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by Elias S. Srouji (Author)
Around the middle of the sixteenth century, Palestine became part of the Ottoman Empire. With the dawn of the 20th century and throughout its course, drastic events were happening in relatively rapid succession. World War One was the first of those events and it resulted eventually in changing the political face of the region. The ensuing thirty years of British mandate over Palestine provided the stage for change in the geopolitical, economic and sociodemographic profiles of the land. The Second World War came and hastened the cataclysm that brought about the state of Israel. This major historical event created ripples that have at times turned into violent waves disturbing the waters of the whole region and occasionally the wider world. The 'Arab Israeli' conflict will remain with us for God knows how long. The author was serving his hometown during the period of turmoil, great adversity and resulting change. As pediatrician in Nazareth, he was close to the families of the town and surrounding villages. He knew how they felt, and how they confronted the cruel new realities in their lives. He had a chance to be with them for a short time when they were stranded as refugees before they were huddled into the notorious 'refugee camps'. In all of this there were tales of little successes and of great failures. On many occasions on relating some of those stories of personal experiences to friends or colleagues, he was urged to write those down for the benefit of future generations. He took up the challenge in 1998 following his retirement from a teaching job at the Children's Hospital of Oklahoma. The family had moved from one country to another running away from situations that were intolerable. "We never considered ourselves refugees; but still there was within us a subtle feeling of non-permanence that sometimes surfaced as a consciousness of 'exile'."
