“Why didn’t they kill us at the wall? Some say that Yaqub, the headman of Zikhron Yaakov, is the one who saved us. They say that an old man from our town knew him and was standing in another line to be executed, and that he said to Yaqub when he saw him, ‘Abu Yusuf, the town has fallen and you’ve taken the weapons. What more is there after that?’ and that Yaqub answered, ‘We want to make peace between you and the Hagana so that we can stop the killing.’ They say that the headman left the village and came back with a written order to stop the killing. They say that some of the residents of Zikhron Yaakov, who had neighborly relations with some of the townspeople, intervened. Some say that they wanted to stop the killing because they needed us to work in their settlements, and some say that they wanted us alive because Abd Allah al-Tall had captured three hundred of them in the battle of Kfar Atsiyon near Jerusalem, and they wanted to exchange us. God only knows.
“In any case the trucks unloaded us in Zikhron Yaakov, at the building that was the headquarters of the English army. They held us, thirty to a narrow, dank, dark room that was only big enough for us if we stood. We spent three days in those mass graves, without any food but beatings with rifle butts, insults, and abuse.
“I’m sure you understand, Sitt Ruqayya, our morale was very low. The town had fallen, and we had seen piles of bodies with our own eyes. In fact, four of us had been told to move some of the bodies and bury them in a large ditch. Everyone who had seen anything spoke about it. Some said that they saw groups of people from Zikhron Yaakov walking around the town, with the bodies everywhere, singing and clapping their hands, and that others were doing the same thing on the boats in the sea near the beach. They were celebrating. One would say, ‘I saw So-and-So’s body.’ ‘So-and-So fell, killed before my eyes.’ ‘I saw Abu So-and-So and his brother and the three children of his brother killed near the mosque.’ Those who were martyred in the battle were few. In fact, more of them died than of us; that was also why they were afraid and lusting to kill. But most of those who were martyred were killed after being stripped of their weapons, after the end of the battle. Then we saw the women and children and old men in trucks, and no one knew where they took them. One person among us saw the Israeli soldiers assaulting a girl before his eyes, and when her father tried to protect her, they killed him. No one talks about rape now because it’s a painful subject for the family, and they don’t want to go into it, but we learned of it when we were held in Zikhron Yaakov. I was twenty-two and was not married, but I had four sisters; you can imagine my state, and my fears. We were all thinking about the old women. I mean, death and destruction and the greatest possible humiliation. All of these things, Sitt Ruqayya, were lead weights. It was a terrifying despair; I never knew anything like it, before or since, except perhaps in 1967. I was imprisoned twice later on and I did not despair, even though I was older and had a family and children I was worried about. In the seventies I was imprisoned for five years, and in the Intifada I was held for six months. Both times I was part of a group that believed it was powerful. We were part of a resistance organization, and in the prison camp there was a meaning to life; we weren’t without hope, or without moments of contentment, satisfaction, even cheer. In 1948 the situation in the camp was completely different. The despair was total, and life was narrow, dark, dank and oppressive, like the room we were crowded into.
“After several days they loaded us up again and took us to Umm Khalid. Do you know where Umm Khalid is? It’s a village in the district of Tulkarm, in the middle of the road between Tantoura and Jaffa, on the Natanya line, near the sea. They had occupied it and thrown the people out. They held us behind barbed wire and would take us to forced labor in the quarries, from sunup until sunset. We cut stones and carried them on our backs, taking them to the places they designated. It’s strange that we withstood it. I mean, I don’t know how our bodies bore it, because they gave us a single potato in the morning and half a dried fish in the evening, and they beat us and abused us.
“Then they moved us again, to a big prison camp in Ijlil, on the road between Umm Khalid and Jaffa. Instead of the work in the quarries they began to drive us to the villages they had occupied and where they had destroyed the houses, to take the stones. We were carrying the stones of the houses of our people, so they could use them in building their settlements. And they used us to build fortifications, military fortifications, and to bury the Arab martyrs. They took us to Qaqun, where there had been a battle between them and the Iraqi army in which they were victorious. We had to bury dozens of the bodies. We counted them: ninety bodies. Human nature is amazing, by God it’s amazing. I had not cried since I left our town, but I cried that day when I was burying the young Iraqis. I was sad for the young men and repelled by the odor of their bodies, and the repulsion made me more disturbed. I thought, ‘Why? They’re martyrs.’ I would bury them and cry, sobbing aloud. I remember the ones I buried. I remember all their faces, but one face in particular comes to me sometimes in sleep. He speaks to me, but when I wake up I don’t remember anything he said, even though I’m sure it was a long speech.
“In Ijlil a truck arrived carrying hundreds of men. It was obvious that they had not had a drink of water for days. They set them down at a single water faucet. The men rushed for it, and they shot at them, and some died. We later learned that those men were prisoners from Lid and Ramla.
“There were Egyptian prisoners in Ijlil, including a pilot whose plane fell over Tel Aviv on the morning of May 15, so he was the first Egyptian prisoner, bearing the number one. That’s why I don’t remember his name — we called him ‘Prisoner Number One.’ There was another pilot named Abd al-Rahman Inan, who was the leader of the flight of five planes that attacked the area near Haifa the following week. The weather was so bad when they took off from al-Arish that they had to turn back. Then an order came to take off again. Inan said that the British were the ones who brought down the five planes, and that he was the only one destined to survive. They treated the Egyptian prisoners harshly, like us. Inan told one of our mates that the Israeli soldier grabbed a small copy of the Quran that he was carrying, threw it on the ground and began trampling it underfoot.
“Twenty-five of the young men from Tantoura were able to flee from Ijlil. They discovered it in the morning and they became very agitated. Beatings and insults and abuse. Afterward they brought us back to Umm Khalid and from there they took us to Sarafand, near Ramla. It was a big camp with nearly 1,500 prisoners. In Sarafand there were other prisoners from the Egyptian army, officers and soldiers. They separated us from them but we found ways to communicate with them. We comforted them and they encouraged us. In captivity prisoners console each other.
“Also in Sarafand representatives of the International Red Cross arrived. They recorded our names and told us that we were prisoners of war, and that the Geneva Conventions applied to us. They informed us of our rights, and permitted us to write messages to our families, messages no longer than twenty-five words. After that we were treated a little better. They put us to work as agricultural workers, picking the fruit from the Arab lands they had occupied. In return for the work they gave each of us a card that allowed us to get some food from the canteen, because the camp food was very meager, not enough to satisfy our hunger.