I wish this post meant that I was home. I dream for the day when I can blog from my home in Palestine and tell you all about the beauty in it, tell you about how amazing it feels to breathe the fresh Arabian air, listen to the Arabic tongues speak their language wherever I turn my ears, and smell the scent of....I've been trying to find a word but all I can think of is the scent of Palestine.
Here I am supposed to be working on a project for a class, which I've decided to do about Palestine. It's turned out to be a bad idea, or maybe not bad, but difficult. I pulled out old pictures, and then found myself playing old music, and that was all it took for me to crash. All of a sudden I can't imagine looking out my window and seeing the snow that lies on my front yard, and I can't stand the flatness of my street, or the fact that I can't see my aunt who was my best friend, or my uncle who was the older brother I never had, or the cousin who I was so close with that it almost unbearable to not see her anymore. Suddenly all of this is just hard to deal with again.
The last time I've walked on Arab land was two and a half years ago. We're planning to visit the summer in a year and a half and I can't imagine not being home until then. Yesterday it was fine. Yesterday was like any other day. But today feels like the days when I first moved back here and I couldn't stand being away, and at the same time it feels like I've been away for so long I can't breathe without breathing THAT air. All I see when I look around at my room is my room in my house overseas. All I see when I look at the laptop I'm typing on is the countless days I spent typing away my first short stories in my room during the rainy winters. All I see when I look in the mirror at myself with my head scarf is on the first day I wore my hijab and how I walked out in the street among other girls and women looking just like me, proud of their hijabs and feeling like they're in their rightful place. Whenever I close my eyes, I see myself standing in front of my house in Palestine and looking out at the mosque across town, the olive trees next to my house, listening to the creak of the gate in front of the house, hearing the laughter of the children in the neighborhood.
No matter how many times I'll feel like I'm finally accustomed to living away, it just hits me all at once that the majority of my life hasn't been spent in my homeland. I've spent it all away, I've been kicked out because the country is occupied and we can't live on the country's failing economy. We've been kicked out of the land that our great great grandfathers lived in with their kids. And now we've become citizens of another country and are constantly trying to fit in and try to prove to people that we belong here as much as they do. But in reality, we just want to live at home.
No one has ever looked at us and wondered why we immigrated instead of just calling us intruders or terrorists. Do people know that we can't live at home because the occupation doesn't allow us to? Do people know that some of us can't even cross the borders and get in? Do people know that we're subjecting ourselves to discrimination and hate just to try and make a life somewhere for our families to live?
No. Every one of us has chosen to live away from home. But we didn't. A lot of us had no choice but to try and find a good life in the Land of Opportunity. And it's hard. And painful. And full of moments where we have to choose between being weak or being strong. But people don't know that when we close our eyes and dream at night, all we see is our family members that we've left behind, the grandparents we're afraid to lose when we're too far to see them, the cousins we miss playing with, the holidays we miss spending at home, the house that was decades old.
That's what I see when I close my eyes. Home.
-Wishful Dreamer
Here I am supposed to be working on a project for a class, which I've decided to do about Palestine. It's turned out to be a bad idea, or maybe not bad, but difficult. I pulled out old pictures, and then found myself playing old music, and that was all it took for me to crash. All of a sudden I can't imagine looking out my window and seeing the snow that lies on my front yard, and I can't stand the flatness of my street, or the fact that I can't see my aunt who was my best friend, or my uncle who was the older brother I never had, or the cousin who I was so close with that it almost unbearable to not see her anymore. Suddenly all of this is just hard to deal with again.
The last time I've walked on Arab land was two and a half years ago. We're planning to visit the summer in a year and a half and I can't imagine not being home until then. Yesterday it was fine. Yesterday was like any other day. But today feels like the days when I first moved back here and I couldn't stand being away, and at the same time it feels like I've been away for so long I can't breathe without breathing THAT air. All I see when I look around at my room is my room in my house overseas. All I see when I look at the laptop I'm typing on is the countless days I spent typing away my first short stories in my room during the rainy winters. All I see when I look in the mirror at myself with my head scarf is on the first day I wore my hijab and how I walked out in the street among other girls and women looking just like me, proud of their hijabs and feeling like they're in their rightful place. Whenever I close my eyes, I see myself standing in front of my house in Palestine and looking out at the mosque across town, the olive trees next to my house, listening to the creak of the gate in front of the house, hearing the laughter of the children in the neighborhood.
No matter how many times I'll feel like I'm finally accustomed to living away, it just hits me all at once that the majority of my life hasn't been spent in my homeland. I've spent it all away, I've been kicked out because the country is occupied and we can't live on the country's failing economy. We've been kicked out of the land that our great great grandfathers lived in with their kids. And now we've become citizens of another country and are constantly trying to fit in and try to prove to people that we belong here as much as they do. But in reality, we just want to live at home.
No one has ever looked at us and wondered why we immigrated instead of just calling us intruders or terrorists. Do people know that we can't live at home because the occupation doesn't allow us to? Do people know that some of us can't even cross the borders and get in? Do people know that we're subjecting ourselves to discrimination and hate just to try and make a life somewhere for our families to live?
No. Every one of us has chosen to live away from home. But we didn't. A lot of us had no choice but to try and find a good life in the Land of Opportunity. And it's hard. And painful. And full of moments where we have to choose between being weak or being strong. But people don't know that when we close our eyes and dream at night, all we see is our family members that we've left behind, the grandparents we're afraid to lose when we're too far to see them, the cousins we miss playing with, the holidays we miss spending at home, the house that was decades old.
That's what I see when I close my eyes. Home.
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