It's a hot midday in Beirut and a few elderly Palestinians have gathered for gossip and lunch at the Active Ageing House in the Burj Al Barajneh refugee camp.
"Today is exceptionally hot," says one of them to the others, while passing around apples. As they bite into their fruit, there's a collective sigh and a distant gaze, when Ahmad Mohammad Al Khatib breaks the silence: "It tasted better in Palestine."
The others nod knowingly and get ready to recount their stories of surviving the Nakba - yet again, to yet another writer, for yet another publication.
In May 1948, Palestinians living in what is now Israel, were informed of "the arrival of the Zionists".
"The fighters told us to return after the Zionists were defeated," Al Khatib recalls. Most of the Palestinians living in the Galilee region walked across the border to southern Lebanon.
At the 60th anniversary of their forced expulsion, their spirit remains firmly intact. "We will go back," Al Khatib maintains.
After leaving Palestine at the age of 18, Al Khatib ended up crossing Lebanon to work as a labourer on farms in Aleppo. "My father pulled me out of school after three years, even though I was smart. My elder brothers studied and migrated to the cities and my father wanted one of the sons to continue farming on his lands," he says.
However, after arriving at the Burj Al Barajneh camp in 1960, he insisted on educating his five children. "They were educated in the camps, but today they're all married. They're all outside camps and one girl is in Canada," he says triumph-antly.
Hanna Anbar, associate publisher of Lebanon's English-language daily newspaper, The Daily Star, clarifies that for most Palestinian refugees, moving out of the refugee camps is a step towards moving up in the social ladder.
Having worked as an analyst with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from 1960-65, Anbar is aware of the climate within the camps.
"I think the situation of the Palestinian refugees is the worst in Lebanon," he says, "the camps have not expanded to accommodate the needs of the growing refugee population. From tents they have moved to asbestos roofs, but concrete roofing is illegal, because it is viewed as a symptom of staying forever.
In the Burj Al Barajneh camp, growth is strictly vertical. Although foreigners are officially barred entry into the refugee areas, the Lebanese army, which usually mans the gates is absent in the Beirut camps.
On entry, a giant photo of former Palestinian Liberation Organisation leader, Yasser Arafat beams down at us, flanked by photos of handsome young men, who we're informed are martyrs.
The camp, which officially houses 15,718 residents, is a mix of beige and grey. Houses are stuck next to each other and grow awkwardly in height as future generations come of age.
Stores sell products at a cheaper price than Beirut and have soulful songs blaring out of radio sets that could only have been from the 1970s. A former woodwork factory, bombed by the Israelis, now serves as parking lot. The only patch of green is the cemetery.
"UNRWA does not have enough financial resources to cope with the rising numbers and also the increasing cost of living," says Anbar, who was 6-years old, when his family left Palestine.
"And that's just the economic condition that is partially visible. Camps have paid a huge price from the socio-political milieu that has engulfed Lebanon for more than 30 years," he adds.
Fadi Dabaja, a 38-year old refugee who lives in the camp is our guide. "There's not much incentive to study for Palestinians in the camps. Firstly the schools are terrible and secondly, what's the point?" he asks.
In Lebanon, the Palestinians are officially not allowed to work in about 72 professional occupations such as medicine and law, resulting in high rates of unemployment and limiting them to work as unskilled labourers.
Realising the limitations of the laws in Lebanon, Dabaja found avenues in the arts. He trained in theatre and even found help for making a film from the Lebanese ministry of culture. Now, he works with the UK-based Learning Through Action in Beirut and spends time "making learning fun for students".
Dabaja concedes that his life is an anomaly in the camps. "I've always been different. I was the first man to open a ladies hair-dressing salon even though society raised eyebrows. My mother and I moved out of the camp during the Israeli invasion of '82 and I've travelled to a few countries. My family is also lucky as we have a sibling in Abu Dhabi," he says.
On returning to live in his home at Burj Al Barajneh a few years ago, Dabaja found that the unemployment rates had increased and education was treated as a joke by the children.
"The good thing is that the attitude towards the arts has changed. They don't look at me as a clown," he says making a face at his two-year old daughter, Gazal, who is the youngest of three.
