Labor of love produces history of lost village
Reem Haddad interviews the man who preserved the memory of a Palestinian village erased in 1948

At first he didn’t think much about it. The passing away of an elderly person was sad, but a fact of life.
Slowly, however, Ibrahim Othman realized that every death meant the loss of history and the only remaining evidence that once there were residents of a Palestinian village called Deir al-Qassi in northern Palestine.
Suddenly, Othman, a school teacher in Tyre who fled the village with his family in 1948, felt compelled to track down the elderly and get their stories.
Soon it became an obsession. Morning and night, it was all he could think about: “Then I felt I had a mission,” said Othman. “And that is to collect every detail I could and write a book about Deir al-Qassi.”
Starting in 1997, after work and sometimes until morning, Othman, now 59, traveled throughout Lebanon going from village to village asking if Palestinians above the age of 70 resided in them ­ specifically Palestinians from Deir al-Qassi or thereabouts.
Altogether ­ from his travels from the North, to the Bekaa, and to the South, he was able to locate 51 elderly villagers ­ the eldest being 102 years old. But it was a race against time.
“Some passed away a few days after the interview and others died before I had a chance to reach them,” he said.
Othman spent hours with each of the residents he was able to find, bringing out every memory.
“I wanted to know everything,” he said. “From customs, to who owned what shops, to the games children played.”
Armed with hundreds of loose papers, he diligently wrote down every word. He found himself overwhelmed with information.
“I checked each fact against another and made sure everything was correct,” he said.
Based on the elder villagers’ memories, he was able to draw as “accurate a map of the village as possible,” he said.
Othman was also able to depend on his own memories.
He clearly remembers the fateful day in 1948 when, as a 6-year-old, he was playing in a street with some friends.
In only three days, he would be going to school for the first time, and he was very excited about it.
He also recalls that his parents were especially pleased that season, as the harvesting ­ which was to begin in the next few days ­ was exceptionally good.
“It was a Thursday afternoon when the planes came whooshing above us and began to bomb the village,” he said.
“I started running in panic along with everyone else. On the way, some children were blown to pieces.”
Joining his family, he hid in some fields. But the attacks did not cease and villagers fled to nearby Lebanon. A few days later, some of the villagers sneaked back into Palestine and made their way to the village.
“They wanted to get some belongings out of their homes,” he said.
Some never came back. They were shot and killed.
One of  them was the mother of a man Othman located and interviewed in Tyre. The last thing Mohammed Maarouf, then 25-years-old, heard was his mother calling out to him as “Israeli” soldiers riddled her body with bullets.
Maarouf’s story is one of those included in the book, which is named after the village.
Othman spared no details. From statistics to the name of the coffee seller down the road “they’re all in the book,” he said.
Included with full explanations are the types of food eaten, clothes worn, water sources, land owners, mosques, cemeteries, agriculture products, flora and fauna in surrounding valleys and type of trees, animals that lived in nearby woods, various roads leading into the village, number of livestock in the village, names of the shepherds, ancient ruins found in the village and the way houses were constructed and furnished.
Customs and traditions were discussed in full, among them births, marriages, beliefs, superstitions, astrology, Arabic medicine, religious commemorations, welcomes for strangers, proverbs, schools and students, women’s traditions, folklore dances, poets, songs, relationships with the Bedouins, and intermarriages between those from the village and those from surrounding ones. Names of all villagers, shop owners, and regular passers-by were included.
“It’s a living book,” said Othman. “Everything has been reconstructed exactly as it was.”
Finally, last year, the book went to print. Othman put much of his savings in producing over 1,000 copies and distributed them free of charge to offsprings of Deir al-Qassi.
Fifty copies were left aside for “my children, their children and grandchildren,” he said.
His one regret was that he didn’t interview his parents before they passed away over 10 years ago. His perseverance in his book wouldn’t have surprised them: “I’ve always been like that,” said Othman. “When I put my mind to something, I don’t let go.”
After fleeing from their village, the family settled in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon. At the age of 13, Othman decided he wanted more.
He left the camp and made his way to Tyre, where he continued his studies. In 1971, he was admitted to the Arab University as a history major.
At the same time he enrolled in a vocational school to obtain a teaching diploma and simultaneously took French lessons. After graduation and since then, Othman has been teaching in schools for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
But memories of his village stayed alive.
“I had this need to make sure that my children and other young people knew where they came from,” he said as he pointed to a painting hung up on a wall depicting a few houses scattered around some hills set in a picturesque village.
He painted it himself. It was how he remembered his village 54 years ago.
“This is my legacy to them.”

The Daily Star, 10-5-2001.