In Amman, Oula Farawati traces the longing to return, still alive after 60 years of dispossession Sixty years after being evicted from her house in Masmiyyeh in Palestine, 82-year-old Um Al-Abed still holds onto her house key. The dream of going back to that home still lingers, blemished only by the death of her husband six years ago. "My dream was to go back with Abu Al-Abed, God bless his soul, and live in our home again. I have been waiting for that day all my life," Um Al-Abed says as she conceals her tears with a shivering hand. "He left me alone and I am not sure if I will see Palestine again before I die... I look around at this shabby house and agonise over my big beautiful house that I was forced to leave 60 years ago... Sixty years of deprivation, 60 years of pain," the old lady says as she languishes in Jordan's Al-Wihdat Refugee Camp, one of 13 refugee camps established to house two waves of immigration by Palestinians from the West to the East Bank, that is Jordan. Um Al-Abed has five sons and three daughters. Four of her sons travelled to the Gulf seeking a better living. Her eldest, Abdul-Rahim, frowns at the notion of going back home. "We have listened to this all our life. I am 46 now and I don't see why I would return. I am happy and I call Jordan home because this is where I was born, raised and had children," Abdul-Rahim said. Palestinians in Jordan live the Nakba in all its detail. They remember the tragedy, the expulsions from their homes, the attack on their civilisation, history and identity, and the killing of thousands. "Stop crying or the Jews will know where we are," Um Mohamed told her children as she escaped with her family from shelling in Deir Abban near Jerusalem. "We left Esleen [village] and my father put our house and nearby land documents in a box and buried it under the floor in our house and took some food that would suffice us for two days," she said. The two days passed with Um Mohamed and her family hiding. When their supplies of beans and lentils ran out, they moved again to Beit Sahour to live in caves for what turned out to be months. "Then we heard that my husband died in battles in Ain Mahseer [village]. He left me alone and I still live on his memories with three sons and two daughters. He martyred for Palestine and we have never settled since then," she said. Um Mohamed and her family moved to Jordan eventually. Her father died dreaming of a return and she remained faithful to the memory of her husband. She turned down many marriage proposals. "I could not get married. I always thought that I would go back and the people in my village would laugh at me, because I did not cherish the memory of my husband," she said. The journey towards indefinite exile took Abu Ibrahim, who was 13, from his village of Safriyyah near Jaffa to Shabteen in Ramallah. "We were waiting for the Arab armies," said Abu Ibrahim, now 73. He recalls that he was lucky to find a truck that transported his family to another village after Shabteen was attacked. "Then we had to walk. I remember my little sister who was six then cursing the Jews whenever she was stung by a needle or faltered amid rocks in the way," he recalled. "There was a lot of crying. The kids cried because they were hungry and we cried because we couldn't give them food," he added. The leaders in Abu Ghandi's village of Bissan met quickly one night in May 1948 and ordered everyone to carry a few days' supply of food and leave the village quickly. "They thought that the Arab armies were coming soon," said Abu Ghandi, now 71. The path towards lifelong dispossession took Abu Ghandi and his family to the Jordan Valley. They had to cross the Jordan River. "We were completely terrified. The water level was very high since it was still spring and it was very dark. I remember it like it was yesterday. The dark and the water marked us indelibly," he said. The old man recalls how he and his family lived in tents for weeks. "We could see our house and land from afar but were afraid to go there. We lived in the northern Shuna in refugee camps while our land was but kilometres away... That was very painful." Some 2.8 million Palestinian refugees now live in Jordan. They have grown up or died trying to fit into Jordanian society, formed of East Jordanians, Syrians and Circassians, and now Iraqis. But many still yearn to return. Abu Mahfouz is 89. He still remembers the expulsions and the war and has taken on the task of teaching his decedents, generation after generation, about what happened. "We cannot forget or else we will lose our home forever," says Abu Mahfouz, admired by his two wives and sons and grandsons. "They gave us the UNRWA houses and a passport, but they don't know that all we want is to go back home," he says. Abu Mahfouz still holds the map of his house and farm in Palestine. "They gave us shabby houses and food and this was anaesthetic for a lot of people. But we can't forget... we can't forget," he says. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302(v) in December 1949. It is the primary international body mandated to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees. The agency officially took over humanitarian relief operations in the then Jordanian- controlled West Bank, Egyptian- controlled Gaza Strip, and in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in May 1950. Many Palestinians in Jordan have shunned the agency and never applied for assistance. "They wanted to buy us with some wheat and cooking oil and they wished that we will settle and forget, but that is impossible," Abdul-Aziz Hamed, whose late parents were evicted from their home in 1948, asserts. "My parents never accepted the assistance and died while dreaming of going back home... and I also live on that hope," he said. The right of return is considered by a vast majority of Palestinians in Jordan as the only means to repair the historical injustice committed against them and their ancestors. The UN defines the right of return as the personal right of every refugee who was expelled, and their descendants, to return to their place of origin, based on international law and UN Resolution 194 passed 11 December 1948. While guaranteed though not implemented, for some in Jordan, and pronounced between generations, the dream of return is being replaced with the dream of living in the Gulf or the US. "The new generation lives with a dilemma. They can't handle carrying the burden of dreaming of going back, amid the failure of all peace initiatives. For them, it is easier to think of settling in Jordan or elsewhere," noted political analyst Jamal Tahat. "But with time, they will discover that the space they are escaping to is not theirs and that they can't live without wanting to go back," he added.
