Umm Hussein still dreams of returning to Palestine

In a tiny hilltop Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, old Umm Hussein stood watching the sun as it slowly sank in the azure, warm water of the Mediterranean Sea stretching just two kilometres from her house. Umm Hussein then quickly shifted her eyes in her wrinkled face to the south and pointed her finger towards Palestine.

“I have been here for 66 years but the memory of my village in Palestine is still very strong and alive…I have adapted to living her but never thought of settling in Lebanon…I still dream of returning to my village in Palestine…if not for me, it’s for my children or even grand-children…right is never lost,” she said calmly but firmly.

“Look at them,” she pointed at her grandchildren as they played noisily in the back garden of her house in Mieh Mieh refugee camp. “They all were born here but I never stop telling them about Palestine…Lebanon is not their country…Palestine is.”

Umm Hussein, 80, was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forced out of their homes in the 1948 war. The woman was only around 14 years old when she was taken by her parents along with other family members out of Palestine to flee the massacres.

Umm Hussein’s husband Ali Khalil died nearly 10 years ago, leaving behind many children and grandchildren. While she is always seen busy, enjoying playing with her grandchildren, Umm Hussein still has time to be on her own trying to recall her beautiful childhood in her small village of Miroun near Safad town in North Palestine.

“I still can’t believe they had taken my village and my country…I still remember we were just simple farmers who never wanted to fight any one…they just came in shooting everywhere and frightened us out of our homeland,” she said.

“I am not sure if I will ever see Palestine again but I always dream of my village…if I cannot return, I am sure my children or grandchildren or great grandchildren will return…they say Palestine belongs to them but they are liars…they were there but we also were there…we had lived together but they then decided that it belongs only to them and started the war against my peaceful people.”

When Umm Hussein and the other Palestinians fled north across Lebanon’s border in 1948, they were given blankets and mattresses and told to stay near the border for a few days before they return to their villages after the end of the war.

But thousands more began flooding across the border to flee massacres in some Palestinian villages.

The refugees, still keeping their house keys, were then taken to a temporary refugee camp near the southern Lebanese border town of Juwayya. They stayed there for a couple of years before they were again moved further north and settled in camps near the southern Lebanese ports of Tyre and Sidon.

“I still keep the key of our house in my village Miroun…it has rusted but keeping it reflects our determination to return and the fact that we have a homeland which was usurped,” Umm Hussein said. “I have been told all the houses in our village have been demolished and wiped out but I am determined to keep this key…it is a proof of our homeland…a reminder and a token of lost right.”

Like other Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Umm Hussein struggles to live in the absence of jobs, land and other fixed sources of income.

Her son, Khalil, 45, is the sole supporter of the family, toiling daily at farmlands owned by Lebanese landlords in the adjacent Mieh Mieh village.

Her elder son, Hussein, was killed by during Lebanon’s invasion in 1982. His memory is as strong and alive as that of Palestine.

“They not only usurped my country and expelled my people out of their homes, but they chased us even to here…they murdered my son...”

When Umm Hussein and thousands other Palestinian refugees arrived in Mieh Mieh, they lived in tents donated by the United Nations and other organisations.

A few years later, the tents were replaced by mud houses. As the occupation of Palestine dragged on, they started to build concrete houses, which have largely been expanded horizontally and vertically to accommodate new generations.

Umm Hussein, one of few Palestinians who are still alive in her generation in the shabby refugee camp, spends most of her time playing with her grandchildren and sitting on the balcony chatting with a few old women who occasionally visit her.

She still has time to stare at the azure Mediterranean at sunset before shifting her eyes towards the nearby southern hills, beyond of which lies her real home.

She and her husband had managed to carve out a little garden to plant apple, pears, onion, radish, tomato and gooseberry. She used to work daily in the garden before she decided to retire indoors because of old age, which has also forced her to stop a previous habit of exchanging visits with neighbours and friends.

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