Aysha Ibrahim Hudali
Posted on | December 2, 2008 | No Comments
Mother of political prisoners
My granddaughter keeps saying, “I want my Mommy, I want Daddy.” She waits. When she hears the doorbell she expects her dad, but when it turns out to be someone else, like her uncle, she cries, “Where is Daddy? You said Daddy was at work, why didn’t he come home?”
How long was your granddaughter with her mother in prison?
Aysha stayed in the prison until she became two years, then she came to us. Now she is three years old. I do not like when people come to ask about Aysha or us. Those outside do not suffer like those inside prison. I was at the gates of the prison when Aysha was released. She was crying with her mother. I cried with them. We should have been happy but we started crying.
Aysha was fat because she slept a lot. She ate and slept. Her father, my son, carried her and used a pushchair for her things. She was like an adult prisoner coming home.
How did you look after her?
Then her father was with her. He took her everywhere. She even rode a camel when she was very little. He took her to the mall. She got used to being taken everywhere. He used to say, “I can bathe my daughter, but can you dress her up?”
And now, how long will her father be in prison?
He has been sentenced to six months. All he wants is to work to support his family. He is not guilty of anything. He went to Jerusalem on the eve of the feast. They caught him and detained him for two hours in a cell. Then they gave him his identity card and said, “Go home, Waleed.” Then he said he wouldn’t go to Jerusalem again. They deprived him of praying at al Aqsa.
Then he went to Jerusalem to request to visit his family in Amman, and they said, “Why don’t you go and never come back?” He answered, “I want to see my children like everyone else.” He received a notification to be interviewed to receive the permit for Amman, but when he went, they detained him.
Why is Aysha’s mother in prison?
Itaf is guilty of running a summer camp. Is that forbidden for the Jews? Of course not. Waleed said to the judge in the court, “Don’t you Israelis have summer camps? We have summer camps, too.” Even the lawyer asked the judge, “What is she guilty of?” She taught children. She let them exercise, played with them, and did summer camp activities. She ran a charity. She taught religion.
After more than two years, they just sentenced her for two or three months more. She may be free in February. God knows.
Does going to prison, like Waleed and Itaf, help the Palestinian people?
No. Waleed will have spent twelve and a half years total in prison for nothing.
Do you think, as a Muslim woman, that this is their destiny?
Of course it is their destiny. May God be praised. It is not up to them. What was Waleed guilty of when he asked for a permit to go to Amman to see his children? That is not a crime. I am tired of all this.
Hudali has been the primary caretaker of her three-year-old granddaughter, also named Aysha, since her son Walid was sentenced to six months in Israeli prison. His wife, Itaf Ilaian, was already in prison, where she had raised Aysha from six months old until she turned two. Walid will have spent more than 12 years total in prison. Another son, a prisoner for 19 years, did not see his child from birth until he was 19 years old.
