Letters from Palestine (10 page)

It’s true that being Arab-American is
different in many ways than being from back home. Those of us born
in the States tend to fuse our cultures, even down to the language,
saying things like “shork,” a mixture of the Arabic word
shokea
and the English word
fork
. I guess you can
call our language “Arabish.” Even when we travel back to the Middle
East there’s a certain tone of voice reserved for us kids from
America, a certain way they treat us, trying to find other
Arab-Americans we can play with. What my dad was threatening me
with, though, was a purer form of the Arab culture. In his mind, I
hadn’t yet seen the primary source, and he was absolutely
right.

Eighteen came and went, and for some reason
or other I was never sent back to Birzeit to rough it out on my
own. When I turned twenty, in the summer of 2006, it was time to
take matters into my own hands. My heritage is such an integral
part of my life and a large part of my own identity. I wanted to be
able to, in some way, make it my own and to be free of the excuse
that I just didn’t get the Arab culture fully. My parents, at
first, thought it was a nice idea, but when they saw I was serious,
they didn’t think it was so nice anymore. The whole going on your
own threat was never really to be brought to fruition. But I was
determined, probably more than I’d ever been determined to do
something before.

I bought my ticket on a credit card so I
couldn’t back down while trying to raise the money. To pay the
credit card off, I picked up a second job while going to school
full-time and saved anything that didn’t go to my ticket for
souvenir buying. I would cut costs while in Birzeit by staying with
my aunt, so I wouldn’t need to pay for a hotel (in my parents’
defense, they did arrange this detail for me). I knew that much of
my trip was going to be one of self-discovery. For me, it would be
that passage from childhood to adulthood, the kind you see in
National Geographic where an indigenous boy’s arm in some reclusive
African village is covered in biting ants, and he has to withstand
the pain in order to be a man, except my version would be slightly
less physically painful. In order to up the intensity a bit and
make the trip worthwhile for me, I made arrangements to spend time
volunteering in the Jalazone refugee camp, about a ten-minute taxi
ride from Birzeit. Along with international students at Birzeit
University, I would be helping teach classes at the U.N. school in
Jalazone on such subjects as art and music.

Although I was excited about making this
trip alone, I was also very apprehensive. When I arrived at the Tel
Aviv airport, I was interrogated for
seven hours
because my
name was Arabic. I sat in an enclosure with other Arab families
that were being interrogated. Some had been there for over nine
hours. During interrogation, the question I found most difficult to
answer was, “Why are you traveling alone.” Of course, this was an
uncertainty that had nothing to do with being interrogated by an
Israeli security officer who called my parents in the States and
every relative I have in the Middle East and still wouldn’t tell me
if I was going to be allowed through or not. The uncertainty rather
stemmed from not knowing exactly what it was I was trying to prove
to myself

The first couple of days in Birzeit I spent
getting adjusted, since no real work needed to be done. It didn’t
take me long, though, to get enmeshed in the culture. By the third
day, I was using my Arabic like a real pro, going down the street
to get hummus and falafel for breakfast (and sometimes for lunch
and dinner too). I was traveling to Ramallah on my own, to
Jerusalem, and even to Bethlehem. It really was a different world
without my parents guiding me the whole time. I can say with
certainty that I did not get out of this trip what my parents had
hoped for me to get out of it. I learned so much more about the
culture, about my culture, yes. And it was every bit as my parents
had related it to me, but I learned so much more about the people
and about myself along the way, things I don’t think my parents
could have taught me if they wanted to.

It was during this trip I first realized
what freedom really meant. I had been saying that all Palestinians
want is freedom, peace, and justice, but I don’t know that I really
understood that mantra. Sure, I had trouble traveling despite
having an American passport because to any Israeli soldier I was
Palestinian first and foremost; my ordeal at the airport is one
example of that. But I was going home in three months. For my
family that still lived in Birzeit, it was much more permanent.

“You see this,” my cousin Hana said to me
once, pounding her Palestinian passport against her fist. “I am
proud of it. I am proud of what it represents.” She was quiet for a
moment. “I hate it too. I can’t go to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem. I
have to carry it with me everywhere like a chain.”

_PHOTO

Sheeren, with Her Cousin Hana on the
right

It was for those exact reasons most
Palestinians fled and never came back, why we are scattered across
the world from Australia to South America. In these countries, we
can go to supermarkets, and we aren’t searched, a fact that
surprised another cousin of mine, a resident of Israel, who came to
visit me soon after my trip.

_PHOTO

Shereen’s Jalazone students

This same theme was apparent as I began to
spend time volunteering in the Jalazone refugee camp. The children
were awed that here was a real live Palestinian woman, who spoke
Arabic and English, who looked and even dressed like they did and
went to university. I had been to all kinds of foreign lands. One
girl who shared my name asked me all kinds of questions about
university. She wanted to know what it was like, what kinds of
things did I learn. Despite the occupation, Palestinians still
remain some of the most educated people in the Arab world. They sit
at checkpoints if they can’t make it to school and read their
books, or have class right there if their teacher happens to be
around. Students travel out of Gaza to go to university, not
knowing if they’ll ever be let back in. They may never see their
families again, but their education is just that important. The
fact that I went to university unfettered was a mystery to this
younger Shereen, and she was captivated by everything I could tell
her. All the kids wanted to know how to write their names in
English. Some of the children drew me a large Palestinian flag on a
poster and wrote their names in English on it to show me how they
remembered. It remains one of my most prized possessions. I can say
I came back to the U.S. with a new appreciation for all of my
classes and realized what a privilege it was for me just to be able
to attend class.

