The San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday May 18, 2003Page D - 1
Right of return to a Palestinian home
By: George E. Bisharat
On Wednesday, the 55th anniversary of the Palestinian "Nakba"
(Catastrophe), when one people gained a homeland and another lost
theirs, I was thinking of a home in Jerusalem.
It was the residence occupied by Golda Meir -- author of the famous quip
that "the Palestinian people did not exist" -- when she was Israel's
foreign minister. It was also the family home built in 1926 by my
grandfather, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat, "Papa" to all of us.
I went to visit our home for the first time in 1977. Although he was a
Christian, Papa named the home "Villa Harun ar-Rashid," in honor of the
Muslim Abbasid Caliph renowned for his eloquence, passion for learning,
and generosity. Painted tiles with this name were inset above the second
floor balcony and over a side entrance.
EXPLOITS IN THE ORCHARD
When Papa first built the home in what became known as the Talbiyya
quarter of Jerusalem, few other residences existed nearby. As I grew up,
my father regaled me with tales of his boyhood exploits in the
surrounding fields and orchards. Two of my uncles were born while the
family lived there; one uncle succumbed to pneumonia in Villa Harun ar-Rashid.
The young boys went to school up the road at the Catholic-run Terra
Sancta College. My uncle Emile told me of a wager he made with his
younger brother, George (for whom I am named), that he could not stand
on a swing on the front porch and swing with no hands - - with
predictable, but fortunately mild, consequences.
The wall enclosing the front yard was a fledgling design effort by my
father's twin, Victor, later a successful architect in the United
States, whose buildings helped galvanize the urban renewal of Stamford,
Conn.
My grandparents eventually suffered a reversal of fortunes, and in the
early thirties, leased the house to officers of the British Royal Air
Force, expecting to return in better times. Frescoes on the interior
walls were plastered over to accommodate the tastes of the British
officers. My family moved a short distance away to a more modest house
on the Bethlehem road. Little did anyone appreciate at the time that the
move signified the family's final departure from Villa Harun ar-Rashid.
A sense of foreboding gripped many Palestinians in the years leading up
to the wars in the region. Under the gathering clouds of unrest, my
father and uncles came to the United States to attend college, while
Papa shifted his business activities to Cairo. Thus, the family was
outside of Palestine on May 14, 1948, when Israel declared independence
and war with the Arab states commenced. Our fortunes were better than
most of 750,000 other Palestinians who were driven out or fled their
homes in terror during the fighting.
Villa Harun ar-Rashid was picked by Zionist armed groups for the
commanding view it offered from its roof. No blood was shed in taking
it, as the British officers simply handed over the keys to the Haganah.
Like most Palestinian families, we were subsequently stripped of title
to our home through a law passed by the new state of Israel called the
Absentee Property Law.
HOUSE DIVIDED
Villa Harun ar-Rashid was divided into several flats. During the 1960s,
Golda Meir occupied the upper flat. Anticipating a visit from U.N.
Secretary General Dag Hammerskjold, it is said, she ordered the
sandblasting of the tiles on the front of the house to obliterate the
"Villa Harun ar-Rashid" and thereby conceal the fact that she was living
in an Arab home.
When I went to Jerusalem in 1977, I had only a photograph of the home,
and a general description of its location from my grandmother. It was
summer, hot and dusty, and I paced back and forth through the
neighborhood inspecting each of the houses, occasionally asking for
directions. All the street names had been changed to those of Zionist
leaders and figures from Jewish history, and the hospital that my
grandmother had described as a landmark apparently no longer existed. As
I was resting against a wall in the shade, I saw a home that resembled
Papa's. As I hurried across the street, I could just make out the name
in the tile: Villa Harun ar-Rashid. I guess Golda's sandblasters had
been a little rushed.
TENSION AND FEAR
I was immediately flooded with emotion -- anger, sadness, and most of
all -- tension, tinged with fear. I walked through the garden toward the
front staircase, putting my hand on the stone banister, as I knew Papa
and my own father must have done countless times. I rang the bell.
