Zakaria Al-Rajabi .. witness to the calamities of Jerusalem in 60 years

Sarah Dajani - Occupied Jerusalem

The memory of Al-Maqdisi Zakaria Hussein Al-Rajabi abounds in the details of the 60 years he lived and worked in the Old City since his early childhood, during which he witnessed the calamities of the city of Jerusalem and the change of its conditions and the conditions of its residents, starting with the British mandate, through the Jordanian catastrophe and trusteeship over East Jerusalem, and ending the occupation's control over the whole city.

In the obstacle of the Saraya inside the Old City, Rugby was born in the Al-Buraq Revolution in 1929 during the British Mandate period, which erupted in protest against a massive march of Jews that came out on the "memorial of the ruin of the Temple" demanding the Al-Buraq Wall and its conversion to a Jewish chapel.

In his home in Beit Hanina, north of Jerusalem, the signs of fatigue in the nineties seemed evident to Rugby as he recalled his childhood, part of which he spent in Al-Omariya and Al-Bakria School in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Jerusalem.

On that eventful period, he says, "In the six-month strike in 1936, the situation was very difficult, and we lived as people lived for a long time without enough food, which forced my father to take us to the city of Hebron until the strike ended."

Zakaria then returned to Jerusalem, and began working in the Old City to help his family, and he was not yet eleven years old.

Beginning work
From the neighborhood of Mamn Allah, west of the city, he started his work as an assistant in a barber shop, where he learned some of the popular methods of medication prevailing at the time, and moved to work in the field of shaving between the Khan Al-Zait market and the tanning market and the perfumers, until the catastrophe of 1948 came and changed the face of the city.

Jerusalem, as Zakaria narrates, lived prosperous days, contrary to today's reality, its religious position made it a place of pilgrimage to large numbers of Muslims and Christians in the world, and the seasons of the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) attracted large numbers of the people of the Levant throughout the year, and the season’s march started from the Al-Aqsa Mosque Towards the shrine of the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him).

“There was no room for an ant,” Rugby recalls the state of the Old City before the year of the Nakba, before he sighed and commented on the way it is today. “By God, the country is dead.”

The Jordanian guardianship
And when half of the city fell to the occupation and the Kingdom of Jordan assumed custody of the other half, many areas in the old town were transformed into a "no man's land" prohibiting Jerusalemites from arriving or passing through. Thus, the city of Jerusalem entered a new era, dividing the Old City into two areas.

"We tried to get used to the presence of Jordan and the exit of the British occupation. In the early fifties we were summoned to the Jordanian National Guard, and after that period I started serving on the Jerusalem Wall in the Bab al-Amud area," Rugby says.

Ezz did not last the old town in those years, and the conditions of trade and tourism deteriorated, which forced many merchants to close their shops and exit from the old town in search of their livelihoods. “The most powerful worker in us was unable to collect more than 20 piasters per month at a time when the price of a pound of flour reached 33 piasters,” thus reducing the rugby period during which most of the inhabitants of the old town lived in extreme poverty until before 1967.

The speaker had a share of that, so he had to move between several professions in order to support his family due to the stagnation of the economic situation, then he worked in the field of shoe repair in the Attarin market, and then traveled to work in Syria, then returned to Jerusalem to open in 1954 the first shop for bridal supplies, but he He had to close it and then sell it in the mid-sixties.

Burning, Rugby describes these moments as "it was a very difficult moment. I had to sell my shop cheaply because of the difficult situation."

Rugby continued to strive to find a source of livelihood for him in the Old City despite all the difficult circumstances, and in 1967 he set up a factory for tourist leather bags in partnership with one of his friends.

Jerusalem is under occupation
As soon as all of Jerusalem fell under occupation this time, and as soon as the Israeli bombing ended, the entire city was in its grip, Rugby returned to his factory located in the Lane of Honor (currently the Jewish Quarter), only to find that the occupation had completely controlled the factory a few months after its opening.

He returned again to open a new factory and learn the profession of making leather bags with printing tourist photos on it, to be the first Jerusalemite to enter this profession to Jerusalem after the merchants were importing these bags from Syria and Lebanon.

"I learned the profession on my own, and I agreed with a painter to draw me some shapes that attract people. I was able to buy some machines from Italy and started working on them day and night until I distributed these bags to all the dealers of the old town," he said.

The situation in the old town flourished after 1967, and tourists started visiting the city again. Zakaria Rugby sighed with a slight smile, "The whole country took the job after it, and despite the deterioration of the economic situation in the old town, I was able to withstand this profession from the year of the setback until the year 2000."

He concludes his conversation with Al-Jazeera Net, "Living in Jerusalem is difficult according to its beauty, we lived very difficult days that I do not forget the fire of the Al-Aqsa Mosque when the Jerusalemites rushed to extinguish the fire with a small water fleet, nor the massacre of Al-Aqsa in which Ibn Khali was martyred, nor the days of extreme poverty that we lived in For one meal a day. "

Today, Rugby lives with his children and grandchildren at his home in Beit Hanina, north of Jerusalem, after the sixty years of work have dug its effects on the features of his face and hands, and he does not get tired whenever someone visits him telling them about the 60 years he spent from his life between the alleys of the old town, witnessing three periods that passed.