Through Song and Sacrifice, Silwad Remains

Slipping through the cracks of a brazen smile, a single English word would become the most treasured relic of my grandmother’s youth.

Exhausted and defiant, carrying baskets of freshly picked olives from her father's grove to the oil press, Sitti* Hafsa confronted the British soldiers who were obstructing her and her donkey’s path. 

“I wanted to cross the road, you see, and then the army suddenly approached. So, I told them, ‘STOP!’” She instinctively reaches her arm out, employing one of the few English words she knew. 

While recounting the confrontation, she is interrupted by her own laughter.

“Ali [my cousin] swore never to leave the orchard with me again. He said, ‘Enough, you’re insane!’” By impeding the march of British soldiers through Silwad in 1944, my grandmother’s impassioned resistance was memorialized, echoing throughout the village. 

Hafsa Abdul Khaliq, my maternal grandmother, was born in Silwad on April 20, 1929. She was expelled in 1962. As the oldest of my three living grandparents — all from the same village — she has the most memories of their home. 

“It was beautiful, ya sitti (my granddaughter), Silwad was stunning!” Sitti Hafsa restores her youth through exchanges between torment and joy. “We were happy, wallah (I swear).”

Mahmoud Abdeljaber, my paternal grandfather, was born in Silwad on May 9, 1936. Forced to leave the village just days after his 12th birthday, he is left craving the image of his distant home. “I don’t remember it 100%,” attempting to justify the absent memories. “I was only there briefly, and then I left with [my brothers].”

Nazmia AlBasha, my paternal grandmother, was born in Haifa on December 12, 1944. Anticipating the developing catastrophe while working along the coast, her family returned to Silwad in 1948. “Our village [was] the biggest village from all those neighboring Ramallah!” She declares.

Hafsa Abdul Khaliq, 2022 (left), Nazmia AlBasha and Mahmoud Abdeljaber, 2001 (right).

Each of my grandparents endures a varying degree of dementia. While confronting their severed memories, visions of Palestine prevail — illuminating our current displacement. My grandparents re-imagine their abandoned homes through disconnected scenes of life during and after 1948. Sitti Hafsa's memory is manifested through song. 

The oldest child of prominent farmers in the village, Sitti Hafsa reminisces about her youth, much of which was spent springing from the olive trees to the fig groves as the seasons shifted. Nearly everyone in the village was a farmer, tending to the land throughout the year, while others used to leave to find work in Haifa. 

Sitti Hafsa was a badda’a in her youth. A natural poet who uses folk songs to bring joy and tell stories. It’s a tradition long practiced by Palestinian women, especially at weddings. A badda’a would typically lead other women in song. She preserves and protects heritage, allowing generations to savor Palestine through her songs. The root of the word in Arabic means ‘to create.’ The songs are often improvised, sung in the local dialect. 

“We [the girls of the village] used to sing and go to the olive press… the daughters of the Hammad tribe and the daughters of the Hamed tribe [would compete].”

Hamed, Hammad, and Ayyad were the first tribal leaders and subsequent founders of Silwad. The ancestry of the village traces back to the three men, with most families today drawing their lineage from the two brothers — Hamed and Hammad. 

Moving to the orchards during the gathering seasons, living in stone houses built for the harvest, Sitti reminisces on absorbing slivers of sunlight that peeked through a pergola of layered grapevines. She dedicates love songs to the land that raised her. 

 “O’ Northern breeze,
[Go] to those whose doors open to the North,
I am a dewdrop among the prairie beasts…”

,‏شمالي‫ يا هوى الديرة شمالي
,على اللي بوابهم تفتح شمالي
.وأنا في وحوش البراري ندى انزل على قلب الأحباب

Silwad ruins (palestineremembered.org)

Having grown up during British-colonial rule, Sitti Hafsa often cannot distinguish between the armies which marched through her home. Memories of the Nakba are intertwined with prior clashes with illegal settlers and aggression from occupiers in the 1960s. As she recounts the incessant raids, public humiliations, terror, and growing resistance from within the village, the attribution of violence fluctuates between British and Zionist occupiers.

“We had freedom fighters in the village. They would go out and hit the tanks of the Occupation army. Then [the soldiers] would return in the morning and raid our homes…it was a terrible life [those years].” 

Soldiers would empty all the homes in Silwad and force villagers to sit in the open wheat fields for hours. Searching for weapons, freedom fighters, and any signs of resistance, the Occupation Forces would callously exhaust villagers lying under the piercing sun. Sifting through the soil, her sentiment drifts; the field is no longer recognized for the beautiful life it provided. The encroaching Occupation claws at the bond between the people and their land. 

Her leathery cheeks, signaling frequent encounters with the sweltering heat, brighten as she relives the moment. “The resistance was magnificent,” the 94-year-old affirms, nodding to her love for my late grandfather.

