Beit Nattif, between Bethlehem and the Mediterranean Sea, was one of the four hundred-plus villages depopulated during the 1948 Nakba, which turned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into refugees. Mohammad Tarbush was then a child amongst them, hearing whispers of massacres, passing through the ruins, and witnessing the real-time erasure of Palestinian presence. In the years that followed from that formative memory, he would hitchhike his way to Switzerland, study at Oxford, build an incredibly successful career in banking, and continue to use his profound infrastructural and economic experience in advocating for peace, autonomy, and the accurate historicisation and depiction of his native country.
In his final years, Tarbush would work on a memoir that coalesced this remarkable life with his incisive perspective on Palestinian liberation and development; the resulting text, My Palestine: An Impossible Exile, details this lifelong pursuit by contextualising the events and conflicting agendas that followed the devastation of 1948, along with the intimate recollections that harboured always—in the words of his daughter and translator, Nada Tarbush—“a mini-Palestine in exile.” Casting his critical gaze on land agreements, international pacts, closed-door deals, and public calls for resolution, Tarbush precisely delineates the Zionist apparatus, indicts ethical and political failures, and substantiates his ideal of a one-state solution—all stemming from the events of this excerpt, set in the days of the Tarbush family’s displacement. Here, one sees that the impossibility of exile is in its unreality; home is never truly left behind.
And still, no one knew for sure what had become of Beit Nattif and the men left behind there. Everyone hoped that they had either managed to hold out or that their deep knowledge of the countryside, its hidden trails and lairs, had allowed them to escape. And the days dragged on through a tunnel of despair. Mother was seized with restless anxiety, unable to sleep at night, her eyes oddly transfixed in the daytime, constantly peering into the distance.
After the ordeal of the journey to Bethlehem, Grandfather recovered a kind of determined energy that would flare up at times. Almost recovering his old spirit, he would wander off, confident that this time he would get to the truth, would find out for sure when we would be allowed back to Beit Nattif. A figure of nobility back home, here he was merely another shuffling old man, liable to be knocked and jostled in the crush.
‘Let’s go back, Granddad,’ Yousef would whisper when he took him along.
‘No, I am going to find out what’s happening,’ he would reply before stubbornly advancing on those trying desperately to bring some relief and order to the refugees, like someone expecting to be revered. Yousef could see that they saw him as a nuisance, constantly demanding they give him answers they did not have. ‘Inshallah, you will return home soon, haji,’ was the stock answer. Back at the school, it was then everyone else’s turn to ask him for answers he did not have.
Grandfather could not bear our existence in Bethlehem. He was not able merely to sit and brood. He was convinced there must be something he could do to change the situation. And he fell ill again, suffering a chronic weariness and succumbing to frequent shivering fits. Many were ill like this, not seeking medical help, for there was none, and, besides, what medicine could heal the trauma they were suffering?
This state of limbo was broken abruptly by the arrival of survivors from the village. The men were hardly recognisable. Now they had become strange, gaunt figures who appeared distracted. People from Beit Nattif swarmed around them clamouring to know what had happened, frantic for news. Quietly and grimly they spoke. They said that some villagers had been killed in the fighting when the Zionists attacked the village. Women became hysterical, tearing at their clothes as they heard that their husbands or sons had been among those who had fallen. But, as to what had happened to Father, they had no news. They had run out of ammunition and had to flee the village. They tried to encourage Mother, but their eyes betrayed their doubts that Father was still alive.
Grandmother took one of them aside and appealed to him, her aged hands rapidly clenching and unclenching. ‘May God bless you, for your children’s sake, tell us the truth,’ she pleaded, staring into the man’s eyes. ‘Where is my son? Is he still alive?’ she continued, whispering. She peered into his face as if trying to penetrate something concealed there. And helplessly he looked down at her, placing a hand gently on her shoulder.
Back in the schoolroom, my family flopped listlessly in their corner, drained of the hope that had somehow kept them uplifted ever since they had arrived in Bethlehem. A half-naked child tottered among the people in the room, perhaps an orphan, maybe the child of one of the sick mothers. Some women lay with their faces constantly covered, barely stirring, too tired even to cry any more.
Slowly it was dawning on people that they would have to move elsewhere to look for less crowded places in which to hold out until they were able to return home. The facilities in Bethlehem had been dwindling even before they had arrived. The first wave of refugees following the Deir Yassin massacre had already filled all the emergency shelters. But people showed great reluctance to move further from their villages. To move on would be to acknowledge a psychological defeat, would be an admission that the wait to go home was suspended or would be seen as an acceptance that they would have to settle somewhere that was not their home.
There were rumours about people, unable to stand the waiting and the uncertainty any longer, who had taken their destiny into their own hands and had risked returning, only to be killed or wounded by the Zionist forces occupying their villages. A handful of those making such a trip had returned to safety afterwards. They spoke of their village turned to rubble, with only a few shattered walls still standing and door and window frames protruding from the heaps of rubble, with goats running wild. Others who survived the venture of returning, particularly to bigger towns, spoke of deserted houses, some perhaps with a half-finished meal on the table, and the disorder of a hasty escape apparent.
News of Zionist victories became widespread, quashing any hope for a quick return. They were accompanied by talk of better shelter elsewhere. Mother sighed deeply and looked into the distance when two volunteers tried to convince her to move to Jericho, thirty kilometres east of Bethlehem. Jericho was only seven kilometres from the border with Jordan. After the 1949 armistice and Israel’s imposed sovereignty over 78 per cent of Palestine, the Gaza Strip (1.3 per cent of Palestine’s area) fell under Egyptian sovereignty, and the remaining 20.73 per cent – including Jericho, East Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem – fell under Jordanian sovereignty, becoming known as the West Bank.
The volunteers’ efforts to persuade my family to leave Bethlehem were met with hesitation. ‘What if Father were to arrive and was unable to find us here?’
They looked embarrassed. Maybe they knew he was dead. Trying to comfort Mother, they added that there would be a register soon. ‘He will be able to trace you.’
Mother stared ahead. She felt trapped. Grandfather was confused when our family started to pack up its few possessions, then his face lit up. ‘Are we going back to Beit Nattif?’ he asked like a child. And Mother turned away, laughing nervously.
Reprinted with permission from My Palestine by Mohammad Tarbush, to be published by Haus Publishing in September 2024.
© 2024 by Nada Tarbush. All rights reserved.
This piece is appearing as a part of the ongoing series, All Eyes on Palestine, in which we present writings and dialogues with insight on Palestinian literature and voices, and their singular value. We hear the Palestinian peoples, and we condemn the violation and deprivation of their human rights.
Mohammad Tarbush was born in Beit Nattif, near Jerusalem. In 1988, he became managing director at Deutsche Bank then at UBS. He is the author of several books including Reflections of a Palestinian. His writings on Palestine have appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Guardian and Financial Times, among others.
Nada Tarbush represents Palestine as a diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva. She holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford, and Master’s degrees from Columbia University, Sciences Po Paris, and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
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