“Is it where I was born?” 

“Is it where I will die?” 

“What is Homeland?” 

Then Darwish answers: 

“To hold on to your memory: that is homeland.” 

Memory is stories and stories and stories…stories of ordinary people just like us, people who want to live… They’re neither angels, nor demons. They’re simply human beings.  

Today, I chose to tell you the story of Nabiha. 

 ...

Nabiha:  

The first time I saw him was in the hospital… on October 1st, 1985 when the Zionists bombed the Palestinians in Hammam Chott. 

It was a Tuesday.  

My father and I arrived with the first injured. 

They took the deceased to Charles Nicole.  

I have been an assistant nurse since 1969. 

a finger in Amman (the index) 

a finger in Beirut (the middle finger) 

and a forearm in Tunis.” 

My eyes overflowed with tears.  

… 

The narrator:  

Few months had passed without any news. 

Nabiha had changed. 

She bought a notebook and started following the news. 

She wanted to know everything that had to do with Palestine.  

She harassed her sister with questions. 

Questions about Palestine… about the Middle East, Tunisia, Bourguiba’s position. 

And Najwa provided answers. 

She gave her a history lesson starting with the Balfour Declaration, to the arrival of Palestinians from Beirut to Bizerte in September 1982. 

The 1948 Nakba. 

About the exodus, the refugee camps  

Bourguiba’s speech in Ariha in 1965 

The 1967 war, the Black September in Jordan, the Civil War in Lebanon, the invasion, the  Sabra and Shatila massacre… 

She was dumbfounded, listening, asking and crying and taking notes. 

Until the First Intifada began in December 1987 in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. 

Najwa told her they were going to protest in support of the Palestinian people.  

Nabiha bought the Palestinian flag and took to the street with Najwa. 

Nabiha: 

It was the first time I felt ecstatic. 

I, Nabiha, the daughter of Sadok, the nurse, raising my fist in the street  

The Tunisian flag in one hand and the Palestinian flag in the other… 

screaming and shouting: “Palestine is Arab!” 

Something I would have never imagined. 

….. 

Until I received a phone call from George by the end of June… 

He told me that Salem was sick. 

He had bronchitis and his health deteriorated because of his asthma. 

He asked me to come over to give him an injection. 

“Of course I would!”  

I felt insanely happy. 

Shame on me! Why am I happy? 

The man is suffering and I feel happy? 

What a shame! 

I lost my sense. 

What have I turned into? 

The narrator: 

That day, she went straight to his house… 

an apartment in Menzah. 

For a whole week, she would go to his place at 9 and leave when George would come back.  

The moment she would come in, he would start talking nonstop… 

Salem was born in 1944 in Majd al Kroum, in al Jalil, North Palestine. 

He would say, insistently… 

“We didn’t want to leave but they made us… in January 1949.” 

They crammed them into military vehicles and drove them away from Galilee. 

They carried their way on foot to Nablus. 

They lived in a refugee camp. 

They spent winter there. 

In spring, they were relocated in buses from Nablus to Lebanon. 

They arrived in April 1949… 

to Sidon on a rainy day.  

Nabiha:  

I would sometimes ask him simple questions… 

like “How did you get back to Palestine?” 

In the summer of 1951… 

a lawyer… by the name of… 

How come I forget it? How would I? 

I should have brought my notebook! 

He used to tell me that this lawyer was really important… 

 because he succeeded in bringing many families back to their villages, including Salem’s family.  

But that was in 1951, today in 1988 no court in the state nor the whole world, who claims to be free and believes in human rights, would be able to let me see my sister again.  

I miss her… I miss her! 

Then he burst into tears. 

I have never seen him cry like this before. 

The narrator: 

He told her about Majda, his sister 

“The Guardian of Majd al Kroum and the ‘Karma’ (grape tree) that will never perish” 

Nabiha thought that al Karma is a fig tree  

he told her that al Karma is a type of grapes  

In 1949, he was 5 and she was 2 

when they left the village, she was sleeping next to her grandmother. 

Then when they finally returned, she would wake up in the middle of the night, stand next to his bed and look at him;  

she was afraid that she would sleep and find no one in the morning. 

He made a promise that he would never leave her.  

Even when their mother passed away, and their father remarried, they stayed at their grandparents  

When he went to school, she waited for him at the doorstep until he came back. 

When he was 18, she told him not to go to their universities. 

He went to Egypt. 

He wanted to take her with him but she refused.  

She told him that she wouldn’t leave the Karma and its fruits, “I am the Guardian of the Karma”, so she said.  

He promised her to come back but he didn’t. 

….