After a long wait, an elderly woman opened the door. I explained my
visit by saying that my grandfather had built the home, displayed my
American passport, and asked if I could briefly see the interior.
Virtually her first words were: "The family (meaning my family) never
lived here." Later I would understand this as part of a way of
rationalizing the seizure of our property - - easier to swallow, in
moral terms, the expropriation of a speculative business investment by
some rich absentee landlord than to contemplate the taking of a family's
home.
HUMILIATION OF PLEADING
At the time, I was speechless, as I had never confronted this claim. As
I recovered my wits I was tempted to apprise her of the truth. But I
feared she would deny me entry. The humiliation of having to plead to
enter my family's home with this woman from I know not where -- Eastern
Europe, perhaps -- burned inside me.
We were soon joined by her husband, now-retired Justice Zvi Berenson of
the Israeli Supreme Court, one of the drafters of the Israeli
Declaration of Independence. He permitted me to enter the foyer -- but
no further, saying there was no need to see any more of the house, as it
had all been changed anyway. The couple insisted that the house had been
in terrible repair, and that they had done much to fix it up, a claim I
had no reason to doubt. Some 10,000 Arab homes in West Jerusalem were
looted and seized in the months preceding the war between Israel and the
Arab states in 1948.
Justice Berenson told me that he found the ceilings and walls stained
with soot -- a memento, perhaps, of the Haganah troops' cooking fires.
Yet this narrative of renovation also embodied an urban and
smaller-scale version of the myth that Zionists had encountered a barren
wasteland and "made the desert bloom." I later learned that Justice
Berenson had upheld laws facilitating Israel's acquisition of
Palestinian lands through what amounted to legalized theft.
IMAGINING VOICES
The house was cool inside, and as I stood there, I tried to imagine the
sounds of my father's and his siblings' voices, and the smells of my
grandmother's cooking. I left after no more than five minutes. Walking
back out into the blazing sun, I felt no specific hostility toward the
old man and woman living in Papa's home. But hospitality, such a
strongly held value in the Arab world, is hard to uphold when guests
become usurpers.
In 2000, we made this same pilgrimage as a family. As we stood across
the street, I recounted the story of Golda Meir's defacement of the
tiles to my son and daughter. I was overcome. Instantly my little son
embraced my leg, then my daughter hugged my waist, and finally my wife
my upper body, and briefly, we stood there huddled together, tears
streaking all our faces. Shortly, we composed ourselves, crossed the
street and wound through the garden to the front steps.
The front door swung open and a man smilingly offered: "May I help you?"
Somewhat startled, I thanked him for his kindness, and he explained,
"Many tourists come to see this house. It's included in walking tours of
the city." The man, an American from New York, permitted us to enter,
and venture through more of the first floor than I had seen before. But
when I said that my father's family had lived in the home, he was
incredulous. This time, I was not surprised as he protested, still
congenially: "But the family never lived here." He had gleaned this from
a newspaper article, he maintained. Repeatedly,
he insisted, it seemed a half dozen times: "The family never lived
here."
THE FAMILY DID LIVE THERE
Of course, the family did live there, notwithstanding the denials,
justifications, and obfuscations we have faced. So did hundreds of
thousands of other Palestinians "live there." The keys to their homes
there still adorn the walls of apartments, houses, rooms, and refugee
hovels throughout the world. We have not disappeared, nor have we
forgotten, our existence a reminder that one people's liberation was
founded on another's dispossession.
At home in California I have a thick file that is the documentary record
of my family's efforts to regain Villa Harun ar-Rashid. We have not
prevailed, of course, nor have we ever received any acknowledgment of
the injustice we, and countless others, have suffered. Our homes and
properties were long ago transferred to the ownership of the state or
quasi-governmental agencies that, even today, do not lease or sell land
to non-Jews.
Recently I found my daughter lingering over photos of my father as a boy
in his Jerusalem home. I know now that she and my son both are heirs of
the truth about Villa Harun ar-Rashid.
George E. Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law
in San Francisco, and frequently writes on law and politics in the
Middle East.
