Cairo, Egypt – The reception of the Palestine Hospital was busy as ordinary in early November, however the temper among the many Palestinian employees was clouded by an approaching anniversary.
On November 11, 2004, a thunderbolt announcement on all main networks: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had died in Paris – poisoned with polonium-210, in accordance with an investigation by Al Jazeera and French, Swiss and Russian scientists.
Yasser Arafat was not the one icon the Palestinian individuals misplaced that yr – his brother Fathi was deathly unwell as nicely, in a coma because of his abdomen most cancers.
As Yasser lay unwell and dying, Fathi woke from his coma abruptly and requested, “The place’s Yasser, is he OK?” Fathi’s son Tarek advised Al Jazeera.
He replied, again then, “He’s nice, Dad, in Ramallah,” to keep away from stressing his father out.
Fathi quickly handed away as nicely, as if the 2 brothers had a supernatural connection, Tarek says.
“When the information about their deaths unfold, we on the hospital would recheck all of the channels to verify it was true,” Rafiq Tawel, who was a nurse there on the time, says.
“Throughout these days, you’ll discover individuals in each nook, crying.”
At the moment, within the hospital Fathi established in 1979, Tarek works to maintain his father and uncle’s recollections alive as he grapples with the connection he had with two larger-than-life males.
Cairo: The early years and the shaping of a conscience
Sitting in his workplace within the hospital, surrounded by images of his father and uncle, Tarek begins to talk, telling the story of his well-known family members.
Egypt is the place the Arafat brothers grew up and formed their engagement, and the greater than 100,000 Palestinian refugees dwelling there mourn their absence nonetheless.
Born in 1929 in Jerusalem, Palestine, Yasser was 4 years previous when his youthful brother Fathi was born, and when their mom died 40 days later.
After a number of years dwelling with their uncles’ household in Jerusalem, the motherless brothers moved to Cairo in 1937 to hitch their older sister Khadija and father – who had been a service provider there for years already.
The household lived in a rented ground-floor house within the district of Heliopolis, the place the Palestine Hospital was later established. Tarek provides that they needed to lease as a result of “they may not afford to purchase”.
As Yasser entered his late teenagers, information from house got here of Zionist militias attacking Palestinians to take their cities and villages in 1948.
Yasser and Fathi needed to watch from Cairo.
Yasser started working “as a go-between in efforts to acquire arms” to the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini’s troops, write his biographers Andrew Gowers and Tony Walker.
By 1950, the brothers have been each attending King Fuad I College, later Cairo College – Yasser studied engineering and Fathi medication.
Within the late Nineteen Forties and early Nineteen Fifties, Cairo was deep in political turmoil, as British troops tried to quell protesters demanding an finish to colonial rule, particularly on college campuses.
Yasser was among the many dozens of Palestinians swept up within the fervour, studying about revolutionary strategies to later apply to their trigger, Gowers and Walker wrote.
Fathi was not as immersed as his brother.
After their college lectures have been over, the brothers gave non-public literacy classes to make extra cash however Yasser, Tarek says, would typically be in bother due to his actions as head of the Palestinian College students Union, leaving his brother to show each of their classes.
“You could have two totally different personalities right here,” he continues. “Fathi was a member of the union, however he additionally loved artwork; focussed on constructing a household.
“Yasser was typically too critical, there was no enjoyable in his life; he was absolutely devoted.”
The brothers complemented one another although.
Yasser labored to construct a powerful Palestinian political motion internationally by establishing the Fatah Celebration and later taking the helm of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation whereas Fathi centered on social assist, offering assist and healthcare for Palestinians.
Social assist for a individuals dispossessed
“I keep in mind, on the time I used to see my dad [once] each three or 4 months,” provides the 56-year-old.
“I might know that he’s coming as a result of they’d wash his automotive,” Tarek says sadly of his youthful years at house whereas Fathi and Yasser have been continually on the transfer, working for Palestine.
Fathi established the Palestinian Purple Crescent Society(PRCS) in 1968, out of the identical constructing because the Palestine Hospital.
