sha3bawi

sunday morning, i got up early and put on a shirt that reminds me a lot of my dad. it's chocolate brown and has the little button flaps on the shoulders and two pockets that button on the chest. my dad loves those shirts.


i was heading home.


i went to sha'ab once as a kid.


My family's village was always a mythical place painted in my mind by my dad's second-hand stories. I remember three things from my visit to sha'ab with my mom and deena almost 12 years ago -


1. the dust from the streets which i kicked up onto my shoes and my chubby ankles and calves.

2. distant members of baba's family feuding over where we would eat lunch.

3. a simple, boring rock that i picked up and put in a red velvet jewelry box which wouldn't close as a way of actualizing baba's myth.


when our bus pulled up to the bottom of sha'ab's hill (bus 68), the village was instantly different than i remembered it to be. i remembered walking in on a flat, grimy road and thinking..."psh. this is it?"


this time, i climbed the windy road to the top, curving around half finished homes and closed convenience shops. For the first few minutes, I wasn't actually sure I was in sha'ab as i looked around at the buildings, the new construction underway..."where is this place," i kept thinking to myself.


soon, though, i started to look around and feel a sort of familiarity with the people. a lot of the kids playing in the street had colored eyes and hair that was more brown than black, lawyers and engineers' names were proudly displayed: faour, el-khatib, and khaled - names i had recognized all my life as my townspeople; i soon saw a sign in arabic assuring me i had scaled the right path:


"مدرسة شعب الابتدائية على اسم الاستاذ كامل سعده" kamel sa'ade sha'ab primary school.


sha'ab is a town of bends and curves, of dust and dirt - of people. quaint is a fittingly kitsch but hardly sufficient description. nonetheless, as i neared the point where the street's upward incline leveled off onto a rocky plateau of construction, i thought to myself, looking over the endless grove of olive trees below, "well. this is it. sha'ab. that didn't take long."


as i pushed on, continuing down the hill, i saw two men in what will from this point forward be referred to as palestinian stance 1(one foot against a wall, second leg slightly bent at the knee, staring into the distance) and decided to test the reality and viability of a family tree.


in the most literal of translations.

"brother, allow me to burden you. where is the home of the el-khatib clan?"

"no. it's no burden in the least! welcome welcome. 1oo welcomes to sha'ab. why do you ask? (welcome.)"

"i'm tarek ziad said ismail el-khatib. i'm from here. from sha'ab. but from america. but from here."

"ahhhhhh! welcome welcome welcome. so you want to see your relatives! who from the house of el-khatib do you want to see?"

"i don't know. just show me some khatibs."

"well there's abu-something-or-other right here, he should be able to tell you. and if he doesn't know, then just follow that street all the way down until you see construction in the road, and that area is all el-khatibs."

"Ok great. Thanks."


And I was off. One of the pair yelled at me while I was walking down the hill, smirking,

"Who leaves America to come to this place anyway?"

"I do!"

"Well, you're an ahbal (a goof.)"

"Thanks."


I went to abu-something-or-others house near the top of the street, but the only person in was a 12 year old boy in a yellow sweatshirt hanging out the window.


"Is abu-something-or-other home?!" I asked him. I slurred the something-or-other part because I wasn't sure at all what the name was.

"No he's not home!"


I walked over to the people sitting on their front porch across the street. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and they were outside chopping the stems off of some type of leaf to cook as palestinians do.


"May God give you health."

"May he increase your health."

"Do you know where the el-khatib neighborhood is?" "Abu-something-or-other across the street is el-khatib."

"I know. His son just told me he's not home."

"YOUR DAD'S NOT IN THE HOUSE?!" he yelled past me at the yellow sweatshirt kid who may have been named something-or-other, given his father's name.

"NO."

"Ah. He's not home," No shit. "Ok...well if you walk down this street to the end, you'll be in the el-khatib neighborhood. You can't miss it."

"Ok, thanks."

"Welcome welcome."


I kept walking down the street. Most of the houses in this area were mere skeletons; construction was the latest fashion trend, as rubble lie everywhere - a productive rubble, not the same as the ramallah rubble with a pile of candy wrappers and falafel sandwich remains attached. As I neared what I thought was the end of the street, I saw and older lady with her hijab halfheartedly tied around her head.


"Good morning. Do you know where the el-khatib neighborhood is?" I fully expected her, at that point, to open her arms and say, "You're standing in it! Ahla o Sahla! Welcome!"


Instead,


" Well...I think there are some down there. Did you try Abu-something-or-other up the road? He knows. Hey, girls!" She called over two teenage girls that were walking back up the way from which I had come. "Take this man up to Abu-something-or-other's house. He's looking for the house of el-Khatib."


