My paternal grandfather became reclusive following the nakba. People say that in his youth he was intrepid, feared, and highly attached to earthly pleasures. Later in life, however, his only interest was in devoting himself to the worship of God. After I started school, my grandfather noticed that I wrote with my left hand, and he wasn’t pleased with this. He got some hemp twine, shoved my hand into a cloth sack, and then tied it tightly with the twine, saying “You must be among those of the right.” But I would trick him and undo the twine and write with my left hand anyway. I have remained left-handed all my life.

My grandfather would spend his time reciting the Qur’an in a loud voice, or reading another book about the tortures of hell and telling visitors about what he had learned. From time to time I would listen to snatches of his narratives. He would say that it was forbidden for women to ululate at any occasion, and that on the Day of the Resurrection snakes would hang from their tongues. He would talk about the scorpions in hell that were the size of camels, and about terrifying snakes there that God would let loose on the infidels.

But my grandfather’s tales were not the only things that frightened me, for I had previously been terrified by many other events, most significantly the ever approaching war that brought with it death, destruction, and displacement. One evening, as my father and I were eating dinner together (women couldn’t sit with us to eat, although I didn’t know why), a bomb suddenly exploded near our house. Its sound shocked us and we couldn’t finish our dinner. We sought refuge in a windowless room on the western side of the house for fear that another bomb might go off and we could be killed.

The tales of my maternal grandmother also frightened me. She would come to stay at our house for several months each year, and was a simple and incredibly kind woman who I loved a great deal. I slept beside her at night, and she would tell me stories and say how much she wished my mother would have many sons so that they could support me in times of misfortune. One night, when my mother was in the final month of pregnancy, my grandmother confided to me her fear that my mother might have another girl. She said she wasn’t pleased about this possibility, and then fell asleep and snored loudly while I stayed up thinking about her bewildering words until I finally fell asleep too.

She would tell me and my sisters about how she once woke at daybreak in a panic, thinking that the sun was about to rise above the mountain already and angry at herself for sleeping late. She strapped onto her back the metal containers from which she sold milk in the city, but as she walked into the open countryside away from the house, realized that she had been tricked by a false dawn. At first she considered returning home, and then wavered and decided to continue on her way to the city anyway. But then misfortune forced her to turn back when she saw two hyenas running close by, striking fear in her heart. The only thing that rescued her from their onslaught were the metal containers protecting her back.

Hyenas occupied a large part of the childhood nights and nightmares of my four siblings and me. My grandmother and mother conspired to frighten us whenever we disobeyed their orders to go to bed early, telling us there was a hyena behind the door. We would fall silent, freeze our movements, and go to sleep frightened.

My grandmother constantly spoke to us of the jinn and about how they were all around us. She would forbid us from sprinkling water on the floor at night, for that angered the jinn, and she never did anything without intoning the name of God to protect her from their evil. She told us about Rasad, who lived in a well owned by one of the village’s families not far from our house. She said that she had seen him out at night, made visible by the light emanating from him as though he were a lantern, as he ran freely through the streets and then disappeared.

My fear would intensify whenever Rasad began to move within a few meters of our house, as his violent mood would sometimes drive him to do. For one dawn, a relative of mine killed his young wife after fighting with her. According to the family, she was always kind and well-behaved and didn’t deserve any kind of punishment. This relative had borrowed my oldest uncle’s dagger because he was going to the Dead Sea to fetch salt. As his wife was baking bread for his journey, he snuck up behind her and beat her to death with it. Then he fled the village and stayed out of sight until he was arrested. He only spent a few months in prison and then was released when the British ended their mandate over the country.

That morning, morbid curiosity drove me to the hut in which the murdered woman’s body lay. I peered from a distance, but didn’t dare to approach too closely. I heard women talking about the blood covering her body and filling the hut, and I remained frightened for many nights. British soldiers came and conducted lengthy questioning on the crime, and didn’t leave until the woman’s body had been moved to its final resting place. I so pitied our dog as he pulled his tail between his legs, folded in on himself, and scurried away from the clamor of the soldiers without daring to bark. (And how pained I was when that dog later died after stray dogs bit him in a fierce fight and left him severely injured.)

My grandfather was among those most pained by the woman’s murder, for the crime had taken place near his house and he had to take care of the three children the woman left behind. He started to go frequenting to the al-Aqsa Mosque to pray. He lost interest in the radio that the Mandate authority had given him, and when it stopped working he didn’t bother to fix it. Another radio didn’t enter our home until many years later.

