“No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary about the dailiness of life in Palestinian villages under the brutal, bull-dozing Israeli occupation, hasn’t found a distributor. But settlers on the West Bank are still angry at the film’s notoriety. Last week, they beat up one of “No Other Land’s” four co-directors, Hamdan Ballal, attacking him in his hometown of Susia. That’s one of the villages that Erella Dunayevksy has been visiting regularly for decades. The following letter dates from ten years ago, but its tribute to an unconquerable Palestinian elder is timeless. Perhaps truths from Susia will become news now. May Erella D.’s letters spark committees of correspondence…
March 22, 2016
Greetings, dear friends,
When the phone rings and I see “Nasser” on the screen, I tense up even before I hear his voice. I can already imagine, see, and hear bulldozers and soldiers and desperate cries in Susia and other places. So, I begin every talk with Nasser by asking “What’s happened?”
The day before yesterday he called. “What’s happened?” I ask, and he calms me down: “Nothing, I just wanted to wish you happy ‘Mother’s Day’. We in Palestine celebrate it today,” he added, I am silent for a moment, swallowing the flutter of tears rising in my throat and send him a loving hug and kisses for the children.
Yesterday he called again, and I, as always: “What’s happened?” (since Mother’s Day is only once a year).
“There were demolitions in Jinba and in Taban,” says Nasser. In a stifled, painful voice, I ask for details and he said: “In fact, that’s not why I called. I actually called to let you know that Hajeh Sara died.” I am dumbstruck.
I’d visited her less than a week ago. She hasn’t been in Susia for some months now.
I met her at her son’s home in Yatta. She was sitting on a bed in a room especially for her. Leaner than always and constantly coughing up the violent tumor that had taken over her lungs and wouldn’t let her breathe.
We came to her, Ehud, Danny and myself. I went in first. When she saw me, she said: “I’m going,” meaning “I’m finishing my life.” The doctors told the family not to let her know the truth, but people know when they are about to die. I hugged her. Throughout the visit, she was as controlling as always, even a bit angry. I said to her: “Hajeh, now I’m beginning to feel that I’m here with you.” She smiled. We’d gathered in the room with her daughters-in-law and grandchildren, and we sat just as we had done in her tent, while she conducted what was happening, urging her daughters-in-law to bring us the migleh she’d planned for us as a reminder of the mutabak she always baked for us on our Susia visits (Migleh and mutabak are Palestinian pastries). In between coughs, she asked about my children and grandchildren.
A special friendship had woven between us since we first began to visit Susia in 2003.
Hajeh Sara was a determined woman, and if I were to loosen my tongue a little, I’d say she was a tough woman. Tough like life in Susia. Tough like the soil she tilled and sowed and harvested and like the tough hours of freezing winter cold and exhausting summer heat, when she grazed her flock alone since she’d been widowed 11 years before. Sara and the soil are one and the same, in her life and in her death.
Courageously, Sara withstood the unfriendly visits of settlers from the settlement Susia to her land.
This woman – who as an adolescent in the middle of the previous century had experienced her first expulsion from Al Karyten soil where she was born and raised and, later on, survived the Susia expulsions – refused to be expelled again.
“Holding her ground” is not just a literary metaphor when it comes to Sara.
Hajeh Sara’s harshness and stubbornness sometimes infiltrated her human relations as well. At times, she treated those close to her in a way that caused them pain. This manner, although not directed at me, managed to make me angry. Yet, something about my anger confirmed what we both knew – that our relationship was personal and human, not patronizing and political.
My last visit was a farewell visit.
Sara surrendered to the reconciled and compassionate massage I gave her withered back. We closed a circle between us.
She was a very powerful woman. I see her standing in the middle of the dry field in arid mid-winter and hear her aging voice imploring God in ancient prayer, pleading for some rain.
I don’t know if it’s possible to preserve olive oil. I would like the bottle of oil she presented me with at our meeting, which she also knew would be our last, to remain with me as a keepsake.
Rest in peace, Sara. Rest in peace from the struggles of existence, from worries, rest in peace from the harassments of the settlers, rest in peace from your loves and hates.
…Now everything is open and aired, like the earth after plowing.
…In appreciation and gratitude for years of friendship,
Erella