One of the Palestinian diaspora - a long journey

Mahmoud Saladam was born in Palestine and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He is working as an engineer at the County Hall in Cork city, where we met in a private conference room for this interview. On the phone he had a rich, authoritative voice and I was expecting a dominant, headstrong person, but in fact, he’s very warm. He is a big, broad man with an appealing smile, which appears fleetingly from time to time.


I was born in the Gaza Strip. My father had to leave school at 14. His parents both died when he was 10 or 12, and his eldest sister took charge of the family. There were five girls and two boys. Although the girls worked in the fields, for very little food and grain, the work was really for men. So, being the eldest, he had to leave school, while my uncle, his younger brother, stayed on to finish his education. The Gaza Strip was under the British protectorate at the time. It was around 1948.

It was very hard at the time. We’re talking about the late ‘forties, early ‘fifties. Ben Saoud was just in his last few years, and obviously we lost what we were promised, a home, Palestine. Instead it became the state of Israel after rejections by a lot of Arab countries. We said no we want our country back. But we were left with Gaza Strip – it was called a pocket, at the time - to keep the refugees in. And that’s it. I think that’s what made it worse, the massive influx of refugees that suddenly came from all over the place, and Gaza has limited resources, and it really did put so much pressure on the economy, which was already bad anyway. We were living in Gaza, the old Palestine. As a result of the war, they all had to leave their homes, and go to Gaza and the West Bank.

By the time he was 18 or 19, my father had heard how well people were doing in other countries. So he moved to western Saudi Arabia. He found a way to get some money, to get to Egypt, to the Suez from Gaza. It was a train route. And from there he caught a ship. It was the only means of transport at the time. From there he got to Jeddah. Obviously life at that time meant there was a lot of migration, so it was likely that at the new place, there was someone who could help you and guide you. He met with some of his cousins who arrived before him, and they started a business, a carpentry shop, mainly for windows and doors.

I think he did well in Saudi. Some Palestinians went to Lebanon, in the north. Some went to Syria. Now we have 400 000 Palestinians living in Syria. They couldn’t believe they would lose their homes. Some left their fathers behind in Gaza. But the army, or the ordinary gangs at the time, were very clever. They’d come in to a small village, take the men out, kill them, shoot them somewhere, and once the family has lost the man, they’d feel very insecure. My current wife’s father was taken away, with all the men in the village, and they were never seen again. And the remaining family had to flee. Now they’re still living in a refugee status in Gaza strip. Some have left, and found jobs elsewhere.

I think at the time, there were 150 or 200 000 in Gaza, and suddenly, the population doubled. People from the UN and aid agencies brought in food and would feed them, but they still had to find work, schools. So some left, because it was too hard in Gaza.

My father did very well, because it was at the start of the oil boom in Saudi Arabia. It spilled over to the benefit of the country as a whole. It wasn’t seen and felt effectively until the 1973 change in oil prices. I think they cut the supply to the west, and suddenly it went from $4 a barrel to $12 a barrel. And out of the blue there was so much money around that everyone was wealthy.

My father was single until 1954. By then he was earning good money abroad. He was 21 at the time. But the average lifespan then was only 45, I was told, so at 21, he was already half way through his life! He went back to Gaza for a visit and his uncle suggested that he shouldn’t go back without getting married. So he married his cousin. It was an arranged marriage. By then Gaza was under Egyptian protection. After he got married, he left again, leaving my mother behind. She was pregnant with me. In those days, it was very difficult to travel. This is how things have changed. She had me in April ‘55, and a few months later he came back to arrange for a visa for her to join him. I think it was ‘56, just after the Suez Canal war, with Egypt on one side, France, Britain and Israel on the other side. Egypt had decided to nationalise the Suez Canal, which was in the control of the British. So it was a hard time as well, just going from bad to worse, because you had the army going through Suez again, after the ‘48 war.

I think the fact that my mother found a visa at the time was a miracle, so she was very happy to grab me and rush onto the first train she could get to take her to Suez. From there she jumped onto a ship.