***

There are many stories of tragedies and sorrow, and many tales of displaced refugees living in tents.

We could no longer go to Jerusalem by way of the High Commissioner’s palace. But my young mind could only grasp a little of what I heard. Some of the teachers at our village school would digress from the usual class lessons to talk about unfamiliar topics, about what had happened and what kind of situation we had come to be in.

One evening, a car belonging to the British embassy brought a movie projector to our village. A large number of men and children gathered in the school courtyard to watch a film about the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the role the British played in spreading modernity and civility among other peoples (so as to justify colonizing them). During the screening, older boys encouraged us to cry “Down with Britain! Long live Egypt!” We shouted this several times, and yet the film still played through to the end, and we in fact really wanted to see it. Later we found out that one of the teachers from our village had been the indirect instigator of the chanting.

My mind started to open up to new things I had never thought about before, although my specific interest in politics did not develop until later. I also went through minor hardships with my mother and father. For example, after the road passing from Hebron gate to Bethlehem was closed following the nakba, traffic moved in the direction of Jerusalem–Abu Dis–Wadi al-Nar–Beit Sahour–Bethlehem and reverse. (This is the same route that West Bank residents have to take today since the al-Mukabbir road and other byways have been gradually closed to them in the waves of separating Jerusalem from the West Bank that began in 1993.) It so happened that my father worked in the Bethlehem area, which meant that every Thursday afternoon I had to travel a significant distance on our white donkey to meet him. I would wait for him until sunset near the village of Abu Dis until he got off one of the Bethlehem–Jerusalem buses. Then he would get on the donkey and I would walk home behind him.

Another example is when money was short in the years following the nakba and employment opportunities were few and far between. These were years of scarcity, when goods were not regularly available in the markets and their prices subsequently rose. Sugar, in particular, caused us great distress. Once my maternal uncle came to visit us, and as he was leaving, my mother suggested that he linger and have a cup of tea. I enthusiastically supported her suggestion and hung onto my uncle’s clothes to make him stay. He hesitated, and then my mother said with a gentleness I soon learnt was forced, “Let your uncle go.”

He left with no idea of what would befall me. My mother was angry because we didn’t have any sugar and I had almost put her in an embarrassing situation. I hadn’t known we didn’t have sugar, or perhaps my mother’s sudden suggestion had simply made me forget.

Some weeks later my mother sent me to buy sugar from the distant village store, and I felt great responsibility as I returned home with it. Then the first drops of rain began to fall. I knew what would happen if the rain fell heavily—I’d return home with half of the sugar melted. I rushed, but the rain only drizzled a little and then stopped, and so luckily nothing happened to ruin that day.

Even after my father became the mukhtar of the clan in succession to his father, he never stopped working for the public works department whenever an opportunity to do so came up. He also grew wheat and barely on our land in the Sheikh Saad neighborhood. He and my mother harvested it, and then he threshed and winnowed it and stored it in sacks. From time to time he fell ill due to the immense energy he expended and the little care he took of himself. He would spend weeks on end in hospital, and during that time I would feel abandoned since only my mother, sisters, and little brother were at home with me. I would have a vague sense that I was responsible for them, even though I was only 12 years old.

***

I became a student in one of Jerusalem’s most renowned schools, the al-Rashidiya Secondary School. At the time, it was the only government school in which students could carry through to the final year. I enrolled in 1954, in the first year of middle school. I felt distinguished among my peers who had to go to the neighboring village school.

Every day I saw Jerusalem stretch beyond the walls of the old city as some of its neighborhoods were slowly built up. The Rashidiya School, which was located near al-Sahira Gate, was in a building inherited from the Ottoman period, a large, square, two-story structure with long windows ending in arches. Other buildings were constructed nearby that housed the library, the carpentry shop, and, when the student body began to grow, additional classrooms.

I had never thought about going to the cinema due to the counsel of my family, who described it as a waste of time. But one night and without prior planning, I went to al-Hamra Cinema to see a film of Senuhi al-Masri. (I later read about his life in Mustafa Murad al-Debagh’s book, and learned that he had come to Palestine as a political refugee in the 19th century (before Christ), fleeing a new Pharaoh. He lived in Palestine for several years and married a Palestinian girl and later returned to Egypt after the Pharaoh allowed him to do so.) Following this initial experience, the cinema became a source of learning and great pleasure for me.

Sometimes, during the school lunch break I would go to the al-Musrara quarter and hire a bicycle with savings from my allowance. After numerous attempts I learned how to ride bicycles, and considered this a real advantage to studying in the city. I showed off to my peers who went to middle school in the neighboring village of Sour Baher.

