Nakba #42 - Safia Hassan Shbayta

1930 “We owned 20 hectares of land and lived a good life. My father had six employees working in the fields. We grew cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and other crops.

We transported the produce to the port of Sidna Ali for onward shipment to Port Said in Egypt. In the 1930s the British closed the port. When my father came to collect our goods from the harbor, the British had already thrown them away.

Despite this, they forced him to pay the port fee. My father’s cousin became so upset that he suffered a heart attack and died. For my father this was a severe blow—he still had to pay the workers’ wages.