This is where accounts differ.
Some people say Hassan killed three members of the patrol and took Reem and fled with her to Sha’ab, others that Hassan fired into the air so no one was hit, and that the soldiers had simply retreated, thinking they’d fallen into an ambush set by revolutionaries. That’s how Reem managed to escape and reach Hassan, even though she tripped over her long, wet dress.
Hassan became a hero. When he arrived at the village, he was treated like a revolutionary.
Even Reem believed in his heroism and fell in love with him. Their love persisted for more than five years, Reem’s father refusing to marry his daughter to her smuggler cousin and Reem refusing marriage to any other suitor. Things grew even more inflamed when Reem threw tradition to the winds and declared in front of everybody in the madafé* of Shaker al-Khatib, and to the councillor of the Western Quarter, that she loved Hassan and would never belong to anyone else. The old story of blood feuding would have been repeated if Abu Is’af hadn’t intervened by claiming that Hassan had become a sacred warrior and that he would vouch for his character.
And so Reem married her hero, Hassan.
Reem of the jerry can full of arak became Reem the heroine. Incredible as it may seem, most people attribute the decision to return to Sha’ab to her.
Yet, it’s the truth.
Please tell me, wasn’t Nahilah the woman of Sha’ab?
Nahilah rose. She gave the impression that she was at the end of her rope: a woman with an infant in her arms, faced at every turn by a blind man and his wife. Her first village had been demolished, and her second was occupied.
Nahilah rose, and Reem joined her.
But why did people say it was Reem?
Was it because that woman, who’d carried the jerry can of arak and staggered under the shot fired by the man she loved, lost everything the moment they entered the village?
Her husband, Hassan, was the first to join her and to plunge into battle. And he was the first martyr.
Reem was at the front beside Nahilah, and Hassan was behind them. On that day in July 1948, Reem came to the end. After the village was liberated and her husband died, she took her three children and went to Deir al-Asad. From there she fled to Syria, and nothing more was heard of her. She lived in the Yarmouk camp outside Damascus and ceased to be of interest to all of you.
What puzzles me is why everybody forgets all the other stories but remembers Reem and her decision to enter the village?
They forgot Hassan, the smuggler-martyr, they forgot Nahilah, who led the march, and they forgot you, too. There is no mention of you in the battle of Sha’ab. Nobody ever told me anything about you. They all said you were there, but you weren’t what people were interested in. What they were interested in was your father, the blind sheikh, who refused to leave again after the village had been liberated. He said he couldn’t because he had responsibilities at the mosque. You begged him to leave, but he refused. You begged him and you begged your mother and you begged Nahilah. Your decision was clear: No one but militiamen were to stay behind in Sha’ab. The residents were to take their belongings and leave because it was no longer possible to live in the village, which was under constant fire from the Jews posted at Mi’ar.
But your father refused, and then he refused again when you decided to withdraw to Lebanon.
Let’s get back to Sha’ab.
I’ll try to put together the fragments I’ve heard from you and others. When I make a mistake, correct me. I won’t begin at the beginning because I’m not like you. I can’t say “In the beginning. .”
I’ll start after the fall of al-Birwa, with the story of Mustafa al-Tayyar.
After you’d mobilized all the men and matériel, you liberated al-Birwa, seizing weapons, ammunition, and harvesters. Then Mahdi, the commanding officer of the ALA detachment, arrived and his men surrounded you. “Everything on the ground!” Mahdi cried. He wanted to confiscate the weapons and claim he was the hero of the liberation.
You were dumbstruck. The battle of al-Birwa was your first offensive. You’d tried to coordinate your fire and organize the assault; you’d put great effort into mobilization and were exhausted from the victory, your first; and along comes this officer whose soldiers hadn’t fired a single bullet, yelling, “Everything on the ground!”
Up jumped Mustafa al-Tayyar, a fighter from al-Birwa who’d die in the last battle between the Yemeni volunteers and the Israeli army, which took place on the hills of al-Kabri.
Al-Tayyar bolted up and yelled, “We’re the Arabs and you’re the Jews,” and threw himself down on the ground holding the machine gun Ali Hassan al-Jammal had pulled out of the Jewish redoubt during the battle.
The Iraqi sergeant Dandan intervened and said, “This won’t do. An Arab doesn’t kill another Arab.” He prevented a massacre. Things were worked out, and they took half the weapons.
Mahdi came back afterward and convinced you to leave al-Birwa and hand it over to the ALA. And you let him persuade you! You abandoned al-Birwa only for it to be surrendered to the Jews twenty-four hours later without a fight. And Dandan stands up and says, “An Arab doesn’t kill another Arab!” Poor people! Say you agreed with Mahdi because it was impossible to stay, because you were exhausted, and the village was surrounded on all sides; so you abandoned it before the ALA did the same.
After al-Birwa fell, you only had Sha’ab.
And Sha’ab didn’t survive either.
On July 21, 1948, the shelling of Sha’ab began, from the direction of al-Birwa. Then an infantry unit advanced from Mi’ar and swept through the village. The first shelling was intermittent but accurate. Ten minutes after the first shell fell on the threshing floors, the second one fell on the houses of Ali Mousa and Rashid al-Hajj Hassan, destroying them. The villagers started fleeing in all directions. In the midst of the chaos, everyone found themselves on the outside of the village except for a small group of fighters concentrated in al-Abbasiyyeh on the eastern side of the village.
On July 21, Sha’ab fell for the first time, without a fight!
The ALA, concentrated in al al-Layyat, Majd al-Kuroum, and al-Ramah, didn’t intervene. It seems the Israeli attack took everyone by surprise. War was everywhere, and it took you by surprise!
The village collapsed before its defenders fired a single shot, and the Jews came in.
You said you lived those six days in the fields and could see Sha’ab from a distance. It was as though the village had fallen into the valley. Sha’ab is hemmed in by hills on all sides, and had become a valley of death. After the fall of al-Birwa and Mi’ar, Sha’ab was under fire, and the only way to protect it was by concerted military action. Abu Is’af tried to organize the fighters. He divided them into four detachments and assigned each one the task of protecting one of the village borders, but he didn’t leave a central force capable of responding to emergencies.
Practically speaking, there was no battle.
The shelling and screaming caused terrible confusion among the peasants and the fighters, and the battle ended before it had begun.
In the fields, the Sha’ab fighters discovered they were impotent. Attempts at surveillance and infiltration were useless. “We can’t attack,” said Abu Is’af, “without preparatory shelling, and we don’t have any artillery.” He assigned the task of contacting the ALA to assure artillery support to Yunes.