Personal Testimony

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Personal Testimony
destined786
10/10/00 at 02:27:59
Friday, October 6, 2000
from Muna Hamzeh-Muhaisen
Dheisheh Refugee Camp
Dear Diary:

Rise sunshine, rise. Rise and warm my cold heart....warm it to tears, let them roll down and wet my dry cheeks.....

Everyone slumbers into a restless sleep....everyone except for me and the birds on the trees. Oh I envy them so!!! They fly from a phone line to a TV antenna......free from knowing about the sadness that wrings a human heart. They don't comprehend pain...nor the spilling of precious human blood.....They don't understand what it means to have vivid dreams of a better life....and endlessly chase after that dream like chasing after a mirage.

Cry my eyes, cry.....the tears may just wash the pain down to a puddle around my feet. How are any of us going to face Um Hazem today? Oh Um Hazem.....your son Mustafa joined the long procession of Palestinian martyrs.....and we are all supposed to tell you: it is alright. He is a mrtyr who's going directly to Heaven.....be strong for your blind husband Um Hazem!....be strong for your other sons.....rejoice that your son was Dheisheh's first martyr in the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Oh! the pain in a mother's heart. Oh the agonizing pain in a mother's heart when she finds out that her yougest son has just been blasted away by watching him strectched on a hospital bed.....oh the horrible agony of finding out this way.

Israeli bullets charred Mustafa's chest and arm Um Hazem! Over and over and over again, they kept showing us a close-up of his spent body as it lay on the hospital bed. We could see all the way through to the bones in his arm Um Hazem! And so could you......Four sniper bullets that riddled his body as he stood there by the side of the road with his best friend Akram Shafout.

Cry my eyes, cry! Maybe the tears will keep me sane....or insane....not sure I can tell the difference anymore.....daylight turns into dark, and then it is daylight again. What month is it? What day of the year? What decade? Which century?.......Does it matter anymore?

I'm so afraid Akram Shafout will die too. Oh Akram! Just the other day you passed me on the street.....Remember all the times we had meals together at your house..all our laughter.....all your beautiful sketches and your promising future as a budding young artist.....Oh Akram, please don't die. So what if they operated on you last night and removed your damaged liver and kidney. You can live without them.....we'll all take care of you and make sure you can live without them. Just don't die.

Who will call your sister, Tagrid, in Gaza and tell her that you were shot last night? Who is going to pick up the phone and convey the news to her and her husband, your cousin Zaher? They will go crazy because they can't leave Gaza and come visit you at your hospital bed in al-Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem. Did you forget Akram? This is what their peace means....That Tagrid can't drive the one-hour away distance to be by your side.

And your mother, Akram!!!! Oh your poor dear mother. Who will tenderly hold Um Ali's heart and caress away her sorrow and pain. A son shot and hospitalized in Jerusalem....where she cannot go; and a daughter in Gaza who could very well be living on the moon.

This is the "peace process" they want to force down our swollen throats Akram. This is the "Oslo".....the "peace accord".....the "negotiations process".....that they want to convince the world they want us to have.

Peace my foot.....and I wish I could use a more graphic word!!! This is a "war process".....a "live ammunition accord".....an "eradicate-the-Palestinians Oslo".....an "Apache Chopper Accord"......

And only last night Akram, in the early evening, I forced myself to turn off the computer after being at it since 3 a.m......I felt like losing my eye-sight and made myself stop. I threw my aching bones on the couch infront of the TV and started switching channels to watch the news.....and then I saw the 'Batman' movie starting on one of the satellite channels....this is just what I need, I told myself, a respite from reality for an hour an a half of Michelle Pfiefer......stupid me didn't realize that respites aren't for us.

Was it 5 minutes later, or only 4 when the phone rang? Someone from Bethlehem was asking me if I knew Dheisheh's martyr...Mustafa Mahmoud Fararjeh. What? I screamed. What martyr!

Aren't you watching the news, the guy asked. No....I was watching stupid Batman.....I was trying to lose myself in a fantasy world when reality was close.....so close.

Hundreds of people from Dheisheh, my husband included, walked down the road in the dark to join the march to Mustafa's house across the street in Doha. The Fararjeh family, originally from Zakaryia, is the largest family in Dheisheh. My 2 year-old neighbor Marianna is a Fararjeh. Remember Marianna and her sweet soapy smell? She's related to Mustafa. And while he lived with his parents in the town of Doha across the street from the camp, his brothers, uncles and other realitves all live in the camp....

When the marchers left the camp, I couldn't sit still.....I felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown and had to do something to vent my anger. I cleaned the entire house and then with a hose and broom in hand, I went up on the roof to wash it clean....imagine that!!! I needed to do somethnig physical......I badly needed to reduce the tension that was eating me alive. When my husband came home, we had a fight. Are you nuts? what are you doing?.....

Trying to hold on to sanity, I told him.

Throughout the night, we heard the sporadic sound of gunfire. It was pitch dark outside and the quietness in Dheisheh resembled the old days of curfews. Nothing stirred!!!!!

Then Bethlehem Tv broadcast news about an Israeli invasion into the village of Harmallah (in the eastern part of the district of Bethlehem, but not sure if is in Zone B or C): As the Israeli army lit Harmallah's sky, the soliders stormed and took control over the village accompained by two tanks and heavy gun fire. At the same time, the army was telling - in Hebrew and through loudspeakers - residents of a nearby settlement not to go to Jerusalem on Friday (today)....Palestinians living in proximity of the Gilo settlement - at the northern entrance to Bethlehem - heard the army telling the settlers in Gilo - also in Hebrew and through loudspeakers - to go hide inside the shelters.

Frightning warnings....what do the Israelis have in store for us today. More hell....what else!!!

After the noon prayer today, Mustafa's funeral procession will be on its way. Where will they burry him? The Muslim cemetry in Bethlehem is adjacent to Rachel's Tomb, where the Israeli soliders, tanks, undercover units and snipers are situated. Will they burry him in the village of Artas near Dheisheh like they burried so many Dheisheh martyr's during the first 1987 Intifada... or Intifada I?

And will there be more martyrs from Dheisheh today??? Mothers brace yourselves.....the "war process" isn't done with your sons yet. But fret not, your sons are only Palestinians.... Arabs... Muslims.... Christians...their blood can be spilled so the world can watch and cry.....and so governments can issue empty statements.

The numbness we feel has stifled our fear of death. There is no turning back this time around....and to everyone's content, Arafat is back in Gaza without signing an agreement. So come on Apache Choppers and LAW missiles...our bodies are waiting.

Like my neighbor Muyasar told me yesterday: don't fear death Muna....we don't die twice but only once.....and dying once is better than going back to the situation we were in before the al-Aqsa Intifada, when we were dying inside a million times over each day.

Do you hear that Um Hazem!!!!! From now on, Mustafa will no longer die a million times over. Do you hear me Um Hazem!!!!!!!!!

Muna Hamzeh-Muhaisen
taken from: http://www.addameer.org/september2000
Re: Personal Testimony
Sara
10/10/00 at 09:33:13
Assalam,
Oh! This made me cry!
Re: Personal Testimony
Saleema
10/10/00 at 13:25:46
Assalamoalykum,

I am sitting at school, right now, trying very hard to contain back the tears.

wassalam


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