Culture
3 January 2024
Abu Fadi
Faris Shomali
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Life provided him with an abundance of reasons to surrender, but he never backed down. Salim Daoud Khalil Azar, or Abu Fadi, as I know him, was born in 1960 in Gaza to a family of refugees from from the port town of Jaffa, northwest of Jerusalem.
His uncle Salim, from whom Abu Fadi inherited his name, used to work in a printing press in Jaffa, where he was seriously injured in the thick of the 1948 Nakba. The injured uncle was transferred to a hospital in Gaza for treatment, and the rest of the family followed him. Tragically, the uncle did not survive, and, compounding the loss, the family could not return home.
Circumstances compelled young Abu Fadi to drop out of school to work at a ghee factory. After nine years of demanding labor, he decided to attend a vocational school to become a blacksmith. Unable to afford to open a proper workshop, he started producing furniture at home. However, when the Israeli Civil Administration caught wind of this, they fined him and ordered him to shut his home workshop down for lack of registration. Not someone to give up, he started to work as a house painter.
One day, Abu Fadi met a driver from Ramallah in Gaza. As they were conversing, they realized that they were relatives from Jaffa, driven apart by the Nakba. Abu Fadi invited him to lunch to meet the rest of the family. At lunch, the driver told Abu Fadi that he was looking for someone to paint their house in Ramallah. Abu Fadi took the job, painted the house, and fell in love with the driver’s daughter, Nahil.
On the wedding day, the family took a private bus to Ramallah. At the checkpoint, after they were stopped and searched, the soldiers ordered Abu Fadi to get off the bus, explaining that he was not allowed to pass.
But, not someone to take no for an answer, Abu Fadi had a plan. The patrol’s shift was about to end. He persuaded the bus driver to wait until the shift changed and then move as if the bus had been permitted passage by the previous shift. The plan worked, and Abu Fadi made it to his wedding.
In 2007, Um Fadi (Nahil Azar) went to visit her dying father in Ramallah. There, she got stuck and was denied return to Gaza. It was only after six years, in 2013, that Abu Fadi managed to get a permit to visit his wife and kids in Ramallah. He decided to stay there with his family illegally (in defiance of the occupier’s law). It was while in Ramallah that Abu Fadi saw an advertisement in the newspaper: a new museum in the city was hiring.
On meeting Abu Fadi in 2018, when I started working at the Palestinian Museum, I immediately noticed his odd accent; to me, he sounded out of place. When you ask Abu Fadi, “How are you, Ammo [Uncle] Abu Fadi?” he always responds with his peculiar answer, “Thanks to the Lord.” I have always suspected that his strong attachment to the heavens must be somehow related to his detachment from the land—from Jaffa, Gaza, and Ramallah.
Header Image: Salím Ázar with a friend a with, 1980s. From the Salim Azar Collection - The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive. Shown at On This Land.
The Ázar family in their house in Gaza.
The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive. Shown at On This Land.
Dawúd and Huda Ázar's wedding.
From the Salim Azar Collection - The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive. Shown at On This Land.
Salím Ázar with children from Ázar family.
From the Salim Azar Collection - The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive. Shown at On This Land.
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