Filmed: May 2024

Fadwa Wafa Dajani, born in Yafa on April 29, 1925, is now over a century old, a lifetime in which Palestine has remained alive within her, in both spirit and memory. Her father was from Jerusalem and her mother from Yafa, and she spent most of her childhood in the city of Yafa, where she first attended a French school before later moving to a British one. She vividly recalls the building her family lived in, the relatives who were also their neighbors, and the beauty of her family’s home near Sabeel Abu Nabbout. Yet the most luminous memories she carries are of the orange grove that belonged to her mother and her aunts: a place rich with ponds, bushes, and trees, where she would pick oranges and help gather them into wooden crates. The grove remains a core memory, one she can still describe in impressive detail, from the striking peacock that decorated the space with color to the rabbits that hopped through the grove, to the glimmering water of the ponds. 

Summers were spent by the sea in Yafa, which Dajani recalls with light-heartedness and warmth. 

In 1948, however, they were forced to leave Palestine. They escaped to Lebanon, leaving everything behind, so much so that she cannot recall taking anything with her but the memories she continues to hold dear.