“These Are Our Homes”: Visiting West Jerusalem’s Neighborhoods with Mounir Kleibo

Mounir Kleibo is a well-known Jerusalemite Palestinian. He was the Special Representative of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Office in Jerusalem and had various high-level positions at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Ministry of Finance in the Palestinian Authority. These days, he invests his energy on photography, a skill he mastered and for which he has gained recognition.

But perhaps more important to Kleibo than all his impressive achievements is his passionate identification as the proud son of Abla Dajani Daoudi, who passed away in December 2022 (from COVID-19) at the age of 93. He describes his mother as an exceptional woman.

Kleibo feels the pain that his mother carried throughout her life when she lost her family home in 1948. “Imagine how difficult it was for my mother to not be able to water her trees anymore,” he reflects. Whenever she visited the neighborhood of Lower Baq‘a, he explains, she would instinctively and automatically go to the trees. “She would gently look after the plants. Sometimes, she would pick up some small leaves and carry them with her.”1

Kleibo’s words convey what is often heard when Palestinian Jerusalemites (and Palestinians generally) describe the loss of their houses during the Nakba: the anguish goes far beyond the actual stone structure, and these feelings do not fade over time. After the 1948 War, which in and of itself was traumatic, individuals and families found themselves forcibly displaced from their lands, homes, communities, and, in many cases, city and country (see The West Side Story, Part 4: The Erasure of the New City and Its Transformation into Jewish West Jerusalem). In Kleibo’s case, the family moved temporarily for safety to Egypt for a number of years, then back to the Jordanian side of the city, where Kleibo was born in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in 1960 and educated at the Collège des Frères in the Old City.

Kleibo describes the strong physical attachment his mother retained for her garden—the olive and lemon trees and the flowers. For Abla, the mere sight of her trees instilled a deep sense of grief. She considered them a part of her; in her view, they would always remain connected.

Kleibo also feels connected to the architecture and infrastructure of Lower Baq‘a, an area with which he is very familiar. “I would’ve trimmed those trees differently,” Kleibo remarks, while walking through the neighborhood. “I would have worked with natural light so that those sitting inside the homes would see the beautiful landscape, rather than live on artificial light.”

Much like Ibrahim Matar and Huda Imam, Kleibo has made it a point to document the confiscation of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem. For him, however, the story is not so much about the stolen houses as it is about his beloved mother.

“My mother was exceptionally beautiful,” he points out matter-of-factly. He shows a photo of his mother before 1948, with her bicycle, in front of her home in Lower Baq‘a, house number 14. She loved to ride her bicycle and was a fast runner. He compares the photo with a more recent one of her, decades later, in a wheelchair.

Abla Dajani Daoudi was born in the al-Baq‘a neighborhood of Jerusalem on December 30, 1930. The family itself was important: Daoudi alludes to Prophet Dawud/King David, and the Dajanis, a prominent family deeply rooted in the city, were historically the custodians and caretakers of King David’s tomb on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.2 Abla’s father Mohammed was an affluent businessman who built several houses and owned important properties in Jerusalem, including the Imperial Hotel and the Daoudi Trade Agency in Mamilla (Ma’min Allah) and a large supermarket outside Jaffa Gate. Among his projects were the family home, completed in 1936, which eventually came to house his wife and eight children, including Abla. He also bought other plots in Lower Baq‘a, built homes on them, and rented them out. He was also a member of the Chamber of Commerce.  

“My mother was a champion for women’s rights,” Kleibo shares with friends and acquaintances during a walkabout of the neighborhood on June 10, 2023. “She was an avid reader, loved photography, and did herbal healing. She spoke several languages, including German, and was quite friendly. She would tell us about our good Jewish neighbors, who enjoyed sharing this space together; they cooked and celebrated together.” Kleibo describes a time that is hard to imagine now, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews “did not have any sensitive issues.” The situation worsened in the late 1940s. 

“There used to be a British checkpoint,” he explains. To control people’s movement, the British Mandate issued color-coded permits, which had to be presented on request. His mother’s permit was green—valid from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m., after which everything shut down. The old railway station, which has recently been reconstructed and turned into a public venue, used to take people by train to Jaffa, Egypt, and elsewhere. “It became a terrorism spot at some point,” he describes, as the Jewish militias would plant explosives and bombs by the train station.

His mother had experienced harassment by both the British forces and by the Zionist paramilitary group, the Haganah. During and after the 1948 War, Abla told her son, the Haganah and other Zionist forces and civilians would unabashedly steal the belongings of Palestinians from their temporarily vacated homes; the looting was so widespread that virtually no house escaped unscathed (see The West Side Story, Part 4: The Erasure of the New City and Its Transformation into Jewish West Jerusalem).

In June 2022, not long before his mother died, Kleibo tells the group of friends and acquaintances, “she asked me to take her to her home [in Lower Baq‘a]. She said this might be the last time and she waved it goodbye. It’s as if she knew it, and she was right: It was indeed her last visit.” The way Kleibo describes it, the place she had not lived in since her family left “temporarily” and “for a few days” in 1948 was what she still considered home several decades later.

Kleibo was not alone in his admiration for his mother. Others too saw in her an articulate witness of Palestinian life and sought her out to hear her recollections. In August 2021, Abla shared some of her reflections about the house in an article in This Week in Palestine: 

In 2016, Alexandra Handal, Palestinian artist, filmmaker, and essayist, combined Palestinian history and art in a web documentary, titled “What Have I Forgotten to Tell You?” The films, produced by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), captured precious visuals and narratives about the displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem. Among the people Handal interviewed was Abla.

In the short documentary, Abla stresses that 1948 was not a war, per se, “because war happens between army and army. But what happened was between an armed nation, and a very peaceful unarmed nation.”4 She goes on to explain how by the end of their mandate, the British handed all their weapons and artillery to the Jewish militias.

Upon hearing the personal accounts of Abla and other Palestinians whose spectacular houses—some could be considered mansions—in Jerusalem were seized by the fledgling Israeli government, Handal described how sifting through the new advertisements for real estate properties in newly renamed West Jerusalem triggered a deep emotional response:

One gets the impression that Abla never strayed too far from the old neighborhood: In the film, she easily sketches a map of Lower Baq‘a, detailing the nearby bakery, the houses of neighbors (such as the Murad and Dajani families), and her own home. These accounts stand as testimony of life before 1948, when Abla and her siblings would sit by the staircase of their home and enjoy an afternoon snack, before she would take off on her beloved bike for a ride around the neighborhood.

As for Mounir Kleibo, he perseveres in life with gratitude and perseverance and documents Jerusalem through his lens on his walks. Deep in his heart remains the pain of knowing that his beloved mother was unfairly deprived of her rightful home, a wound that remains within him even after her passing. Amidst the fading echoes of time, he finds solace in the indomitable spirit of a woman who carried her roots in her heart, even when destiny denied her footsteps upon her cherished soil.