On April 15th, 2009, the Levantine Cultural Center will be hosting Jewish-American author Adina Hoffman. She will be reading from her new book about the life of the great Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, "My Happiness Bears No Relation To Happiness". Ali is a survivor of the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba). His village of Saffuriya was completely razed by Israeli military forces and no longer exists. He is a self-taught poet and souvenir shop owner living in Nazareth. Featured below is an interview with Taha's brother Amin for a series of short pieces about the Nakba done by Jonathan Cook. Jonathan Cook is a British journalist based in Nazareth. His new book, "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair", is now available worldwide.

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15 May 2008 - Amin Muhammad Ali (Abu Arab), 73, is a refugee from the village of Saffuriya, three miles northwest of Nazareth. The village, home to 5,000 Palestinians, was one of the largest in the Galilee and among the first to be bombed from the air, according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. It was occupied on 16 July 1948. Most of its refugees ended up in Lebanon, but some fled to nearby Nazareth, where they established a neighbourhood, Safafra, named after their village. Abu Arab's home overlooks his family's former lands, now farmed by a Jewish community called Zippori. His old home was destroyed, now covered by a pine forest planted by the international Zionist organisation, the Jewish National Fund. He is one of the founders of the Saffuriya Cultural Association and organised the 2008 procession to Saffuriya on Nakba Day, marking the catastrophe that befell the
Palestinian people with the founding of Israel on their homeland.

"It started at Iftar, the meal breaking the fast at the end of the day during the holy month of Ramadan, when two Jewish planes flew overhead dropping bombs. We ran outside to see what was happening and, afraid the houses would collapse on us, fled into the fields and nearby caves to hide. We thought it would be over in a few minutes and we could return, but the attack lasted two hours. I later heard that three people were killed by the bombs.

"Some of the men had guns and they returned to the village while the rest of us stayed in the fields. I was with my father, who was sick, my mother, two brothers and a sister. Later, during the night, the
armed men came back to tell us that Jewish soldiers were advancing from the west. We stayed out in the fields and by daybreak could see that the soldiers had taken over the village and were placing
explosives in the houses. My father realised it was hopeless to stay and we fled north towards Lebanon to wait out the fighting and return when it was safe.

"We walked across the Galilee's hills for many days, regularly hearing shooting behind us. We stopped briefly in other villages where people gave us bread and water. It was summer and very hot. We crossed the border and stayed for a month in Bint Jbeil before heading on to Beirut and then the Bekaa Valley. The journey was very demanding and my sister, who was 12, died of heat exhaustion a short time later. My mother was devastated and sat by her grave every day.

"After 10 months there my father decided we would make the extremely hazardous journey back to Palestine. My mother was falling apart at the loss of her home and her daughter. We walked by night back across the Galilee's hills, trying to avoid the Israeli army. It was a very frightening time, worse even than the journey when we left. We came back to find the village destroyed and the area declared a closed military zone. Anyone entering would be shot.

"We stayed in a room of a friend's house in Nazareth. We had nothing-- our home was destroyed, and our land and belongings had been confiscated by the government. We desperately needed money. So I and my two brothers, Taha and Faisal, started selling sweets and cakes in the city centre. Then we sold felafel, and finally after many years my eldest brother opened a souvenir shop. It took me 30 years of working
to save to buy a house.

"Will we ever go back [to Saffuriya]? Of course we will. It's only a matter of time. We may not go back in my lifetime but my children or theirs will return. There is no future for Zionism. It is an empty
ideology and it will fail. One day there will be real peace."