PRCS constructed 72 hospitals in Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq – of which 57 have been destroyed – and 31 well being centres for greater than 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN Aid and Works Company for Palestine Refugees within the Close to East (UNRWA).
Tarek didn’t see Yasser a lot both – an previous image with him and his cousins is among the few footage he has with “the chief”.
“Even the chief [Yasser Arafat] I didn’t see him rather a lot both … I knew he was busy, that he had different plans and that already there have been lots of people asking him for issues.
“So usually, I might [only] go see him when he known as me and stated: ‘Tarek, the place are you?’”
The faces of the 2 absent father figures nonetheless fill Tarek’s workplace as if it have been a capsule of nostalgia.
“I want I may have discovered extra from my father about issues like life expertise, marriage, love, dying, battle … I simply began to know him extra later,” he continues.
“The day he died, I keep in mind wishing that my achievements could possibly be no less than 5 p.c of his life achievements. With that, I might be content material.”
Rising up in Cairo, Tarek turned a biomedical engineer and finally labored in Canada, the US and greater than 70 international locations as a board member of the Flying Eye Hospital Orbis.
“I sort of thought: ‘I’ve my very own persona, I’m not going to work because the son of Fathi Arafat, I’ll work as an engineer.’”
When his uncle and father died, he turned extra concerned within the PRCS and the Palestine Hospital, the place he stands as much as stroll round.
“After what occurred in Gaza we’ve labored to provide you with initiatives to assist our individuals right here,” he boasts with delight.
“We expanded the capability of the dialysis division, with 9 machines working three shifts a day. Anyone coming from Gaza after October 7 may be handled at no cost.”
Funded by the Palestinian Ministry of Well being, the charges the hospital prices Palestinians have been already cheaper than every other Egyptian hospital, and have been lower additional with a 35 p.c discount for any Palestinian in Egypt since Israel began attacking Gaza.
A person enters the reception space. His father died final March and the household had nowhere to bury him in Egypt, so he resorted to Tarek and the Palestine Hospital for assist. Now, he desires to go to the grave.
“Fathi Arafat constructed a cemetery for the Palestinians in Egypt the place we settle for anyone, the primary one buried there was my Uncle Mustafa,” Tarek explains as the person leaves.
“This isn’t only a hospital, it’s a neighborhood centre.”
‘The identical approach they got here, others will come subsequent’
Since its founding, the constructing has not solely hosted the PRCS and the hospital, it has additionally given a ground to a nursing academy, a short lived hostel for Palestinians in want, a heritage home and the Falooja group for Palestinian Arts and Folklore.
“Fathi was one of many individuals who most believed within the energy of artwork and the necessity to protect our heritage whereas being removed from Palestine,” Tawel, the hospital employee who can also be a longtime member of the Falooja group, says.
“He constructed this place as a house to any Palestinian in Egypt. I wouldn’t have the ability to reside with out it, I wouldn’t have the ability to work simply elsewhere as a non-Egyptian nurse.”
Newcomers, who arrived since Israel’s newest assault on Gaza, and Palestinians whose households needed to settle in Egypt after the Nakba in 1948 are among the many employees and guests within the busy hospital corridors.
Photos of the brothers who constructed the place hold on the partitions of just about each one of many seven storeys. It’s as in the event that they have been watching the occasions happening in entrance of their eyes.
Twenty years after their passing, the fruits they planted in Cairo stay alive because the work to help displaced Palestinians continues.
“They’d each all the time say, ‘They cultivated for us to eat, allow us to domesticate for generations to eat.’ It was a philosophy,” believes Tarek.
Yasser’s previous home is a couple of minutes’ drive from the hospital. A mango tree he planted many years in the past nonetheless grows within the deserted backyard.
“On the time, he stated he needed a mango tree, however I consider it was a logo. He planted a tree that till now could be rising fruits in the identical approach that his brother planted this hospital and needed us to proceed rising it for individuals.
“They have been rising a revolution, and in the identical approach that they got here, others will come subsequent.”
