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Sunday Essay Reasonable Maori Izzy Joy Feature Image (1)

The Sunday EssayMay 22, 2022

The Sunday Essay: ‘A reasonable type Māori’

Sunday Essay Reasonable Maori Izzy Joy Feature Image (1)

Perhaps those entrenched with a superior view of their place in the world may describe Dad as ‘reasonable’. One wonders if that same bar exists for non-Māori.

The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand

Original illustration by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White


My dad died last year. We were blessed in that he passed at home with his whānau by his side on his last journey. It happened while there were Covid-19 restrictions in place but thankfully he wasn’t in a hospital where staff, albeit beautiful and caring, were the last faces he saw. He also surpassed eight decades of life which, for a Māori man, is bucking the statistics.

A couple of months before his passing, we received his official army papers. Dad had never talked up his army contribution, though we did discover he’d been part of the Queen’s guard on one of her visits. The day the papers came, Dad was in hospital. In reading the sender’s details (NZ Defence Force), Mum decided to come to my home to look at them together. We excitedly opened the envelope. After the obligatory name, age and address came a requirement to be a “British subject”. This heralded the next “overview section” and was perhaps a clue to stop reading. But we didn’t.

Cursive handwriting in the overview section described my precious dad as of “medium physique, speech good, manner fair – a reasonable type Maori (sic).” I looked incredulously at my mum and inquired: what is a “reasonable type Māori?” She only shook her head. I had a bunch of fleeting thoughts. Perhaps bizarrely, it reminded me of my days on a farm when you would haul the ewes over the board and decide whether to cull them. They were either “reasonable” with good teeth, physique etc, or not.

Dad was my superhero. One day, he saved my life when the car door came open while driving on the open road. Long before car seats were ever thought of, let alone made, he somehow managed to reach into the back seat and pull me back into the car. I vividly remember the tarseal coming closer and closer while he managed to manoeuvre the car.

One of my earliest recollections of life was Dad waking me one night and bringing me a little black and white kitten in his lunchbox. He loved all animals, and animals loved him. He had rescued the kitten from the perils of those who did not feel the same way about animals. Panda became my loved friend.

Dad was of the generation of Māori boys sent to do trade training. His real love was shearing, but he dutifully went off and earned his ticket as a builder. He built many things, including a road bridge which stands today, a community hall and a split-level home for our whānau, which we thought immensely flash at the time.

He was also the generation of Māori beaten for speaking the only language they knew. As a young boy, he lived with his deeply treasured Nanny at the marae, and this was the happiest time of his childhood. He grieved losing that ability to speak Māori fluently throughout his life. Ironically though, there were times when, after operations requiring a general anaesthetic, he would recite ancient tauparapara that he learnt in wānanga with his Koro. I know this because there were two occasions that a nurse in post-op came to get me because staff thought he was having some sort of psychotic reaction. Nope, deep in his cells somewhere, that ability had not been entirely lost, despite his assertion otherwise when fully conscious.

He didn’t lose the ability to sing waiata. We never had radios in cars nor needed one. Dad would sing from the moment the engine turned over until it stopped, tapping on the steering wheel as we went. He was one of those musicians that could play by ear. A trait that has well and truly missed me. His arrival home from work was often announced by the tune of ‘Remembrance’ being played on the old piano we had in the garage. I loved to watch him play. His fingers would dance gently over the keys so naturally and easily.

He was also naturally gifted on the sports field, with coordination and athleticism that many dream of and have to work so hard to attain mechanically. I was one of the latter, but Dad would spend hours with me outside, passing balls and helping me to jump higher with each pass. When I made representative teams in Wellington, he would drive nine hours round trip just to watch me practise at the cold and windy Hataitai netball courts. I would feel so bad for him that I sometimes bought him Caramello chocolate bars (his favourite) to eat while standing in the cold. He never saw it as a chore, only a privilege.

When my children were born, I would look out for his car to come up the farm driveway every day. Then I could run around in a frenzy doing farm chores and household chores while my children were sung to, read to and cuddled. He made all the difference in my life during those times, and I don’t think I ever thanked him. Again, he saw it as his privilege.

