It was the oranges

Al-Qalam, September 2006

The old man walked into the Beirut office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), parcel in hand, and asked for Leila Khaled. The PFLP guards refused. It was 1971 and, following her hijackings of two aeroplanes in the past two years, Leila was a prime target for Israeli assassination. The man explained that he had just returned from hajj and an anonymous Iranian man had asked him to deliver the parcel to Leila. After the regulatory bomb check, the suspicious guards opened the parcel to find an Iranian carpet.

Moving between three countries, trying to avoid Israeli attacks, repeatedly becoming a refugee, Leila always ensured that the rug travelled with her – even though she never used it and even though it sometimes meant leaving behind other valuables. Two years ago, during a television interview in Iran, she called for the rug donor to identify himself so she could thank him. Instead, a woman approached her, explaining that she was the man’s daughter. He had died two years previously. On his death bed, he had asked for Leila Khaled’s picture to be placed on his grave. And on his grave stone his family had had the following words inscribed: “He died without meeting Leila Khaled.”

Such was the love of people around the world for this Palestinian revolutionary. She has been eulogised in scores of languages, even referred to as the “female Che Guevara”. Counted among those who admire her are a number of South Africans who, over the past 37 years, have named their daughters “Leila” or, even, Leila Khaled.

But almost four decades after the courageous acts that Leila became famous for, many wonder what had happened to her. Had she mellowed? Did she become a “housewife” and a mother and disappear from public life? Does she have regrets about the hijackings that made her an international celebrity? Is she still an activist?

Leila Khaled’s recent visit to South Africa, as a guest of the Encounters Film Festival, answered many of these questions.

No, she has not mellowed; yes, she remains as revolutionary as she was in 1969; yes, she is a mother and wife but that has not changed her commitment to her homeland and the struggle for its liberation; yes, she remains an activist and a committed member of the PFLP and of its politburo, and a member of the Palestinian National Council – the Palestinian parliament in exile. No, she has no regrets about the hijackings; she patiently explains that at a time when the world had forgotten that there even existed a Palestinian people, some dramatic action was necessary to draw attention to the plight of her people. “And we didn’t kill a single person,” she adds.

Of course, everyone wants to know why she did it; what drove her, a 24- year-old woman, to embark on that daring adventure? What inspired her, as a 15-year-old teenager, to join the Arab Resistance Movement and, later, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine?

It was the oranges.

She cried at a public meeting in Johannesburg a few two weeks ago when the chairperson related how, as a child refugee in Lebanon, Leila was instructed by her mother not to eat the oranges because “our oranges are in Haifa” where Leila was born and from where her family was forced by the Israelis to flee in 1948. Her mother promised that they would one day return to Haifa and eat their oranges.

The yearning to realise that promise is also the reason that, to this day, Leila’s family does not celebrate Eid; they simply observe it as a quiet family affair: she, her husband and her two sons. Because, as Leila’s mother had told her children, a real Eid can only be celebrated “at home”, in Haifa.

And, in conversation with Leila, it is clear that these are the reasons for her tirelessness, her boundless energy, her fiery enthusiasm which easily could be missed because of her soft speech. It is the need to go back home. So there is really nothing extraordinary about this youngest of four children; she is just like any other Palestinian refugee.

Her quiet demeanour and determined efforts took South Africa by storm in the two weeks that she was here. She had numerous speaking engagements, even more media interviews, met with Nelson Mandela, Minister Essop Pahad, Minister Ronnie Kasrils, Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad, various other politicians, Cosatu president Willie Madisha and other trade unionists, various social movements and faith groups. And her message was the same wherever she went: it is foolish for South Africa to think that it can be a mediator between Palestinians and Israelis; South Africans must side with their historical allies, the Palestinian people; the South African government and civil society must take the lead in imposing sanctions and boycotts on the Israeli state; the South African government should listen to more Palestinian voices than just Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah and should grant recognition to the democratic choice of the Palestinian people who elected a Hamas government in recent elections.

Her other message was of hope and love – for South African comrades in the liberation struggle and for allies of the Palestinian people in South Africa. Leila’s commitment to friends is as deep as her commitment to Palestine. That commitment is reflected in the reason she continues to refuse to use the Iranian carpet. She had promised herself that when Palestine is liberated, she would place the carpet in the Mosque of Al-Aqsa and bring her Iranian admirer’s family to Jerusalem to pray on it.