Back to square one
George S. Hishmeh; 10/4/08
Sixty years ago this month, my mother rushed one morning into the bedroom that I shared with my younger brother, Suhail, and told us to dress quickly because we are travelling by sea very shortly to nearby Beirut, Lebanon. We had had quite an evening the night before - April 22 - in Haifa, our Palestinian hometown - a horrific night because of the sound of gunfire was deafening, keeping both of us wide awake. I recall the blankets that my father had placed over our window so that stray bullets would not harm us while we were asleep. It turned out that Haifa had fallen in the hands of armed Jewish groups and many Palestinian Arab families were already in the port area hoping to take a boat to the Lebanese capital.
See: http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10204290.html