Ninety-year-old Haj Ahmed Abdullah and his wife, Fairouz Rostom, led us into the living room of his apartment, opening up the spaces of his memory and offering a glimpse from his apartment in the Zarout area of the Iqlim al-Kharroub region into the hidden worlds of his village, Kabul, in the Acre district, which he left at the age of fifteen.
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His memory overflowed, revealing its richness and an intimacy undiminished by 78 years of absence, and by the relentless refrain of "a land without a people for a people without a land," a Zionist narrative that persists in trying to convince the world of a lie built on hollow myths and illusions that crumble before a coherent narrative.
Haj Ahmed speaks of cultivating figs, olives, and vegetables on land that remains vivid in his memory, of the simplicity and beauty of life, and the warmth of relationships. He recounts, with bitterness, the story of his migration from Palestine and his movement from place to place in southern Lebanon before settling in the Al-Bass refugee camp.
Hajj Ahmed Abdullah: I lived amidst the bounty of Palestine, and I know the value of Palestine.
“I lived in the camp before my marriage and my travels to the Gulf and Africa to earn a living,” he says, recounting the stages he went through to survive after finding himself adrift in a void. He
doesn't dwell on settling in Zarout after many years of exile. His pockets are filled with papers containing memories of “beautiful, captive Palestine,” as he calls it, and reflections on the current state of his people's cause. Among these papers is his will to his children, asking that he be buried in Palestine.
Hajj Ahmad points to his wife, now in her seventies, who left her village of Sheikh Daoud, in the Acre district, when she was just a week old, saying, “She's my beloved, but whatever her feelings toward Palestine, or my son's or daughter's feelings, can't compare to what I feel. They haven't lived in Palestine, they don't know Palestine, unlike me. I know Palestine, I lived amidst its bounty, I know its value, and every town and city has its unique character.” Hajja Fairouz interrupts, saying that the connection between an individual and Palestine isn't necessarily physical, but spiritual. “My niece was born in Vienna, she is married to an Austrian, and her daughter tells me she comes from the Ain al-Hilweh camp, she speaks Palestinian, and she loves Palestinian food.”
Camp narrative
In the narrow, dilapidated alleyways of the Shatila refugee camp, which feel like a continuation of the footsteps of oppression, humiliation, and deprivation, we stopped some passersby to ask them what the Palestinian narrative means to them. Some ignored our question and continued on their way, while others stopped to speak with us for a few minutes before moving on.
Mohammed, from Sa'sa', in the Safed district, told us that he "drank the love of Palestine and its suffering from his family." The young man in his twenties added that he grew up hearing stories about the beauty of Palestine and life there, concluding that his love for Palestine is "innate."
Mohammed explained that his knowledge of Palestine began with the stories of his family and grandparents and deepened through information available on social media, which has opened doors for the younger generation to learn more about the struggle of successive generations for the liberation of Palestine, the nature of life there, the displacement, and other related matters.
Mohammed believes the Palestinian narrative is alive and well as long as generations hold fast to it. He cites his three-year-old daughter as an example, who, despite her young age, identifies herself as a "Palestinian refugee in Shatila camp." He attributes this to the ongoing suffering inherited by the new generation from their parents and grandparents.
Fourteen-year-old Rahaf and nine-year-old Aseel, two sisters, were on their way home carrying groceries. The girls hail from the village of Na'ama, in the Safed district, which, like many Palestinian villages, was destroyed by the Zionist occupation. They say their greatest aspiration is the "liberation of Palestine," and proudly mention their grandfather's martyrdom in the War of the Camps in the 1980s, a testament to their own experience of the struggle and displacement.
Captain Tariq Abdul Rahman, head of the "Al-Karmel Club," which trains children and youth in football and basketball at the camp, believes that the cumulative knowledge of the Palestinian narrative began with stories passed down from grandparents and parents, and developed through personal efforts to research and gather information about the history of Palestine and the Palestinian cause.
Abdul Rahman hails from the village of Al-Amouqa in the Galilee and maintains daily contact with the children and youthat the camp. His work with these age groups is not limited to sports activities; it also includes cultural activities that introduce Palestine and commemorate national events.
He says that the knowledge base of the younger generation differs from previous generations, because stories passed down from one generation to the next lose some of their details over time, in addition to the diminished role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in raising national awareness. "The details may be less extensive for the new generation, but what's most important is that the cause remains alive within them," Captain Abdul Rahman emphasizes, before addressing the difficult living conditions and fast pace of life, which contribute to the lack of effort parents make to educate their children about the Palestinian cause.
