The Road to Nablus

By: Bassam Hadi MD, M. Rutledge McCall

Narrated by: Bassam Hadi MD

Seven years before the emergence of the modern state of Israel, a boy was born in an ancient city in Palestine called Lydda (also known as Lod), the setting of the Bible story of Acts 9:32, in which the apostle Peter miraculously heals a man who has been paralyzed from birth. But this is a story of more recent greatness that came out of this town of miracles located in dusty hills surrounded by harsh, ruggedly beautiful countryside in the heart of the former Palestine. It is the story of a boy who was different than all the others. A boy of rare grit and determination the likes of which hadn't been seen by Palestinian refugees in generations.

The Road to Nablus is the true story of a boy who fought to escape from a hardscrabble refugee camp in Palestine and a wretched destiny in store for him in the aftermath of World War II. He was seven years old when United Nations Resolution 181 was enacted in November of 1947 to partition Palestine and to allow displaced Jews into the region after the war. The young boy's family suffered greatly in the ensuing violence. He was eight years old when soldiers showed up at his family's house in Lydda in the summer of 1948 and evicted them at gunpoint.

Told that there was no longer a place for them and their generations in this region renamed Israel, they were sent eastward into Transjordan. Carrying what few belongings they could grab, they trekked east, to an area of land located in a rock-strewn, dry, hilly desert in the western reaches of Transjordan.

The refugees were resettled 20 miles east of Lydda in a refugee tent camp in this new "West Bank" portion of Transjordan, almost exactly halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. There, these native, homeless Palestinian civilians could try to eke out a living. The boy, his brothers, his father and mother, and a few other family members would all live together in one tent, with no electricity, no running water, no amenities, a small monthly food allotment from the UN, and only the barest necessities. They would live in that camp for the remainder of the boy's childhood and upbringing, never to see their home in Lydda again.

In spite of his circumstances, the boy felt destined for more than an existence of hopeless desolation and abject poverty. Yet how he would lift himself out of his circumstances while living among thousands of other forcibly displaced refugees in a ghetto camp, he had no idea. Then, in 1950, when he was 10, a dramatic event occurred that offered him a possibility of escape. The odds were slim, but the boy now had hope, a vision, and a plan to flee from a life drawn in the quickly aging face of his father. It would take him eight years to bring his dream to reality. If he could pull it off at all.

In his book, Back to Methuselah, George Bernard Shaw wrote, "You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'" The Road to Nablus is the incredible life story of a young boy who dreamed things that never were and said, "Why not?" Far from a "poor us" story or a them-against-us political diatribe, The Road to Nablus is a poignant and riveting true tale about a boy with a dream. It is a story of grit and romance, of struggle and hope, during the longest occupation in modern world history.

With undertones of Saroo Brierley's best-selling book, A Long Walk Home (the memoir that inspired the critically acclaimed hit movie, Lion), and Vikas Swarup's best-selling book, Q & A (which was adapted into the smash hit movie, Slumdog Millionaire), this story should speak to us all about what it takes to rise above injustices perpetrated against the young and the innocent.

©2019 Bassam Hadi, MD, and M. Rutledge McCall (P)2019 Bassam Hadi, MD, and M. Rutledge McCall