Zakia Jabre Hajjar: “What I Had in Jerusalem Was Like a Treasure, a Precious Gift, and I Lost it”

I want to tell you about my friends and the YMCA.

Like most young people in Jerusalem—Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—my brothers and I joined the new YMCA on Julian Way. It was such a beautiful building! Everyone in town was in awe. There we developed many new friendships while participating in sports, music, and art activities. I learned how to swim in the basement indoor pool, and daily I played squash in the courts. I was a tough player, you know! I also sang in the choir with Esther, a young Jewish woman I befriended, who had escaped Nazi Germany and had found refuge in Palestine.

I loved singing. My brother Afif had joined the PK Band, which stood for Pascal Kamar, the creator of the band. I often accompanied them with my vocals. We would give concerts in the lobby of the YMCA, and once I even got to sing solo in the big auditorium in front of a huge audience. Our love of music started early in life. We had to learn how to play the piano. Mama played it, so we had to learn as well. We began to have concerts at home in front of our parents and their friends. My brothers would play, and I would sing. . . . I also liked pretending I was the French singer, Edith Piaf, because I was tiny like her. I wore a black dress to look like her.

I always tell people who ask about my youth in Palestine, “You can’t understand our life unless you’ve lived it.” No matter how much people read about it, they cannot begin to imagine what it was like. We were not what most people in the world think of us. We were educated, accomplished, modern, and cosmopolitan . . .

My childhood was wonderful, but then when my mother died, overnight I had to become a mother. I had to grow up too quickly and become this mature Arab woman. My brothers were really protective, but at the same time they also made me feel grown up, as if I were in charge and perfectly qualified.

After my Mama died, I was expected to take care of my father and two brothers, which I did with loving care. Every morning I cooked and cleaned the house. Two afternoons I took typing classes (in case I wanted to pursue a secretarial career) with Sister Martin, a jolly, British nun who taught English and typing at St. Joseph’s School. You remember how I told you I had once dreamed of becoming a doctor, well, my dream was shattered when Mama died. But a part of me still longed to feel useful in a hospital, so three days a week I took nursing courses, which, unbeknownst to me, would turn out to be very useful when a few years later conflicts broke out between the Arabs and the Jews and hospitals needed nurses.

In the evenings I enjoyed the stimulating philosophical or political conversations Papa had with his friends in our living rooms or gatherings around the piano with Afif and Daoud to sing with my friends Mimi and Denise, or attending a lecture at the YMCA with my childhood friends Dumia and Hala. Ah, the best part was walking home from the YMCA at night, especially at springtime when the air in Jerusalem was soaked with the sweetness of jasmine, wisteria, and lemon blossoms. I would inhale deeply and fill my lungs and almost feel drunk from the delicious perfumes . . .

I don’t like telling you about this next chapter in my life, because it is the beginning of the end for me, the end of living in my homeland among my own people. I know you want to know about what happened, but it’s not easy, Mona dear, to go back to those times.

. . .

Following the Second World War, tensions in Palestine between Arabs and Jews began to escalate. The official ending of the British Mandate was to take place on May 15, 1948, and both the Arabs and Jews had the same ambitions in mind—to create their own state. It was like we were heading towards a head-on collision. We knew it was going to be a huge disaster, but it was inevitable.

Two years earlier in July 1946, the south wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British Mandate had its military offices, was blown up by the Irgun, a paramilitary, Zionist organization. We were at home when it happened. We heard the loud explosion and ran outside. We saw a huge cloud of smoke hanging over the city. We couldn’t believe what was going on. Then one neighbor called another neighbor, and that’s how we discovered it was the King David. We immediately thought of our friends as the YMCA was just across the street, and we were afraid that some of them might have been hurt, but no one at the YMCA was. About a hundred people perished and many more were injured in the King David bombing. For weeks, the city was in mourning. One of our friends, a woman my age, Hilda, was under the rubble for three days, calling out, “I’m Hilda Azzam. Please help me out.” Sadly, the rescuers were unable to get to her in time, and she perished alone and frightened under tons of limestone. Daily we attended more than one funeral, as every day more bodies were dragged out from the ruins. It was a terrible time, the beginning of the changement, you know, the change of our lives as Palestinians.

