The Nakba as Experienced by a Jerusalem Child

Living through the Nakba: Tales of a Palestinian Youth, by Nina Bazouzi Cullers (Harrisonburg, VA: self-pub., 2021)

One may think of the Palestinian Nakba, in geopolitical and abstract terms, as a process in which states and other actors maneuver, ethnically cleanse areas to create space for the newly arrived settlers, and draw new borders. Living through the Nakba reminds us that the Nakba was above all else a catastrophe on the human level, that it affected hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young children who had to live with fear and uncertainty, relying on adults who were themselves struggling to make sense of a world that had become unrecognizable.

This self-published memoir is a moving account of one Jerusalem family’s traumatic experiences and the effort it took to reshape their lives. Nina Bazouzi Cullers states her purpose very clearly in the introductory pages of the book:

The memoir tells the story of a family who lived in the Palestinian neighborhood of Qatamon undergoing an existential crisis as seen through the eyes of an observant and sensitive child who struggles to make sense of it, to find her way in a new environment, and to help ease the strain on her parents. But underneath this narrative is a story written for the author’s children and grandchildren, all raised far from Jerusalem, to tell them where she came from, who her people are, how she grew up, what shaped her, and what was important to her. Looking back on events that occurred more than 70 years earlier, she tries to explain—for them and for herself—how the adults around her and the child that she was coped with their new situation. No doubt this became even more urgent a need when she found herself living in exile. As she states: “It never occurred to me until I became an adult and moved still farther from my roots, that there is a basic need to ascertain one’s identity among strangers.”2

The author offers a summary of events that shaped the history of Palestine in the 20th century. She assumes the reader might not know that history and is careful to explain the roles of the major players. On an anthropological and historical level, she offers a snapshot of different Palestinian Jerusalem neighborhoods and the communities of people who once lived in them, how children played and the toys available to them, the ways they observed the occasions that mattered to them—marriages, religious holidays, and death—and the social conventions they observed.

Roughly the first third of the book introduces Nina’s maternal and paternal families, explains their roots in Jerusalem and their life in Qatamon, and describes the outbreak of violence in what became West Jerusalem following the family’s permanent displacement in 1948. Nina’s parents, Nada Adranly and Shafiq Bazouzi, are Greek Orthodox Palestinians who trace their roots in Jerusalem’s Old City for several generations. Both were taken out of school when their fathers died and were brought together by their influential uncles who happened to be good friends: on the Adranly side, Wasif Jawharriyeh and on the Bazouzi side, Khalil Sakakini. It appears to have been a successful match. Because they were denied the option of completing school, they were determined to provide the best education they could for their three children: Nina, Nelly, and Hanna.

Nada Adranly and Shafiq Bazouzi married in 1935 in a celebration that lasted three days—not uncommon at the time. Soon after the wedding, they moved to Qatamon, where they established their independence as a married couple at a slight distance from both sets of families. Nina describes a gracious and comfortable middle-class life: her carpenter father able to provide a decent living and her mother, a creative and capable homemaker.

Despite the unrest in the country, Jerusalem was relatively insulated—at least until the bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, by the Zionist Irgun forces. Because it housed the British civilian administration, which employed many Palestinians, the Arabs of Jerusalem were rocked by the blast; everyone lost someone or knew someone who lost someone in the explosion. The author herself lost a relative in the attack and can still remember the “unfamiliar ghastly sound” her mother made when she heard the news.3 Writing more than 70 years later, she said:

The bombing of the Semiramis Hotel in early January 1948 forced the family to flee Qatamon, which was under attack by Zionist forces, and seek what they thought would be temporary refuge with their relatives in the Old City in East Jerusalem. The explosion had shattered windows in the children’s bedroom; their home was no longer safe. The author recalls the anxiety that took hold of the adults sheltered in her grandmother’s Old City home. The war had a pronounced effect on her parents, as she recalls. Her father became more subdued and uncertain; Nina’s mother developed rheumatoid arthritis, which flared up and caused her a lot of pain for many years. Twelve-year-old Nina became aware of the need to spare her mother aggravation.

By April, Qatamon was in Zionist hands and was emptied of Palestinians, who were never to be allowed to return (see The West Side Story).

The second third of the book describes the four-year period after the 1949 Armistice Agreement was signed. One would think that once a ceasefire is declared, the worst would be behind them; but in fact, that’s when the real ordeal began for Nina and her family (see The West Side Story, Part 4: The Erasure of the New City and Its Transformation Into Jewish West Jerusalem). Nina recalls: “Hope and the support of family and community is what sustained us in 1948. When the siege was lifted and the Armistice put an end to the fighting, we realized that we did not have a home to go to.”5

The focus then shifts to the family’s attempt to find their footing in a new reality away from their home. They moved first to Beit Jala and stayed with Nina’s aunt and uncle. In a poignant scene, she recalls the two families going to a high point in town with binoculars, where they could see Jerusalem and try to identify the houses of people they knew; she describes the endeavor as one of “sadness and emptiness from great loss.”6

Nina’s family would move a few times before they settled in a house on Batten Road in the nearby Palestinian town of Bethlehem, which fell under Jordanian rule at that time. The moves were prompted by the parents’ desire for proximity to the best schools they could find for their children. As Nina puts it, “They hoped to spend their time, effort and money on giving us the best education, which they believed was the passport to a good and happy life.”7 For the father, work was intermittent, and the family sometimes needed help from relatives to get by. He found it humiliating to take food rations from the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) center and changed his route so that the neighbors would not see the UNRWA-labeled food supplies. Eventually, the son was sent to pick them up; he was instructed to be discreet about it, to take a route that would avoid the neighbors.

Nina’s mother had an additional challenge that does not seem to have concerned her husband too much. She wanted to be accepted by her middle-class neighbors as one of them. In Qatamon, they were known; there was no need to prove themselves to anyone. But in Bethlehem, that was not the case.

The narrative describes a mindset that is unfortunately common throughout much of the world: prejudice toward refugees.

Luckily for Nada Adranly, she had two aces up her sleeve: her uncle, Wasif Jawharriyeh, and her husband’s uncle, Khalil Sakakini. She name-dropped both of them liberally, as situations arose.

Counting as kin of such established figures of learning and culture helped lubricate society’s wheels for her; her neighbors could begin to see her not as a shiftless person but rather as someone like themselves whose fortunes had taken a downturn through no fault of her own.

With that acceptance, her new environment could begin to take on the shape of home. Nina’s mother met other transplanted Jerusalemites, which eased her sense of difference. They recreated the traditions that were familiar to them, and they hosted formal receptions.