An Ode to Anaam
Dispossesed from her home and displaced from her village in 1948. As a fifteen year old girl, during the creation of the State of Israel. Her childhood scattered across distant towns like fading memories. She kept her key, hoping to return to her home one day. She never has.
The First Nakba | 1948
Today, she walked on foot around and across dead bodies and under bombs, scaling four miles, that felt like forever. No longer a young girl, but an old woman. She could not make it alone, but had to be held up to make it past the scream of missiles above and the streams of blood underneath.
The Second Nakba | 2023
A refugee. Again.
This time far older, with deep wrinkles that stretch across her brow like wise branches that reach for out from olive trees.
They both have seen too much.
Have cried too much.
Have lived too much.
Have died too much.
Those standing trees and this strong woman, for 90 years and the 75 years between two disasters, two Nakbas, sit atop roots of repeating tragedy. Disasters happen far more than twice.
For Anaam, this proud woman that resembles our mothers and our grandmothers, there were a million unseen tragedies in between the Two Nakbas that bookend her life.
She is older than the state of Israel.
Wiser than any president or prime minister, politician or pundit.
As Native as the olive trees that rise from the soil and reach for the sky.
She doesn’t have to utter a single word. This motley mosaic of tragedies are visible, prominently, on her face.
While the world conspires to erase her name and story. These words, which spilled from my mind like tears, are my humble attempt to not only remember a face that I will never forget.
But to give Anaam a modicum of justice that the world perpetually denied her.
I see you and all your pain.
I just wish my words were strong enough to mend, instead of memorialize, your wounds.
Khaled A. Beydoun is a law professor and author. He posts his daily insights on his socials at @khaledbeydoun.