A Testament to a City Lost and a Time Erased: A Syrian Woman Remembers the Jerusalem of Her Childhood

This wonderfully engaging memoir covers the author’s childhood in Jerusalem during the final seven years of the Colonial British Mandate. It offers a fairly detailed description of a child’s life during that period, one occupied by school and by social activities available to Jerusalemites but also, and perhaps equally, by an undertone of political tension and unrest that became especially pronounced in late 1947, when the British government announced its intention to end its Colonial Mandate on May 15, 1948.

Seham Mudarri Obegi, the author, was six years old when her Syrian parents decided to move their family to Jerusalem in 1941. Writing her memoir in 2004 and 2005 from her retirement in the United States, she stated that her family moved to Jerusalem “to be part of a well-educated and vibrant society, to gain access to top educational institutions, and to build a stable and fulfilling life,” goals that they apparently did not feel could be achieved in Damascus.1 The family was a little unusual in that the mother was a successful and independent businesswoman, a milliner with a refined sense of fashion. They were French speaking; in fact, Seham’s first language until the age of four was French, and when she moved to Jerusalem, she knew little Arabic. She makes an interesting observation about the difference in the mandate systems in Palestine and Syria: in Syria, many Frenchmen had married Syrian women and lived in their communities, whereas British nationals in Jerusalem tended to segregate themselves from the local population.

During those years, the Syrian community in Palestine did not consider themselves to be immigrants; they were simply moving from one part of Greater Syria to another. Armenians were regarded in the same way; the word “immigrant” was used to describe the European Jews who arrived in Palestine during the British Mandate years.2

The Syrian community was large enough that it created an association to handle matters pertaining to the community; they did not want their issues to come to the attention of the British Mandate authorities. People traveled easily between Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. In fact, Seham’s parents opened their hat store on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem years before they moved there; her parents took turns going to Jerusalem and staying for months at a time, supervising and growing their business until they were ready to uproot their family and put down roots in Jerusalem. The ease with which this could be done back then, and the impossibility of such an arrangement now, gives an indication of how much the region as a whole lost when Israel was established.

Seham was enrolled in a private French school, Saint Joseph de l’Apparition, located in what she describes as “the most modern part of the city”;3 a Google search identifies the location as Sheikh Jarrah, a predominately Palestinian neighborhood in the northern edge of today’s East Jerusalem. She recalls that the teaching staff were mostly Roman Catholic nuns from (Vichy) France, England, Hungary, Malta, Ireland, and Syria; she sensed that the nuns discriminated against Greek Orthodox students and regarded them as heretics. There were tensions among the staff because of their political allegiances, which surprised her; she expected their allegiances to be for the church, not their countries of origin. (Tensions between the British and French nuns eased when Charles de Gaulle assumed the leadership of France.) As described, one could conclude that the French nuns share the bigotry of their colonial home country: they showed no appreciation for the Arabic language or Arab culture, the geography of France was studied in minute detail (but not the geography of the Arab world), and in history classes, they took pride in recounting episodes in which the French defeated Arab armies.

Seham was fortunate to be taught Arabic by a Palestinian nun who loved her language and taught it with devotion. She went to school with the daughters of Musa Alami, Henry Cattan, Fuad Saba, and other prominent Jerusalemites.

She watched the nuns perform an “exorcism” of a student who she realized in later years was probably mentally challenged.4

Jerusalem in the 1940s was a vibrant, multicultural city:

It was also a city swimming in religion, Seham observes. Religion was unavoidable. Seasonal tourists swarmed the city, and they could be eccentric. The priests were competitive in their devotion (with Armenian priests being the most aggressive, in her view). In fact, her description of Christian sectarian hostility makes one appreciate the level-headedness demonstrated by Christians in the seventh century, who settled the potential flashpoint among sects by giving the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City to a Muslim family, an arrangement that has worked amicably ever since.

Seham recalled that Jerusalemites relied on buses for their transportation (unlike the horse-drawn carriages of her native Syria). At night, they observed blackouts to avoid Axis bombing. Food was rationed during 1941. Bakeries were closed altogether. Many foods disappeared from Palestinian households during the war years; according to Seham, potatoes were not available at all until 1945. For the British authorities, the priority was feeding their soldiers. Seham’s family was able to eat chicken and eggs from time to time because they had good relationships with Bedouin encampments, who provided them with these hard-to-find items.

Life was difficult in some ways, but satisfying in others. During those years, people were in the habit of going on picnics on their day off from work; with their family members or groups of friends, they spent hours outdoors. Picnics were a democratic form of entertainment, enjoyed by rich and poor alike.

Friends of Seham’s family, conscious of her father’s interest in water sources, encouraged them to visit Battir, famous for its ancient stone terraced farmlands (now on the UNESCO list of endangered World Heritage Sites) and a sweet water source, and Beit Safafa, home of sweet peas. Being in nature had a way of rejuvenating spirits and reinforcing connections with one’s surroundings.

Seham’s recollections of Jerusalem’s cultural activities are consistent with other memoirs written about that period. She credits the Arab Orthodox Club and the YMCA for the stimulating cultural life enjoyed by Jerusalem’s middle class during the 1940s.

Reflecting on that period more than half a century later, she described the Arab Orthodox Club as a “prominent lifeline” serving a city, Jerusalem, that she compares at that time to “a ship in the middle of a stormy ocean”; the club “educat[ed] and entertain[ed] for the ultimate goal of serving their patriotic duties.”6

The club (and the Y) offered the community opportunities to hear lectures by local intellectuals as well as intellectuals and prominent figures from the Arab world. Seham recalls hearing poet and philosopher Mikhail Naimy from Lebanon; musicians Sami al-Shawwa and Tawfiq Sabbagh and singer Layla Mourad from Syria; journalist Souhair al-Qalamawi and author Taha Hussein from Egypt; and Jerusalemite educator Khalil Sakakini. The club promoted political awareness and held lectures on such topics as the boycotting of Jewish goods. Jews had been limiting their commercial interactions with Palestinians all along, she believes. She cannot recall her mother having any Jewish customers, but she does remember that the only Jewish milliner tried to poach her mother’s employees. She remembers her father trying to buy a machine from a Jewish vendor, and the deal fell through when the vendor realized from the shipping address that his customer was an Arab. The only thing Jews were interested in buying was Arab property: “it was ‘land grab’ they were solely after.”7

The club had one of the best libraries in town, which Seham, a precocious reader, took full advantage of.