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Saleem Yousef Bisharah

He was elected mayor of Nazareth in 1924. Under the British Mandate, he was asked for his date of birth and since under the Ottoman Empire no records were ever kept he did not know when he was born. To establish an approximate year of birth, it was known that another man was born approximately at the same time whose father was still alive. The father shrugged and claimed he did not know the year but he recalled ordering two sacks of dried figs from a wholesaler in Haifa to celebrate the birth of his son. The wholesaler’s records were searched and it was established the figs were ordered in 1870 which was recorded officially as the mayor’s year of birth.

The mayor was awarded the M.B.E. by H.M. King George VI in 1942 for introducing electricity to Nazareth. He was later awarded the O.B.E. in 1946 for his philanthropic and diligent work as mayor.  He had to travel to Jerusalem to have the medals pinned on him by the British High Commissioner at which time he was expected to sing the British National Anthem. Not speaking a word of English he tried to find Arabic words that phonetically resembled the English words of the anthem. He sang “ two bulls or a filly” (Torain aw faras) for {to reign over us}.

He had 2 children by his first wife who died in childbirth giving birth to their second child Sami in February 1902. By 1904 he was urged to marry again and was taken to the city of Acre to meet his second wife. He agreed to marry her having seen the back of her head from a house across the street while she was combing her hair. They married in 1904 and his second wife produced 5 boys between 1905 and 1919. Acre in those days was considered a good place to find a spouse since it was the seaport where the crusaders landed, some of whom settled there and married locals passing on blond hair and blue eyes for generations to come.

He was considered to be 20 years ahead of his time and was held in very high regard by all of his contemporaries. He remained as mayor for 24 years until  he arrived in Beirut in 1948 as a refugee.

He was a merchant and a shopkeeper in Nazareth and being the only one on the “street” who could read and write, took orders for all the shops and went to Damascus which was the wholesale centre of the Middle East to place orders for the variety of goods that all the shopkeepers required. His journey to Damascus took the form of a donkey to the port of Haifa, a boat to Beirut and a horse and cart from Beirut to Damascus. It took a week. Today, it’s a 2 hour journey by car.  The Wholesalers accepted his word as his bond and shipped the goods on his say so.  He would then collect the monies due from the shopkeepers and deliver them promptly on his next visit. No letters of credit, no bank guarantees no deposits. Just Saleem Bisharah’s word.

His wife (my grandmother) become mother to his two children from his first wife and her own 5. The seven children produced 16 grandchildren the first of whom was born in 1933 and the last in 1956. 10 boys and 6 girls. Saleem died in 1962 as a result of a fall and a broken hip. The operation was a success but a small bone chip cause a pulmonary embolism and he died instantly without suffering. His wife of 58 years effectively lost the will to live following his death. She was that devoted to him. She had a stroke in 1966 went in to a coma and died in her sleep.