I don’t assert that Dad was a perfect human. Perhaps he could be described as a man’s man in his younger life – playing rugby, drinking beer, playing pool for money. Yet this same man would sit patiently while the girl mokopuna would put hair clips in his hair and giggle profusely while painting his toenails. He had patience and tolerance in spades. He was the parent that taught you to drive because even if he was in danger of being catapulted through the windscreen, he would calmly sit there and say, “shall we try that again, Bubs?.

He loved people. He loved talking to people. He was genuinely interested in them and their lives. He saw richness everywhere. When he passed, my mum had a visit from the ambulance driver who had once taken him to hospital. She detailed how she had written in her logbook, “BEST DAY EVER – got to transport Peter Te Karu – what a lovely man.” I don’t think I was ever more proud of Dad than when he was in the intensive care unit and feeling so unwell. He was only ever demonstratively grateful to all the staff. They regularly commented on how they wished everyone behaved with such grace and gratitude.

He was well-read on all subjects, and people always commented on his oratory skills if he stood to speak somewhere. He had a wide vocabulary and did crosswords with speed and ease, but his ability to connect with people in a room made the difference.

Some people may not recognise the stance of superiority in the overview section of the army papers. Some people may not comprehend that a belief of superiority based on race is, by definition, racism. Those people are more likely to perpetuate the racism that sadly pervades today. It may have been more overt when Dad was a young man and was prevented from playing tennis at a City Tennis Club. Regardless of his claim that he and his mate from Tūhoe rohe were the best players in the city, they were unable to demonstrate this. It was also overt when I was growing up and the motel would suddenly become non-vacant if Dad asked for a room, despite a sign outside displaying otherwise. It was more casual in approach in his later life, but nonetheless, just as cutting.

When he turned 80, I took Dad to Te Waipounamu for a holiday. We drove to Kaikoura and ordered fish’n’chips. He chatted all the way about wool sheds where he’d shorn sheep and the “jokers” (men) he had met. He questioned how he could detail the Anglo-Saxon Battle of Hastings, England, in 1066 but nothing in-depth on the history of the South Island. And how he only knew about Parihaka because my Koro (his dad) had lived there for a time milking cows, not because he was taught it in school.

The wheels of colonisation continue to play out in contemporary society, and we are all disadvantaged by them. Those that are directly affected – losing land, language, culture, history – are compounded by these systemic losses. Even those that have benefited from the supplanting are still losers in some respects. They also miss out on a rich tapestry, Indigenous history, and ways of knowing. Increasingly and ironically, the world is only just looking to Indigenous knowledge for solutions to things like climate change and systems infrastructure when it has been around in some cases for millennia.

In Dad’s final hours, it was this belief that helped us all. He distinctly saw his treasured Nanny and he whispered to me, “Nanny is here now, Bubs.”

Sadly not all his mokopuna could be with us while we kept him at home in the black suit he had requested and his rugby socks. My daughter wrote an incredibly beautiful letter to her Koro which she popped in his suit jacket along with a shearing comb her partner lovingly sharpened. My tall, strong son wept openly. My beautiful cousins arrived at our home and guided their Uncle on the very final stage of his journey with his Nanny (their Kuia) and other ancestors.

Perhaps those entrenched with a superior view of their place in the world may describe Dad as “reasonable”. One wonders if that same bar exists for non-Māori. I assert that Dad was not only reasonable but a great father and a wonderful man. The measures of greatness or success are often defined through the lens of power, wealth and title. Society even celebrates wealth by publishing lists ignoring the compounding sociohistoric injustice that pervades for “reasonable” Indigenous people. The markers noted by the army as making my father reasonable show the complete dismissal of attributes that define the great man I knew.

If we conscientise ourselves to racism and superiority views, we would be far richer as a nation and rewarded in seeing the fullness of people. In the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” We must call out racism in its many shapes and guises. People with advantage and power have arguably more leverage to do so. To accept the world as it is is something none of us should stand for.

We didn’t show Dad his army papers.