So I was brought up in an Arabic, Muslim culture, but not really my own. I went through schooling in Saudi, where we were made to feel like refugees, made to feel like we didn’t belong, but were just there as guests, all the time. Even on our ID, we used to be called “guest worker, son of…’ This is the system they have adopted. Nobody could claim citizenship. Everybody is sponsored by somebody who works for him. And I am the son of someone who’s been sponsored to do a certain job. You have to be in that exact occupation. And you have to pay taxes. They’re obviously not like the taxes you pay in the west, but they have to be paid. The locals never pay taxes. According to Islam, you don’t pay taxes. There’s no such thing.

How do they raise money to build roads and so on?

They obviously manage to raise the money to build roads through the number of immigrants who pay taxes, and also trading, the wealth, the oil prices, and the amount being pumped out. I think in the seventies, they pumped four or four and a half million barrels a day. Now they pump out 11 million a day, as I speak. It shows you what a huge reservoir there is.

My father did well. Not many people had a carpentry business. There were only a few. But we still lived in a small two-bedroomed house. After me, there were four more boys to follow, and five girls. We lost one girl, and a boy, so there were four of each then. There was always a fatality, in every family, because a woman can’t cope with ten. So we lost two, and had eight left. They were a few months old. This was purely due to the type of life. My mother was having to breastfeed some and cook for some and make sure the husband comes home and has his dinner. That meant that some got less, and they were usually the weakest. So it was a matter of survival of the fittest. So, in every family, it was not uncommon to hear, ‘oh, so-and-so has lost a baby.’



In the ‘sixties they brought in contraception. And as it was with the Church in Rome, there was a dispute, but finally they allowed it to be taken between births. It is still used that way now, just as a rest between births. It’s not allowed to stop production altogether!

So I did my schooling there, then left in 1972. I got a good result in my GCSEs. In the early ‘seventies, it was impossible to find a seat in a university in Saudi Arabia, although we had two universities. There were just enough places for the Saudis, never mind the guest workers’ sons. So people used to fly to Cairo. But Cairo was top of the class at the time, and if you happened to be a Palestinian with a seat in Cairo or Syria, you were considered to be very, very lucky. But your father would have to take you there to apply. And my father wasn’t really going for it. He wasn’t pro-active about it. It wasn’t easy at the time.

So I decided to follow the footsteps of a friend of mine in my class who was going to the States. I suggested it to my father, and he said, ‘there’s a bad tradition among Palestinians who to go the States for education – they tend never to come back. So no chance.’ So that was out. He believed that the UK would be a better option. So we approached the British consulate. He’s semi-illiterate my father. He can read, but he can’t write very well. But he said, ‘I’ll go and find you something’.

The man at the consulate put us on to a very expensive boarding school, to do ‘A’ levels. It was very difficult the first few months, going from a hot country, and a home environment. I was only 16. I’m very much a homely person. I was never much outside the home, didn’t really have friends. My mother and father, and our extended family formed very much the core of my life. So when I went to this school, I was thrown in at the deep end. It was a difficult time for me. It wasn’t the norm, flying at the time. So that was a big deal. And then the weather! I couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t see the sun for a few days at a time!

I remember arriving on the 6th October at Heathrow. The school was supposed to send me a driver. They didn’t. But the school was not at all what we thought it was. I remember my father saying, ‘I have enough money to get you through the first two years. You have to prove yourself.’ He thought I was going straight into medical school! He had no idea about ‘A’ levels, acceptance etc. He was so naïve at the time. The man at the consulate said, ‘oh, he’ll need a bit of English, obviously, and once he gets that he’ll go straight into university.’

