Remembering June

I remember the sounds of planes going over our heads. My brother and I crawl under the bed but the sounds are still loud.

At night we are sent to sleep in the neighbor's basement. We don't understand why, but we think it is great fun. It was the only sleep over I ever had as a kid.

The next day, our neighbor packs his kids in his car and leaves to his village in Deir Debwan. He does not offer to take us or come back for us. My mother cries when she sees our mattress lying over the fence between our house and his. I remember her standing there, looking.

The next night we sleep with my cousins in a garage few blocks away. I remember candles and loud noises. Planes? Explosions? Someone says: they must have hit the radio station. Another adult says it was dumb to come here, so close to the radio station. No body cries. Just cowering.

Then we march. The adults decide that it is safer if we leave our house in El Bireh. It is two blocks from the Jordanian base (which used to be a British camp, then after Oslo became Al Muqata'a: Arafat's Headquarters). It is a likely target.

We march on foot. We don't have a car. My aunt, her husband, their young children, my 12 year-old-brother and me. We are heading to the village of my aunt's husband. Burka. There are other people on the road. We can see the planes flying over our heads. The adults yell at us not to look, as if by looking up we become targets. Every now and then they will call on us to lie down flat on the ground. I don't remember how I felt.

I remember my brother weeping and refusing to move. He wants our mother. She has decided to stay home to take care of the house in case anything happened to it. She has built it only 4 years earlier with tears and sweat and it was her pride and joy. She can't part with it.

My brother digs in his heels. I will always feel grateful to him for that.

My aunt's husband walks back to El Bireh. He is a policeman in the Jordanian force. He comes back with my mother.

He tells us how he heard the cries of the prisoners in the Jordanian jail nearby. Their guards had evacuated and left them behind. He fired shots at the prison doors and released them. He tells the story crying. The first man I ever see cry. I will see more later.

We March. I lose one of my plastic slippers. Green. Why the hell am I wearing slippers?
My foot bleeds a bit. My mother carries me part of the way. She later told me that at some point I asked her to put me down and said "Allah byustor."(God will protect us). I don't remember saying that.

I remember sitting under olive trees.

In the village, there are lots of kids in the house where we lived. I remember spending idyllic long days playing in the fields, building camp fires, and eating roasted wheat. The smell of it is unforgettable.

I learned to jump rope.

I remember the women baking large loafs of bread and spreading them on the village's stone walls. They sustain the passersby fleeing their villages on foot and donkeys.

I remember seeing my uncle, the family's patriarch, weeping. This is a man who spent eight long years in Al Jafer, the desert Jordanian jail. I don't know if he ever wept in jail or under torture. But I remember him weeping in Burka. That's when I got scared. He and all the men were glued to the radio. I remember them standing on the open veranda looking towards Jerusalem. Pointing. To fires. Planes on the horizon. And weeping.

Someone tells my mother that our house received a direct hit. She collapses. Two of my teenage cousins are so upset on her behalf that they decide to go back to El Bireh to see for themselves. They come back with the news: the house is still standing. My mother lives.

I remember hearing talk of Amman. Of us going there with my aunt and her family. My aunt's husband, the policeman, declares that he will never work with the Israelis and that he will never hand them his gun. This I learn later.

They leave.

My aunt and her family become refugees. She and her husband are both buried in New Jersey, USA.

We stay.

My mother balks at the last minute. She decides that whatever happens, it is better than leaving.

We return to live under Israeli occupation.

The first Israeli I ever saw I encountered on our walk back. About to cross Nabuls Street in El Bireh, a man on a motorcycle whizzes by us. My mother says matter-of-factly: "Yahudi." His face was invisible. But I remember a helmet. To me, he was a creature from outer space. It will take years before I could gaze at the soldiers' faces, still hidden under helmets.

When we arrive home, my brother and I collect some shrapnel from the roof of our house. My mother sweeps the broken glass. We spend the next few days going around the neighborhood comparing damages. The Rafidi family down the street had their stone wall destroyed. But the houses are standing. Later on, news of family members begin to filter through: a cousin in the national guard got lost in the desert for days. Some of his companions died. My mother's aunt was killed on her way to Jericho. And my cousins made it to Amman and were living in a refugee camp.

But on the day of our return, I remember, or my mother told me, that she finds that the dough she had left behind and was planning on baking six days ago has risen and spelled out of the tajen. She kneads a new batch.

I remember the smell of the fresh baked bread. The first thing we eat under occupation.