‘Children of
Catastrophe,’ a refugee’s story by Jamal Kanj
Reviewed by:
Michelle Cohen Corasanti on August 2, 2013 1
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/08/children-of-catastrophe-a-refugees-story-by-jamal-kanj.html
Children of
Catastrophe is an autobiographical story by Jamal Kanj, a descendant of
Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes in 1948. In 1958, Jamal
came into the world in the refugee camp Nahr el Bared in Northern Lebanon. He
was his parents’ first child to be born in a room instead of a tent like his
older siblings. The story tells of the crude structures that gradually replaced
the tents.
Although
Jamal came into the world with what we might perceive as the bare minimum, a
refugee in a country that did not want his kind, in anything but a stable
political environment, throughout his life he had the love and encouragement of
an unshakeable family that would do anything for each other. Despite the
overwhelming hardships, incredibly his family persevered as a unit under seemingly
insurmountable conditions. They faced everything as a solid unit that could not
be broken, through thick and thin, his family lived for each other.
Jamal Kanj is
an engineer and his style of writing is almost clinical. He is very clear,
direct and precise. Reading Children of Catastrophe I experienced what Zionism
meant to Jamal and his people, the Palestinians. How one people’s dream became
another people’s nightmare.
So often we
only think of our own dreams and desires and not how what we want affects
others. As a Jewish American, I was taught that after the Holocaust, the Jews
found a “land without a people for a people without a land” and made the desert
bloom. When I first went to Israel, an Israeli told me that there were 21 Arab
countries and the Palestinians needed to choose one as they didn’t want them in
Israel. I had no idea who he was talking about. I thought Palestinian was a
synonym for Israeli and referred to the Jews who were in Israel before 1948. I
thought it was like Persian and Iranian. How would I know otherwise when I was
indoctrinated that we Jews found a land without a people? All we learned was how Israel was the
safe-haven for Jews. We never understood what Zionism meant to the
Palestinians. Our entitlement to the land was inculcated into our heads because
of the Holocaust even though Palestinians weren’t responsible for the
Holocaust.
As I read
his book, I was stung by how people can be so cruel and amazed how resourceful
children can be. Here in the US where drinking and drugs are prevalent in our
society among our youth, Jamal and his friends were fighting to survive. There
was no sense of entitlement or laziness that we experience in the US among many
of our youth. Instead I could see the deep desire to improve not only one’s own
life, but the lives of one’s family members as well.
I stand in
awe of the distance Jamal had to traverse as a refugee to make a new life in
America becoming a registered professional engineer in California with graduate
and post graduate degrees in civil engineering, management and executive
leadership.
In the
Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el Bared, the brutal environment motivated
parents to stress the power of education to excel and succeed in life. With the
divorce rate said to be about 50% in our American culture of instant
satisfaction, people jump ship when things get difficult. I doubt many couples
would remain together when faced with the hardships that Jamal’s parents faced.
As an
American, it’s important to read Jamal Kanj’s story, not just because he is a
Palestinian, but a Muslim. With the prevalent Islamophobia in America, it’s
vital we not focus on the extremes in any one culture, for we find these cases
in every religion and culture. It is more important to see how Muslims face
injustice and overcome adversity.
Unfortunately
too often instead of celebrating differences and working together to advance
humanity, we focus on our differences and destroy opportunities. At the end of
the day, we all belong to the human race. We all want the same things for our
children: a safe environment, a place to call home with a roof over our heads,
education, freedom, love, happiness, a future, a world in which our children’s
worth isn’t judged on their religion, race, color of skin or any other dividing
factor, and their basic needs are met. Children of Catastrophe should be
required reading for all and I hope one day Kanj's book will become a movie so
that people can see what it was like to be a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon.
We need to
hear these stories because awareness leads to understanding and understanding
leads to change. By reading Jamal Kanj's story, we become aware of ourselves as
human beings and the horrors we create for others. We cannot afford to be
ignorant to the truth, holding onto fallacies. In the words of Stephen Hawking,
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of
knowledge.” Through awareness we can put an end to these great injustices
committed against the Palestinians. No
one lives in peace when we condemn others to misery.
(Michelle
Cohen Corasanti is the author of The Almond Tree)
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