Pain and Love in the Holy Land
Pain and Love in the Holy Land
Tuesday I managed to enter Palestine. On Sunday October 5, 2003 at 10:25 am as I held his hand, my father took his last breath in the same village in Palestine where he took his first in 1929. At the last checkpoint on my way in, I had to walk across and find a ride home. I asked a guy with a phone next to a car if I could use his phone to call my family to send someone. We exchanged a few words and he was from my hometown. He said he will give me a ride home in a few minutes. We called and rode the 10 minutes ride home as if flying. Everyone was there but to me it was all a blur between the checkpoint and my father’s bedside. There he lifted his head and his functioning left arm, his voice quivering and unintelligible he started to cry as we hugged. My sisters tried to calm him down saying it was ok, I arrived safely, nothing happened. He later calmed down and lay back physically
and emotionally exhausted. From that Tuesday to Sunday his condition deteriorated very rapidly. On Tuesday and Wednesday I was able to decipher some of the words he said. He briefly awoke at rare things. Once smiling at my cousin, once on Friday he attempted to tell Umm Jalal (his deceased brother’s wife) that she should not trouble herself
to come visit him. Once he raised his head to look at his sister and he once exerted a faint, painful smile at his great grand child Yazan. We, his children took turns taking care of him with our mother. He suffered and died in dignity. This great educator had an accomplished life. He was a teacher, a school principle, and an entrepreneur (once managed a club and once a children’s toy store.) But above all he raised six children and imparted on us and his 11 grandchildren all that is good – teaching us to care for all fellow human beings. He was
never bitter or angry over the misery that he and other Palestinians endured. He just preferred to live and encourage others to live. He insisted to me that he should die in his homeland and he breathed his last breath in his own bed surrounded by his wife, children (five of the six as my sister was still in Jenin), grandchildren, and close relatives. I felt a strange sense of miracle as bells coincidentally (?) rang just in the few moments of his death. An Islamic call to prayer also “coincidentally” sounded along the way to the prayer and burial. Thousands came to pay their respects. My father left us a heavy burden yet he leaves us a great deal of love and wisdom. Mish ra7 niksifak yaba (we will not fail you father.)
Mazin
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