The eyes of Nihad Salama Abu Qainas were not obscured by the vision of her original town in historical Palestine before the Nakba of 1948, as she was born in the Gaza Strip to a refugee family from the town of Rubin in the Jaffa district, but she inherited from her parents and grandparents what links her to a legacy she believes will return one day, no matter how far apart the years go.
Although Nihad (55 years old) - nicknamed “Umm Faraj” - has not received a higher education, she stores in her a lot of stories and information inherited from Palestine, and tells Al-Jazeera Net that “the love and nostalgia that I inherited from my mother, father and grandparents, I make sure to pass them on to my children So that Palestine remains alive in the souls, generation after generation. "
These stories left their mark on the life of Umm Faraj, which is not without rituals and daily customs that were prevalent in her hometown and most Palestinian cities and towns before the Nakba.
Mrs. Nihad Abu Qainas believes in the inevitability of returning to her hometown, Rubin, Jaffa District (Al-Jazeera)
Umm Faraj loves to do her homework by cooking food and preparing bread on a clay oven that she set up in a corner of land next to her home in the Zawaida area in the central Gaza Strip.
"Here I smell the scent of the country, and I gather my daughters and young grandchildren around me to talk to them about the stories I heard about Robin and Jaffa, and I teach my daughters traditional Palestinian food, so that our heritage does not perish, no matter how long it takes."
Umm Faraj directed her to her daughter Raghad, who used to help her prepare bread on the oven: “My daughter, my advice to you is to tell your daughters and daughters about Palestine, and to pass on them to what you learned from me .. This (this) is not only food, it is history, and the occupation after stealing the land was not satisfied. By that, he sought to steal chickpeas, falafel, and much of our history and our heritage. "
Raghd innocently asked her mother, “Why are you not tired of talking about Palestine?” And in a tone of deep faith, Umm Faraj replied, “We will one day return to Rubin, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Safad, Nazareth and all our cities and villages (..) We do not give you money, but we leave you. What is more precious than the treasures of this world .. It is the land that God sanctified in Al-Aqsa Mosque and blessed it with Al-Isra and Al-Mi'raj. "