Occupied Jerusalem- Behind a gray door, on Nablus Street near Damascus Gate, one of the gates of the Old City, lies the house of the daughter of Gaza and Jerusalem, Ikhlas Munir Al-Rayes Nusseibeh. Behind this door, the visitor walks among a group of fruit trees, and is greeted in the front by a beautiful house built in the Ottoman era for the Nusseibeh family. Which has deep roots in the Holy City.
With a smile behind which the sincerity hides deep pain; I received Tel Aviv Tribune Net in a quiet living room in which nothing moved except the breaking news on the Tel Aviv Tribune screen, which changed every moment to announce a new massacre in a Gazan city, neighborhood or camp. You stared at the words of this news and the pain renewed and the sadness deepened.
Ikhlas was born on January 6, 1954, in her family’s home on Al-Mukhtar Street in Gaza City, but she only lived there for two years because it was blown up by bombs that were thrown at it during the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956, as punishment for her father, who was the mayor of Gaza at the time. He was one of those close to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose nationalization of the Suez Canal led to the war.
Crowded memory
Munir Al-Rayes was arrested during the war because of his refusal to cooperate with the Israeli forces occupying the Gaza Strip, and after the war ended and Israel withdrew from Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt. Her father was freed.
“When my father got out of prison, we were living on agricultural land with our relatives. He rented a house and began building our new house in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, which was completely burned during the current war, and our memories burned with it in every corner.”
Because nothing passes and ends and no memory fades or is erased, a stream of memories flowed through Ikhlas’s mouth at home, which she spoke about proudly and in precise sequence, but she could not control herself when she mentioned two lines of poetry that her late father had written in his own handwriting and pinned them under a picture of him in the living room. They are:
If I am away from my family and they gather my loved ones.. let my drawing remain with them as a memorial
In order to remind my soul to see my image… the body is buried in the earth and hidden
Ikhlas cried and drowned in a sea of worries accumulated by the wars on her devastated city, which she left in 1979, to marry in Jerusalem the Jerusalemite teacher Zaki Nusseibeh and give birth to Hassan, Munir, and Sahar.
Since then, the Palestinian woman said that she was attached to Jerusalem and loved it, but Gaza remained the darling of her heart and her outlet. It was the first destination for her and her children during their childhood years to spend the weekend. Regarding those trips, she said: “We used to travel in our private car from in front of our house in Jerusalem to my family’s house.” In Gaza until 1994, when the Oslo Accords were signed and the Erez military checkpoint was established and Gaza was deprived of it.”
A sea, a lake, and a grave
The Sea of Gaza, the house, and the grove (orchard) of her father, Munir Al-Rayes, are the places most frequently mentioned by Ikhlas. She said that the grove is located in the Beit Hanoun area and is full of fruit trees, the throne of which is citrus fruits, such as oranges, lemons, grapefruit, and poppies, in addition to almond, olive, and sycamore trees. Her father was buried under her shadow in 1974 and her mother in 1999.
“Al-Bayarah was destroyed in the current war, and we fear that the graves of my parents and three others from the family were exhumed. By burning the house, my father’s library and a huge archive that he collected during his work were burned, as were his poems and studies that he prepared in history and literature.” Ikhlas added.
There are many beaches whose sands this Gazan-Jerusalem woman walked on inside and outside Palestine, but she says that the sand beach in Gaza is the most beautiful, and as she began to list the reasons that make it the most beautiful beaches in the world, she moved to another world as she drew with her hands its features and the elegance of sitting on it.
“The sand is a distinctive golden color, and the shells that the waves throw onto the beach are distinctive in shape and colour. I don’t know, perhaps it is the memories we lived in the place that made it exceptional for me.”
Displacement enhances the dream of return
Ikhlas was silent for a few moments, as if she had woken up from a dream describing the beach, and the dream changed into a memory that sparked pain in her when she said that in the midst of the family’s happiness sitting by the sea, her father used to look at it and always repeat the same call: “Oh God, make us safe in our homelands.”
“I did not understand at the time why this grief was accompanying my father, and I later realized that he was far-sighted and knew that the occupation would oppress us for many years. He was an Arab nationalist and wished that the Arabs would be united and not fragmented. But he left and the Arabs have been fragmented for decades, and we are all paying the price for that.”
During the current war that broke out on October 7, Ikhlas’s relatives were displaced many times inside the Gaza Strip, and then most of them were forced to leave, but the dream of returning to the burned house continued to haunt them and even her.
“I have a great longing to return to the sea of Gaza, to our home, and to our burned home, and I do not pay attention to those who say that Gaza needs decades to rebuild it because I know the people of my city for their stubbornness, determination, and ability to rebuild everything that this war destroyed within 4 years, at the latest.” She adds sincerity.
Waiting for the miracle
Gazan dukkah, a spicy dish consisting of a group of ground grains and spices that is eaten like thyme with bread and oil, will continue to be at the throne of Ikhlas’s table every morning and evening, and sumakiyah, a dish based on sumac, meat, onions, and chard, for which the Strip is famous, will continue to emanate from the kitchen of her home in Jerusalem. But she wishes that a divine miracle would stop this war so that she could go to sleep as reassured as she was before it broke out, because “those who slaughtered their country do not sleep at night,” and this is what is revealed by the features of her face and her eyes, which were repeatedly filled with tears.
Ikhlas Al-Rayes Nusseibeh accompanied us as we left her house and among the trees of her small orchard, which does not compare to the size of her father’s yard in Beit Hanoun. She stood in the shade of the lemon tree and inhaled the fragrant scent of its fruits before she picked one of them, washed it, and then said: “God is generous… the war will end and we will return.”
Ikhlas sees the return to her hometown as inevitable. Just as her father was arrested during the 1967 war and deported to Lebanon after being accused of aiding and financing the guerrillas, he returned to Gaza in 1971 and lived there for an additional 3 years before being buried under its sand, bright as gold, as his daughter says.