Her song continues, “...[I am the dew] falling on my lover's heart.”

Hafsa Abdul Khaliq (top right) and her siblings, 1950.

Coming from a long lineage in Silwad, with a home surviving an ancestry of over 200 years, Sidi* Mahmoud possesses absent memories of the village. As catastrophe ensued along the coast only days after his 12th birthday, the suspension of schools across Palestine resulted in the suspension of my grandfather's youth. 

The devastation of the Nakba lingers in Sidi Mahmoud’s mind as he seeks memories of the home he worked endlessly to support yet never lived in. He was forced to move to Amman to find work. 

“It was only me, Abdul Qader, and Abdullah [my brothers]…[my father] had to stay and maintain our land,” he recalls. “We rented a single room…and I used to work for two dinars per month.”

My grandfather remembers his first job, alone, confined in a dark, suffocating room, packaging wholesale goods. After three years in Amman, he moved to Kuwait, following his brother Abdul Qader. There were better job opportunities in the Gulf. This marked the beginning of a cycle of migration that my grandfather endured for the remainder of his teenage years. 

“I would send them money in the mail,” he says. He recounts the limited correspondence with his family due to the gaps in his parents’ literacy. The 87-year-old’s stoicism unravels as he reveals coexisting agony and pride in sustaining his family’s land, financing the construction of a new home — left uninhabited — and supporting his three younger brothers’ education. 

When his father passed from a sudden heart attack, Sidi Mahmoud somberly returned to Silwad. Amid his homecoming, he met my grandmother.

Mahmoud Abdeljaber's home in Silwad.

The youngest of my living grandparents, Teta* Nazmia does not remember the Nakba. Unable to recollect her early childhood in Haifa, she recounts Silwad as a place of isolation. Her mother, from Nazareth, feared the conditions of the village after 1948, restricting Teta Nazmia’s earliest memories of Palestine to time spent in her father’s fig groves. Her reserved nature is overcome by excitement as memories of her youth rush forward. 

“He was the largest producer of dried figs in the village!”

In anticipation of the Nakba, her father sent money from Haifa to their family in Silwad to purchase farmland. He declared figs “the livelihood of the poor,” as they had a quicker and longer harvest period. Olive trees required at least 10 years to grow and produce fruit, whereas fig trees could be ready in two… adequate time to protect his family from impending violence along the coast. “My God, it was so beautiful,” she recalls. Beyond the harvest, Teta Nazmia was taught tatreez (Palestinian embroidery) by a private tutor employed by her mother to supplement her solitude. 

Marrying Sidi Mahmoud at only 15 exposed her to the terrifying reality of the village under Occupation, gradually preparing them for expulsion in 1963. Clutching the hands of her two-year-old son while bearing a newborn in her lap, Teta Nazmia was wedged between other families from the village in the back of an old truck. They fled to the border in herds, desperately seeking refuge in Amman as war ensued in the West Bank. Teta hurriedly accompanied other families from the village to meet Sidi Mahmoud, who left his work in Kuwait to recover his family at the Amman border. 

“[The Occupation was eager to] get rid of us. They wanted to empty the villages…when they occupied Palestine, they wanted to expel the Palestinians to take our land. They were ecstatic to turn us into refugees. They even escorted us to Jordan!” 

Nazmia Albasha and Mahmoud Abdeljaber with four of their children, 1968.

Arriving at the unpaved border, Teta Nazmia clung to her sons as she navigated a wavering piece of wood, serving as the makeshift crossing into Jordan. She reached my grandfather and commenced her displacement.

Before my grandparents’ memories begin to withdraw, Sitti Hafsa makes her final call home.

“Oh my country, I will remain your guard until our soldier returns,
Oh my country, I will remain your warden until our absent rebound,
Oh my country, I love none other than she…”

‏لا يابلادنا لاقعد عليك حارس واصبر على الجفا تروح الفارس،
‏لا يابلادنا لاقعد عليك بواب واصبر على الجفا تيروحو الغياب،
‏بلادي ما بحب إلى بلادي.

Marah Abdel Jaber (second from the right) with her three grandparents, Hafsa Abdul Khaliq (far right), Nazmia Albasha (second from the left), and Mahmoud Abdeljaber (far left), during a Eid celebration in early 2023. 

*Sitti is Arabic for grandmother. Teta is also Arabic for grandmother — Teta Nazmia prefers to be called Teta. Sidi, Sido, or Jeddo are all Arabic for grandfather. 

This article is a product of the 'How to write your Nakba story?' workshop hosted by the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) to commemorate 75 years of the Nakba, led by Laura Albast. It is also available in Arabic on our website and in Spanish on the website of our partner, El Intérprete Digital. The workshop was co-sponsored by United Palestinian Appeal and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. 

Story illustration by Aya Ghanameh. 
Translated into Arabic by Laura Albast.