"Of course, I fear as a father, for the future of my children, but it's definitely a little less than the fears my mother had," he says. During Dabaja's formative years, he recalls, the atmosphere was far tenser.
"The PLO was quite powerful then and at the time of the Civil War the camps were badly affected because of the various militia factions. There was always the fear in my mother that her sons would be recruited," he says.
Although Dabaja freely expresses his disdain over the PLO's dealing with issues, Hanna Anbar, says that the rise and acceptance of Yasser Arafat's group is what provided some relief to the Palestinian people.
According to Anbar, the laissez passer, which serves the purpose of a passport, was accepted by Arab states, who began to honour the document and issue visas. "It wasn't easy, still isn't, but at least there was a temporary way out. The Gulf states in particular were quite welcoming," he says, "though there were instances of expelling 400,000 Palestinians from Kuwait during the 1990 Gulf War".
Hope of return
Celebrated journalist Robert Fisk explains the Palestinians' hope of return despite enduring continuous hardships as having gone through multiple phases. "First it was determination, then it became a desire and now it's a dream. If they give up the dream it's like surrendering and accepting that their lands have been taken," he says.
Nazmieh Fathalla Abdelaal was a young mother when she left her village of Tarshiha. "My family and my husband's family were of the nobility," she says at her rented apartment outside Tyre's refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
On asked about the silver artefacts in her living room, she says, "Yes, we used those in our bathrooms."
The greatest pain for her was coming to terms with the anonymity. "From somebody to nobody, with one sweep. It was all over for us," she says.
Abdelaal's family was offered the option of acquiring the Lebanese nationality during the 1950s, when the government extended citizenship to the Palestinian elite and Palestinian Christians, however, they declined it.
"Today I regret it. But only for my children," she clarifies. "We said no out of principle and also because we genuinely believed we would go back. I think we made a mistake."
The Nakba survivors have nurtured and raised their children with memories of a peaceful Palestine, in which Muslims, Christians and Jews co-existed with olive trees and warm sunshine.
Even their grandchildren describe the family homes in Palestine and remain tethered to the dream of return. "It is our ancestral land with our grandparents' homes," says 24-year old Paul Damouni, a volunteer with the Joint Christian Committee in the Dbyeh refugee camp, which is uniquely home only to Palestinian Christians.
Damouni's grandmother, although a Christian, couldn't take advantage of the Lebanese offer to grant citizenship, according to him, as she couldn't afford to pay the required fee at the time.
In the Dbyeh camp, Zaki Kaiser Antouk, a 75-year old widower lives alone in a two-room house. He limps due to a fighting wound and welcomes us into his musty smelling home.
Between spontaneous and sporadic bursts of poetry recitation, Antouk shares anecdotes from his youth as an active militia man for nine years in George Habash's Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine faction.
"Right of return?" he asks and roars into a laugh. "Never. I knew it would never happen after 1973. I was with Yasser Arafat and I asked him, 'After your death what happens?' He said to me, 'Your destiny is to stay here. We'll go back and you'll stay here'."
Robert Fisk, who has interviewed Arafat on numerous occasions, says he's not surprised. "When I asked him [Arafat] about the right to return, he said, 'Yes, they'll be buried there.' I was taken aback and asked him again, 'Can the Palestinians in the camps return to Palestine when they're alive?' And he said, 'Yes, they'll be buried there.' So I guess that gives you a sense of the politics surrounding the right to return," Fisk says.
At the Active Ageing House in Burj Al Barajneh camp, 71-year old Nazmeya Darwish, is all too aware of the politics surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically related to the refugees.
"I am not from this camp. I was living in the Nahr Al Barid camp [in Tripoli, northern Lebanon] since 1951. In 2007, when fighting broke out between the Fatah Al Islam group and the Lebanese army in the Nahr Al Barid camp, Darwish says she was petrified. She lost a son in the crisis. Her widowed daughter-in-law still has shrapnel lodged in her brain and their three children are still in school.
"My son died for nothing. He died in a camp and not in Palestine. I can't even bury him in Palestine.