Keep going!
Illustration: Ali Al Boriny
Illustration: Ali Al Boriny

The Sunday EssayMay 15, 2022

The Sunday Essay: A Palestinian catastrophe

Illustration: Ali Al Boriny
Illustration: Ali Al Boriny

I thought a similar tragedy must have happened to every other kid in the world. I was mistaken.

The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand

Original illustration by Ali Al Boriny.


I don’t recall when I first heard about the death march, which was part of what came to be known as Nakba; the Palestinian Catastrophe. All I know is I have always known about it. It was part of our childhood. I saw it every time I saw my grandparents on our usual weekend stroll to see them. It wasn’t a “thing” that we talked about all the time; it was our life.

I was aware that I hadn’t even been born when it happened, but because it was so intertwined with our life, I always felt that it happened to me. It felt like a distant sad memory in my head, but strangely enough I don’t recall feeling mad or angry about it. It was so normalised; almost every single child friend I had back in Jordan had a relatively similar experience. At school we could recite the name of the Palestinian village or town every single kid’s family came from – we used to introduce ourselves by saying our name, the name of the Palestinian place our family came from and the year they were dispossessed (i.e. 1948 or 1967).

It wasn’t an exceptional story to us. I thought a similar tragedy must have happened to every other kid in the world. I was mistaken.

This is a relatively recent photo of my grandmother Salma (d. 1998), and grandfather Suleiman (d. 2008). They were both expelled, along with their three children, from their hometown al-Lidd, southeast of Tel Aviv in post Mandatory Palestine. It was 1948.

Until 1948, al-Lidd was a town with a population of around 20,000, predominantly Arabs. In 1947, the United Nations proposed dividing Mandatory Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab; al-Lidd was to form part of the proposed Arab state. In the 1948 War, Israel captured Arab towns outside the area the UN had allotted it, including al-Lidd.

Operation Danny was the codename for the Israeli attack on al-Lidd. At first, al-Lidd was bombarded from the air. This was followed by a direct attack on the city centre. The few men of al-Lidd, armed with old rifles to defend the town, took shelter in a Mosque. After a few hours of fighting, they ran out of ammunition and stopped resisting, only to be massacred inside the mosque by the Israeli forces. Palestinian sources recount that in the mosque and in the streets nearby, Israeli troops went on a rampage of murder and pillage. 426 men, women and children were killed (176 bodies were found in the mosque). The following day, the Israeli soldiers went from house to house, taking people outside and marching about 50,000 of them (al-Lidd’s population doubled with the influx of refugees during the war), out of the city towards West Bank. Houses, every single one of them, were looted and the refugees robbed before being told to start walking.

The occupying soldiers set up roadblocks on the roads leading east and were searching the refugees, particularly women, stealing their gold jewellery from their necks, wrists, and fingers and whatever was hidden in their clothes. They took their money, along with everything else that was precious and light enough to carry.

On July 13, 1948, in the height of the Middle East summer, my grandparents and every other Palestinian Arab in the town, were ordered by the Israeli occupation rulers to walk into a death march.

Around 50,000 people walked for three days, in 30-35 degree temperature. Up to 350 people died from the heat, thirst, and exhaustion.

Palestine refugees on the death march, 1948 (Photo: Fred Csasznik / Public Domain)

My grandparents survived the death march and reached West Bank. From West Bank, they walked again to Gaza, where my father was born in 1950. The work and living prospects in Gaza were bad, and word came from Jordan that Palestinian refugees were welcome to settle there, so my grandparents decided shortly after my father’s birth to move to Jordan with their four children.

The walk from Gaza to Jordan proved to be very challenging. It meant sneaking through then-Israel in a hostile atmosphere. Emergency martial laws in Israel were applied which put all Arabs into lockdown. Movements of Arabs were very risky, even more so if it was considered “trespassing”. There was a strong belief that if they were detected they would be killed on the spot, the same fate that met Kafr Qasim villagers few years later.

My grandparents left Gaza on foot, and kept walking east at night only, to stay under the cover of darkness as much as possible. The fear was astronomical.

