Yeah, I still call you properties, because I know you still belong to us.
This is Rasha, the granddaughter of your father, the one who gave you life, that’s my Grandfather. What a great man he was!
Anyways I am standing here right before you, writing you this letter, to show you that I care, and I will never forget about you.
Do you know how many times I have imagined how your rooms would be my womb and I would be the fetus huddled in the warmth?
And growing up would be like this:
I would go to school, come with my friends, have some tea on the porch, then do the homework, later we go play outside and watch the sun set while it paints you and the whole world with an orange pink, forcefully creating shyness to the whole world where things are no longer things, because they have been blushed with life.
Since I love reading and writing, the perfect atmosphere would be in that beautiful garden, where I can also play my music.
But alas! You were forcefully kidnapped and taken hostage for 63 years.
It pains me now to look at you all dirty and grey and your insides cold! I have seen previous pictures of you, and you were as bright as a bride’s wedding dress.
Now I am standing next to you Sansur Building on Jaffa road in the commercial center of my Jerusalem or what they call now west Jerusalem.
This is a picture of you in 1940, you were so beautiful, but now even though you’re still beautiful, they didn’t take good care of you, so you became grey, and lost your charm…
I look to my left where I can see my Father staring at you, I watched him closely, and monitored his movements; his head was looking up admiring the decorations of the building, then he moved to one of the gates, and pointed at the Family’s name carved in the stone.
While I started taking pictures of you, people around me where looking at me curiously, and that’s what I wanted to do actually: bring attention to you. Because all these years people never questioned your existence, and those who questioned where answered by this little blue plaque, which ignored the great history of your birth…and summed it up in one paragraph.
Then later, following my Father I entered you, Sansur building, just to see your great interior, but I admit, it was another painful experience… All the people who occupied your offices were strangers, not from this land at all.
We went up the stairs and I closely watched my father again as he got emotional; this was a painful experience to him too.
“Rasha” he conversed with me “Did you know that whenever your Grandfather came here, his blood pressure would rise”.
“Really, that’s sad!” I said trying to put myself in my grandfather’s shoes; it must be a living hell to see that one of your great accomplishments was taken by force. It’s as if a bully stole your homework, but you couldn’t do anything about it… Because there were certain discriminative laws that were put by the “Israelis” called the “Absentee Property Law” which prevented us from taking you back.
After a short drive south, just off the road that leads to Bethlehem, I am now standing in Al Kattamon distinguished residential area, where affluent Palestinian professionals and businessmen resided at that time, but in 1948 (Al Nakbeh) around 50,000 of them were expelled from their homes, including my Grandfather and his family. They were forced to leave their homes under gun point by the terrorist “irgun” and “hagana” thugs and fled to Lebanon and thus were forced to become refugees.
Wherever I go, I notice “Israeli” flags on every one of you, it’s as if they are not convinced that this is their land and property, so they put up the flags that come as a reminder that they live here, and that they “rightfully” own this land, because internally they have no deep conviction of belonging here. That’s why whenever I walk in one of “their” neighborhoods I notice that they speak the language of the country they immigrated from, like Russian, English, Ethiopian, German, French, etc.
I looked at you, the residential house of my grandfather Michael, a house that my Father never lived in because, he was born in 1948, and at that time they had been refugees in Lebanon. Now you are turned into a home for the elderly, with three new stories built…You have turned out to be like a cold place for both the elderly, but firstly, for the whole Sansur family, who have lost all of their belongings in you, but the memories still hang on like a ghost grudging on its death. I would have sworn I heard my aunt Mary and my Uncle Shibly racing on the stairs, hearing their laughter, and their whispers to plot an evil plan to scare the younger ones. And then they are caught red handed by my Grandmother Rose who immediately scolded them. Yup, she was a kind and beautiful tough woman.
This tough grandma stood in front of an Israeli tank, in 1967, to prevent them from repeating their crime and expelling her family from their Bethlehem home and succeeded in doing so. The family had returned to Bethlehem in the early 1950’s where my Grandfather had his cigarette factory.
Then I find myself in front of you, the Greek Consulate building, you were until 1948 known as the Egyptian Consulate. My Grandfather built it in a grand luxurious style to fit the great kingdom of Egypt. When the Egyptian consul left Jerusalem in 1948 my Grandfather handed the keys to the Belgian consul to care for it and who in turn handed it to the Greeks. This was another dear building for my Grandpa who after the reoccupation of the rest of Palestine (West Bank) in 1967 went to court to get you back, and after having won the case, the Israeli attorney general refused to abide by the court’s decision.
Now how’s that for Israeli democracy? Equality for all! I laughed at the thought as I looked at the sign below a few meters away from our Katamon properties.
Finally, I have met you, the Italian Consulate building. Neither the Greek nor the Italians, who claim to be friendly with the Palestinians, have reimbursed my family one cent for using these properties for the past 63 years.
I was glad that my Father didn’t show me all the other properties, in Upper and Lower Baka’a neighboring the Katamon because I wouldn’t have taken it in any longer, for every time I met one of you, my heart beat would go faster, and I could feel the hot blood rising to my cheeks in anger. The Israelis are still after the Europeans to be compensated for the properties they lost in Europe but for us Palestinians………
Oh my buildings look below and you will see these posters, I am going to scream for you and throw my fists in the air, and join other demonstrators who have lost their children, land and properties. Through loud and rhyming patriotic words… I am going to get you back, and keep you warm and white.
Because the Right to Return Is Never Outdated.
Yours Truly,
Rasha Sansur.
14-5-2011.
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