In a small coffee shop that barely has room for a few seats, we sit with Abu Tariq al-Sadiq, who hails from Haifa and lives in the Shatila refugee camp. Abu Tariq, who trains scouts at the "Refugee Dreams" association, says that Palestinian identity is "inherited genetically" from grandparents and parents who experienced displacement and suffering, and passed it on to their children. "My daughter is far removed from the Palestinian atmosphere, but imagine that today her children are preoccupied with what's happening in Palestine, and this is related to what happened in Gaza," Abu Tariq explains.
Through his work with younger generations and the dialogues they engage in, Abu Tariq has come to believe that the Palestinian narrative is safe, despite the difficult circumstances Palestinians face. He sees the emigration of young Palestinians abroad—a phenomenon that has become widespread among refugee youth—as an escape from a painful reality, but one that does not diminish anyone's Palestinian identity. "They want to emigrate because there are problems in their host countries, not because they want to forget Palestine," he explains, pointing out that the emigration of young people does not distance them from Palestine but rather brings them closer to it. "They can obtain citizenship that allows them to visit Palestine, and besides, they can work for Palestine more freely in their host countries, and their narrative spreads more widely throughout the world." He emphasizes that the Palestinian narrative is not limited to the Nakba narrative: "It encompasses all the living stories that Palestinians have experienced since 1948."
In the Mar Elias camp, near Shatila, Class, a Palestinian heritage shop selling Palestinian symbols—keffiyehs, embroidery, and more—overlooks one of the camp's narrow alleyways. Media figure Imad Mukhtar, owner of the shop and head of the “Jaffa Return for Heritage and Culture” association, believes that these symbols are an integral part of the Palestinian narrative and should be disseminated and promoted as widely as possible.
“When our people left Palestine in haste, they took some of their personal belongings. For example, the women took some of the dresses they had worked so hard and stayed up late making, and the men took their tools, like the pickaxe and the plow, to help them wherever they went with their work, and other things like the bride's chest, the millstone, keys, and land deeds,” says Mukhtar.
He adds, “Many of these things are still in our homes today. They used to tell us stories about these things, stories from the reality they lived. We were raised on these stories, which speak of our Palestinian customs and traditions, and we preserved them and raised our children on them. So, this narrative is everything our grandparents and parents lived through, everything we lived through, and everything our children and grandchildren are living through.” Mukhtar keeps a picture of his mother taken in 2017, holding a “Jerusalem cake” in one hand, and in the other, a picture of her as a child in Palestine in 1948, holding the same cake. “When she saw the Jerusalem cakes, she insisted I take a picture of her with the cake, which reminded her of her childhood in Palestine,” Mukhtar says.
He asserts that the Palestinian narrative is alive and well with the younger generation, who grew up on the history of Palestine, its cause, and the sacrifices made by the Palestinian revolution. “Besides that, they live in exile, marginalization, and a lack of job opportunities in Lebanon, and this is part of the ongoing suffering of generations and part of the resistance,” Mukhtar concludes.
Many link the continuity of the narrative to the continuity of the suffering. One of these is Amira al-Saleh, who lived in the Nabatieh and Tel al-Zaatar camps before their destruction and has lived with her family for years in the Mar Elias camp. Amira says that, in addition to the narrative of her grandparents and parents about Palestine, her awareness was also shaped when she was just 11 years old through awareness sessions held by Fatah cadres about the Palestinian cause in the Nabatieh camp.Amira recalls a famous phrase that the residents of the Nabatieh camp used to repeat: "Ten days and we'll return to Palestine." But, she adds, "Those ten days have turned into long years, and we're still waiting." The sixty-year-old woman emphasizes the impossibility of a Palestinian forgetting their narrative; they live the ongoing Nakba and witness the continuous Israeli massacres against their people. "Even if they wanted to forget, they couldn't forget the humiliation and deprivation they endure daily because they are not in their homeland."
Narrative of Place
Palestinian novelist and visual artist Marwan Abdel Aal believes that the Palestinian narrative is not confined to a single event or element. “The Palestinian narrative is not a single, closed story; it is a river of flowing tales, weaving together history, memory, and daily experience. The Nakba was not a fleeting event in history that could be parenthesically closed, nor was it a moment that ended with the year it occurred,” says Abdel Aal.
Abdel Aal, a native of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp and originally from the depopulated village of al-Ghabisiyya in the Acre district, believes that everything that followed the Nakba was shaped by its long-term impact: language, memory, fear, and deferred hope. What transpired was a reshaping of consciousness, not merely displacement from one's land, but a fundamental rupture of the relationship between people and their land, between time and its meanings.
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