A Poem and Writing by Aida Qasim, a poet and Lifta descendant, and her father Isa's memories of Lifta.
Aida, the youngest of her father's children recognizes the value of her father's stories and feels a sense of urgency to record them. She realized whilst reflecting on Lifta that her father Isa, who will be 80 next december, never told her stories of Al Nakba; the stories had always been about the Lifta of his childhood and Aida wanted to capture that in a poem which will be forthcoming. Aida, who will participate with FAST in forthcoming events for the Saving Lifta Project, has generously contributed a poem she had written last year- "Neruda's blue rose"- in commemrotation of the passing of 60 years since Al Nakba. The other piece illustrates a parable of the very poignant and personal ressurgent affect that the Nakba has through the generations and onto the present zeitgeist. FAST would like to thank Aida and Isa for their contributions and we will continue to post their writings on the blog.
Nerduda’s Blue Rose
My dreams are not enchanted springs of jasmine
Laced with the musings of romantic artists
Or utopian meadows
Where gazelles fall in love with lions under starry skies
They are not safe havens for tilled soil
Sanctioned by a punishing rain
But are hungry children
Luring a nostalgic pilgrim into the narcissistic desert night
Restless bats taunting a gentle swallow
Armed with a warm blue silence
Muted witnesses to your fleeing echo
And to the seagull’s yearnings for Neruda’s blue rose
O repentant kings of a bygone moon
Weep not for blind men of the Imposturous Setback
Weep for your beloved son
Born again in the cradle of another Catastrophe!
Aida Qasim
Isa's Memories of Lifta
The prevailing notion, among those who are not intimately familiar with Lifta is that it is the old village down the valley west of Jerusalem. True Lifta is that village, but it is in fact much wider and larger.
That old village, romantic and beautiful whose houses are very old and which contains the famous water spring, is the original village. All Liftawis come from there. But early in the twentieth cencury many Liftawis started spreading around. Why not when those vast areas of land to the west and north of the old city of Jerusalem belonged to them. Sheikh Jarrah, Romema, Sheikh Badr, to name but few, belonged to the people of Lifta. If fact much of what is now west Jerusalem belonged to Litawis.
As you approach Jerusalem, coming from the west along Jaffa road, you will see two rows of nice and elegant houses on top of a hill on your left. Those are the houses of my extended family - my father's and my uncles' etc. We moved to that house when I was about five years old. At that time we had our first radio set, and the first radio set in the area, a big His Master's Voice and had electricity.
To me, most memorable was a big mulbrry tree that was standing majestically in the front yard. That tree was my friend. Many a time had I played around it and climbed high in it, ostensibly to collect its delicious fruit but in fact trying to do what Sammy now does best: to climb for the sake of climbing and to jump for the sake of jumping. And that tree was very tolerant and wise. I believe it still stands after over seventy five years. For, some years ago I went there and from some distance I could see it. Sad, maybe, but it still stood in its place. Is it waiting for me to go back?
Narratives intersect at the crossroads of memory
Though life’s circumstances have been the stated reason for my procrastination, there was a sense that to begin my journey towards a PhD, I needed geographical and emotional space from my place of enduring exile. Conversely, my father’s approaching eightieth birthday left me with a compelling need to register his narrative before it was lost to oblivion, and in so doing, discovered my own.
In reviewing the literature, I came across Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “To my mother”. The line: “I love my life, because if I died, I would be ashamed of the tears of my mother”, made me weep. Never had those familiar words resonate so deeply; until then, the metaphor of an idealized mother was a stranger to me. My earliest memory at the age of three, informed my understanding of this construct, subsequently orchestrating the assimilation of successive losses into my repertoire of being.
She stood wailing near the television screen as though intent on entering the box and rearranging the scenes. The defeat of the Arab armies and ensuing occupation of the rest of Palestine, including her birth place –Jerusalem- unraveled my mother like a forgotten sweater who had not been mothballed. A three year old little girl looked on, mesmerized by the histrionics of a strange woman who up until then had been her proverbial anchor.
Queasy at any perceived unruliness of emotions, my father urged her to calm down for his sake as much as mine. My mother’s tattered edges came together in a crescendo of uncharacteristic fury as she shot back a perfectly lucid proclamation: “Let her know the truth!” And for countless nights thereafter, I lay anxiously in the “truth”, overwhelmed by an insidious feeling that the world was an intensely unsafe place.
More than three decades later, I watched helplessly as American tanks rolled into the West Bank while the Israeli army waged its merciless war on Palestinians with its “incursions”. My husband, concerned for our three year old son urged me to take hold of my feral emotions which vacillated between despair and rage. His seemingly treacherous request prompted me to summon the freighted and bemused little girl that remained accessible. Resurrecting the intensity of an earlier time, I reiterated the same maternal sentiment with equal conviction. Palestine had become my abducted child; innocence usurped. And as the notion of abandoning a three year old girl seemed inconceivable, so was deserting a sixty year old boy standing defiantly in the squalor of a refugee camp, with both hands behind his back- patiently observing history unfold- awaiting liberation.
That moment’s idiosyncratic reading of an iconic poem jolted me. No longer did my invention live in the context of the defiant daughter I had always been, but rather experienced through the forgiving Mother I have become. I paced through the vacant rooms of the second floor to our rented villa; the bare walls and furniture that seemed sparse in relation to the size of the place gave it an air of aloofness. Slothfully, I inched towards the hard edge of our oversized bed and covered my head under the inviting sheets. Failed attempts at commanding my body to travel the bed’s full splendor prompted me to surrender with un-bashful abandon my somewhat trusty resolve. Tears that were not mine alone or solely of this time and place commandeered the day’s agenda; a creative process unfolded, derailing what had set out to be an academic exercise.
Aida Qasim
