{"id":787,"date":"2015-10-27T17:15:56","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T15:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/?p=787"},"modified":"2021-03-15T20:07:34","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T18:07:34","slug":"there-was-no-farewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/2015\/10\/there-was-no-farewell\/","title":{"rendered":"There Was no Farewell"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brenda Mehos<\/p>\n

\"We<\/a>

We did not know at the moment of parting that it was a parting<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n\u201cWe did not weep when we were leaving<\/span>
For we had neither time nor tears,<\/span>
And there was no farewell.<\/span><\/p>\n

We did not know at the moment of parting<\/span>
That it was a parting<\/span>
So where would our weeping have come from?

<\/span><\/td>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Poem by Taha Muhammad Ali (1931-2011) Palestinian poet who fled from his village Saffuriya, Palestine in 1948<\/span><\/p>\n

His village was destroyed along with 530 other villages in Palestine in 1948.\u00a0 His family fled north towards Lebanon as many of the 7,000 residents did after the village was barrel bombed by Israeli’s army.\u00a0 They returned weeks later to find it completely destroyed.<\/p>\n

We had an excellent tour of the destroyed village with British journalist and author Jonathan Cook that started at a spring outside the area where villagers gathered their water prior to 1948 and which now feeds water to an Israeli settlement called a moshav<\/em>. The site of Saffuriya is now covered with pine trees that were planted to hide its ruins as other villages such as Bi’ram were covered.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0060\"<\/a>

531 villages were destroyed<\/p><\/div>\n

\"We<\/a>

We entered through the gate of the moshav<\/p><\/div>\n

We learn from Jonathan that 531 villages such as Saffuriya were destroyed in 1948.\u00a0 We entered through the gate of\u00a0the\u00a0Moshav that is built adjacent to the hidden ruins and park on road leading to a Christian orphanage and ruins of a Crusader Church.\u00a0 We walked to the cemetery used by the village prior to 1948 and is now in disrepair as relatives of people buried there have left the area for good or are too intimidated to return to this site.<\/p>\n

\"We<\/a>

We looked at pictures of the area prior to 1948<\/p><\/div>\n

We looked at pictures of the area prior to 1948\u00a0and compared the picture to the current site.\u00a0 For a moment my imagination hears the sounds of this rural village long gone, a donkey braying, children playing, birds chirping.\u00a0\u00a0 From this point on I have a chill when I see areas of the non-indigenous pines in between olive groves wondering if this is a site of another lost village.<\/p>\n

We ask the obvious question of Jonathan… what do the current residents in the moshav<\/em> think the ruins are from?\u00a0 He said he’s asked people what the few remaining structures are from and they always answer “from the Ottoman period”.\u00a0 Is it a common human trait to want to see and hear what we’ve been told or what we want to see and hear without asking the hard questions?<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>

From the Ottoman Period<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brenda Mehos \u00a0 \u201cWe did not weep when we were leavingFor we had neither time nor tears,And there was no farewell. We did not know at the moment of partingThat it was a partingSo where would our weeping have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-october-pilgrimage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}