valued, while his gift was rejected." I wondered, if the blow to Israeli feelings of superiority would finally open their eyes to face their dependency on the Palestinian people, or if the opposite would happen - their trauma of being persecuted and victimized would be re-enacted.

But before I could embark on using the effects of the Ocober war for my own goal, I had to first clean my determination from the uncontrolled emotional influences (?) from my traumas, my resentments, my fears, my prejudices.

I decided to wait for the end of Ramadan and then set out for a systemataical search of my father, when on the second day of Id-al-Fitr, amidst the rows of devoted men, which leveled down the usual barriers and painful discriminations between people, I discerned the outstandingly dark eyes of an old man, who seemed to be in a world of his own, not quite in tune with the rest of the worshippers. He crouched rather close to where I hid in thecorner that had become familiar to me during this time of contemplation, I was strangely drawn to watch his crumbled fingers fumbling with his prayer-beads.

Prayer-beads are one of the outlets for the artist's imagination in Islamic culture, and among the more artistic samples one rarely finds the same device twice. Never again had I seen the small black ivory beads, laid in with silver, that my father had treasured as the most precious item among his possessions. The black eyes, my eyes, and the black beads - it must be him! I had found him! I could hardly wait until the end of the service, but when I finally pushed my way through to him, my throat choked. What would I tell him? How could he relate to me, the ony remnant of his family? Probably he had married again, had raised a second generaton of children, would he care for me at all?

-21-

The childish dream of cuddling in his arms was the first thing to dissolve in the light (?) of reality. He was smaller than I am, his back bent a little, his features unfamiliar, his eyes expressionless, his lips pressed together in a hostile way. Still, I approached him with reverence.

"Is it possible that you are Mr. Muhammed Abu... from the viallage D.... in occupied Palestine?"

He turned a suspicious look at me, neither affirming nor denying the fact.

"If so, then I am your dauighter Azmeeyeh!" I said, hoping , a flash of joy would lighten up his weary eyes.

There was a second of recognition: "So, it's you. People told me that you stayed alive', he said without expression.
As if some dam was breaking down , tears rushed into my eyes.

" But you did not look for me?"

He did not answer, but wearily looked up and down my tall stature, my western-styled, rather elegant clothing, my uncovered head, still embellished by my long, black braids tied up in the back of my head, the fashionable spectacles on my freckled semitic nose. To break the ice, I started telling him my story, stressing the facts, that would make him proud of me. But nothing moved in his face.

"The Jews have done a good job on you, haven't they", he finally said. "With how many men have you slept after they first defiled you?" his voice raised to a kind of shriek.

I automatically stepped back, letting some worshippers pass between us, first paralyzed , then disgusted, then under the strong urge of just turning my back on him, then suddeny struck by a vision of the wretched life of this broken man.

Ii order to avoid complete discomposure (disintegration) he had to desperately stick to the values of the society in which he had grown into a man and respected member of his village. Though I too had internalized part of these values and had never been with a man until I came to know my husband, everything in my appearance, my occupation, my way of life seemed to deny his notion of womanly decency. Compassion returned to my heart. I approached him once more and said tenderly:

"Father, if you would know me, you would see, that I value the education you gave me. I did not betray it. "

But his eyes already were somewhere else, the expession of confusion I had noticed in the mosque, overshadowed his face again, and he just turned around and left me standing there. There was a surge of hugging him from behind in an overwhelming wish to soothe his wounds by showing him the light, the joy, the love and the hope that life will reveal forever to those who open themselves up to it. But I stayed, where I was. His wounds were closed, his life was reduced to minimal pain. Why should I open it up again? It was too late, he would never enjoy his daughter again and I, I had to do without a father. I had to finally grow up.

-22-

That same day I left Amman, and without going home, I travelled straight to Jerusalem, leaving my few belongings at the bus-station. Since none of the present geographical maps bothered to mention my village, I had difficulty to spot its exact place. But remembering the name of an old Jewish settlement nearby, with whose inhabitants we used to have rather friendly economic and even social contacts, I took a taxi to this settlement and finally found a path that led through low woods planted on the stony slopes of my childhood, up to where once my village had towered like a little fortress built for centuries. Passing through the Jewish settlement, I had not met one familiar face, nor did I want to ask anybody. It would be hard to face, what lay ahead of me, and I wanted to face it alone.

The winter season made itself noticed, the clouds that covered the sky grew heavy and dark, and so did my lonelyness, once I reached the scattered bolders, which covered the earth above the region of the woods, earth still grey from the summer's drought, thristy for water and new life.

I was not equipped for rain, but I did not mind. The first drops came like companions to join me in my painful journey to my childhood. Wishful thinking had made me believe, that I would find at least the ruins of my village, of our house, the little mosque. Whenever I sought refuge in dreaming about what I felt to be my homeland, the place where I belonged to, where I wasn't a stanger, I saw the ruins of my village, concrete walls, though destroyed, spelling a spirit of safety, of hope.

Climbing what I finally spotted as the right path up the last slopes, I imagined, that sometime in the future, Zionist Jews and Palestinians would understand, that what seemed to be a curse to them - two very unique peoples who insisted on living on the same territory - could be changed into a challenge and a blessing. Then our young people would come and rebuild the village again, maybe not all of it, in order to leave more space between the houses and the road, but not destroying the picturesque site. Again something like a dam broke in my mind, and my imagination carried me away, to the extent that I forgot asking myself, who would live in this village, since most of its former inhabitants had been murdered, and the rest of them was dispersed God knows where.

This was an hour of happiness, I felt warm in my heart and body despite the rain that had started to come down, first softly and, when it seemed as if I had reached the ridge, where the ruins must be, the rain poured down with such vehemence, that for a while I could not see anything at all. I was drained to the bones, but I loved it. I was finally home.