“To Palestinians, the tree is sacred, and so is the land bearing it.” – Sarah Ali
My grandmother’s early years in Melbourne were characterised by loss. Nan was five years old when she found out her father had died in World War 2. The middle sister of three, her youngest sister died from Tuberculosis at just six years old. Their mother abandoned them. She came home from school one day to find her gone. Her oldest sister, Kathleen, only eight years old at the time, took my grandmother’s hand and marched them across town, from St Kilda up to the slums of Carlton to live with their great-grandmother and other distant relatives.
In 1954, when Nan was 17 years old, she wrote to the Australian Department of Defence asking for the details of where her father was buried.
Private Albert Frederick Kemp VX5802, serving with the Australian Imperial Force, 2/7 Battalion, Australian Infantry, died on 13 February 1942 age 26, and is buried in Plot B Row A Grave 3 in Gaza War Cemetery, Gaza.
For decades, visiting her father’s grave was a vision that lay out of the reach. But in 1992, seven kids, a divorce and 40 years later, she began the process of seeking permission from the Israeli government to visit her father’s grave in Gaza. Eventually, after years of communication, research and planning, Israel granted her a two-hour permit to visit the Gaza War Cemetery.
For Nan, the journey to visit her father was her greatest service of love.
A man from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) greeted her on the other side of the armed checkpoint.
“Hello, Mrs Spence!”
She didn’t know how he knew her name and she had not expected to be met by anyone on the Palestinian side of the Erez crossing. But he met her with a smile, her name and a car, and drove her to the entrance of the war cemetery. There, she spoke with the cemetery caretakers, through the bits of broken Arabic and English. Upon entering, her first impressions were of how beautifully the cemetery was kept. Each grave was clean, the impressed lettering wiped free of grime. The grass was clipped short and flower bushes had been planted between each headstone. Recalling her impressions of the site, Nan remarked “they [the Palestinian caretakers] take great pride in keeping the cemetery beautiful.”
She sat down on the grass in front of the headstone, read the inscription and wept.
Fighting for those he loved, our darling Daddy died.
Nan placed a wreath, a photo of her father and an Australian flag at the foot of his grave. When she left the cemetery, she was met by the same man who had picked her up from the Erez crossing. He asked what she would like to do for the remaining time she had been allowed in Gaza. She replied she would just like to look around. He took her back to his house where she met his mother and aunty, and was offered coffee and food. She watched children walking to school in their uniforms and met his nephew who played with a toy gun. They smiled for a picture, and she purchased a keffiyeh and a Palestinian flag from a shopfront.
Nan’s process to visit Palestine was a multi-year long endeavour. Recounting it to me, she laid out piles of stapled letters to and from the Israeli embassy, coordinating with the PLO on her behalf. She was not allowed to contact them directly. She travelled through the armed checkpoints by herself, walking the one km strip of the Erez crossing with a wreath, her purse and a plastic bottle of water. She underwent security screenings from armed members of the Israeli Occupation Force. She underwent a two-hour Mossad interrogation upon leaving and had her luggage searched. From the Palestinians she met? A greeting, a clean headstone and a cup of coffee.
There’s a sick feeling in my stomach when I think of the gentleness the caretakers kept the headstones with. I imagine them pruning the flower bushes, sweeping eucalypt leaves from the bases of each headstone. I imagine the Gazan sun beating onto their backs whilst they mowed the lawn. I imagine my great-grandfather’s bones growing ancient in the shadow of the olive trees, swaddled in the cool, rich Earth. It’s a bizarre, unsettling thing to confront; the roots of your family laying in a place where the Indigenous people are being pulled from their ground. Among the daily horrors coming out of Palestine, the stories of bravery, resilience and defiance in the face of brutality, I think of the caretakers my Nan met. I think of the care and compassion they took in tending to the graves of an imperialist war, whilst being unable to bury their own dead. There’s a dizzying irony there; a career dedicated to the respect of the dead.
My great-grandfather’s grave isn’t there anymore. Earlier this year, my grandmother learned that Israel had bulldozed the war cemetery, ripping the Earth from beneath the bodies. Aerial imagery shows that the Australian section of the cemetery has been cleared, the headstones removed and the land turned over. The caretakers, as far as we know, have been evacuated to Egypt. The olive trees are gone.
My Nan’s voice quivers.
“I hate to think of his bones laying there, exposed.”
I imagine my great-grandfather’s bones bleaching in the Palestinian sun. I imagine cement engulfing them, laying foundations for Israeli settlements. I imagine the names and lives of the Palestinians whose bones may neighbour his, the lives they led in their homeland.
Amongst the photo albums and letters, Nan brings out the keffiyeh she bought in Palestine to show me: “I only really wear it to the protests nowadays.” My 89-year-old grandmother, with a cane in one arm and a daughter on the other, marching down Anzac parade to parliament house, to demand an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people. It’s her duty, she tells me, to the people who shelter her heritage in their soil.
I think of my great-grandfather’s bones being turned to dust, feeding a new growth of olive trees in Gaza. I hope their branches shelter the land. I hope they shade Palestinians as they rebuild their home.