7/17/03
From Luke
One day I find myself t...
July 24, 2003 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
7/17/03
From Luke
One day I find myself talking with refugees in Al Wihedat camp near Amman, Jordan, about the loss of life and land, about struggle, about hope and hopelessness, and the next day I find myself safe at home in my San Francisco apartment. Though I rest myself in relative physical safety, there is no safety in my thoughts. I now carry with me the many stories of pain and loss that were entrusted to me throughout my travels, stories which I will never forget.
“It’s difficult to think about Palestine when you have to struggle just to feed your family…but as a refugee, it’s impossible to forget Palestine.”
Al Wihedat camp is notorious for its extreme poverty, as I was told by a camp resident named Ahmed, “some people in the camp are deadly poor.” In addition to facing discrimination as Palestinian refugees, many face compounded discrimination for being residents of Al Wihedat, “it’s hard to get a job if you say you’re from Al Wihedat, and it’s impossible to get a job with the government if you’re from Al Wihedat.” According to UNRWA statistics, literacy in Al Wihedat is extremely high, yet few students are admitted to universities, and even fewer can afford to pay tuition.
A new monolithic 5-story high castle-like police station erected at the entrance to Al Wihedat is symbolic of the relationship between the Jordanian government and the residents of the camp. Such an expensive project seems obscene in the face of such poverty, taking up a space in the camp that would likely house several hundred people. More telling however, are the many scars and graves that are the legacy of the September War of 1970 when King Hussein of Jordan launched an attack against Palestinian refugees in response to several airplane hijackings carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). I had the privilege of talking to Um Mohamad who still bears the scars of the September War. Um Mohamad is the mother of six, though the bomb that came through her house and changed her face forever, also took the lives of her two daughters, leaving her with four sons to raise in the rubble. The family is from Jaffa, and Um Mohamad’s father was forced to flee Jaffa in 1948. According to her son Samir, “growing up in the camps, you have two things in mind, first that you are a refugee, second that you must struggle for your right to return home to Palestine. Though we are citizens of Jordan, we are always treated as refugees.”
Anjad is a new resident of Al Wihedat, whose presence challenges the definitions of "refugee” or “displaced person” as established by the UN Relief Works Agencies (UNRWA). According to the UNRWA refugees are, “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.” The category of “Displaced Persons” was created to account for those made refugees in the war of 1967. There is no category to account for people like Anjad, and the steady diaspora of Palestinians resulting from continuing Israeli military violence and the socio-economic attrition of Palestine. In 2002 Anjad, father of two, was wounded in an Israeli attack on the West-Bank city of Bethlehem and was forced to flee to Jordan for medical attention. In that attack, eight other people were wounded and two were killed. He showed me where the bullet entered his belly, traversed through his abdomen, and exited through his back. Anjad was shot by an automatic rifle mounted on a tank made and paid for by the United States. He narrowly escaped being run over by that tank, though his friend did not, his friend was shot, crushed by the tank, and left bleeding and immobilized. While there were many in the area who were seriously wounded, the Israeli soldiers obstructed the arrival of an ambulance fo
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The new phase of my life isn't working out so...
July 21, 2003 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
The new phase of my life isn't working out so well. Someone else has my new email address, so it's back to the old one until it's figured out. I spent the afternoon with Emma, Sam, and Margo, the real babysitter. As Margo and Sam ran around in the nerd cave, i strapped on Emma and made almond scones. Since Adam's party, baking is my new thing. I'm working up a repertoire for cooking by myself in the fall.
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