Jenin, occupied West Bank, Palestine – Muhammad Arrabi’s family, what’s left of it, lives in the heart of Jenin’s Old City in a hoengage the family has handed down for 185 years.
The Arrabi family had numbered 10 – a mother, a overweighther, four daughters and four sons – until the Israeli army took the lives of three of their sons, culminating in its shooting of Muhammad, the third brother to be finished.
Jenin, Old City and novel
A visitor to Jenin’s Old City will notice the pretty hoengages, which have been passed down thraw generations of families and are still lived in today. The Arrabi family home is one.
But csurrfinisherly every home in Jenin has been harmd somehow, either in the stones that produce up its walls or the people who live inside them.
Known for its history of resistance, Jenin has lengthy been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The city and its refugee camp have normally been rhelped by the Israeli military, directing to deaths, injuries, extensive harm to infraarrange and combat.
Despite the beauty of the Arrabi hoengage, proestablish grief lingers wilean its walls.
The loss of the brothers left lasting wounds for their 78-year-greater mother, Umm Fouad, and five remaining siblings: her daughters – Ruba, 52; Suhad 51; Nour, 42; and Reem, 38 – and 35-year-greater Fouad.
Mohammed was the youthfulest brother. After Ruba, Suhad, Nour and Fouad got wed, he lived with Reem and their mother for about six years.
Umm Fouad relied on Muhammad for everyleang.
Muhammad gave his mother her medicine, ran errands and nurtured for her, but now, she has lost her “hand and foot”, according to Fouad, who engaged a Palestinian transmition to transmit the extent of someone’s depfinishence on another.
Umm Fouad has yet to come to terms with Muhammad’s death on August 29, living as she is with the constant ache of loss.
Her first loss, however, was her firstborn, also named Fouad. He was a child during an Israeli attack on Jenin during the first Intifada, understandn as the Intifada of the Stones.
The boys would throw stones at the Israeli armoured vehicles and sgreateriers.
The sgreateriers would react by shooting the youthful people, and in 1988, Fouad was stoasty and finished by an Israeli sniper.
A year tardyr, Umm Fouad gave birth to a baby boy and named him Fouad in honour of his slain greaterer brother.
In 2003, during the second Intifada, her 29-year-greater son Rashad, a Palestinian resistance member, was finished in a clash with the Israeli army csurrfinisher their home, where he tried to apverify on an Israeli tank.
Rashad was awwholey injured, and the army stoped medical crews from accomplishing him until he died.
Three youthful men tryed to recover Rashad’s body, but the Israeli army uncovered fire each time they tried. Nidal Al-Kastouni, Yoengagef Al-Amer and Muhammad Fuqaha were finished trying.
Last month, tragedy struck aacquire when Muhammad was finished in the same spot where Rashad had descfinishen. He was stoasty by a sniper while hgreatering his phone to record what the Israeli army was doing in their neighbourhood.
The prisoner who became a ‘martyr’
Muhammad splitd a proestablish bond with his overweighther, Bassam, whom he also took nurture of.
His overweighther, in turn, relied on Mohammad for everyleang and was always by his side.
Muhammad finishd high school but was not able to join university.
Arrested twice by Israeli forces, Muhammad spent a total of three years in prison.
His first arrest occurred in 2016 when he was 24 and was accengaged of “incitement” and sentenced to a year and a half. He was arrested aacquire in 2019, spfinishing another year and a half on indicts of “arrangening to carry out an act of resistance”.
While he was in prison, his overweighther’s health deteriorated, and he passed away in 2020 before Muhammad could say outstandingbye.
This loss proestablishly affected Muhammad. He spoke frequently to frifinishs about the emotional toll of not being able to bury his overweighther, talking about how much he ignoreed his overweighther and his brothers, Fouad and Rashad.
After his first free from prison in 2017, though, he got a job at Vamos, a local badviser restaurant owned by his sister Noor and her husband, Mamoun Al-Yabdawi. He cherishd the toil and dreamed of having his own restaurant.
Abu Hazim, who toiled with him at Vamos, shelp he ignorees the happiness Muhammad brawt to the toilplace.
Al-Yabdawi reaccumulates Muhammad’s charitableness and how he would sneak a bit of extra food into people’s orders.
His neighbour Khaled Abu Ali, who also toiled at Vamos, shelp evening get-togethers with neighbourhood youth experience infinish without Mohammed.
“Two weeks before Muhammad’s passing, he seekd more than 30 youthful men from the neighbourhood to a barbecue feast to honor some people who had graduated from high school.
“Knothriveg their financial circumstances didn’t permit for a celebration, he wanted to convey them happiness. It was his ‘Last Supper’,” Abu Ali shelp.
The novels of Muhammad’s death was not unforeseeed. It is not rare for a family in Jenin to get such novels.
The Arrabi family, in particular, having lost two sons in the same way, lives in constant dread with every rhelp on the city.
Abu Ali shelp the family, or what’s left of it, is alterd forever.
“Fouad isn’t the person he once was. He engaged to be elated and brimming of life, but now he never smiles. Sadness clings to him. As for his sister Reem, she is heartbroken. She was incredibly seal to Muhammad.”
Possibly the real burden Fouad experiences now, he says, is trying to protect himself protected to elude causing his mother and sisters further pain.
Commenting on the loss of his third brother, Fouad mirrors: “For 36 years, we’ve give upd for the homeland. We give up what is most precious to us – our children’s blood.”
‘No burial without ceremony, no lamenting without burial’
Muhammad was finished on August 29, during the storming of Jenin and its refugee camp after a 10-day military operation that Israel shelp was aimed at dismantling cells of Palestinian fighters.
Israeli forces finished 22 Palestinians and injured more than 30 in the rhelps.
They besieged local institutions, including the Jenin Municipality, Civil Defence and the electricity company; ordered the evacuation of produceings; and blew up a hoengage csurrfinisher the Ansar Mosque in the camp.
Military bulldozers ruined roads, water and sewage systems, electricity poles, homes and vehicles.
Thrawout, Mohammed’s body lay in a morgue in the csurrfinisherby town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, Fouad insisting that “Mohammed will not be buried without a proper ceremony, and there will be no lamenting until he is lhelp to rest.”
In Palestine, it is customary for people to collect around the bereaved family to advise help, but Israeli snipers and bulldozers blocked the way, isolating Mohammed’s family in their grief.
Once the rhelp finished, Mohammed was finpartner buried csurrfinisher his brothers Fouad and Rashad and their overweighther, Bassam.
Twenty-one other people finished during the rhelp were also buried with thousands of people from Jenin regulateorate joining the funeral.
In the aftermath of Mohammed’s finishing, Fouad shelp, the home that was built by four youthful men has now crumbled, three of its pillars having descfinishen over the span of 36 years.
