December 31st: In Loving Memory of My Grandfather
The last day of the year has always been meaningful in my house. It is a day when my mother would often make custard pudding, layering Marie biscuits, otherwise known as tea biscuits, upon layers of rich chocolate and vanilla custard. Or she would opt for one of the citrusy orange spongy cakes she learned from my grandmother and modified to her liking. This ritual was not born out of celebrating the end of the year; its meaning was far deeper than that, and time has only profoundly etched it in our hearts.
The 31st of December marked the birthday of my grandfather Kais, a special day that was always filled with delicious dishes that bustled on an illustrious mesa of hybrid flavors between Middle Eastern Lebanese and Colombian cuisine. It was also the wedding anniversary of my grandparents, which they religiously celebrated. I grew up hearing stories told by my mother about their festive day, when her family would gather to embrace their father’s well-being and cherish moments that, at some point, were stolen from them.
This day was commemorated even more when my parents got engaged in 1998, on the eve that dawned upon yet another new year, 1999. In this way, for years now, around this time of the year, my mother divulges stories from the past, memories of her childhood and teen years, when her father was still present and alive.
I happen to regret never sharing one of those birthdays with my grandfather, but I am grateful that even though it’s been 11 years since his passing, that day has not changed in meaning. It is a mixture of perplexing joy and sorrow to celebrate a man who no longer walks among us. While I write this, it’s hard not to choke on tears that bend my will and blur the words I type; it’s just as hard as remembering his heartwarming, uplifting voice or what his laugh sounded like.
So let me tell you a little bit about my grandpa, a man who has inspired me on so many levels.
My grandpa was a simple, strong, and witty man who was obsessed with anything olive-related and loved his land. He was born in a small town in West Beqaa, Lebanon, across the narrow Litani River, which would then expand into a full-blown electrical project and become a wide, bulging lake, guarded by a sturdy, tall dam. In his youth, he was known as a troublemaker, and many of his friends and family members still believed that at his core, that energy still blazed even as his hair grayed and his skin wilted and wrinkled with age.
My grandfather migrated to Colombia in his early 20s, where he met my grandmother and married her in La Guajira, Colombia. If I were to describe their relationship, it is the closest I’ve seen to true love; it is one that withstood hardship, heartache, longing, and finally death. Whenever my grandma talks about him, her green-olive eyes spark with so much youth as if time has stood still for all those years, and the mere memory is enough to rejuvenate her yearning heart. The sheer affection, friendship, and companionship those two had were unearthly, like those found in those exaggerated romantic novels that dealt with intricate plots and challenges grounded in fiction and fantasy. But what I saw in them and in their stories was very much real, and it gave me a silver lining of hope that perhaps authentic love like that existed in our world.
As I’ve laid this down to you, a love story like theirs couldn’t be woven solely on happiness; a chunk of it was overpowered by looming powers that tore them apart. They built their story like a fortress, with bricks of laughter, sobs, tears, and yowling, for what would be four years apart.
One very important fact about my grandpa is that he had an undying love for Palestine; he lived and dreamed of the day of its liberation. So, like many young men of that time, they were part of resistance movements fighting the lancing arm of an occupation. When my grandparents returned to Lebanon, Israel invaded in 1982, promulgating more resistance against thieves that preyed upon his beloved hills, mountains, fields, lakes, rivers, and most importantly, his olive trees.
This resulted in his incarceration by the Syrian regime, where he was plucked away from his beloved lands and wide-open blue skies carpeted by ancient mountains. Confined to a tiny cage that trapped him like a bird. My grandpa had no crime attached to his name, no charge, or trial — just a document indicating the reasoning behind his conviction and abduction to a foreign country, which was prompted by his dream to free Palestine. He was held captive for four years in what is known as one of the deadliest prisons in Syria; ironically, its name is Far’ Falastin. The prison was established to hold Palestinian fighters and ebb away their resistance, and with that, many Lebanese and Arabs who stood in support of the Palestinian people became part of this scheme of silencing the calls for freedom and became targets of unlawful and unjust detention.
Many individuals whose fathers, uncles, brothers, or friends mysteriously disappeared were left with the unsettling suspicion that their loved ones might have been imprisoned behind the walls of those torturous facilities. Many men were never found, and the lucky ones like my grandfather lived the rest of their lives scarred and branded by the atrocities they experienced at the hands of the brotherly nation that backed Palestine publicly. I never had the chance to hear those stories from him; all I have are the retellings of my mother, who remembers those events so vividly despite her young age at the time. She often balks into nothingness, recalling the day her father was freed. She tells me that “the day he died, he looked just like when he was freed and returned.” It trickles a spider-like shiver down my spine to think that the time he spent in that Syrian prison was the equivalent of the deceitful, unyielding cancer that eventually took his life.
All he wanted was a free Palestine….
As people demand a ceasefire in Gaza, my grandfather has been on my mind a lot lately. My mother often voices her grief about what her father would think if he saw the grotesque state of Palestinians under the relentless aggression perpetuated by Israel since the 7th of October. “Walah, he would be pacing around nonstop, a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other,” she mentioned countless times. I’ve developed that same habit somehow, where I always think about what he would say and how he would react. I am left with gnawing questions and thoughts, such as If only there was more time, if only I could’ve heard more of him. But life is not fair, and we are often left to rotate around the cusps of ‘what could’ve been’ and ‘what could not,’
I remember a very specific memory of him that did not hold much significance to my 8-year-old self. It was around the time of the 2008–2009 Gaza massacre, and we were visiting Lebanon for the first time after moving to Qatar. It would’ve been the first time I’d seen my grandpa in five years. He had so many Palestinian flags draped around the living room after Israel stopped targeting Gaza; he was celebrating, and since his grandchildren, who are part Palestinian, were there, he wanted to share his joy. I’ve replayed that scene in my head so many times; it’s like a nonstop tape of some sort. But it wasn’t until recently that I noticed or discovered that glimmer of pride in his eyes and how much it had meant to him that we, his grandkids, had the Palestinian blood he cherished and loved flowing through our veins. The fulfillment in his eyes when he realized that his grandkids would grow to understand the Palestinian plight, he as a Lebanese, adopted as his own and tried to fight for its freedom.
Now that I am 23 years old, I wish he was around to drape that Palestinian flag around my shoulders with that same tenderness and resilience that twinkled in his eyes. Perhaps his actions back then were one of the many ways he tried to nudge us towards finding that sense of belongingness to the land that was stolen from us.
When his illness was discovered, I witnessed how it rattled my family. I watched as their eyes deepened with the pain of losing him yet again, especially my mother. When he died, I remember seeing a cloud of people marching towards the house as news of his death spread around town like wildfire. I remember cackling in disbelief when a child younger than myself said, “Ami (uncle) Kais is dead.” It wasn’t until we were hurled to my aunt’s house that the news of his death became tangible. But even as they buried him and whispered their prayers and goodbye, he has never truly left; a man like him could never truly disappear or be forgotten.
I still wonder what it would’ve been like to hear those stories from him, and even though I cannot share my thoughts with him, I hope that through my writings and work, a piece of him always translates. That his memory will always flow within, unwavering and mighty, and that the world will happen to remember the mighty man he was.
Happy Birthday Jodu, may you rest in peace and power.
