Witness to the Nakba: Palestinian teacher after 76 years as refugee

By UN News/Ezzat El-Ferri

Mahmoud Ahmad Al-Said remembers his birthplace and the ancestors who came before him. Seventy-six years ago, the Palestinian refugee, who has devoted his life to teaching children, was forcibly displaced from his home village of Al-Birwa approximately 9 km northeast of Acre. It is well-known as the birthplace of the renowned poet Mahmoud Darwish. While the village and surrounding area still hold many memories for the 84-year-old, the community has since been completely destroyed and replaced by what is now known as moshav Ahihud in Israel and kibbutz Yas’ur.

Before the summer of 1948, Mr. Al-Said’s life was like any other child's in historical Palestine. Belonging to one of the poorer families in the community, he remembers working to gather olives, climbing trees, and playing in the courtyard with his friends.

His father used to ride his bicycle to work at a major supermarket chain called Spinney’s in Acre. “We would run to welcome him after work, and drag the bicycle for him,” he said.

He recounted his story to UN News’s Ezzat El-Ferri during a visit to his humble home in Al-Bidawi, a large and crowded town in Northern Lebanon.

“Our home was just one room. My mother would tell us to wait for our father to come. We would lay out fruit to eat, cactus fruit, figs, and grapes. All types of rainfed fruits grew in our land”, he said.

When the war broke out, his father moved the family to his grandmother’s village a few kilometres away from Al-Birwa and went back to defend his hometown. After it was clear the battle was lost, he came back for his wife and four sons and started the long journey across the Lebanese border.

‘A few days’ turns into 76 years

Mr. Said remembers stopping at several villages along the way, sleeping the nights in olive groves. He remembers a sea of people, “as far as the eye could see” walking in line-formation. Each of his parents carried a young child and a bundle of clothes, while young Mahmoud held his brother’s hand a jug of water throughout the treacherous journey.

“My father told us we would only leave for a few days and come back to Palestine. He was hopeful of that”, he said. The family finally reached the southern Lebanese town of Jouaiyya where they rented a room awaiting a day that never came. Sadly, the father had a stroke and passed away only a few months later. “I believe my father died out of sadness for his homeland”, he said.

After his father’s passing, his uncles convinced his mother to move closer to them to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, where they had recently sought refuge.

“My mother used to serve in people’s homes in Tripoli. Back then there were no washing machines, she would wash their clothes, and they would give her one lira or a plate of food. Whenever she would get food, she would put it aside for us in case we weren’t able to find anything to eat ourselves. She went through a lot.”

The family lived in a wooden shack by the slaughterhouse in Tripoli’s port city Al-Mina. He said: “The fish would gather where they drained the blood into the sea, so we would go fishing there to get a meal sometimes.” The family also received assistance from the Red Cross, until that task was taken over by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) in 1950.

A child determined to succeed

To help with the family expenses, Mahmoud would frequent the local dumps in search of scrap metal and collect shells from the shore by their shack to sell. For several summers during his elementary school years, he also worked in a pottery factory.

Although he had learned basic reading, writing, and math skills in his village, Mahmoud was placed in the first grade at the age of 10. He said many people tried to convince his mother to leave her children to an orphanage and remarry, but she refused and took it upon herself to raise them.

“People told her that she couldn’t raise four children and that she should take us out of school and send us to work, especially me as the eldest. She would say: ‘How can I take him out of school when he already received two degrees (elementary and middle school). At that point, I told my mother to rest and that we would work to support her.”

At 19 years old – when he reached 9th grade, known in Lebanon as Brevet – Mahmoud got a job at a sawmill making crates for the oranges that grew in abundance in Tripoli, which is known as the city of orange blossoms.

“In Ramadan, my shift would end at 2 pm and school started at 2 as well. How is that going to work? I would dust myself off and go to school with my work clothes. Eventually I started bringing a change of clothes with me to work.”

He continued working there even during his first year of college, after which he traveled to Saudi Arabia on a teaching contract in 1965.

‘Children love those who love them’

Five years later, Mr. Al-Said returned to Lebanon, where he landed a job with UNRWA as part-time teacher. In 1971, he was assigned a full-time role as an instructor, launching his 30 year-career serving his community.

He looked up to his teachers and always dreamed of becoming one. He told us that being a teacher required passion for the job – he was often the first teacher to show up at his school and the last to leave – and he insisted that those who don’t have that passion should not be in the field.

“I tried to be a good role model to my students. When they would buy me gifts for Teacher’s Day, I would tell them I didn’t want anything from them except to see them well-mannered and educated. An auditor once came by and told me: ‘Your students love you’. I said: ‘Children love those who love them.”

With his witty and fun demeanor, Mr. Al-Said built a special bond with the more than 10,000 students he taught over his 36-year career.

“I still see a lot of my first students in the street, and they always greet me warmly. Some of them became UNRWA employees themselves, and some have had children and grandchildren – many of whom I also taught. Some of my best memories are as a teacher.”

Like most teachers around the world, he didn’t choose this career for the pay. Teaching at UNRWA schools was a source of pride for him. He said it made him feel like he was on the frontlines supporting his community. “They are refugees just like us, and if we are not going to sacrifice our lives and money for them, this was the least we can do,” he explained.

A love for reading

In the 1940’s, children like Mahmoud would gather under a tree in the courtyard of Al-Birwa where a Shiekh – an Islamic scholar – would teach them how to read, write, solve basic math problems, and memorize parts of the Holy Quran.

“From the days when I was in Palestine and the Shiekh first taught me how to read, I fell in love with it. I would pick up any paper with writing or newspapers and try to read”, he said.

Around age 14, he developed a new hobby, collecting books, and has read over a thousand books in his lifetime. “I gathered a large collection of books over the past 70 years, most of them were free. Many of them were gifts, and others were thrown away. I would carry these books back home and restore them”.

A rare case of refuge

Mr. Al-Said, like millions of other Palestinian refugees who are suffering a similar fate and are presently dispersed throughout Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, has been waiting for a solution to his predicament for 76 years now.

“Leaving Al-Birwa was compulsory because every village that resisted was completely flatted. They didn’t leave a trace in it”, he explained.

“The question of Palestine refugees is unlike any other the world has seen. The uprooting of a people and replacing them with another is very difficult to accept. It doesn’t seem like there will be a solution to this issue any time soon,” he added.

Mr. Al-Said said the entire Question of Palestine has taken far too long to resolve and has “rotted”. He said he has lost hope in returning home but expressed his faith in a solution for future generations.

“When I hear the word ‘refugee’ I feel the oppression. I feel offended. I feel like this should not be happening. Why haven’t we been able to solve the plight of the Palestinian refugee after 76 years?”

He believes that the solution needs to be two states, living side by side under the protection of the United Nations, “so that they do not continue to quarrel”.

“There cannot be peace between Israelis and Palestinians except through a just solution in which the Palestinian People are given some kind of rights. The majority of Palestinians accept the two-state solution. Negotiations need to be between two victorious parties. You cannot have real negotiations between a victor and a vanquished. Both parties need to feel like they won”.