She told me that the Church sat at the edge of a cliff with a wall in the front and that from that point, you could see the whole port. She told me that from that point, you could see her house, all the way down at the bottom of the hill in Ajami. She told me that in her home, she used to sit on the back steps and feel the water wash up onto her legs. Orange peels fresh under her fingernails. She loved the smell of cedar wood.
There are no more homes like that in Ajami now. No more homes like that in Jaffa. The shore is lined with parking lots, cement bike paths, ‘rustic’ artesian exhibition spaces, a beautiful park with suspiciously lush grass and old warehouses that are being turned into chichi hotels.
The house that she lived in, that my grandfather lived in, that my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather lived in is gone from the geographic location but is still so strong in my imagination. There are very few who remember that house now and if I knew who they were and where they were, I would ask them to tell me about it. I want to know which parking lot, which abandoned couch, which old broken cabinet, which piece of scrap metal chicken-wire holds my heritage.
“Did you see my Teta grow up?” I wanted to ask the old trees. “What was she like as a child? Was she a stubborn little girl? Was she a serious teenager? What did she dream about before she left her roots behind? Did she smile the day before they were severed from her body and scowl the day after she realized they were gone?
Their town today would be unrecognizable to them, the omnipresence of Jaffa’s orange trees made hazy from the pretense of high-rises. Even the streets are named after famous Zionist leaders who they had never known about, had only ever heard about. Listen I just want to ask all the questions I never got to ask. Hear some of the little stories I was never able to hear. Take these dormant seeds and sprout them from my palms like the eye of Afreet-Jehanam*. Cut this Hegelian dialectic with our vision of the future. Tell the hundreds of stacked bodies in their rocky beds to rest in assurance that no more of any community will be added to their grave, no more swept to the ocean bed below.
How can you stick a memory? I need a fix of adhesive glue with a dose of letting go all at the same time. Is there a prescription for bringing the disappeared back? Holding on burns like coal and smells like tar, it drowns my senses.
What is the cure for vanished existence? The stones are layered in holes. The houses are like sponges, dry with the absence of your presence. We need you to fill them in.
Breath of the living and prayers of the dead, is anyone out there?
The west wind blows warm here. I know it is a trick.
…Seashells shredded into sand: how can we be nowhere and everywhere at once?
Come back come back come back come back. Don’t let their memory be washed out to sea. I never finished searching for their driftwood.
* Afreet-Jehanam is the 3-eyed blue jinn of the desert or, more simply, the King of the Underworld.
There are many legends of Afreet Jinn. The one put into writing by Rabih Alameddine in his book “The Hakawati”, tells of the fabled Fatima, the human lover of Afreet-Jehanam, for whom he gave up his 3rd eye in order to protect from harm. According to the story, it is the jinn’s eye in the middle of the Khamsah.
The Khamsah is also known as “the Hand of Fatima”.
Beautiful , Nadya.!
I remember (as a 12 year old growing up in pre ’48 Jerusalem) a young boy called Raja Tannous, whose father was Izzat Tannous and friends with my parents.
Your writing is sheer poetry …. penetrates the heart and sensibilities !
beautiful indeed. a catalyst for emotions, that lead you down some very specific paths.
I had just read an entry from one of my favorite blogs about the connections between Odessa and Jaffa. some very different memories and associations than Nadya’s.
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-spirit-of-odessa.html
it’s jarring to read descriptions of Jabotinsky variously as
maybe it’s my prejudice, but I can’t comprehend how a discussion of the linking of Odessa and Jaffa through, in part, the personality of Jabotinsky can be so gushing and simply ignore what comes next. nostalgia over a lost Jewish history in Eastern Europe devoid of any sense of irony, at least.
for other connections between memory and loss and pain see the recent New Yorker piece on an Israeli scientist studying the relationship of pain and the repression of memory:
(the article is locked for non-subscribers, but goes on to describe research into memory and various attempts at learning how to ‘rewrite’, ‘erase’ or otherwise manipulate painful memories.)
Nadya, you’re looking for your Jaffa roots in the chicken wire and other places. The full background on your teta’s beloved and once beautiful Jafa, is found in the history of the Jaffa orange itself as it fully describes what happened to the Palestinian people when the Zionists decided they wanted it all. One the first things they did was to actually steal the orange and the Palestinian culture that had evolved around it. I’m sure you’re aware of this piece but others here that erroneously believe that Israel invented the Jaffa orange may not be. Israel actually stole it from the Palestinians and marketed it as its own.
A great essay on Jaffa, the orange, the Palestinians and what the Zionists did to all three of them starts with the following intro:
“The Jaffa Orange (or Shamouti) was the principal export of Palestine in the 1890s. The history of the Jaffa orange (and the city after which it has its name) reflects the recent history of Palestine. Just as the theft of the name, by the Zionist colonisers, reflects the greater theft of Palestinian land and identity.
The fate of the residents of Jaffa, those who owned the land, planted the groves and harvested the fruit is the same as that of the vast majority of the Palestinian people in 1948.
Understand the background to the hijacking of the Jaffa orange for the purposes
of the colonisers and you understand the fear and terror which led to the
dispossession of the Palestinian people. You understand the background to the
dispossessed, refugees in their own land or dispersed across the globe….”
Full essay:
http://www.easi-piesi.org/pics/Jaffa%20-%20more%20than%20just%20an%20orange.pdf
thank you so much nadya. words fail me.
Zionism as identity theft. A fruitful perspective.
So Israeli identity consists of three sorts of pieces: (1) pieces kept or revived from the Jewish past; (2) pieces stolen from the Palestinians; and (3) newly invented pieces, but these are fewer than they appear because so many pieces passed off as new are actually stolen.
If you have stolen someone else’s identity, it is essential to pretend that the original owner of the identity no longer exists (or, ideally, never existed). Essential both to self-presentation to the world and to psychic coherence. If the original owner manages to contest the theft effectively, the response to be expected is hysteria.