Returning to Palestine: Dismantling the caged identity

My grandfather, buried
in Northern California

I am the oldest of four children, and so I became the carrier of hopes and aspirations my parents seemed unable to reach. While my father immigrated to the US when he was 15, with only his early childhood and teenage years in Palestine, they  are the bulk of his memories. It was these he related to me: the warm bread his mother made, the cold of winter, the water wells, his father’s visits from the US, his ignorance to how poor they were but the reality of their humble happiness.

My grandmother,
buried in Al Bireh, Palestine

And as a result of these stories, it became my own determination to bring forth the years we spent in diaspora, to hopefully return to live in Palestine. My first visit was when I was five, just shortly after the conclusion of the first intifada. I ran back to the US to relate to my kindergarten teacher the destitution I had seen, wearing a shirt with a Palestinian  flag on it that my parents had dressed me in. It was the apparel of someone baptized by the struggle. With my wild hair in my face, I jumped in front of my teacher to tell her where I had went, the soldiers I had seen, the taste of Rukab and kanafe and barbeque. I had lived in my father’s childhood. I saw those who were left, his uncles, the elders that entertained the stories I had heard my father once speak. The narrative of my father was still alive in my childhood, I lived it for two months, and you would hear them all, all the adults, laugh well into the night.

Time went by and my political knowledge grew sharper. My father worked harder to support us. He kept repeating these stories of Palestine, but accented them more as I grew up. I was living by the words he told me, and they became a sentimental text that I guarded vehemently through my goals and actions. It became my dream to return home. By second grade the teachers had to meet and quizzed me for who I was. Five of them sat opposite to me and continued to ask me, “Who is your leader?” And I would say in my nasal-y voice, “Yasser Arafat is the official leader of the Palestinian cause.” And it was then teachers began to give me odd looks, or told me when I drew pictures of home, that it belonged to the Jews. My language changed, my slang and Ebonics grew more characteristic of me. I became reactionary, refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, saying doing so meant standing against myself and the stories my father told me.  I was punished but at the age of 8, I knew it was part of the struggle.

Which is frightening as I look back at how embedded I was in the notion of US relations with Palestine. I was a minority, poor, looked like a mix between African American and something else. But my name was odd. My dad looked like Saddam, my mom looked white. They continuously asked, “What are you?”

With only one white child per classroom in a sea of us “colored folks,” my identity became a forum for common ground yearnings of immigrants.

My father sat us down always and said, “This is who we are. We are American but we have our own culture too, and there is nothing wrong with that. America is a mix. We are a part of that mix. But do not forget where we come from.” A portrait of my brother and I, I wearing a traditional dress my grandmother had sewn and my brother wearing a traditional robe, was nailed into the wall of our small home.  I always stared at it as I chewed the gold necklace my grandmother had given me, gnawing on the olive tree charm until it turned into a battered symbol of who I was.

My father tired for us so that the narration would change, so that I would not have to repeat the story of loss to my own children.  We were going to school, getting straight A’s, joining after school clubs and programs. We were challenging the system in our own way, through friends, talking to neighbors, visibility. We chose topics to debate in class that would educate our peers. We organized events. We called a Zionist what he was. My identity was to resist, resist the police who did nothing in our communities.  Resist the aggressive marketing of a consumer America. Resist the stereotypes of what “ghetto children are.” Resisting Zionism.

In fifth grade I entered a special program for more “talented students,” although looking back I am ashamed I had entered such a thing. I wrote about Palestine. I blamed American Zionism for sustaining my  membership in Diaspora. And my teacher told me, “Britain is the one who signed you guys off.” A boy in my class David, was always picked on. He was white, clean looking. Different. His dad always walked him to class. The kids threw his books on the ground, called him a loser, he resisted. I resisted with him.  He heard my teacher talking about Palestine and Zionism, and the class reject suddenly piped up and said, “I was born in Jerusalem.”

This was the first time my naïve nationalism was challenged. He suddenly grew interested in what I had to say, and despite him being born “to the other side” we shared something between us. I convinced the other kids to leave him alone. I realize what I was thinking without knowing it: Because we get picked on by the system, we look for something to pick on to bring up our feeling of control as marginalized people. And here we were doing this to a new kid, who turned out to be Jewish. He did not deserve it, just as we did not. We were born to this. We must resist.

While my father worked his twelve hour shifts, we called him constantly for help with math equations. And I heard him punching numbers always on the cash register, that was always the sound I heard when I spoke to my father, who would sleep as we went off to school in our giant back packs.

The narration was not changing as I began to tell it. I start with the story of my father, always, and find myself speaking about his life more than the narrative I have lived. By high school I had been doing what my father and uncles had done as immigrants to the US, starting student organizations, advocating, writing articles and poetry, being flamboyantly Palestinian to compensate for the years we were not able to see Palestine. I visited during the second Intifada while American Palestinians in the West Bank were heading the opposite way. They called us crazy, but we told me them it was our duty. The tanks that showed up in front of our home, pulling the kids out of the street when you heard the rumble of army jeeps, days without groceries—this was 1% of what the people were feeling and dealing with.

