by Mona Hajjar Halaby
As a small child when I walked about with my mother, I always clutched her hand and let her guide me. It was smooth and easy, like gliding on ice. Looking up at her from my tiny stature was like beholding a superhero by my side; Mama was larger than life.
Her handgrip was firm and decisive, like she meant business, like she knew where she was going, yet it was also warm and tender, like “I love you, and I’ll take care of you.” The puffiness of her palm reminded me of a loaf of warm pita bread, and when she laced her fingers into mine like a pretzel, I felt safe. I would have walked with her to the ends of the earth.
Nothing could pry us apart, except that life happened, and when I grew up we found ourselves worlds apart. In my twenties, I moved away from home in Geneva, Switzerland, and settled in California, USA, to be with the man I loved and to pursue my graduate studies. Mama, on the other hand, a Palestinian refugee in exile from her homeland, remained in Geneva with my father and sister.
Even though I wasn’t born in Palestine, my mother fed me stories about her childhood and youth, and I grew up knowing that Palestine ran in my blood. I was enamored by the joyful and exotic life my mother led in Jerusalem, by the happy days that came crumbling down when she lost her home during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
I also visited Palestine repeatedly, but never lived in my homeland, until 2007 when the Ramallah Friends School (RFS) in the Israeli Occupied Territories invited me—a teacher by profession—to train their faculty for one year in the facilitation of class meetings and non-violent communication, my specialties. I was hired to teach the students how to problem-solve and resolve their conflicts in a direct and peaceful manner. That year, I grew as a teacher while witnessing firsthand the effects of the Israeli Occupation on school-age children.
Living in Ramallah, I had come to know every corner of Palestine like the palm of my own hand. By the time my mother joined me for that epic visit, I was a woman in my fifties, and Mama had grown old with signs of an arthritic body and a fuzzy memory. She held my hand, or walked arm in arm with me, as I helped her negotiate the narrow cobblestone alleys of the Old City and streets of Lower Baq’a in West Jerusalem. Years ago, I had dreamed of being guided by Mama down the souqs of the Old City and the leafy streets of her neighborhood. I wanted to glide on ice with her again and feel her decisive and confident stride. But alas, it was not to be. Now with our roles reversed, I had become her legs and her memory.
My book is a memoir in two voices, my mother’s and my own, the past and the present intertwined. She wrote me letters during my year in Ramallah: letters that told her story, her love of Jerusalem, and her loss of Jerusalem. I’ve included her letters in my book, because my narrative wouldn’t be complete without my mother’s voice.
Mona Hajjar Halaby is the author of In My Mother's Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home, which interweaves the story of her mother's life and her own sabbatical year teaching conflict resolution in Ramallah. She is currently working on her next book about growing up in Alexandria, Egypt in the 1950s.
