 Diaries
Ain el Hilweh in the heart of
Montreal
Ali Abunimah, Live from Palestine,
8 December 200
The
Ayoub family in the basement of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce church,
Montreal
, 2004. (Darren Ell)
I went to visit the Ayoub family while I was recently in
Montreal
. It was freezing cold and snow was falling as along
with two activists with the Coalition Against the Deportation of
Palestinian Refugees, I approached the side door to Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
church. We found Khalil Ayoub huddled outside, smoking a cigarette.
The small alley and adjacent yard are as far as any of the family can go
without facing arrest by Canadian police.
Khalil led us inside, down the steps to the basement, where church members
were holding a rummage sale. We made our way through the tables of books
and clothes and into the small room that has been the Ayoubs' world for
almost one year.
Khalil Ayoub, 67, his brother Nabih Ayoub, 69, and Nabih's wife Thérèse
Boulos Haddad, 62, sought sanctuary in the church after Immigration Canada
issued a deporation order against them in January 2004. The Ayoub brothers
were born in the
village
of
Al-Bassa
, near the port city of
Akka
, in northern
Palestine
. In 1948, when
Israel
was established in their country, they fled to
Lebanon
and over the years moved among several refugee camps,
trying to escape the horrors of the Israeli invasion and the Lebanese
civil war. In 2001, they obtained visas to the
United States
, and in April that year crossed into
Canada
and applied for refugee status. Stateless, with no
passports and no where to go, their claim was rejected and they were
ordered deported. This is when they sought refuge in the church.
The
Ayoub family in
Palestine
, in 1948, as the family was being expelled to
Lebanon
.
For many Palestinian refugees living underground in Montreal, the Ayoub
family is a local symbol of the larger Palestinian refugee struggle,
representing the fate of the forgotten majority of Palestinians in the
world who live in diaspora, denied the right to return to their own
country. Whether the Ayoubs and 100 other stateless Palestinians
threatened with deportation will ever find a place they can call home
and live in peace depends most immediately on whether
Canada
's Immigration minister will decide to regularize their
status in
Canada
. I had always thought that
Canada
has been exemplary in upholding international human
rights and humanitarian principles. But while I was there, Ahmed Nafaa, a
stateless Palestinian, was deported to the
United States
to face an uncertain fate. What will become of the
Ayoubs if they are deported? Who will take them in if
Canada
will not?
What was so shocking and moving
about the situation Ayoubs find themselves in, in their church basement
room in
Montreal
, is how reminiscent it is of the conditions they fled
in
Lebanon
's Ain el Hilweh refugee camp. The little room was like
so many refugee homes I have visited in
Lebanon
,
Jordan
and
Palestine
. One room suffices for all the family functions: a home
despite itself. All their clothes and belongings are meticulously stacked
and ordered, sometimes covered with brightly printed cloths to hide any
semblance of clutter.
As we visited with the family, Thérèse sat on a chair, shelling peas,
while Nabih and Khalil joked and speculated on their future. When I told
Nabih that my family is from a village in the
West Bank
, he told stories of people he knew from our area,
describing moments of his life as if they had occurred yesterday. But all
the stories he told occurred before 1948 -- before his life was
incomprehensibly shattered into pieces that have yet to stop careening in
unknown directions. He described the family's search for shelter after
they heard about the deportation order -- the terror of not knowing what
would happen to them from one hour to the next. After they came to the
church, they found a certain tranquility, but no peace.
As we sat and talked, Khalil got up, insisting on making us Arabic coffee,
despite our protestations that he should not trouble himself. This gesture
is the most commonplace among Palestinians, and it is also the most
powerful. To offer someone coffee, to serve it with your own hands, is a
way to say "welcome to my home."
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