So as soon as I got to this very expensive school in Cheltenham, the principal started asking for more money, although we had already paid the full fees for the first year. At the time, £300 for a term was like £3 000 now. It was the ‘seventies. And he said he wanted another £50 for laundry. We didn’t have a phone at home till ‘76, so to contact home, I had to send a telex from the post office. So it wasn’t easy. I took action myself, encouraged by my Belgian friend from Iran. He was in a similar situation. He said ‘look, let’s go to London. I’ll go to my embassy, you go to yours.’ I wasn’t saying anything at the time about my birthplace. If people asked where I came from, I said, ‘Saudi Arabia.’ Which was true really, but I wasn’t Saudi. In spite of this, I have to give them credit. They did have the time for me at the embassy. They said, ‘look, this isn’t a real school; it’s just a tutorial college. What happened was, at the British consulate in Saudi, they got the schools mixed up. It was Cheltenham Tutorial College. They gave my father the list, and he sent the fees to the wrong school. It was for grinds, for people who were failing at school. But by now, he had sent a lot of money to the school.

The school managed to get three of us from outside the country. There were no inspectors checking on them. The embassy said, ‘we struck that school off our list a long time ago. What are you doing there?’ They wrote the principal a letter, saying, ‘You cannot charge him more money, and you have to keep him for the year, because he has paid.’ My friend got the same letter from the Iranian embassy.

Needless to say, our life was made hell at the school. So we both decided to pack our bags and disappear and never go back. We made our way back to London. My father sent me more money, although he had lost the other money. I was 17 by then, and just beginning to open my eyes to what people have and don’t have. I was meeting my own kind of people. Palestinians from Kuwait, Palestinians from Jordan, Palestinians from Lebanon. And I found that people didn’t go back home for the holidays. They all worked. There was no restriction on working, earning money. But before I could say anything, my father sent me a ticket to return home for the summer holidays. I didn’t have a choice. I had to follow orders, and go.

I was 22 stone, really, really big, when I went to England. And when I went back to Saudi, I was 13 stone. So that was excellent progress. It was because there was no mother’s food! Our food is very rich. We eat a lot of bread, and rice. So I was feeling very good to be going back so much lighter, and it was good to see the sun. But after the holidays, I was also glad to go back to England.

I’d started enjoying the freedom in the west. I had a girlfriend for the first time. I started drinking. Not as you drink here. Just a lager. But it was a taboo for us. My money was also being spread to include going out over the weekends. So it wasn’t all books and study. But it’s very sad that I failed all my exams. So for three years, now, my father had supported me and I had nothing to show for it.

And now I couldn’t even go back to Saudi, because after six months of exit and re-entry you can’t go back as the son of a foreign worker. Well, you could, but it would take a lot of trouble and money. So he said, ‘what are you going to do?’ By then I was 19. I said, ‘Leave me to my own devices.’ By then I had worked out that there were engineering courses, which took only three years. So I applied for Pure and Applied Maths, and for Physics, which was what I needed to get into the Engineering course. I went to a local Polytechnic, got three Cs, and through those results, five acceptances. It was a good result at the time. I did this on my own, by getting a local education grant, and working part time.

I chose Sussex University, because my girlfriend at the time happened to be going there too. I also discovered another part of me while I was there. There was a Palestinian society there, and I joined, and got so involved. I became a statist. The Irish influence also started on me. All my friends belonged to a movement called Troops Out Now. It was Republican, anti-British, and they were all from the North. We worked together, canvassed together. I don’t like to blame my failure at university on this, or on the fact that my own tutor was a Jew, which I didn’t know, and the head of the Jewish society in the university. But it didn’t help, I’m sure! I didn’t want to be studying, studying all the time, I wanted to educate myself left, right and centre. For me, that’s what being at university was all about. It was more exciting to be out there. I had lost my girlfriend by then. But it wasn’t such a blow, because I was politically involved. I wanted the world to know we were stateless, we’d lost our home. And we’d get together and cook Palestinian food. For the first time in my life, I belonged.

I failed two subjects and had to repeat them in autumn. I carried them over, and passed the second time. But by Christmas, the course was becoming very nitty gritty, and complex. Also I wasn’t paying much attention. And my tutor said, ‘I can’t really justify your being here any more.’ I think by then, the fourth semester, it was too late to catch up.