Crimony.


Up again we walked, to Abu-s.o.o.'s house. Once again, the only person there - a boy in a yellow sweatshirt hanging his big goofy face out the window.


"Where's your DAD?!" "Not home!"


Just then, a pickup truck drove down the rode, and slowed next to the porch leaf-choppers.


"Where is he?" "This is the kid. He's looking for el-Khatibs. He's one of you."


I opened the truck door to find Omar - buzzed head, bright pink and white striped polo shirt, and huge silver chain.


"What's your name?" "Tarek Ziad Said Ismail El-Khatib. My grandfather lived here. Said Ismail. Abu-Ghazi. Ana Sha3bawi."

"You're related to me kid. Jump in."


We drove down to his father's house, where he parked the pickup in the road and ushered for me to walked into the outdoor area - too low to the ground level to be a porch, and too shabby to be a courtyard. He introduced me to his father, Abu-Marwan - a fair skinned man with a blondish mustache who sat alone shuffling 4 decks of cards, and his lips smacked together around his toothless mouth when he explained to me who was related to whom among the el-khatibs.


We never really established how we were related, but within 5 minutes Abu-Marwan (from the sheikh muhammad branch of the el-khatib clan) was insisting that i was family, and that regardless of whether he wanted to host me or not, that he was "majboor - forced" to have me. Because we were family.


His wife, daughter, and grandchildren came out of the woodwork, elated at the prospect of a new cousin. I was equally so. They brought me coke, cucumber, tomato, and za'atar (thyme) bread that they had baked that day, and argued over who i resembled the most among our family.


Soon, they called me inside,


"Tare2, the phone's for you."

I walked in, as they all crowded around the spin-dial phone. Im-Marwan handed me the receiver.


"Hello?" "Yes, Tare2? Tare2 what?" "Tare2 Ziad Said Ismail"

"Ahhh...so your grandfather is Said? Said whom?" "Said Ismail...Abu Ghazi. He left to Lebanon in 1948." "Ah so you have family in Lebanon? Who?" "Um...my Aunt Myassar is there. She's married to Khaled Yunus."

"Myassar is your AUNT?! Hold on we'll be right there."


5 minutes later, Abu Said, Im Said, and Insaf, whom I had spoken to on the phone, pulled up to Abu-Marwan's and hopped out of the car. My dad's sister Myassar had visited them in the early 1980's when she was still able to travel here, and they knew her from then.


Im Said was on the verge of tears. "The people of Sha'ab are coming back. The people of Sha'ab must come back."


She went on, telling me how she didn't know anyone anymore in her village. It was all foreigners - Arabs from other towns that had settled in Sha'ab. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Nakba is not the destruction of homes or the loss of land, but the sheer annihilation of familiar community.


"Where are your father’s sisters and brothers?" I explained proudly, “Well, he has a brother in the UAE, one in California, another in Texas but he was in Saudi for a while, one in Canada, a sister in Lebanon, one in Syria, and another in Turkey..."

Im Said shook her head the whole time.

"Yaaaa haram. What a shame. They belong here. They belong in Sha'ab so I can know them and know their children!"


After thanking Abu-Marwan profusely for his generosity, I was whisked off by Abu-Said and friends to his home in the upper part of town.


"Look over here...look my son..." Im-Said told me pointing west, toward the setting sun..."That's all Sha'ab. All of those olive trees...grove after grove...this is your village my son." And it was.


They quickly zoomed me around the city, showing me an abandoned - yet preserved - church that was over 300 years old, my grandfather's home, and the well from which the villagers used to fill bucket after bucket of water.


At home, Abu-Said told me about himself. He had worked for years in Haifa as the manager of a supermarket, living there and raising his children. Sha'ab had been closed off as an Israeli settlement until 1970, but when the time came to retire, Abu Said told me, he decided to come back home. His sons have followed suit and now live in the three floors above him.


Child upon child piled into the house, each of them with bright green eyes and frizzy hair.


Im-Said and Insaf made molokhiyeh and sumac-spiced chicken, apologizing for having only been able to throw something small together.


I laughed. 4 hours before, I had been ready to turn back to Jerusalem, and now I had an entire family urging me to come back so I could properly see my village. I agreed.


As I walked out Im-Said limped after me, a heavy bag at her side, insisting,


"Take this. Take this I swear it's nothing." I opened the bag - a 3 liter corn-oil bottle - filled with olive oil.


"This is from Sha'ab. Use it to your heart's content, and if you need more - it's your village. Just come back for it."