Sometimes I would have lunch in my uncle’s shop. I would buy a piece of halva and a loaf of bread from a nearby store and then sit at the shop’s door or in Mona Cafe, just opposite my uncle’s shop, and watch the people passing through the market. Then I would return to school and pass the time remaining until we could go home.

The city’s markets became familiar to me, and sometimes my mother would entrust me with buying things for the house. She would scold me when she found a damaged tomato or a withered sweet potato and urged me to look carefully when buying vegetables. She couldn’t be convinced that merchants wouldn’t let a boy my age pick out his purchases on his own.

Yet I did not suffice with these ventures, and from time to time I went to the Dome of the Rock and al-Haram al-Sharif. Sometimes I would pray the noon prayer and then study as I walked to and fro through one of the courtyards. I would return to school via al-Mi’dhana al-Hamra Street, which led to al-Sahira Gate, or via al-Wad Road leading to al-Amud Gate. I learned the names of the markets, alleys, shops, restaurants, and cafes, and when I would return to the village, I’d talk about the city.

In the mid-1950s, my generation was influenced by the nationalist uprising against Western colonialism and its allies. We began to pay attention to the role played by Egypt in this regard following the July 1952 revolution.

The political developments that swept the region led my father to think about buying a radio. I went with him to a store in the Khan al-Zeit Gate area, and we bought a radio that ran on dry batteries. It had several buttons and a glass panel filled with numbers and needles that indicated the radio stations. It also had a glass knob that lit up when you pressed the power button, and so we thought it was incomparably superior to my grandfather’s old radio. My father started to spend the evenings following the news. Cairo, and then the Voice of the Arabs, were the most important stations he listened to. Whenever I had the opportunity, I would sit next to the radio to listen to the singers of those days, such as Muhammad Abdel Wahab, Farid al-Atrash, and Abdel Halim Hafiz.

When the tripartite forces attacked Egypt, the patriotic songs of Fayda Kamel and others drew my attention most. I would get highly worked up when I heard the song, “God is mightier than the tricks of the aggressors,” the anthem “My country, my country,” or the song “Peace has returned, oh Nile,” which filled our ears after the war ended.

I started to follow Egypt’s news and was enthusiastic about the activities of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. When the Suez Canal was nationalized, I was gripped by the zeal that filled everyone’s hearts. When the tripartite forces attacked Egypt starting with Israel’s invasion of Sinai on 29 October 1956, my heart was with Egypt just as everyone else’s was. I followed the news of fighting on the front and of the popular resistance in the Canal Zone cities.

***

I often sat in Uncle ‘Ayed’s shop waiting for the right moment to head to the gate of Schmidt College. Lucy would walk through in a throng of girls, and I would watch on from the opposite sidewalk. Then the girls would break up into a few groups and disperse in every direction. Lucy and her friends would walk toward the taxi station near al-Amud Gate, go down the few steps, and then cross through the massive entrance to the old city. A few friends and I would follow them, sometimes walking across from them at a distance and sometimes approaching them. Their procession would continue to Khan al-Zeit Gate market, where we’d get closer to them using the crowdedness of the market as a pretext. They’d try to avoid our wary brushes without acknowledging us, and their laughter and graceful movements would fill us with suppressed joy. We would only distance ourselves from them again once we’d reached the beginning of al-Khanqa al-Salahiya Street, which leads to the Christian quarter.

The crowds thinned out there and the groups of girls would begin to disperse. One girl would disappear into an alley, and then another would take a different back street toward her house. Only Lucy and a few of the other girls would remain to cross Haret al-Nasara market. They’d climb a few stairs at the end of the market, at the intersection with the bazaar, and walk towards the Armenian quarter, where they’d split up and head to their homes. I’d climb the stairs and take a few steps along the narrow, deserted Mar Morcos Street and then return, filled with desire for Lucy to pay attention to me, maybe by exchanging glances or even returning the feelings I had for her. Yet I never noticed any change in her behavior; she always remained indifferent despite the numerous times I followed her from the school gate practically to her house. At last I despondently let go of her, convinced of my defeat.

That took place when I was a young teenager in middle school. I never would have thought about chasing girls if it hadn’t been for my relative who studied with me in the al-Rashidiya School. He was two years ahead of me, and opened my eyes to the matter while he was chasing a girl from Schmidt College. Just like with my girl, he had no success in swaying his. It seems that he wanted to compensate for that, for he told me about romantic adventures with other girls that he and his friends who were older than me had experienced at celebrations in the city. To this day, I still don’t know how much truth there was to his stories.

