By Celine Lim

18 January 2012. East Jerusalem, occupied Palestinian territory. The Gregorian calendar year has ended, as a new year begins, I feel I ought to write a more upbeat post than my usual, cynical ones about life under Israeli military occupation. Frustratingly, all the topics that come to mind tend towards negativity about the situation here.

Since I seem unable to derive good cheer from recent events, I will look to the memory of an incredibly generous and wonderfully feisty Palestinian woman for inspiration.

This is a tribute to Im Hani (mother of Hani), as she was commonly known to her neighbours in the Beit Jibrin refugee camp, and whose actual name I learnt only during her last days. To me – and to most of the international visitors who were welcomed into her home – she was the mother of A, a 30-something year old woman who was born with muscular dystrophy.   

It was slightly more than a year ago that I responded to an online posting by A, who needed a stand-in volunteer to assist her with her daily needs until her next live-in volunteer arrived. A’s father had died when she was in her early teens, and her seven older siblings had moved out after getting married and starting their own families, so she was the only one still living with her mother. Back then, I was living in Bethlehem, less than a 5 minute-walk from A’s home, so I agreed to spend my evenings (after my internship during the day) and nights there as needed.

I don’t really remember if, the first time I saw her, A’s mother was seated on a thin mattress on the floor of the living room, her reading glasses held in place over her headscarf with a black, elastic band, her head bent intently over a piece of embroidery. Or perhaps this is the image that has surfaced because it was the first sight that greeted me every morning during the fortnight or so that I stayed with them. Like many Palestinian women, A’s mother enjoyed creating the vibrant-hued and intricate patterns of the traditional craft. Her finished embroidery pieces were then turned into cushion covers, purses or bags, ready to be sold as souvenirs. Although her children were supporting her financially, she clearly found satisfaction in producing beautiful works of art that, occasionally, provided her with independently-earned income which she felt free to spend as she wished.

Soon after I had stopped assisting A (when the live-in volunteer had arrived), I was asked if I could continue giving A’s mother the foot massages that I had given her during my stay there. “My mother says she can pay you,” A told me over the phone, “she finds it hard to fall asleep at night because of the pain in her legs.” I did not want to take monetary payment so we arranged to barter A’s Arabic lessons for foot massages. The trade did not work out so well because I could not always find time for an Arabic lesson after each foot massage session, but A’s mother always insisted on feeding me every time I was over at their house.

She was an amazing cook and I have vivid memories of the flavours I experienced in her kitchen as well as the feeling of being achingly full each time I left their house – that is, until I learnt to say khalas (Arabic for enough) while simultaneously moving my plate away from her marauding, food-filled ladle. During one of our conversations, A mentioned that her mother was so good at dishing up good food in large quantities that whenever there was a big event in the refugee camp, such as weddings or funerals, she was the one that people would turn to. When her role as the camp’s main cook eventually ceased, the younger women would visit her to learn how to cook the delicious Palestinian dishes they had grown up on, and she would oblige with cooking tips and recipes.

In the kitchen, A’s mother sat on an overturned crate and presided over a single gas burner placed on a low table – the regular four-hob stove and oven remained largely untouched. Either her grandchildren, the neighbour’s kids or the live-in volunteer would scurry around the kitchen, handing her ingredients, pots and spatulas as instructed. A’s mother had such a bad back, she could only move around with the use of a walker; standing up and sitting down were painful ordeals. I initially attributed it to old age, but when A told me her mother had carried and moved heavy, concrete cinder-blocks to build their house in the refugee camp, the cause of her bad back became clearer. She had, in all likelihood, paid for the roof over their heads with her health, but as someone who fled her village in 1948 to escape armed troops, there was never any question of not participating in the construction.

Not when her husband, who was the editor of a political newspaper, was often arrested and imprisoned for his stance against the occupation. A recalled how her father spent as much time in jail as he did at home while she was growing up. Her mother devoted herself to caring for A, sleeping next to her youngest child and waking at regular intervals to turn A, who has control over her hands and face. Fortunately for A, her mother and her extended family accepted her condition and did not regard her as an aberrancy to be hidden from public view.

A’s mother was held in high regard as a traditional healer and much sought-after for her skills. She was particularly popular for her “baby massages” that cured colic and the other pains that afflict infants, toddlers and young children, but which the young ones could not articulate. Parents learnt of her through word of mouth and, by the 1970s, word of her skill had spread to the paediatric unit of the French Hospital in Bethlehem. First a nurse, then a doctor, paid A’s mother a visit in her home and invited her to work at the hospital as a full-time employee. Imagine their surprise and puzzlement when she politely declined. A recalled: “My mother said that she had made a promise to her God to use her gift to help whoever came to her, without taking any money.” And that was exactly what she did. Even after she was diagnosed with leukemia slightly more than six years ago, A’s mother never turned away anyone who came to her for relief. I have seen her, on days when she was feeling under the weather, draw on some hidden reserve of strength to minister to a colicky toddler, to a teen with an injured wrist, to an older woman with a sprained ankle – never mind that her efforts often left her drained for the rest of the day.

Towards the end of her battle with leukemia, relatives, neighbours and friends were visiting A’s mother on a daily basis. One of those visitors, the mother of a little girl who had stationed herself next to A’s mother, leaned over and told me, “My daughter, Yusra, is named after her grandmother.” And that was how, more than a year after I had first met her, I learnt the name of A’s mother. In Arabic, the word, Yusra, has several meanings: “wealth”, “ease” and “relief”. Although A’s mother had a hard life, she was blessed with a wealth of talents and an easy sense of humour, which she shared generously to bring relief and joy to many people. For me, she typifies the resilience of many Palestinians of her generation, who chose to laugh in the face of adversity while continuing to make the best of the difficult circumstances under which they live. As we enter the new year, I will carry her strength and spirit with me and attempt to live as fully as she did.

Celine Lim is a freelance writer based in the occupied Palestinian territory of East Jerusalem.