Deir ʼAbān – Jerusalem District
Na‛īma Muhammad Isma‛īl,
speaking from Qalandya refugee camp, 2011
I was born in 1927 on the outskirts of Sar‛a village. My sister Aziza was married to a man from our village, and when they came to collect her for the wedding, they saw me, and they told my future husband, ‛Abdallah Abu Latifah, about me. He was looking for a wife and I was a good match and seemed to attract him. We were married soon afterwards, and he brought me at fifteen to live with his family. We lived near the Deir ʼAbān station. I can remember watching the trains go by as they made their way to Jerusalem.
Things were good before the arrival of the Jews. We had been married for five years when their forces came near our village and the Nakba began. On the day of the attack, a plane flew overhead and dropped four bombs. They didn’t explode, but they destroyed the houses they fell on. Our house was damaged—the roof and one wall had fallen in. We ran to the Egyptian and Jordanian military camp near the station, and stayed there for ten days under their protection. In those first days the Jordanians came to the village to defend it from the Israelis. They collected the unexploded bombs and asked my husband, who had a mule and cart, to bring them back to the camp. There they took the bombs apart to make a new bomb and exploded it in an attempt to try to fool and intimidate the Israelis. The truth was they didn’t have any bombs of their own and wanted to make the Israelis think they were better armed than they were. But it only worked for a short time, and after ten days the Israelis took over the village.
When the news reached us, we decided to leave for Beit Nattif, where we made a shelter and were able to stay for thirteen days before the Israelis arrived and we were forced to flee once again, this time to al-Khadr, where we stayed for a fortnight.
I had given birth to two children in Sar‛a, but both had passed away. My daughter who survived was born before we fled the village, so we were also traveling with an infant. We were looking for a village free from Israelis where we could stay in peace. Each time we moved, we thought we had fled far enough to be safe. But in each place we landed, they soon followed. Next we fled to Beit Saḥūr, where we stayed until the rains. We found a home to rent, but things were difficult, and eventually we were forced to move on to the small village of Abu Falaḥ, where we stayed for three years, living in a cave.
At this time my parents went on to Jordan, but my husband and I stayed behind because he was afraid to lose his job in construction work. But we could not afford rent elsewhere and life in the cave was difficult, so eventually we had no choice than to come to the Qalandya camp. The United Nations Relief Agency [UNRWA] gave us this piece of land, where we built our house. It was here that I had my fourth child, Naeem, who survived and is the father of my grandson ‛Abdallah, who is with us now.
When we left the village, we left our home exactly as it was, thinking we would return. But that day never came, and we have lived here ever since. My husband lived with me here in the camp until his death at over 100 years old.
When I think back to our village at Sar‛a, I remember the old Maqām [religious shrine], but it has since been destroyed. We had a sprawling house where the whole family lived together. The spring of al-Qantara and the well were right next to the house. I remember how the men used to spend their evenings at the coffee shop. For years, we could not go back, for fear of the Israelis who had occupied our houses and land. We went back to visit Sar‛a only once, five years ago, but the place is now an Israeli farm and we were too afraid to enter. I don’t know if I will ever be able to go back to the spot that was my home.
Na‛īma passed away in 2012 and was buried in the Qalandya refugee camp.