There were 50 people in the group, most of them children, including my father who was seven months old.

My grandfather was extremely worried that his son’s incessant crying would compromise the safety of the entire group. Eventually he became scared and desperate enough to abandon his son. A few men who were following behind saw a baby on the ground and brought him back. My grandmother almost lost her mind when she realised what happened.

This incident developed a strange and special bond between my father and his father. My grandfather’s trauma was complex, and he responded by acting tough. He never carried his baby again. I think he felt remorse and that he was not a good parent. A year or so later, my grandmother was in the kitchen when she heard her son crying in their bedroom. She hurried to tend to him but he soon stopped. When she peeked into the bedroom, she saw my grandfather was holding and soothing Dad. She burst into tears and ran to the bedroom to celebrate the moment, but when my grandfather heard the clattering he almost dropped my dad. He wasn’t prepared to be seen emotional and “weak”.

As a child, the story of my dad’s abandonment was just that. It was void of emotions. Actually, it gave us kids the giggles. It felt like a joke, and we were teasing Dad for it as if it was his fault. I never asked Dad how he felt about the story and what his memories were. That question didn’t fit with the acting tough attitude had all developed. Now I wish I had asked.

The iconic “Where to ..?” by the Palestinian artist Ismail Shammout, who was on the same death march as my grandparents.

A few nights after walking out of Gaza, my grandparents crossed the border into Jordan. Jordan was a new place to them and they had no money or possessions to start a new life. But everything considered, they were safe.

From that time on, their living conditions kept improving but the scars never healed. They never saw their home in al-Lidd again; Israel never accepted the Palestinian refugees’ right to return. I don’t remember ever seeing my grandfather smiling.

My grandparents kept the key to their house in al-Lidd, in anticipation of an imminent return to home. As days and years went by, the key became to us a symbol of hope and steadfastness. It’s now not uncommon to see picture frames of a house key or even an original key itself framed on a wall in an exiled Palestinian’s family house.

“Home” is a concept I struggled with. Throughout my childhood in exile, home experience was confusing. The direct and natural answer to the where-are-you-from question was Palestine. Although I was born and bred in Jordan, the exile feelings were powerful. It was akin to an out-of-body experience, where my body was in Jordan but mentally I was elsewhere. References to Palestine were in literature, schools, places of worship, TV news and drama, shop names, arts and music, sports, food, and every single aspect of my life. Other than the attachment to Palestine, there was an overwhelming feeling of insecurity: everything felt fragile and temporary. It was not uncommon to see people holding their passports in their shirt pocket, in anticipation of a sudden need to get moving, or more likely to prove who they were if they were to be made stateless.

Statelessness was something I didn’t quite understand when I was a child. I learned it was a bad thing and I had a fear of it. Statelessness was, and still is, one of the biggest issues for the Palestinians. Although my family were granted Jordanian citizenship, along with the majority of Palestinians in Jordan, we were treated as second-class citizens, a fact I was reminded of every time I dealt with even the smallest ranking public servant at a government department. Still, I thought I was among the lucky ones, compared to the tragic situation of Palestinian refugees in nearby Syria and Lebanon, or still in besieged Gaza and occupied West Bank.

The scenes on TV of sufferings and killing of Palestinian children in particular was something I could never erase from my memory. Sheer chance put me on a different path, but that didn’t matter. As a child, my mind couldn’t distance itself from the collective experience of Palestinian children everywhere. I felt I like was that kid separated from their parents who were either killed or detained in Israeli prisons; that arrested kid; that kid sitting next to a sewage gutter in a refugee camp. It was definitely me, and it felt more real than my shadowy physical experience.

A few years back, I decided I was not going to tell my children about the death march story. There was no point in passing on that memory. I knew sooner or later they would know about it, but at least I could  delay it a few years. Now I am sharing this story with you, dear reader, and my children for the first time.

.شكرًا جزيلًا على قراءة قصتي، و أتمنى لكم السعادة و العدالة

Thank you for listening to my story, and I wish you happiness and justice.

 

Editor’s note: Nakba Day is today, May 15.

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