The sun rises in the east and arcs toward the west. The moon and her maidens are predictable lights. But were a New Year’s Resolution to be granted, it would spring from a simple thought. May the Palestinians awaken to a happy and prosperous tomorrow. Mohammed and I sat across from each other with our beverages gently cupped between our hands. They would become the ceramic sentinels of a history that was about to unfold before my eyes. My friend is a Palestinian with a law degree from Syria. On this particular day I was allowed to see into the small museum of physical evidence of a displaced lineage. But it is the museum of our minds, which is the most interesting of all. When another is allowed access and the roaming of these passageways, such incursions must be handled gently by a friend. I experienced a raw display of emotional energy and an unforgiving manner regarding Israel. My own humanity required a quiet and non-judgmental response as I walked through the museum of individual historical account. Mohammed carefully extracted papers from his briefcase and showed me pieces of family history. Lifta, the ancestral village of Mohammed’s grandfather, had long since been abandoned. A few ancestral homes dotting the hills are all that remain. The papers he unfolded had the look of having been handled carefully many times. The creases in the folds matched the deep laugh lines around his eyes. We examined the family tree of the village patriarchs, a work lovingly put together by his father. The project took three months. “Here,” said Mohammed, pointing with his wrinkled finger, “this is my family name on the village tree.” Spreading a map on the table, Mohammed traced an area near the Knesset. The home he lived in as a child was originally 150 yards from the edifice. “They knocked on our door in the middle of the night. We were given one hour to leave.” The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) gives a definition of a Palestinian refugee as “any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period June 1, 1947 to May 15, 1948 and who lost their home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Mohammed’s registration card showed the names of his family members. I looked at his UNICEF milk card, issued in Amman, Jordan. This allowed food rations, and sported neat little boxes checked off with an ‘x’ to denote family food allotments. Mohammed then pulled out a small brown apothecary bottle wrapped in foil. Opening the bottle, he poured coarse reddish brown dirt onto the foil and said, “Smell it. This was from our home. Holy soil, this is holy soil.” Carefully pouring the dirt back into the bottle, he wrapped it in the foil and returned it to the briefcase. Every meeting with Mohammed I have stated the same thing. You cannot go back. You must move forward. He responds, “We will wait. The land belongs to the Muslims.” He always says one additional thing. “I will never forgive the Jews.” Within Mohammed I note a nomadic posture. It is a restlessness that began when he was a child and thrust out of his home. It continues to this day. He returns to Jerusalem to sit on a bench in the park and cry for the land. The grief of his uprooting has never left him. Yet grief requires passage and not tent pegs buried in the heart. Understanding life’s sorrows does not bring healing of the wounds collected along the way. Only God is in the healing business. We live within the reality of our own thinking. How and why we think as we do presents as a vast psychological frontier. Much of the terrain of an individual’s mind remains unexplored over a lifetime. But what can be resolved with regard to the collective memory and political history of a people? This terrain is like the rugged topography of a mountain range. Beyond the baggage of our illusive dreams lies a temporal reality. This reality is hard for some to accept. Individuals are complex in their own right. But the complexity of a collective memory harboured by a displaced people can present the greatest challenge when formulating policy. When I examined the soil from Mohammed’s village he also asked me to smell it. I felt the cry for the land rise up in my own soul. We all have it, that longing for a root system. This is the cry of the individual. But if we listen carefully enough, there is the collective cry. It is the cry of a different kind. It is one for a season of peace to raise our children and bounce our grandchildren on our knees. It is the cry for good governance. I have read the Hamas Covenant many times. This week I took the time to read it again. My thoughts regarding this document are not ex nihilo (out of nothing) but exist as an evolving intellectual force which examines political platforms and their impact on the communities they claim to serve. Al Qaeda, Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Taliban have graced the pages of Daily Times in the past. Hamas is merely the current organisation placed on the table for public discussion. Here is the question on the table. Is it possible the Hamas Covenant is flawed? Is it possible that the inhabitants of Gaza remain economically hindered and internationally disenfranchised because of a cognitive bow to the Hamas system of doing business? To continue this discussion it is necessary for each of you to invest a bit of time in a journalism homework assignment. Read the Hamas Covenant this week. You will be able to locate several translations online. Arm yourself with a yellow highlighter. Jot down your thoughts. We will consider the document together next week. (To be continued) The writer is a freelance columnist. She can be reached at tammyswof@msn.com