The Tears of Tarshiha

Remembering Olfat

Our tears are for you, Olfat
A window of hope
for refugees in the camps
shedding light in the dark

Not yet born in Burj el-Barajneh
You dream of return to Tarshiha
dashed by eleven men
who met in a white building
on a winter’s night in Tel Aviv

Your village painted red,
one of the last cleared
Generational terror of al Nakba
One last glimpse of home for Alia
Not one for you, her granddaughter

The fear of Deir Yassin
more than one hundred murdered
Alia’s exile begun
marooned in Lebanon
in a canvas tent
multiplied into a camp only to be bombed
by Israeli planes.

You met Helen from Australia
like you, a nurse forging hope
in the camps, a partnership
that brought in the unions
to become APHEDA

We remember the siege
of Tel al-Za’atar in 1976
the old men, the women, the children
in dread telling their stories of survival
after shells came down like raindrops
becoming blood in Sabra and Shatila in 1982

You remember the kindness
of a Kurdish man become a demonstration
of Lebanese and Kurd to stop this crime
being brought to your camp
by the butcher of Beirut, Ariel Sharon
and his accomplice

To think you survived all this
to tell your story in Sydney and in New York
before those cruel leaders who pay no heed
You lived through Covid in a camp
a stateless Palestinian woman
now dead in Burj el-Barajneh

Denied your quest to go, for once,
to Tarshiha in Palestine
You live in our hearts
Helen, Ken, Suha, Mahmoud, your sons, comrades
and all the people in the camp
we love you so