where is mustapha

Where is Mustapha?

By David Verveer

Introduction

Funny enough, I expected that I would hear more about the disappearance of Mustapha Monsen, the blood son of Mustafa Bey, an army Officer who disappeared from the Palestinian soil, after the Ottoman armies lost the battle against General Allenby, on the end of the First World War.

If you remember, the story started when friends of mine told me about the treasure box they found hid in a hole of an old wall, when their parents left the house, and they took down the antique wooden cupboard, which hid the treasure hole.

In the treasure box they found a button from a Turkey's Army Tunic, a story that asked for more explanations, and indeed a few months later, I got a phone of Palestinians who left Palestine before the Second World War and immigrated to Canada. It was an old gentleman with his Grandson, who was visiting their relatives in a village nearby my house, called Jaljulia.

They told me about Mustapha, the cousin of this old man Musa Monsen, which were raised together, as the mother of Mustapha was killed by his uncle, as a family honor crime, as Mustapha's mother had given birth without having been married to the father.

At the age of 15, Mustapha run from home, with the intention to look for his father in Turkey, and since then Musa never heard again from Mustapha, even though he tried with the help of the Red Cross and other organizations, however without any success. Musa and his grandson returned home to Canada, with the hope that my story would help him somehow to find his cousin Mustapha Monsen.

Last week I received a very happy letter from Hassan, telling me that on arrival back home, they found a letter from the Red Cross with a small list of people who somehow answered to the description and age of Mustapha Monsen, a man who was now also nearing his nineties birthday. And indeed, one of the people listed was a Gentleman calling himself Gustavo Monsen Bey, who lived in a small border town on the Colombian and Venezuelan border.

And, due to the Internet era, they found also an Internet address which they could call for further information. To make the story short, Gustavo was indeed Mustapha, the lost cousin, they phoned and arranged a reunion between the two old men, next spring, where and when has not been established yet, but they spoke several times on the phone, and from this lengthy discussion he following story of Mustapha's travels and life became clear. Hassan asked me to write and publish the story, as he thought it had some historical value, which of course, I am doing now with great pleasure.

I will tell the story chronologically with background information, which I found in history books and on the Internet, I might have included facts which did not really happen in this way, but I tried not to beautify the story with events happening in that era, but still, in order to comprehend this fascinating story, I needed to create the right environment, thus please do not expect absolute true story but the general trends are based on historical facts.

Mustapha runs from home

It was 1932, Mustapha lived with his cousin in the old farm house in the middle of the citrus groves, (today the town of Raanana) which were owned by the influential merchant Muslim family Monsen, mostly living in Jaffa area, the grandfather of Mustapha and Musa was never cut out for trading, and therefore chosen to run the citrus business which was flourishing and profitable, but did not require the sharp business sense required for the international trading.

Mustapha, as I wrote before, was an orphan, as his mother was killed by her brother and the father disappeared to defend his country, during the

First World War, and never returned from the battle.

Mustapha decided to run from home and to look for his father in Turkey, and on a cold night 1034, Mustapha packed his rucksack with cloths, and the next day, he took a ride to the harbor of Jaffa (about 10 km from his home). Mustapha looked much older than his age, and he had no trouble what so ever to get a job of cabin boy / cook on a coaster, who was trading the Mediterranean and Black sea harbors between Marseille in France and Odessa in Russia.

And as he was a quick learner, he soon spoke a mixture of languages, required to make your self understood, in this region of the world. His trip to the Turkey's harbor of Istanbul was not very eventful, he did not have any money, and did not participate in the sailor outings on the way, (Beirut, Tripoli, Nicosia, Izmir, etc.), and when finally anchored in Istanbul, his fellow sailors wondered why he intended to go on shore, but Mustapha never intended to stay on board, and jumped ship.

Istanbul

Here he was, penniless and without papers, looking for a Mustapha Bey, a name which appears to be in Turkey likes looking for John Smith in the USA. But not only his financial status was troubling him, also the fact that he did not speak the language and the Turks of those days, did not like Arabs, specially not the Palestinians. He found a shelter in the bazaar of Istanbul, and some Arabs in the Bazaar gave him some work, sufficient to keep alive, but nothing more.

He soon realized that he had to change his plans, and decide that looking for his father was a childish dream, and if he wants to live, he had to take actions.

Thus after spending three cold and unpleasant months in his father's homeland, he found a new ship and was taken on as cook. Like the first ship, it was also a coaster, trading from harbor to harbor. We have to remember, the political atmosphere of those days was extremely complicated, both Germany and Italy were changing into dictatorships, Spain and Portugal were also losing out on democracy, countries such as Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon were ruled by France and England, Greece was instable, in Turkey, Ataturk was establishing himself as a single power of force, the Austrian empire was falling apart, in short, nobody knew what was going to happen in the next years, poverty and political unrest became the rule.