A Glimpse of the Life and Relocation of Palestinian Artist Samia Halaby
Samia’s old Family Home in Jerusalem (taken 2017)
By Sidney Kuri Poor
In the Spring of 1948, Samia Halaby’s family fled their home. At age 11, Samia was under the impression that they were going on a short 2-week summer vacation. Her mother told her and her siblings each to grab something that was special to them; there was a bit of room in the suitcases.
Before age 14, Samia had lived in many different homes. She fondly recalls fragments of each of them. She had relocated several times by measure of force, including the displacement of her family out of Palestine during the Nakba in 1948.
When Samia and I sat down for tea at her apartment in New York City, I had only met her once before. Samia’s niece and my mother have been close friends since they were young. She is now 87. She had recently broken her arm. She told me she was dealing with learning to simply use the other. She was happy to tell me about her life.
She told me about her grandmother’s house, and her grandmother’s garden. There was a small, modest fountain in the middle, with goldfish and a little water spout at the center. She described it as “a delight… a paradise.”
She told me about her extensive collection of toys.
She told me about one family home in particular – of the rectangular apartment unit and the plants and trees that it housed. “The apartment was full of young people,” she said. “It was fun to play on the roof, sometimes at the annoyance of my parents.” She vividly recalls the unit’s green terrazzo floor.
Things quickly changed when she was about 8 or 9 years old.
Zigzagging Through Barbed Wire
“All of a sudden, one night, my father gets news,” Samia told me. “I didn’t know what the news was.” A group of men came in and hassled her family into the bedroom. The next thing she remembers was waking up in a new house.
Samia would quickly learn that this was the British administration taking their apartment unit, and forcing them to another neighborhood within Jerusalem. The British installed barbed wire throughout the neighborhood. “They had spread those coils all across,” she said. “People coming in would have to zigzag through the barbed wire.”
Despite being so young, she was not ignorant to the power dynamics at play. “I understood they were stealing something that didn’t belong to them,” she said.
This was not the last time her family would undergo forceful relocation.
In the Spring of 1948, Samia’s family was displaced again. This time, they were forced out of the country all together.
There was no Israel at the time. But the process of its construction had begun. This move marked the start of what is known as The Nakba – an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe.”
Samia remembers the effects that this move had on her father. Her grandfather died when her father was young, leaving her father to take care of his family at age 12 or 13. He sold bread on the streets during his youth, and eventually gained success throughout his life and accumulated ownership in land, orange groves, and residential properties – many of which she lived in.
“And then 48 came,” Samia said.
Olive Trees and Fountain Tiles
Decades later, far away from home, her father received a magazine, and in it there was a photograph of one of these properties. The magazine highlighted how the population now had “made the desert blossom.” What Samia saw was the mutilation of a place – a space – that now existed as it once was only in their memories.
Samia has returned to her hometime many times since. The memories of those returns often blend together.
On one trip, in the early 2000’s, she recalls her home – the one with the green terrazzo – to be completely “run down.” “I was shocked at how shabby it looked,” she said. “It was very disorienting… I felt disgusted… I knew this house no matter what, was our house.”
Samia has also returned to her grandmother’s house. It has now been changed from a house into three divided apartments. At first she wasn’t able to get into the building. “They were very rude,” she said. After finding her way up to one of the units by meeting someone in the building who spoke English, she talked with a Jewish couple who lived there. The wife told her about what had changed in the house. “She kept trying to tell me what she added to the house,” Samia said. “‘I remodeled the bathroom… I did this, I did that.’” Samia tried to get to the other side of the house, towards the dining room. She remembers her grandmother having had a basket hanging from the ceiling to keep items away from any critters.
“And they wouldn’t let me in,” she said. “They told me no.”
Samia also discovered that day that her Grandmother’s fountain had been dismantled. “What was a beautiful formal garden with amazing flowers and trees turned into a slum,” she said.
She has since found that where her father’s building once stood is now home to a division of many storefronts. “One of them had toys,” she said. She noted the irony of this being the place she had lost her own extensive collection.
Not everything about her home had changed. “The land is familiar,” Samia said. “The trees are familiar. The kind of shade the olive tree casts.” Although the city adheres to the same streets, they’re no longer called what she called them. “It’s the same house you lived in,” she said. “But no, it has a different name.”
Now
About 150,000 people stayed in Palestine in 1948. Samia was one of more than 700,000 that fled.
She has since been able to experience the place again. Only now she has to do it in fragments. She returned in the 90s, the 2000s. She has found the house with the green terrazzo floor. She returned again just a few years ago.
She’s been able to find the plot where her grandmother’s fountain once stood, although it does not display the same intricate tiles. Samia noted that often tiles of this kind were taken and sold in the United States. She speculates that’s what happened to the fountain.
“Everything changes,” she said. “The food changes. The ingredients you want to buy. You try to cook with replacement ingredients. You lose your friends.”
The toys Samia left behind were taken. New toys – ones she doesn’t recognize – are now sold nearby.
She never got to save one of the tiles from her grandmother’s fountain. On one visit home, she found one little stone in its remnants. It’s “somewhere” in her apartment in New York City.
After age 14, Samia has lived in many different places. Although none in what she originally called home.
Samia is now regarded as one of the most successful living Palestinian artists. In 2023, Indiana University – the institution which she previously taught and earned a Master Degree – canceled a major exhibition of her work just weeks before the show.
Today, there are an estimated 9.2 million displaced Palestinians worldwide. Every visit back to the country shows Samia how the space continues to change – an ongoing process almost never done by those who call it home.
What, I asked Samia, did she choose to carry with her in her suitcase in 1948, when her mother told her there was extra room?
She smiled.
“I decided to be stoic and save space,” she said. “I told her I didn’t need to bring anything.”
Sidney Kuri Poor is a Graduate Student at Columbia University, completing a dual Master Degree in International Affairs and Journalism.