I got a job in a restaurant in Weymouth. I’d lost my grant so had to earn the money. The problem was, with catering, you always have drink around. I’d work hard till 11, then go out drinking till 2 in the morning. In September I saw a new engineering course offered at a Polytechnic college. So I called them – it was a college in Oxford. I was accepted. I’d saved a lot of money by then, so I could manage. I knew it would kill my father if I asked him for more money. By then I’d had a love affair, and a break-up, and I’d toughened up. The years had done their job. Nothing was going to make me feel sorry for my father for having a son who was not going to be a doctor. I was beginning to think about what I wanted, not what he wanted. That was very good. I thought,’ yeah! He doesn’t know how it is for me here.’ So I stopped being afraid of my father, an Eastern thing.

There is a thing about being educated in the west. I have friends who have graduated from Moscow University, from Bucharest. In the east, they really are being led like a donkey. I wouldn’t trust my friend who graduated as a doctor from Bucharest University. Whereas in the west, you get a degree though hard work. That’s it.

I had a girlfriend in the summer, who later became my wife. She was from Weymouth. That was also another step away from my culture. She’s British. So that was another wish of my father’s blown out of the window. He didn’t have a son who was a doctor, and he didn’t have a son who came to him to ask permission to marry. I didn’t tell anyone. I was living in Oxford studying for a degree that would be of interest to me. But I was intending to seek work in Saudi, so it wasn’t all bad!

It was very hard, because at the end of first year, my girlfriend got pregnant accidentally. I was 23. She was very proud and didn’t believe in the welfare system, so there was also added pressure to earn money. She’d been working as a legal secretary up to then. I had a flat, with two rooms. I think she was in a hurry to leave home. She was 19. She didn’t really have a good home environment, everyone was busy; the Mum was always out working. So it was a matter of getting a man, because that was the only way she knew to get a home of her own.

Then I got a job in Saudi through a friend. Katrina was shocked with the culture change. It was completely different. Our little boy was one year old when we went out. My parents weren’t over the moon, but they weren’t horrible. In fact they were proud that I called my son Javr, after my father. It’s an old-fashioned name. You wouldn’t name your child that now.

When we got to Saudi, I discovered I’d been given bachelor accommodation, because I’d only just graduated, and it wouldn’t be right for me to get superior accommodation to other employees who had been there much longer than me. But Katrina went to the managing director, who had Irish roots, like herself, and said, ‘look I’m living with my in-laws in the city, and believe you me…you can’t leave me there!’ So he gave us really good accommodation, so we were the envy of all the employees, who knew we’d got the accommodation through my Western wife.

Then the company went bankrupt. It was a multimillion-dollar conglomerate, which was eaten away from the inside. The employees from Europe and America had to pack up and go home. Katrina wanted to do that, but I wanted to stay. I knew I wouldn’t find a job in the UK, not without experience there. But she insisted. She was homesick for her country, her culture, not really for her family. She wasn’t at home in Saudi, whereas I could adjust. So I thought, (by ’85, we had a little girl as well) we could manage if Katrina was prepared to take a job. But she didn’t want to do that.

And I didn’t find a job in engineering, although I could get one in catering, because I had experience in that. I wanted to set up a B and B, or a restaurant, but Katrina wasn’t interested in that. She wanted to stay home. She’d hated here own mother coming home tired, asking for tea, and she wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. But I wasn’t earning there so finally, I had to go back and get work in Saudi. She stayed in England, but it was very hard. After the first eight months, she started getting depressed. She had a severe depression. She couldn’t wait to see me, but when I was there, she didn’t want me. She couldn’t stand doing things every day without me, although she knew the money had to come from somewhere. At the same time, my family was pressuring me to stay back there in Saudi. So it was causing friction between my wife and my family. But she couldn’t stick it. She was offered a job in kindergarten, although she wasn’t qualified, because she was English and could reflect the ethos of the school, bring customers in. But she didn’t take it.

