Carpenter from Nazareth: A Palestinian Portrait

By Azmi S. Audeh, Audeh Publishers, 1997, 368 pp. List: $15; AET: $12.

Reviewed by Dr. Fred Strickert

This book “describes the simple life of a Palestinian family,” states the jacket blurb. “An average Arab Palestinian.” No claim for the spectacular. Just nuts and bolts descriptions of everyday life with its customs and traditions.

What sets this book apart as particularly significant is the context in which the events he recalls took place. The writer just happened to have been born when the Palestinian conflict was still in its infancy. So this young man grew up witnessing the massive Jewish immigration into his country after World War II, the partitioning of his homeland, the 1947-49 war, and the transformation of his own status to that of second-class citizen of Israel, imprisoned within the boundaries of his own hometown. There are no heroics. No rise to greatness as a politician or a war hero. Only the eyewitness observations, as the jacket blurb explains, of an “average Palestinian.” It is a story of betrayal, sadness, disappointment, and dashed hopes and dreams.

This is not an action-packed adventure story. Most of the earth-shattering events take place miles away from the author’s home. Nevertheless, this underscores the frustration and pain felt by so many who are helpless in charting their own destiny. Nor is this a polished literary tome. It suffers from grammatical errors and uneven style, but nevertheless offers the personal, heartfelt memoirs of a young and truly innocent bystander.

The most moving section describes the fall of Nazareth to Israeli forces on July 17, 1948. It is a description filled with disbelief. Up to this point, Audeh’s encounters with Jews had been only positive. The glass dealer Mordechai in Haifa, who treated the Palestinian boy’s father only with dignity and respect; the fish vendors of Tiberias from whom they could always expect an honest deal.

By contrast, there is the sense of betrayal by Arab leaders such as Jordan’s King Abdullah (great-grandfather of his namesake and Jordan’s present king), who seemed willing to sell out the residents of Nazareth for his own political gain. There is also a naïve, youthful disappointment that Western leaders first took away by diplomacy more than half of his homeland with their U.N. partition resolution in 1947, and then stood by without objection as Israeli forces occupied by force more than half of what little remained in 1948.

Audeh describes his family’s response as they watched the nighttime shelling of nearby Saffuriya, after his father’s plan for escape by car to Lebanon proved futile. His father distributed the savings of a lifetime among all members of the family so that anyone who survived would have something to fall back on. The book recounts how they buried the rest of their valuables in a metal box underneath a lemon tree in their backyard and how they then sought refuge in a local convent:

Finally at about 11 a.m., my Dad came back on foot with no car. His eyes were real round and hard as steel. He looked at all of us and declared that cars were not available at any price…Our only way out, my Dad continued, was to pack some food and seek refuge at a nearby convent…The nun led us down to the basement of the convent and assigned to us a corner where we placed our belongings. We collapsed down on the cold concrete floor breathless and exhausted. I closed my eyes…Then I noticed some strange whispering all around me…to my amazement the room was packed with families who had arrived earlier…we were safe in the convent. Even the Nazis respected the holy places and refrained from desecrating them, I reflected. Those Jews who had suffered, had been discriminated against all through history, and had even been slaughtered by Nazis, should at least have some compassion toward innocent and peace-loving people who had done them no harm. (pp. 107-108)

Return to their home was not so easy:

We reached home and found it in shambles. Everything of value had been stolen by the Jewish soldiers while the rest of the furniture was smashed to pieces. The shock of seeing our home in this situation was almost too much for my Mom to bear. She almost collapsed, but then, she knelt down and kissed the ground, and thanked God that all of us were safe. (p. 110)

So ended the personal tragedy of 1948, seen through the eyes of a trusting and innocent 15-year-old boy.

The book continues with lots of questions typical of survivors. Why were the residents of Nazareth spared while hundreds of nearby villages were bulldozed over and thousands of lives uprooted? How was it that he was given the intellectual gifts that enabled him to become the first Arab student at Haifa’s Technion, and to gain the respect of Jewish teachers and students alike? What does it mean to emigrate to America and to leave behind the beloved land of one’s birth? Audeh attempts to answer such questions in a way that demonstrates his deep roots in the land.

In addition to its obvious Christian connotation, the book’s title refers to the simple communal life of Nazareth, which may have changed very little since the time of that earlier carpenter. The author grew up in a carpenter’s shop, carried water through the narrow streets of the souq and served as the messenger delivering goods and collecting unpaid bills.

There are unchanging scenes of the young boy sitting in the butcher shop waiting patiently for a choice leg of lamb, observing his mother baking Easter goodies, and celebrating the marriage of his older brother, Aziz, complete with the display of the bridal sheets.

There are descriptions of attitudes of toleration of diversity:

Religion was never a factor in Nazareth. We were all one people sharing everything and enjoying each other’s company…Our life was happy, simple and unburdened by any religious strife. (p. 43)

While the kind of story Audeh tells could probably be repeated a hundred times over by other Palestinians, it is to his credit that he has recorded these memories between book covers for a posterity that might otherwise forget.

Dr. Fred Strickert is professor of religion at Wartburg College in Waverly, IA.