Cairo, Egypt – The reception of the Palestine Hospital was busy as usual in early November, but the mood among the Palestinian staff was clouded by an approaching anniversary.On November 11, 2004, a thunderbolt announcement on all major networks: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had died in Paris – poisoned with polonium-210, according to an investigation by Al Jazeera and French, Swiss and Russian scientists.
Yasser Arafat was not the only icon the Palestinian people lost that year – his brother Fathi was deathly ill as well, in a coma due to his stomach cancer.
As Yasser lay ill and dying, Fathi woke from his coma suddenly and asked, “Where’s Yasser, is he OK?” Fathi’s son Tarek told Al Jazeera.
He replied, back then, “He is fine, Dad, in Ramallah,” to avoid stressing his father out.
Fathi soon passed away as well, as if the two brothers had a supernatural connection, Tarek says.
“When the news about their deaths spread, we at the hospital would recheck all the channels to make sure it was true,” Rafiq Tawel, who was a nurse there at the time, says.
“During those days, you would find people in every corner, crying.”
Photo of three Arafat siblings: Fathi, left, Khadija, centre, and Yasser, right, Arafat [Courtesy of Tarek Arafat]
Today, in the hospital Fathi established in 1979, Tarek works to keep his father and uncle’s memories alive as he grapples with the relationship he had with …
