It's time to move on from Lakiya to Rahat, a township that I visited in 1998 and where I have two 'contacts', one the editor of a daily Nagab newspaper, the other Abu Azmi Al-Tayf, all of whose land near Bir Sabaa has been expropriated by Israel. I can get a lift with Hassan who is going there for a meeting at the Arab Youth Centre to commemorate Yom al-Ard (Day of the Land). Like Lakiya, Rahat has no hotels. I hope to be able to stay with Abu and Umm Azmi, as I did in 1998. I haven't been able to phone them - few Palestinians in the Nagab have phone lines though I notice that many of the audience at the Arab Youth Centre have cell phones. I hope that I'll be able to find their house.

The Land Day commemoration at the Arab Youth Centre is somewhat lackluster. The speaker gives a long historical resume leading up to the clashes at Ghabsieh (Galilee) after which Yom al-Ard became a national festival that overshadowed the battle of Karameh. The audience chatter and fidget with their cell phones; many leave before the speech is ended. When question time comes, the speaker doesn't make an effort to deal with the issues that concern the audience, but reverts to his set speech. Disturbed, I ask Hassan why the speaker doesn't respond more effectively to audience questions? Hassan laughs goodnaturedly, "That's how he is. He always sticks to his script". "But he lost his audience!" "They were too young. They'll learn". Learn what? To respect the 'scripts' of senior men? But of course one could equally argue that the transmission of Palestinian history between generations has in fact been disrupted by the sharp rise in levels of education, eroding the authority of fathers even as respecting this authority becomes a consciously maintained item of "our customs and traditions".

I shouldn't have worried about finding Abu Azmi's house. As soon as Hassan starts enquiring, he finds one of the 'shabab' at the Youth Centre who knows

it. He leads us there. It's only about 8pm but the windows are dark, everyone seems to be asleep. After some knocking and shouting, Abu Azmi comes out, fully dressed. He wakes Umm Azmi to make coffee and tea, and takes us into the visitors' room. It's just as I remember, empty of all furniture except straw mats and a small TV set. Abu Azmi has been entangled for many years in a law suit against the authorities to try and regain his expropriated land. Of course he has to employ an Israeli lawyer - as yet there are no bedouin Palestinians trained in law. He tells Hassan the whole story of his land case, and of his son Izhak, shot by a member of the Green Patrol just outside the village, probably as a warning to Abu Azmi. He shows him all the documents of the case (including his father's Ottoman tabu 16), kept in two suitcases.

Abu Azmi had hoped I would be able to find evidence of his family's ownership from the land registry made by the British Mandate authorities. The surveyors reached the Nagab just before 1948, and had started registering the land around Bir Sabaa. This is where Abu Azmi's father had owned hundreds of dunums. On my earlier visit, he had driven me over rough desert paths -- we had to keep off the main roads because his car wasn't registered -- to show me the ruins of his family home, bombed in 1948, and to gaze at his land stretching to the horizon, unsown and barren. Indeed I had tried to find out what had happened to the British Land registry and was told that, after 1948, four copies had been made by the British government, one of which my informant said had been given to the PLO. This is as far as my enquiry had gone. I can see that Abu Azmi expected better of me. I have to explain to him that I live in Lebanon and very seldom go to England.

Next morning I record with Umm Azmi. It's good to be with this family again.