Some wounds never heal

“I was tortured” are not the words you expect to hear from an 85 year old woman. “They arrested me together with my sons, hoping that my presence in jail would either encourage them to talk, or that I myself would supply information of their activities. It was 1987, and they were active in the PLO. In jail they kept on moving me from room to room, and every time I would find my sons bloody clothes intentionally left behind.”

An old woman, we can call her Um Naser, is sitting in the shade telling me a story dating 25 years back. The story is told slowly, her son is translating, and he is also visibly upset. He feels guilty for being the only one of the brothers not present in jail at the time. Although she has requested to talk to me, I feel guilty for making her relive her memories. She is twisting and turning a tissue she has used to wipe her tears, and I am sitting clenching the handmade patterned bag she has made for me.

She is reliving her eighteen days in detention. Together with three of her four sons, she was held in jail the year 1987. She was forced to listen to her son being beaten, as an attempt to pressure her to tell about their activities to make his suffering stop. She was herself spat on and beaten, with her sons in the next cell, asking if she was ok. She refused to give in, saying to her sons that the screams they were hearing were not from her.

Um Naser says “It is easy to suffer pain for me, but it is torture to be the cause of my children suffering, and it breaks my heart to see them suffer, to hear them be tortured. The pain never goes away.”