No Finish Line

I have put in hours working on my family tree and there is no finish line. How could there be. I am but one Handal of many past Handals, and many present Handals, and untold futures of Handals. As for my task, I have stacks of pictures downstairs to scan, catalog, share, and if possible put into some kind of context. I have the family trees of others to study. I have notes to take and stories to write.

I have discussed before that this journey began on Ancestry.com, and it blew wide open with the DNA test my wife gave me for Father’s Day this year. With the help of new found family members my tree came together abruptly. With the help of family is how it should be, forming ties as I find links.

I first followed the tree from me along a reasonably direct path to a man named Handal in Tiqoa in the West Bank in the late 1500’s. His son Nassar Handal moved to Bethlehem and fathered the line I am part of. After some aimless wondering and refinement of my tree, I am fleshing out the tree, adding branches, twigs, and leaves with the information I have at hand and that shared by my new relatives. For the last few weeks, I have sat hours at a time in a recliner with a lap board, at my desk, at the kitchen table. I have bent over a lineage of Handals organized by branches stemming from Nassar and have progressed to reorganizing it by generations. There are twelve or so generations to go through and record.

With my reading glasses on, my head turns left-right-left again reading the tree and copying it to levels/generations with my fountain pen and my legal pads. It has been an effort that makes me feel monk-like. My home-my monastery. My documents, ancient tomes that must be preserved the only way possible, by transcribing, by sharing. All I need to complete the image is guttering candlelight and a nondescript brown robe of rustic fabric tied at my waist by a length of cord.

Name after name I write. Names that would be familiar to anyone -Evelyn, George, Eddie, Nathalie, Frank. Mostly the names are exotic - Khalil, Jamile, Issa, Jadallah. Some even straddle the two realms: Yousef (Joseph), Yacoub (Jacob), Ibrahim (Abraham). The places of births, deaths, weddings exist as places I have seen, places I know, and places I must look up to find, to pinpoint: Brooklyn, Beit Jala, Tiqoa, Amman, San Pedro Sula, Jerusalem, Santiago, Paris, Bethlehem.

I melt into the pages of names and places and dates as I read and write. My hand and wrist are starting to ache, but it makes me smile because this should be an effort. I am to the point now that I am transcribing, re-ordering the names of those that are alive, the names of those I am older than. I have gone through the past, to the present, to looking at this vast family’s potential. I know that I am exploring only those of us who originate from Bethlehem and Nassar, and there are other ties from other regions in the Arab world. Maybe one day all these branches will connect. That is my hope. If not with me, then with some other Handal, perhaps some future unnamed Handal.

In this way, I am doing my part to add to an oral heritage. The stories both told and written that color our history. That make that history rise from pages of pictures and scribbles and stories to take on a four-dimensional image comprised of height, breadth, depth, and a time locked shadow we call our ancestors. And the best part is that I am answering questions as the disturbed dust of the past raise other questions. Questions upon questions. I now understand why question begins with quest.