Canalisation pipes being laid at a Tel Aviv ma'abara
Girl carrying her baby brother through the mud at Beit Lid camp (Z. Kluger)
The conditions in these settlements were often terrible, with little amenities and very poor sanitation. Novelist Sami Michael, a refugee from Iraq, describes his first days in his new home.
“I woke from a deep sleep to a chill dawn. I rose, wrapped myself in my grey blanket as in a prayer shawl, and stood watching the turquoise strands of the first light. Pearly drops of dew had collected on top of the tent and dripped in a dark line on the sand. A gleam beyond the mountains heralded the sun striving to rise on a new day.
Children stepped out into the narrow passageways between the tents and went to defecate by the fence, covering their excrement with sand like a cat.
"The camp was waking up. Men fetched water from stand-pipes in buckets and pots and long lines began to form everywhere. My mother, uncombed and wrinkled looking, peered out from the tent flaps at a queue in front of the toilet and muttered:“For this we left our house in Baghdad?””
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1 comment:
All my family the Souery family,(see picture at beginning of Point of no return)went to these tent camps. It was very hard and some never got back their life. Up to this day I cry for them.
sultana Latifa
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