We survived the first contract, till July ‘86. We spent that summer in France. I saw the kids in January of that year, and now it was July. I knew we couldn’t go on like that, so I said I’d look for a job in the UK.

But I was so engaged in Saudi practice by then, I couldn’t show them in England what I could do. When the big boys asked me what salary I wanted, I said, ‘I don’t mind. Whatever God sends me!’ You would say that in the Middle East, but you wouldn’t say it in Europe!

So by November of that year, I went back to Saudi. I found a very good job with the brother of Osama bin Laden. His father still owned the company, but the brothers were running it. In April ‘87, we were building in Mecca. By August I was told I’d have a job for life. I informed my wife, I said, ‘sell everything and come’. I must admit, this was one of my mistakes in life. But you live and learn, until you go to the grave.

She sent her brother over to speak to me. I said, ‘no, I couldn’t find a job there, I let everybody down, I’ll never find a job in the UK; this is where I have work. The wife and kids must come.’ She said, what about schooling? She was very good at responding, I must admit. Later in the year, she said, ‘I wish I’d listened to everything you said.’ But a lot of things just happened. She did manage to get there, book them into a private school. I was hoping I could afford it, or the company would help me, or my father could. But nobody could. They arrived in November. We had to return in the end, because of the schooling. 40% of my salary would have gone on school fees, so it was really not on.

So I got a job as a freelance, doing contracts in England. I didn’t have English experience, so the agency was giving me a chance, through short contracts, to prove myself. Then I found myself a job with the local authority. By March ‘89 I was offered a fulltime position. I accepted it, and I was on the local council by July.

So we bought a house in Southampton and I was working in Gosford. The reason we bought in Southampton was it was a city. We would be bound to find ethnic minorities for us to share our life with. But the minorities in the UK at that time were usually Indians and Pakistanis, really very different cultures from ours. You can’t mix the two. I did try to mix, and at work I mixed with English colleagues. But that was it. After work it was back home to the family, and there was nothing to do in Southampton. Then I got talking to somebody in a shop, and he told me about a mosque and soon after that I found myself in an old-speaking mosque, where they spoke in Urdu. A Muslim community. I’m not practising anymore, and really I only went there because of Ramadan. But it was nice, even though before that I got along on one or two prayers a week. I took the kids off school to join me at the mosque. Katrina was Church of England, but she wasn’t religious at all. In fact, she wanted them to be brought up as Muslim, even though I never said they had to be.

Did you and your wife experience any difficulties because of cultural conflict?

Yes, so much so, that we got divorced. As we grew older, we grew more apart, because of the culture clash. She wanted to stick to her English way of life. She was grown up now, 34 or 35. I was 38 or 39. When you get to that stage, God becomes more important in your way of thinking. I was giving the kids an Arabic lesson every Sunday at home. And after that I’d teach them one prayer, just one, to show them what the words mean. So when they grew up they wouldn’t say, ‘oh you never taught us anything.’ The two boys are now working with the Hampshire police, as constables. When they are asked what religion they are, they say, ‘Muslim.’ But they do feel very English.

They live in Southampton, although their mother left; she got married and went away. I see them every six, eight, nine months.

Did you ever go back to your birthplace?

Yes - in ‘83, I got an invitation to visit my relatives in Gaza. So we went there, and they showed me the room I was born in, the cot. The mattress was made out of straw. The type of accommodation was very nice. So it gave me an attachment to the place.

I am a very strong supporter of integration. You may not find many who would take my view. I wouldn’t like to politicise Islam or put politics with religion. To me, religion is a way to be brought up. If you’re brought up in a Catholic way, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist way, or Hindu, they all bring some kind of spiritual satisfaction. I respect all of them. But I also expect people to respect me for my beliefs. Providing that you don’t ride a bloody aeroplane and bump it into a tower. No religion on earth can be justified to be used this way. Integration is possible I think, if people respect each other’s differences.

What about integrating in Ireland? Have you made any changes to your lifestyle here?