. . .

Then on a rainy January night in 1948, we were awakened by a loud noise that shook our whole house. In Qatamon, a couple of miles from our home, the Hotel Semiramis, which also served as the Lorenzo family home, was bombed by the Zionist paramilitary group, the Haganah. The Lorenzos were friends of our family. Sixteen people died, eight from the same family. The next day, as torrential rains came down over Jerusalem, I wanted to attend the funerals, but shootings in the neighborhood prevented me from leaving our home.

During that time, I saw Esther, my Jewish German friend, at one of our choir rehearsals at the YMCA. She asked me, “If your side wins, will you take me in and protect me?” I immediately answered, “But of course, Esther, you don’t need to worry; you’re my friend.” At dinner time that evening, I repeated for my family Esther’s question and my answer. My calm and deliberate father asked me, “And did you ask her the same question if their side wins?”

“No, Papa, I didn’t think to ask her, but I will.”

When I saw Esther again at choir, I asked her, “Esther, and if your side wins, will you hide me and protect me?”

“Oh, no,” she said, looking sheepish, “I couldn’t take the risk of endangering my family.” For a long time, I stared at her in disbelief. What I had believed was a mutual friendship had its limits. That night I came home heartbroken and cynical.

You know, my Darling, even though I was frightened and upset by all these terrible events, I wanted to do something to help my country. I was very courageous, I must say. I worked in two hospitals—the Jerusalem Government Hospital in Musrara, and the Beit Safafa Hospital, on the way to Bethlehem. I spent a lot of time bandaging the wounds of the men shot during the conflicts. We felt these men were giving us the greatest gift—their lives. Every day, a Red Cross truck came to pick me up in front of my house, and when we drove through a Jewish area we had to get down on the floor of the bus for fear of being shot at . . . .

Nighttime was the most dangerous time, as the Haganah and Irgun were planting bombs in the residential neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, with the justification that Palestinian guerrilla fighters were holding their meetings in those homes. Baloney! The real reason was to create fear in us and drive us out of our homes. And that’s exactly what happened.

. . .

During that time, we didn’t have a full picture of what was happening. We didn’t understand that we were systematically being driven out of our neighborhoods in order for the Zionists to incorporate West Jerusalem, which had been part of Palestine per the UN Partition Plan into Israel. Every day more houses in the neighborhood were attacked and bombed—the houses of the Shahines, Anabtawis, Campbell-Browns, Budeiris, and Freijs, to name a few. Every day brought another casualty and more fear for the remaining of us. Were we going to be next? . . .

Many neighbors and friends left their homes for safer grounds, quickly grabbing a suitcase and arranging for a taxi to drive them to Beirut, Cairo, or Amman. They needed to protect their loved ones. When our beloved upstairs neighbors, the Nuwayhids, came by one day to say goodbye, I broke down and cried. “But Imm Khaldoun, I’ll be the only one left. I’ll be all alone.” Imm Khaldoun had taken good care of me since Mama’s death and I had come to rely on her. She reassured me that she’d be back in a few weeks, but that was the last time I saw her. Like in all wars, we thought that once the fighting subsided we would be returning home. Little did we know that we would be losing our homes and our homeland forever.

Papa began to worry about us and decided it was best to send Afif and me to Tante Afifeh, our maternal aunt, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, until the situation calmed down. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to fight for my country, but Papa convinced me that I was helping by taking Afif away from the bombing . . . You know, our house was like any other house in the world. It had a garden; it had chairs; it had a couch; it had tables, and food in the pantry. But all this didn’t matter. It was my family, my friends, Jerusalem that I had to leave behind and that’s hurting me to this day.

So, I packed my little suitcase with a few summer dresses. I anticipated coming back in a few weeks. Luckily, Afif, who was enamoured with photography, packed his camera and the family photo albums. We hugged Papa and Daoud at the gate of our house. “See you soon, Allah ma‘kum (Godspeed),” said Papa, and then Afif and I walked together to the bus stop on Bethlehem Road and boarded the bus to Cairo, not realizing that we would never be allowed to return home.