Besides the horrific story of the Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation, Raja Shehadeh’s memoir is a tale of the author’s “irredeemable guilt” of not understanding his father and befriending him while he lived
Raja Shehadeh’s memoir, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, is about his father’s life in the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the strained relationship between the two men. Nearly three decades after his father’s assassination, the author mustered courage to go through a cabinet in his office containing a treasure of documents left behind by the deceased. The author peeks intimately into his father’s life and rediscovers him through those archives — vital documents detailing major legal cases that his father fought, published and unpublished articles, and personal letters.
Besides lucidly recounting the horrific story of the Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation, the memoir is an emotional tale of the author’s “irredeemable guilt” of not understanding his father and befriending him while he lived. Born in 1912, the author’s father, Aziz Shehadeh, grew up to be one of the most famed lawyers of Palestine who dedicated his personal and professional life to the Palestinian cause. Aziz fought and won many famous cases which won him fame as well as an endless number of woes, a journey which ended when he was brutally stabbed to death by a squatter who collaborated with Israel.
Without homes and hearths
Aziz Shehadeh fled the port city of Jaffa, his hometown, in 1948 Nakba, when under immense Israeli atrocities, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven out of their homes, and were relegated to mere refugees, their fate lying in the hands of the Israel, its perpetual appeaser Anglo-Jordanian state and a bunch of Arab nations who could never take the Palestinian cause so sincerely.
After the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, King Abdullah grew closer to the British and the Zionist lobby which the author defines in the memoir as a catastrophe as the Hashemites were perpetually appeasing Israel, pursuing their self-interests, and in the process, the atrocities that Palestinians suffered only grew manifold. The Hashemite king Abdullah was later assassinated during a visit to the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem and three Palestinians were implicated and accused of the murder. Aziz’s legal acumen did not only get the accused acquitted, it also marked the beginning of the interminable hostility of the regime towards him.
However that did not stop Aziz. “..he was tireless in his work,” writes Raja, “and fearless in his convictions.” Aziz went on, legally and politically, fighting for the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return home. After the Nakba, the Israeli government did not only rob the Palestinians of their property, it also ordered banks to freeze thousands of bank accounts belonging to them, the decree leaving the woeful refugees helpless, without homes, without money. “They [Israel] wanted to turn Palestinians into beggars,” the author writes, “And this is what happened to a large number of them.”
Raja Shehadeh further writes that the fate of these assets was left to the newly created state of Israel and that the Israelis even “refrained from calling the holders of the accounts Palestinian,” and by the end of the year 1948, all the banks that operated in Israel complied with the orders, inflicting the maximum damage on the Palestinians.
A legal campaign against Israel
Appalled at the lawlessness, Aziz Shehadeh pursued to figure out the possibilities of launching a legal battle, helping to secure return of the frozen assets to whom they rightfully belonged. The foreign banks justified their compliance with the Israeli orders by stating their need to obey the law of the land, a prerequisite if they were to run the operations in the country. However, Aziz found a chink in the armour—Jordan’s non-recognition of Israel— and launched a legal battle and a series of negotiations with the management of these banks, eventually, forcing Israel into declaring in 1954 that all the frozen assets would be released.
The same year, after winning the infamous case, Aziz along with other political activists, made attempts to “influence the course of events in Jordan through ceaseless efforts to promote democratic rule there.” Once the parliamentary elections were announced, Aziz decided to contest as an independent, only ending up losing in the fray. After the results were declared, Aziz was imprisoned.
Aziz was released from prison in a few months. Later, to discuss the process of reimbursement of frozen money, Aziz, along with his colleague Muhammad El Yahya, went to London to meet the manager of Barclays Bank who agreed on the timely release of the assets. However, only on the condition of excluding from the process the Refugee Congress—a body representing Palestinian Arab Refugees which sought their repatriation, of which Aziz himself was the General Secretary. It was the biggest success for thousands of Palestinian refugees, and for Aziz himself, further consolidating his conviction of taking the Israelis head-on through legal campaigns.
Aziz’s victory in the frozen assets case was a big blow to Israel and its appeaser Jordan. However, it irked Jordanian authorities. Citing propaganda articles published in the press, they accused Aziz of bypassing the Refugee Congress and committing treason by collaborating with the Israeli government, ordering his immediate arrest upon his return from London. Aziz, unable to return home, spent nearly 27 months in exile, moving places between Beirut, Rome and London, struggling to find out ways to revoke the order of his arrest. Aziz was eventually able to return, only to find himself arrested once again in 1958, along with dozens of known nationalist leaders. This time, he was arrested “in the wake of a coup in Iraq that toppled and killed King Feisal.”
An absent figure in the family
The memoir is a detailed and intimate portrait of Raja Shehadeh’s father, tracing his familial history as well as his life as a husband, father, lawyer and an activist. The author weaves the history of Palestine and the story of his father’s unwavering commitment to the cause. In between the narrative, he carefully narrates an emotional tale of the relationship with him, which was mostly fraught with a series of impassable rifts between the two till the latter breathed his last, or to be more accurate, till the author rediscovered him through the abandoned archives in his study cabinet nearly three-and-a half decades later. The memoir is the author’s genuine attempt to rediscover his father.
A major chunk of the memoir reflects the author’s profound regret of not having understood his father, or rather not having to attempt doing so when he was alive. The memoir, thus, is the son’s intimate inquiry into the reasons behind the somewhat distant relationship between the two men despite the fact that both of them were lawyers, shared the same cause, and the suffering it ensued.
Although Aziz’s courageous political and legal battles made him a popular figure in the Arab world, it earned him more misery than glory. His relentless engagement in activism, the periods of his unjust incarcerations and exile made him more or less an absent figure in the family. The author admits to realising that his attitude towards his father was never of admiration and that he never asked him about his prison experience or the political battles he fought.
In a bout of realisation, Raja Shehadeh questions as to why Aziz’s sufferings and unjust imprisonment didn’t make him a hero in his eyes. “I took my mother’s side,” he writes, “and thought, like her, that he was too rash and foolish to get engaged in activities that ultimately led him into trouble… I [always] blamed the victim.”
A reconciliation that was not
The author admits to writing about his father in his memoirs from the vantage point of his mother. “She supplied the standard against which I gauged his worth,” he writes. Raja Shahedah saw his mother suffering and struggling; she often moved from pillar to post, meeting Jordanian officials to seek respite for her husband. The author’s sympathy was won by her mother, and he believed that it was the father who had caused her hardships.
During his youth, Raja overlooked his father’s courage, and Aziz, in turn, failed to recognize Raja’s endeavours in advocating for human rights through the organisation that his son had successfully established. Raja Shahedah grew up believing that his father’s political opinions— especially of establishing a Palestinian state next to Israel— were not received well in the Arab world and amidst other stakeholders like Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Owing to his father’s unpopular opinions, he could never fulfil the need of feeling belonged in the political circles and the peers he admired.
However, as things quickly changed after the 1967 war, finding a solution to the conflict seemed like an uphill task, almost impossible. It took Raja years to realise that his father was right and by the 1980s, Aziz too had given up on the idea that establishing a Palestinian state next to Israel would end the conflict. However, these realisations came very late. Aziz was murdered in 1985, making it impossible for the duo to reconcile and live in harmony.
Aziz’s death changed everything for his son. Raja had dreamt of living a life with his family, in harmony and happiness. “When he died before this could happen,” he writes, “I had to wake up from my fantasy, [and] had to face the godlessness of my world…” The grief-stricken son writes: “Now that I know how much we have in common, what I regret most of all is the fact that we could have been friends.”