I didn’t see Lucy in later years; it seems that she finished her schooling and left for somewhere else. Then in my final year of school I got involved in a quiet love story. It was with a girl from my village, a girl I had seen when I was ten or eleven. We boys and girls would gather in an open area and tease her, sometimes with shocking words, until she cursed and threw stones at us in her fury. Then she would run off with all of the other girls. This scene was repeated many times and was later followed by encounters at weddings that took the form of an innocent pursuit she never avoided, although she always remained somewhat shy. I found an odd pleasure in this. But soon enough I was cut off from her and then forgot about her, and she must have forgotten about me too. It was simply one of my first romantic attempts to approach the world of girls. They were innocent, naïve, and shy attempts.

***

As for Ramallah, the first time I went there I was 16.

We spilled out of the bus arriving from Jerusalem at the final station near Dunya Cinema, which shut down when the first Intifada broke out as though cinemas and the Intifada were incompatible. Its owners demolished it a year ago and opened a car park in the empty lot created—another abuse of the city’s architectural heritage and attack on memories of the city.

From the Dunya Cinema that no longer exists, we would continue on foot. Or rather, I would continue on foot, as would my worker cousins who accompanied my father. My father, however, had created a rather comfortable custom for himself. A worker from the village we were going to would be waiting for us with a saddled donkey, which my father would ride while we followed on foot behind him.

We went to Ain Arik village, which was not far from Ramallah but which cars couldn’t reach. It was my father’s mission to make the village accessible by car; he supervised the forging of a road connecting the village and the city during the summer of 1957. I was still in school, and my father had been taking me during summer vacations to work with these projects for a few dinars each month.

We rented a house in the village to stay in all summer long. It was the first time that my father didn’t stay in a tent like he had at all the other work stations. This particular house was nothing more than a large room with long windows that let in the refreshing night summer breeze. I would sleep in great comfort, and visions of the girls I would pass in the village’s alleyways and gardens would often visit me in my dreams. I sensed that my life was opening up to new directions, and the Ramallah countryside was in some way or another at least partly responsible for that.

***

The following summer I got even closer to Ramallah. My father set up his tent and work station in al-Tira, on the site where Dar al-Mu‘alimat now stands and near the road my father was working on to connect Ain Qiniya village to Ramallah. He was no longer in need of a donkey to pick him up near Dunya Cinema at the start of each week, for the site was nearby and could be reached on foot in a matter of minutes.

My father had a metal bed that he took with him everywhere as he traveled from one village to the next forging roads. The value of this bed became apparent in al-Tira. Every night I would spread blankets on the dirt floor of the tent and then look all around before putting out the soft light of the lantern. I had to do this for the sake of safety, for my personal safety that is. My father’s assistant would lie upon his blankets across from me and do the same thing for the sake of his own personal safety. Even my father, lying up high in his bed conducted the same surveillance. Luckily our enemy targets were easy to spot.

We’d grab our shoes and use their heels to strike at the scorpions crawling everywhere, taking pleasure in crushing them. Then we’d sit and wait until other scorpions appeared out of the red soil, and I’d long for the spacious room with long windows in Ain Arik. Yet sleep would come in the end, for we simply couldn’t stay up all night long waiting for scorpions to appear in order to kill them before they bit us. My father’s assistant would recite the Verse of the Chair in a loud voice as though doing so would protect us all from the threat of the scorpions. I’m sure my father recited it as well without us hearing him, as one night there was a scorpion on the tent roof right above his head. I hadn’t memorized the Verse of the Chair, and so I’d recite the Chapter of Daybreak three times in a row before I went to sleep.

It was from this rural location in al-Tira that I began to form a plan to invade Ramallah with all of its intriguing secrets. (At the time, I hadn’t yet read the plans of Mao Zedong to invade the city from the countryside.) I formed the plan on my own without my father’s knowledge, as he would have considered it an unnecessary luxury. Yet my desire to invade the city wasn’t random and unplanned.

I had grown accustomed to seeing throngs of young women and girls, a little older than me or more or less around my age, walking down the dirt path from Ramallah in the afternoons. They would be wearing city clothes that revealed their shapely legs and comely arms. The radiant sight of them would light up my imagination, and I grew convinced that Ramallah was filled with wiles, for it was sending these throngs of young girls to the vineyards in the lazy, late afternoon for me, for me! Stationing myself on the corner became one of my daily missions. I would observe the girls close up, taking pleasure in their beauty and listening to their pretty speech punctuated with delicate laughter.