Cardiologist traces his roots in a labour of love




By Rand Dalgamouni
AMMAN - As he was growing up in Amman, Ayman Hammoudeh kept hearing the name Beit Dajan mentioned by his family and people he met at weddings and funerals, which made him long to know more about his parents' hometown.
"The name was always with me, even when I went to the US to pursue a higher degree in medicine, a patient mentioned it to me," the cardiologist told The Jordan Times in a recent interview.
Searching the Internet for information on a medical condition, Hammoudeh decided to check if the Web had anything on the small Palestinian village located nine kilometres southeast of the city of Jaffa.
"I found thousands of results… I felt it was a waste to keep them hidden," he said.
Hammoudeh's interest was aroused, so he did further research about Beit Dajan in encyclopaedias and history books, but he still felt something was missing.
"When you read encyclopaedias you read about destroyed walls and abandoned neighbourhoods. They give you a lifeless image."
So he decided to write a book documenting Beit Dajan's history as told by those who have lived there, to "breathe life into the facts" and give the walls and neighbourhoods a vibrancy that they lack in history books.
"I interviewed 60 men and women who were born in Beit Dajan or visited it after the Nakbeh, in addition to using almost 100 references from books, encyclopaedias and the Internet," the author, who has been living and working in the Kingdom as a cardiologist since 1998, said.
In his 384-page book titled "Lest we forget… Beit Dajan-Jaffa", Hammoudeh details the village's history from as far back as the time of the Canaanites to the years before the Nakbeh in 1948 and how its residents were driven out after the creation of Israel on Palestinian lands.The village's name comes from the Canaanite god Dagon, according to Hammoudeh.
"I spoke to the elderly who lived in Beit Dajan before the Nakbeh. When they are gone, no one will live to tell the tale and it will be the end of it," he told The Jordan Times.
The recently published book also includes chapters on the life of women in the village, traditional ceremonies, schools and education, the geography of Beit Dajan, and its famous traditional costume.
"You can find Beit Dajan’s traditional dress in museums in New York, London and Amman… Women told me how they used to make it, stitch by stitch."
Hammoudeh, who was born in Karameh in 1962, dedicated appendices for a map of Beit Dajan, providing a general view of the village which used to house some 5,500 Palestinians, and 10 sub-maps detailing every neighbourhood and house that stood there before 1948.
The cardiologist explained that Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta had compiled an Atlas of Palestine before 1948, using aerial photos of the territories taken by the British Royal Air Force in 1946.
"We matched them with Google’s 2010 maps of Beit Dajan, the streets are there, the houses are gone. We got the village's old residents to draw the houses and where they were."
"I was amazed that this was not a small town in the middle of nowhere. The Beit Dajan roundabout was a famous intersection between two roads: Jerusalem-Jaffa and Gaza-Haifa. It was a landmark," he recounted.
Hammoudeh's journey into his hometown's history also revealed accounts of how the two banks of the Jordan River are connected by blood ties.
A chapter on the families and tribes of Beit Dajan narrates how families from Jordan came to the village to work in its famous orange groves, or passed it on their way back from Egypt to Jordan and settled and married there.
"Most of us from Beit Dajan now reside in Amman, where there is a street called Beit Dajan, and another named after one of its martyrs Youssef Al Qinneh," Hammoudeh said.
"We are now part of society’s fabric in Amman, but at the same time we remember our roots. So we are proud of what we are doing here, but long for Palestine."
The author voiced hope that others would document the history and heritage of the villages of their ancestors in Palestine.
"[Former Israeli prime minister] David Ben Gurion said 'the old will die and the young will forget'. While death is inevitable, some have lived to tell us about the history of Palestine. Therefore, we will never forget, as long as we have someone who records all this."

سنرجع يافلسطين ولو لم يبقامنا سوى فردوسوف نعلم اطفالنا
حب الجهاد حتى يتم التحرير باذن اللة

الله ينتقم ممن كان السبب

هذه دكانة جدي الحاج يوسف محمود سليم