In Search of Human Kindness by Amber Poole

“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifils; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
- Moshe Dayan, Address to the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), Haifa (as quoted in Ha’aretz, 4 April 1969)

I was twenty-five when I visited Istanbul for the first time. My partner and I travelled across the Bosphorus with a guide who wanted us to meet his grandmother. Crossing to the Asian side was an Islamic journey to see the lesser known mosques of the city.

We entered the concrete block by way of a paved pathway. Inside, was a concrete floor with an oriental carpet stretched out about half way across the room. There were scattered pillows. In one corner, beneath an open window was a single mattress, neatly made. There was nothing else in the room. Off to the side, a small space which accommodated a double burner - electric hot plate, a table and one chair.

What happened next was a memory I will carry through eternity. I know this sounds dramatic, but considering the stark poverty of the house and the modest dress of our host, this dear widow made mint tea. It wasn’t just any mint tea.

From the room off to the side appeared this petite lady carrying the most beautiful tea service I’ve ever seen. The teapot was hand-engraved silver resting atop a Moroccan style tray supporting six green and gold, tulip-shaped tea glasses and a footed, nickel inlaid ceramic sugar box.

She was perfectly agile. She bent at the knees and came right down to the floor setting this majestic sight before us. Then she poured the tea from high above the glass descending with the stream of liquid until the glass was full. She offered us sugar. Lots of sugar. Four cubes each is my recollection.

And we sat there for every bit of thirty minutes indulging on the most exquisite tastes. There was a plate of Sekerpare - Turkish cookies with an almond pressed into the center, like a thumb print. And these cookies had been placed on an antique style, china plate not unlike you might have seen on your great-grandmother’s table in the 19^th century. Perhaps it had been a gift from someone traveling from abroad, or perhaps a wedding present – I wouldn’t know because I didn’t speak Arabic and she spoke no English. What I do know is that she offered us her best. She didn’t spare the silver tea service, nor the delicious cookies nor the precious time it took to prepare a proper welcome to strangers entering her home.

I am over seventy now. My ferry across the Bosphorous was a long time ago. I was just then beginning to learn about what happened at Sabra Shatila, but it wasn’t until the early 1990’s when I read Edward Said, Illan Pappe, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Mahmoud Darwish that I started developing an understanding of what actually happened after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and how the region was colonized and ultimately became what we call Israel today.

I am not here to explain this history; I am not qualified to do that. I am here to tell you about the hospitality of the Palestinian people. To do that, you must know them. Toward the end of the First Intifada (September, 1993) I went shopping for a Palestinian flag. Houston, my hometown, is also home to a large Palestinian community so it wasn’t difficult to find one. That day, I walked away with not only a flag but with Sharif’s friendship and the friendship of his family and friends, his neighborhood. Sharif, the owner of the store, was truly shocked when a young, white woman in her forties approached the counter in search of his flag. When I told him the books I was reading he offered more.

He said, “Do you know about Ghassan Kanafani?” Men in the Sun.
“Have you read the Poet of Palestine: Fadwa Tuqan?”

‘My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn't cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.’

The shop-owner and his family accepted me into the open arms of their hospitality. They didn’t ask a lot of questions. Mostly they wanted me to understand their story, because it is a big story.

The Palestinian story. A big one.

The women were always cooking and feeding us - we ate well and on the nights when it got dark, Sharif insisted on following me home to make sure Zachary (my son) and I got there safely. “Houston is a big city,” he’d say, “anything can happen. I will follow you home.” But he never came in, he just waved me on until next time. Sharif and his family were deported to a refugee camp in Jordan after I had already left America for Europe.

According to what Sharif told the newspapers, "We received a phone call that made my wife almost die," Sharif explained. Asmaa's mother, father, younger sister and 3-year-old nephew had been killed in an accident on Jordan's Dead Sea Highway. As word of the deaths spread throughout the Kesbehs' community in Houston, friends rallied to the family's side. The family believes the large gathering of Muslims and Arabs caused the feds to notice them.

The Kesbehs had been living in Houston since 1991 but in 1997, their paperwork lapsed and after 9/11, Muslims and Arabs were a target. The late Sheila Jackson Lee did everything she could to get the deportation order stopped but they were ultimately sent back to Jordan. It was a freak-show at the airport with all the cameras and Lee talking with journalists. I saw Asmaa, Sharif’s wife, crying, screaming, pleading not to send them back to a place where they would be living in inferior conditions; nothing like suburban Houston. Nothing like the life that Sharif had legitimately made for them by selling flags and souvenirs.

The Palestinian story got bigger on October 7, 2023. It got bigger and even more misunderstood. Once again it had to explain itself, defend itself, compromise its history to satisfy those who know nothing of its past, yet speak as if they do.

Noor wrote from Gaza today that cleaning supplies cost the equivalent of $80 USD (See photograph below). They have some food though it’s expensive. Tomatoes and cucumbers are selling at the equivalent of $25 USD a pound, still they manage, but barely.

She says in the north they have cleaning supplies but little food. In the south, it is the opposite. I find the response to enforced starvation, dirty water, a spreading polio virus, unaffordable domestic necessities, like soap and laundry detergent increasingly more unimaginable.

I still know those who call it a war. It’s hard to call it a war when Gaza is not a country, nor does it have a military nor do its residents have passports. They are not free to move. They are occupied. Trapped.

If we didn’t talk about politics at all, I’m still amazed to hear, “We can’t save everyone.”
No, but you can stop killing them.

Or, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Against what? Amputees, seniors, motherless children. I am tired and I’m depressed and I don’t know how to reach other women, mothers, wives, nurses, doctors, professors, musicians. There are so many women who don’t make the connection of a Palestinian child one with two legs, two arms, a broad smile, a beating heart – of course, until they are murdered, maimed and starved to death.

How is it that our human consciousness can tolerate the carnage? I’m not looking to the poor women in other countries to do anything other than care for their own and survive as best they can, I am looking to those who can make a difference. Who can speak up. Who can say: This is wrong.

What will it take before those who can help, understand? Will it take the loss of their family, their homes, their livelihood before they do? I’m not sure that will even be what it takes to make the difference. Believe it or not, I have talked to war refugees from other wars who couldn’t care less about the Palestinians in their present situation. Cold heart.

For those who can help, I have attached a link to Noor’s GoFundMe page and no, she is not a terrorist, she is a University Professor and cares for her father who has cancer but hasn’t had treatment since January because there is no medicine and few doctors.

In the end, it’s about kindness, hospitality, generosity and love. We are missing these values in our modern world, at least for ‘The Other’ who has become an inconvenient reminder that there really are innocent women and children being murdered at will and no country in the world putting a stop to it.

But it will take more than a genocide to strip the Palestinians bare of their hospitable nature. The friends I have there text me every day to see how I am, if you can imagine. They are always asking about my day, my health, my routine. And they are the ones fighting for their lives, yet they keep in touch. They are polite and genuinely curious about my well-being. They are the most gracious people I have ever met. I think I failed to tell you that the woman who served me tea was a Palestinian.
Now you know.