But the freedom I enjoyed was not just
freedom of movement or educational opportunity, but also the
freedom to live peacefully, knowing that my family and my loved
ones are safe and protected by a mostly fair government. The
majority of the students I worked with at the camp had a parent or
a sibling in jail. One boy’s father was shot by Israeli soldiers
right in front of his eyes. Many of the children wore pictures of
dead loved ones or of martyrs around their necks or on their
shirts. It was a constant part of their lives.

One project we wanted to do with the group
was to transform their playground into something more kid-friendly,
a place where they could escape politics since their playground was
completely covered in political slogans and cartoons. Our first
task for them was to draw the things they would want to put on the
new painting. They drew Palestinian flags. In America, when I think
“not political,” I think flowers and cute bunnies. I can turn off
the TV and stay away from the news for a while, and I have freedom
from all the stress that comes from being from an occupied land.
They can’t. They do not have the freedom to live peacefully, mostly
because they cannot live securely.

Israel spends most of its time talking about
security for its people. Well, what about us? Cars that are stolen
are left broken in the street because there is no proper police
force to deal with the problem. And who is prosecuting the people
who killed my students’ parents, or who wrongfully imprisoned their
mothers and brothers? There is no security and no justice for those
who live in the West Bank and Gaza. In the U.S., on the other hand,
I can sue someone who merely looks at me the wrong way.

Because of these restrictions, life in
Palestine is almost unbearable, causing many of those who can leave
to leave. Those who stay, by virtue of remaining and staying in
their homes, are peacefully resisting the occupation. It was my
cousin Hana who first made this clear to me. She and I spent almost
every day together, and I squeezed out of her every bit of
information on the conflict of life under occupation that I could.
She would express her fear of people leaving for the States or
elsewhere and not coming back, people forgetting what Palestinian
culture really is, even beyond just the struggles of the
occupation. She was a student at Birzeit University and was writing
her senior thesis on traditional Palestinian wedding chants because
she didn’t want people to forget them. She would take me down to
the old part of Birzeit and tell me all about the different
buildings, their history, who they belonged to. She remembered
because she didn’t want that information to be forgotten.

To those who stayed in Birzeit, it was hard.
They saw a vibrant city dwindle down to almost nothing as more and
more families and students left for a life with greater freedom.
That very summer, we had a convention of the Birzeit Society, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping those from Birzeit in
contact and to protecting and supporting the city. Once people from
around the world flew in for the convention, the city came to life.
I arrived almost a month ahead of the convention and saw the city
change as homes that had been boarded shut were aired out, coming
alive with lights and voices rising out of open windows. Balconies
that had been empty were now filled with laughter at some lame joke
and curses over tea and a card game late into the night. My cousin
reminded me how this would only last a short time. Soon everyone
would go back to the States, to Germany, to Australia, and the old
Birzeit that had reemerged as homes and streets filled would be
silent again. She was afraid we would forget. That we would come
for the convention but we wouldn’t come back.

I will never forget. I can as soon forget my
own name. I can still vividly hear my students’ voices as they
plead with me to take their picture. They absolutely loved having
their pictures taken and wanted to know if I would show them off in
the U.S. In fact, most people I met wanted to know if they shared
their stories of pain and their stories of resistance, would I
share them in the states for their sake. For Palestine’s sake, they
would say, spread the word. Take pictures, write what I tell you,
they would say, and spread the word. I had people go out of their
way to take me to Haifa, to Hebron, and give me tours of all types
of cities just to show me the things that confined them and made
their lives so difficult, to show me what living under occupation
really meant. The things I saw I could write a book about:
overflowing hospitals in Hebron, useless checkpoints and reminders
of checkpoints scattered around the land, among other things. And
each time they asked me to take pictures, and not to forget.

I won’t forget, and I won’t be the person
who didn’t come back. That’s one way I’ve become a different person
than I was before I made my trip to the West Bank in 2006. I saw a
thriving people, pushing every day, against all odds, just to make
things work, and they sang and praised God as they did it. I saw
cruelty in the occupation that is subtle, a psychological warfare
inflicted on the people that you can’t catch on camera, and I felt
it. Now I speak about Palestine with a certain haughtiness because
I had the ants on my arm, and I survived, and I lived to tell the
tale. But I live my life with humbleness because I cherish more
than ever the freedoms I have, and I understand them so much more,
and I will fight for them so much harder. It is because of this
contrast that all I do I treat as a gift, as an opportunity, and
that if I make the best decisions possible in my life, maybe one
day my opportunity will translate into opportunity for the people
in Palestine who shared their stories with me—taxi and bus drivers,
the children I worked with in Jalazone, my aunts and uncles, my
cousins. I’m going to be the person who goes back, and I’m going to
go back with a vengeance.

In the selections to follow, our contributors
continue to give us a vivid picture of what ordinary life is like
for Palestinians living in the West Bank, particularly those who
have spent time in or near its de facto capital, Ramallah. Here, we
again are made to witness the hassles and humiliations that come
with having to pass through degrading checkpoints, with their
seemingly interminable chaotic waiting periods; the frequent
restrictions of movement and the ever-present risk of detention;
the necessity to submit to pettifogging bureaucratic regulations
associated with having to apply for permits not only to travel but
even to remain in Palestine; and, most shocking of all, the
arbitrary denial of passage to hospitals for desperately needed
medical treatment and, even, in one case, for permission to have
one’s baby. (As is well documented, many pregnant Palestinian women
have lost their babies as a result of not being allowed to pass
through checkpoints, and sometimes even their own lives.)