having spoken with a number of refugees in a handful of camps - in dheisheh and azze camps in bethlehem, al-am'ari camp in ramallah, balata and al-ain camps in nablus - and with my family in sha'ab and those FROM sha'ab who can only imagine it, i have come to realize something VITAL about us, as palestinians - as a people in exile.
like i wrote in my last entry, we have suffered a series of losses as palestinians.
as refugees, we lost our ancestral homes and livelihood both of which had undergone generations of development. some of us have experienced temporary (and sometimes permanent) replacements for both of these, whether in the ghettoized camps of lebanon, syria, jordan and the west bank, the prisonized refugee camp that is gaza, or the starbucksized suburbs of america.
we remain. palestinians.
more than the land, the olive groves, the sunrises and sunsets, the citrus-olive oil smell ground into our skin, the endless hills rolling into the sea, the SEA! the SEA!...more than all of these, what we have lost is our COMMUNITY.
from this loss, we must rebuild. from this loss, we must bring forth the lessons of exile and pour them back into our communal tunjara, add some zeit and summac, and stir until it BUBBLES vigorously.
with this in mind, i want to reach out to my family.
i'm going to start with the sha'bawis, since I know many of you are out there reading (thank you.) and because the el-khatib clan is truly an exiled community.
i am going to start working on a family tree, a geneology reaching back as far as we can, aiming to reconnect US with ONE ANOTHER.
For this, I will need ALL of your help. If you can give me as much of the information as requested below as you know, it would be GREATLY appreciated. I will obviously share the results as they proceed. If you have any ideas, or know anyone who has started doing this...please let me know.
If you care to copy and paste this information and e-mail it to me at ismail.tz@gmail.com , that would be wonderful.
I'll give a brief example, but it will be by no means all-inclusive.
Your Name: Tarek Ziad Said Ismail [1985]
Your Siblings Names - Their spouses (their children-their spouse(their children)): Deena Ziad Said Ismail[1987] - No Spouse; Nadia Ziad Said Ismail [1992]- No Spouse
Your Mother's Name: Linda Nasr Attieh Mansour [year]
Your Mother's Siblings Names - Their Spouses (their children (their children)): (e.g.): (Randa Nasr Attieh Mansour [year] - Hussien Yehia Shousher [year] (Yasmeen Hussien Yehia Shousher [1983] - No Spouse; Marwan Hussien Yehia Shousher [1987] - No Spouse)
Your Father's Name: Ziad Said Ismail [year]
Your Father's Siblings Names - Their Spouses (their children (their children)): (e.g.): (Sabih Said Ismail [year] - Iman Mohammad Al Faour [year] (Manal Sabih Said Ismail [1985] - No Spouse; Hicham Sabih Said Ismail [1986?] - No Spouse; Ahmad Sabih Said Ismail [1993 - No Spouse)
If you can provide MORE information than that, it would be great...but I think it would be a great start.
Please let me know if you have ANY ideas. Thanks so much.
tzi
