Tel al-Zaatar: searching for buried memories

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but there were several incidences within a short period of time that made me think of Tel al-Zaatar ["the hill of thyme"], a former Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. The camp was the site of a massacre of Palestinians by Christian militias in 1976.

When Randa, a Palestinian-Jordanian friend living in Beirut, asked me where the camp was located I answered: "It stopped existing after the massacre in 1976."

"I know," she said. "But where was Tel al-Zaatar, and what happened to the land it was on?"

The same dream

I visited Camilia al-Khayata, a Palestinian in her 60s. She told me she saw her younger brother, Ibrahim, in her dreams the night before. Ibrahim went missing during the battles of Tel al-Zaatar.

Why doesn't the dream give me a few minutes so I can mend his clothes?

She has had the same dream ever since he disappeared: She sees him returning from the horrendous massacres. His clothes are torn. She opens the door and he falls to the ground. Ibrahim is still 12 years old in her dreams, and despite being grateful for his visits Camilia wakes up terrified.

She cries: "Why doesn't the dream give me a few minutes so I can mend his clothes?"

While taking part in a training session in Dekwaneh, a suburb north of Beirut, I asked the other participants about Tel al-Zaatar camp, but they could not help me. Our young lecturer, who had a clear Lebanese accent that does not give away his affiliations or origin, approached me later when I was standing alone on the balcony.

"I am a Palestinian Christian, my family lost more than 40 members during the massacre of Tel al-Zaatar. My grandfather was one of the survivors, and he often spoke about the scenes of horror when the armed men stormed the camp.

"They took his youngest grandchild, who wasn’t even three months old, threw him in the air and fired at him like he was a bird in the sky," he said. I asked where the camp was located, and he turned around and returned to the room, signalling that we should end our conversation.

The journey begins

This is how my journey in search of Tel al-Zaatar began. I called Raeda who was excited about the idea, especially because her sister Reem and her boyfriend from the US, Eric, were visiting. The four of us agreed to meet on a sunny spring day, one of those beautiful Beirut days.

A traffic jam from central Beirut all the way to the museum keeps us company. Passing over the Fiat bridge until the Mkalles roundabout we reach Dekwaneh, on our right is an uphill road and on our left a furniture gallery that has shut down.

A man dressed in white sports gear from jogs next to us. "Hello, do you know where Tel al-Zaatar camp was located?" I asked him. He smiled politely and pointing his finger said: "This way, up the hill." "Thank you," I replied.

He added: "I took part in the Tel al-Zaatar battles, after which I escaped to Sweden. Had I not, I would have gone crazy!"

We tried to convince him to stay, but he refused. He waved at us and continued his jog. Unable to understand the conversation, Eric tried to ask why we were so shocked. "Why did we let him go?" said Eric. "We should have spoken to him longer!"

"He went to Sweden to forget, surely he wouldn't have wanted to talk about it," I replied.

Getting close

We headed up the hill towards a desolate industrial area. We turned left then right until we reached a modern building and an empty plot of land, and part of the hill obscured our view of the road. We repeated the question several times: Where was Tel al-Zaatar camp located?

Tel al-Zaatar camp! Upwards from here! It's left! Take a right! But wherever you went, you saw the same scene: modern buildings, neglected plots of land and a barren hill. We wanted to take a picture of the hill that was once a camp. We returned to where we met the white-clad jogger and took another road up the hill.

Eventually, we met a man called Tony who solved the mystery. He told us the camp was further up the hill where a military airport is now located.

As we continued up the hill questions raced through my mind: Why are the people I spoke to so anxious about the site of the camp? At last we arrived at the airport, and my questions were answered: The people were scared of the memory.

This is an edited translation of the original Arabic