My father never picked us up from school. The only time was in 11th grade when he lost his job and was unemployed for a year. 

It is a blessing to struggle. You do not take things for granted after that. Whether it is the one time visit of a relative you probably will not see again unless someone gets married or dies, or the food that you can no longer afford. Or trips every weekend to get away from the neighborhood. That was the year family became truly family.

It was only until after I graduated from university that I realized, those of us in diaspora compensate for the time we spend away from homeland with outward, obsessive symbols of Palestine to sheet over the gaps when we were not in our homeland. In Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable, he explains this in regards to the Lebanese (a term he disregards but is still forced to use despite calling himself a Levantine):

My father was still working hard and I was heading off to university, where I became overly involved in anything Palestine. My father’s stories continued to gain detail as I matured.  And he would tell me, “----h, we tried these advocacy tactics. They do not work.” But I had to learn on my own. That hanging a flag outside of the Federal Building in Los Angeles was something my dad did 30 years ago and did nothing but make me feel better about myself.

I read a lot of books. I was challenged by history and literature. I accepted this challenge.

Whether it was the professor who called me into office hours, holding a school newspaper and pointing to my name as an organizer, and crying about his illegal Zionist settler daughter, or the very hush relations between student leaders to get the Palestinian flag hanging from the student body presidents high up office. I took the challenge as a matter of my survival.

I was obsessed.

It was during the long car rides between school and our home that my father began to question the narrative he had lived. He began to ask why was this the result, why did we tire, why are their inconsistencies in the cultural, moral fabric. What spurred religious conservatism between our relatives, why were others who were communists during the 1967 war chasing money so much? What had become of the characters that my father often referenced?

I realized we weren’t perfect as I had thought and grew obsessive with questioning my identity. I dropped the flag patches from my backpack, and began to study migration patterns to Palestine. I started saying I was from Bilad al Sham, the Levant, and learned about the village families I knew who were part Turkish or German or Russian from hundreds of years ago. I made the struggle in my mind about all people, not the borders that carved me into a prison of colonial enscripted identity.

As I neared graduation and began getting ready to go back and live in Palestine, I prepared myself for reality. My father built this for us, a narrative of the past and gave us the tools to challenge the oral history and seek out what exists here today.

Millions of Euros thrown at Palestinian  NGOs in a cross border project,
 and Palestinians sitting like eager beggars  waiting for details and free coffee

We are not perfect. I do not even know who "we" is.

"We" have made many mistakes and we repeat the historical ones in traditional fashion.

"We" are losing ground on all levels, not just the physical.

The elders are dead.

Money is dominating most conversations between "us."

I have returned to the ghetto, this time called Palestinian. Buying brand names is important in Ramallah now, going out and not saving anything is to alleviate the obvious fact that we are failing and hurting. The word martyr only achieves a thirty second conversation. 

Ramallah is dominated by distractions. Conflict mitigation-days of celebrations-caged schools that claim to be prestigious.  

This is not what my father deserves.

As the rain pours today on the faint petals of spring’s elegant return, I do not know who I am anymore. The longer I am here the more sporadic my thoughts. 

The tactics I attempted helped me understand my confusion but caused more questions. Sadly, my identity is merely this: One of billions, unable to live freely.  

These borders are not my god. We are at the crossroads of exchange.

 I embrace my diversity.

This terminology is not my history.

We have existed for centuries and modern terminology has only blurred the history that we claim we defend.

I am a product of struggle. But if I am a product, do I have ownership of my own direction? My Creator is above while those that dismember my history are the anti-Christ.

Working class, financial aid, spray paint, playing in the street, fighting off bullies and even becoming one. 

This is me, raging. Too rough, no where to go, confused.

My grandfather's home,empty and locked now. 

Seeing my dad age too fast because he gave me this life. It hurts. What can I give back to him, the sad stories of today's reality? The billions that are stolen in political charity? The graves of his family as he sits in the US still working while we, his four children, live his dream of return? Do I tell him the days are dead? Do I tell him about the failure of my cell phone, NGO slave generation? Are we to blame? 

I blame myself. I am always guilty, always angry, finding people desperate like me hurts.

Being born to this is like checking into room 1408 at the Dolphin hotel. 

You cannot get out.

Coming to Palestine I have learned that I am a product of many parts of the globe, that living in activist offices and losing nights of sleep organizing simply helped me understand who I am. Beyond that, the system of oppression resumes, with some taking part without actively knowing it. It is frightening to sleep through the night knowing this.  

But I am a person of all people. One who has one simple yearning, complicated by the agenda of Zionism , US discrimination and policing, working class struggles, and crooked politics.

I wish to be free.