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The loss was painful. We loved this man very much and we believed in him. When we lost him, we lost our minds and became like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. I remembered what the Nakhshun plan said regarding the importance of a leader for the Arabs to follow, like sheep; that without a shepherd they would roam and disappear like a consumed stalk of grain. That was what happened to us after the funeral and the procession. Every one of us went to his family to protect it or be protected by it. That was what my brother Wahid did when he went to his wife in Deir Yassin. But before that, he went with Rabie and a group of forty men to al-Qastal; they established their headquarters in the empty village behind the abandoned barricades. There, they sat on the ground, in the center of the village, remembering the leader and his words, the funeral and the procession, their concern about the unknown and what to do after him. They lit a small fire and sat around it, exchanging words of condolence as if they were in a large mourning tent. They drank tea with heavy hearts and deep sadness. They looked like each had received a blow on the head and lost his balance.

At nightfall, they saw two armored cars coming their way, one British and one Jewish. They removed the fallen dead from the verges and the platforms. The two tanks saw through their binoculars that the village was empty of its inhabitants, the windows were dark, and the doors were broken and burned, and a group of armed men, most of whom were peasants, were sitting around a small fire, drinking tea and talking.

Our men ignored the two armored cars collecting the bodies. They did not pay attention to them and returned to their conversations about the leader, the funeral, those who were wounded, those who were killed, and those who fled. They drank more tea and built up the fire, adding more branches and wood from the burned-out empty shops. They went back to describing what they saw, what they heard and did, and what they expected would happen. They forgot totally about the two armored vehicles; they had considered their presence a normal procedure and a welcome step to remove the dead before the decomposition of the bodies and the smell of the decaying corpses.

An hour after the departure of the two armored vehicles, they saw legions approaching al-Qastal, backed by armored vehicles, tanks, and a plane to indicate the targets and pinpoint the locations. The commander of the group told them that facing such forces was an impossible task and, being the man in charge, he advised them to withdraw through the nearest roads and exits. He even helped direct them to those roads, carrying his gun and preceding the others to save himself. Wahid left the group and went to Deir Yassin to see his wife and save her, while Rabie returned to Jerusalem to inform us about the events and the men leaving al-Qastal.

Al-Qastal fell without a single shot being fired. The Jewish forces moved to the other Arab villages, where minor confrontations took place. An historic massacre was committed in Deir Yassin, with hundreds of victims, among them my brother Wahid. Those who survived went to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron. There were other less well-known massacres in the whole country, which led to the emigration of thousands from Palestine. Some settled in refugee camps in the cities and deserts of the Arab countries.

As for us, the Qahtan family, that was how our dispersion began. Wahid died in Deir Yassin; Widad left Jerusalem and was seen in different places, by different people; my mother passed away in the hospital after the death of the leader and my brother Wahid; and I placed Nidal at a school run by nuns, where she was cared for. I left for Lebanon to join Lisa and Saadeh, who had promised to liberate Jerusalem. There was nothing left in the house, the family home, but my books, my papers, and the last souvenir from the leader: a handwritten letter, which I did not mail. It stayed with me to remind me of what had happened to us. I will publish it one day with my writings and my memoirs, because history is what we write, and not what we say and hide in the closed boxes of the heart that we carry with us to the afterlife and the darkness of the grave.

The General Administration, Jerusalem
al-Qastal, 6/4/1948

Memorandum

Mr. Secretary General of the Arab League,
Cairo

I hold you responsible, because you left my fighters, at the height of victory, without help or weapons.

— Abdel-Qader al-Husseini