Sunday, March 24
5:00 pm
701 Belt Line Rd.
Garland, TX
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/625009664587448/

In 2016 the Nakba Tour brought 21-year-old Amena Elashkar and 86-year-old Nakba survivor Mariam Fathalla to 26 venues in North America. In 2017, Amena journeyed with 85-year-old Khawla Ibrahim to another 29 venues. This year, Amena is returning with Umm Akram (Mariam Fathalla), now 89, to share her personal story of the most tragic event in Palestinian history.

On May 14, 1948, as Zionist leader David Ben Gurion was proclaiming a Jewish state in Palestine, his troops drove out the inhabitants of the ancient Palestinian town of al-Zeeb. 18-year-old Mariam Fathalla (Umm Akram) was one of them. She and her young husband fled to Lebanon. By year’s end, the 4,000-year-old community had been leveled. More than half of all Palestinians were killed or expelled and more than half the cities, towns and villages disappeared, a crime that Palestinians call al-Nakba (the Catastrophe). Now 89 years old, Mariam has spent the last 71 years in crowded, makeshift refugee camps in Lebanon. She has raised three generations, all waiting to return to Palestine. She has seen five Israeli invasions of Lebanon, as well as the 1976 Tel al-Zaatar camp massacre that killed more than 2000 refugees there.

Amena El-Ashkar, 24, is a Palestinian journalist and translator. The granddaughter and great granddaughter of Nakba survivors and has known no home other than a refugee camp.