Darwish arrived in Burj Al Barajneh, where she meets with her friends at the Active Ageing House. Together they pray. Together they hope.
"If I can still hope and believe, I don't think anyone has the right to lose it on my behalf," she says and walks towards a painting of occupied Jerusalem.
DECLINING NUMBER: lEBANON REFUGEE CAMPS
Following the 1948 Nakba, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established by United Nations General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949 to carry out direct relief and works programmes for Palestine refugees. The agency began operations on May 1, 1950. In the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA's mandate, most recently extending it until June 30, 2011.
According to the UNRWA, of the original 16 official camps in Lebanon, three were destroyed during the years of conflict and were never rebuilt or replaced: Nabatieh camp in south Lebanon, and Dikwaneh and Jisr Al Basha camps in the Beirut area. A fourth camp, Gouraud in Baalbek, was evacuated many years ago and its inhabitants were transferred to Rashidieh camp in the Tyre area.
Observers and UNRWA officials admit that the 12 official refugee camps in Lebanon are facing serious humanitarian problems. Reports confirm that Lebanon has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees living in abject poverty and who are registered with the UNRWA's "special hardship" programme.
As of December 31, 2006, the number of Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA in Lebanon was 409,714, which accounts for about 10 per cent of the population of Lebanon.
The Palestinian refugee camps have mirrored the goings-on in the Palestinian political scenario. With the PLO's creation in 1965 and its arrival in Beirut in 1970 the refugee camps were widely believed to be operational centres of the PLOs strategies and tactics.
Fadi Dabaja, who left the Burj Al Barajneh camp in 1980, recalls that since the beginning of the Civil War in Lebanon in 1975, the news of death within the camps became routine. "After a point it became hard to keep track. Which group started it? Which person was part of which group? Which groups were against which other groups? It just got too blurred," he says.
However, the worst massacre in the history of the Palestinian refugee camps was in 1982, following Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Documented accounts of the incident state that Ariel Sharon, who was Israel's defence minister at the time, claimed he had intelligence that the PLO had left about 3,000 guerrillas in the Sabra and Shatilla camps in Beirut, before it was routed from the Lebanese capital.
In September 1982, the Sabra and Shatilla massacre was carried out by the Phalangists (Christian militia group) and the Lebanese army. The attackers were permitted to enter the two camps, which were in an area under Israeli army control. There are disputes over the number of killings in the three-day massacre, but international agencies estimate the numbers between 800 and 1,000 including women and children.
The camps were also victim to the War of the Camps in 1985 and 1986. Although the Civil War has sometimes been simplified into a war between two religious groups - Muslims and Christians - a great amount of literature has been published to prove otherwise. There was, as has been documented, a substantial amount of intra-group fighting between various sects and leaders.
The most recent conflict within a refugee camp was at Nahr Al Barid between the Lebanese army and the Fatah Al Islam, a militant group. The fighting between the groups resulted in civilian loss as well.
ORAL HISTORY: RECORDING FACTS
As the generation of Nakba survivors enters their 70s and 80s, non-governmental outfits such as Al Jana - The Arab Resource Centre for Popular Arts is working on a massive Oral History Project to collect testimonies of the evicted Palestinians to share with future generations.
Bushra Moghrabi, who works in the centre's field office in Tyre, says that she's roping in younger Palestinians and training them to document the stories of their grandparents as part of the initial data collection process.
"Some older Palestinians just don't want to talk about it to someone with a notebook and pen. We found that when their grandchildren asked questions or for stories, they were more forthcoming and that became a good starting point for us," she says.
Moghrabi is also working on a project with a Beirut-based group, Shams, to collect the testimonies from Nakba survivors and feature them as part of an international exhibition. "We've asked 12 questions and the survivors have answered them. These will be printed on fax paper as it has that faded out quality and along with hand-made figurines, we will exhibit them at various festivals such as Edinburgh this year."
As larger organisations take care of the basics of rehabilitating refugees, it's smaller agencies such as Al Jana that work at the cultural rehabilitation and preservation of Palestinian traditions.
"Of course, money is a problem. The world is not interested in our stories," she says.
Vinita Bharadwaj is an independent journalist based in the UAE.