In certain ways, yes. For example, we have greyhound racing tonight. This is something new for me. Everyone from work is going. It will be good, as long as nobody tries to force me to have a drink. I haven’t had a drink since I was in my thirties. That’s my choice.

On the other hand, as we live in this country, I’ve decided that we should eat what is available. I don’t believe in travelling all the way to Waterford to buy chicken slaughtered by our methods. I eat the meat that’s available, the only exception being pork. But some people have a different view and travel to buy their meat. Before I gave up drinking, we used to be very social, we’d go out, we’d have beers in the fridge. We’d celebrate Christmas, Boxing Day.

How did you come to be in Ireland?

To be honest with you, it was because I worked with some Irish people in Saudi, and I thought they were really nice. I thought all Irish people would be the same! That’s why I applied for this job. Although all the Irish people I mixed with were from the North, and from Donegal, and this job was in Cork. But I thought, ‘why not?’ I also liked the idea of rural Ireland. They also offered me more money than I was getting in England. It was £10 000 more than the other job

You mentioned a Palestinian wife?

Yes, my second wife, Manan, is Palestinian. She joined me here in 2003. We have two children, and she has one from a previous marriage in Saudi Arabia.

How did you meet?

My sister went out intentionally to look for someone that might be suitable for me. I went and did the talking and meeting and thinking and going away. I don’t know if it would be classified as an arranged marriage. I suppose you could say it was more like matchmaking. We both had a choice. With an arranged marriage you don’t really have a choice. But in our case, no one was forced. I think it works, you could say.

Ireland is a challenge though, for a Muslim woman. It definitely is not an easy place to live in. My wife grew up in Saudi Arabia. She covers her head. So it is a bit tough for her. When we meet other people socially, people are expecting you to be freer. These scarves, some people think it is the man who forces the woman to wear them. So when people see her wearing the scarves, they say, ‘what do you want to wear those bloody things for?’ You think, don’t be vicious. Just take it easy. Make your own choices, let other people make theirs. Also, when you offer someone a drink, and they say, ‘I’m alright with this coke,’ just take it; don’t try to push them to have a drink.

I thought I would come here, and find people like the ones I met in England or Saudi, very politicised. But I find people are so materialised here, only interested in making money. I met some Irish women at university, and they were more religious. They wouldn’t have sex before marriage. I thought, ’so, this is how Catholicism is. ‘ I came here expecting religion to be on top of everything. Unfortunately, and I mean unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. This society is living without religion.

In spite of the drawbacks, do you feel settled here?

I do feel an outsider, but I think so, yes.

The kids were born in the UK. They are 8 and 6. They are having trouble with the Irish language, but I’m amazed at how quickly they picked up English. I speak to them in English; my wife speaks to them in Arabic. So they are very much bi-lingual. My first children became English; they feel at home in England. I hope my younger children will become Irish, will feel at home here.

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The lands known as Israel and Palestine have endured centuries of upheaval, violence, suicide bombings and tension, while borders have been drawn and redrawn after each war. The situation has been affected by every major event in history, most recently including the Holocaust, September 11, the death of Yasser Arafat, and the invasion of Iraq by US, British and Australian forces. Americans began to view terrorist activity in a new light when Palestinian organisations such as Hamas and Hizbulla came to be associated with Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. As a result, a blind eye was turned when Israeli forces stepped up atrocities in their control of the territories.

Then the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah came up with a dramatic proposal to end the long Arab war against Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories as well as appropriate arrangements regarding Jerusalem and refugees.

The proposal was adopted at a meeting of the Arab League, with a few amendments concerning refugee issues. In March 12, 2002, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1397, calling for the creation of a Palestinian State alongside Israel, and on the 15th August, Israeli evacuation of Gaza settlements and four West Bank settlements began. By September 11, the last Israeli soldiers had left Gaza and on the 12th, control of the settlements was officially restored to the Palestinians. It remains to be seen how the repatriation of refugees will work out.

Source: World Almanac