We remember the taste of pure olive oil, za'atar , and tabun bread. Some of the sounds and smells of the land have been carved so indelibly in our souls that a few steps in Jerusalem's Old City are sufficient to trigger a rush of memories. We recall Palestinians as a wonderful and caring people who have suffered great injustice at the hands of foreign invaders and occupiers. We recall evenings spent with family and friends, visits to grandmothers and other relatives. We remember long hours spent studying in the fields, driven by a tremendous zeal to achieve, to go on to some great university, and eventually to return to do something worthwhile.
Early dreams remain vivid in the imagination.
We dreamed, for example, of building a big house where all the brothers would live and where the family would be together, where father and mother finally would be able to enjoy their lives, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. We dreamed of building a truly free and democratic society in a liberated Palestine, not one like the other Arab countries whose leaders we despised. Many of us never had lived under Israeli occupation and knew almost nothing about Israeli society. In the early 1950s, under the Jordanian administration, we had been careful not to listen to Israeli radio. We even had been careful not to read the literature of the Palestinians who had remained in Palestine under Israeli control.