I am typing this as I am experiencing a level of exhaustion I haven't felt in ages. It's not exhaustion from studying or working too much or anything like that; it's even better. I'm exhausted because of all the life I've been experiencing, and I've only been on this journey for 2 days.
Today I began the first part of the "work" I've been hoping to do while I'm here. I woke up at 8 AM, drank a quick cup of hot Nescafe (basically instant coffee if you've never had it) despite the 90 degree summer heat, and rode the car that was to take me to my destination: a Palestinian refugee camp.
History time! Palestine was Palestine until May 14th, 1948, in which the nation of Israel was established post WWII. On May 15th, the 1948 war also known as Al-Nakba, or "the Catastrophe". During this war, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes (basically the population of Austin, Texas!) and were forced to flee to other areas of Palestine (known today as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Yes, there are Palestinians who are refugees in their own country, unable to return to their homes since that time. Many of those living in the camps in the other countries have never set foot into Palestine because some do not have Palestinian ID cards to allow them access in and there are many who are not able to obtain IDs from the countries they are residents in because they are refugees. Right now, the Yarmook camp in Syria is a camp of about 140,000 Palestinian refugees who are not struggling for survival in the Syrian war. Lebanon's refugee camps Sabra and Shatila underwent massacres in the 1980s that startled the world when 3500 men, women, and children were killed. The city of Amman (capital of Jordan) itself has about 3 Palestinian refugee camps, one of which I had the opportunity to visit today.
The last time I visited Palestinian two years ago, I remember distinctly asking multiple people if there was any way we could visit a refugee camp. Each time I received the same answer: "Why would you want to go see how they live and upset your life? They don't need your pity." At the time, I had a good idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to study medicine and write the stories of my people for fun. When I volunteered at one of the worst hospitals in the region, I was repeatedly asked by any doctor who found out I was visiting from America about why I would even think to come back. Home is home, right? Turns out it's more complicated than that.
Now, I have a stronger grasp on how I see myself in the future. I want to not only study medicine, but to use medicine as my way of obtaining the stories I want to tell. Pursuing medicine gives me a job that allows me to fuel my passion for writing. It gives me access to those who need voices the most, to families who have been through the worst. Some people need BMWs to get places. I need my education.
Although I found myself once again hearing the same comments about not needing to go see people living in such difficult situations, there was nothing that could stop me this time. I keep thinking back to how they all originate from Palestine the way that I do. The only difference is that I got lucky and left to America. They did not and ended up in camps.
So there I was in weather that felt like 90,000 degrees by that point walking in the middle of homes that were barely homes and mostly stone walls with holes they considered windows and doors. I spoke to a family with 9 children who all slept in one bedroom. I met a grandmother living in a home without electricity, who had a sink in the living room next to a corner in the room she considered the bathroom. At the same time, she was raising her three grandchildren and was taking 9 different medications that she could only get aid to pay for every other month.
I continued on with the assistance of a woman who had been financially assisting various families to the most that she could and collected donations for them from others. She had been seeing these families for the past 10 years, some even 20. She knew their children since the day they were born, many of them now orphans. We visited a home in which the mother was ill and could not see us. Her 17 year old son led us into the house, his solemn face hiding any kind of reaction to us being there. First, to reach the home, the climbed flights and flights of stairs due to the way the houses are build on top of each other from the bottom to the top of the mountain that the camp lies on. Once we made it through the door, it seemed as though the temperature got even hotter as the space was small and cramped. I felt as though I was invading and wanted to apologize to the boy and even thank him multiple times the way my American mind was accustomed to, however as a young Arab man, he avoided eye-contact. On my way up the stairs, I saw little boys who would not talk to the stranger that I was to them, but I managed to let them tell me their ages. I was longing to ask them more, sit with them and find out their dreams, favorite games, and even favorite foods but I knew that was not something they could give me. However, I found myself hoping that the 17 year old boy could answer those questions for me.
"What's the most difficult part of living in the camp?" I finally asked him. It was probably the only time he looked up, shrugged, smiled shyly and gave me an answer I am still dwelling on hours later: "Nothing."
I could name about 15,000 things I could only imagine were challenging. One, the heat as I was melting as we spoke. The lack of financial support. The difficulty to obtain any kind of job. However, there was one thing I found they believed was their strongest weapon: their education. This boy's older brother was in college. The boy himself was studying to be a technician at a local center. Another family we spoke to lived in what I personally considered to be a cave with doors and furniture. It was dark, cramped, and hot. Their fan was broken, as the mother proceeded to tell me. The mother herself had just returned from the hospital with new medication. Since she was from Gaza, she was unable to obtain a Jordanian ID since Gazans do not have a Palestinian ID either, and so the only assistance she was able to obtain was from the hospital. Other Palestinians receive small monthly stipends from the government similar to WIC checks in the states.
As the woman told me of her situation, she smiled and pointed to her "living room" area and said, "Do you see how good it looks? We just had it redone." I took note of her smile and held myself from wiping the sweat on my forehead that seemed to have no end. I tried my best to return her smile because it was at that moment that I believed that I was a Palestinian like many others who got the easier life. We may be strong to be living far from home but we were not the strongest. This woman, her family, and those like her, those are the ones we can only aspire to be like. Ones who are able to sit in darkness and see the light even when I had no way of seeing that.
I asked her about what her dreams were for her sons. She commented that her second son, who was about to be a senior in high school, was a great student and she hoped he'd be a a doctor. You can call it a cliche or call it an Arab stigma, but a doctor there gives hope to their family. A doctor is able to have a life that their family could not have. Later, I asked the boy what he wanted to become when he was older, and he hesitated before saying, "Maybe an engineer or a doctor. It all depends on what scores I get when I graduate."
It was then I noticed the lack of dreams once again. Reality struck hard to the youth and there was no "youthfulness." Most of these families had grown up in these situations and grew accustomed to the struggle, something I don't even like to say but I see it to be true. Could a person who was born blind feel as though they are missing out on what certain colors look like if they had never seen it before? That is what life is to them. A life they have to fight to live and that is all they may have ever known.
Today I began the first part of the "work" I've been hoping to do while I'm here. I woke up at 8 AM, drank a quick cup of hot Nescafe (basically instant coffee if you've never had it) despite the 90 degree summer heat, and rode the car that was to take me to my destination: a Palestinian refugee camp.
History time! Palestine was Palestine until May 14th, 1948, in which the nation of Israel was established post WWII. On May 15th, the 1948 war also known as Al-Nakba, or "the Catastrophe". During this war, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes (basically the population of Austin, Texas!) and were forced to flee to other areas of Palestine (known today as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Yes, there are Palestinians who are refugees in their own country, unable to return to their homes since that time. Many of those living in the camps in the other countries have never set foot into Palestine because some do not have Palestinian ID cards to allow them access in and there are many who are not able to obtain IDs from the countries they are residents in because they are refugees. Right now, the Yarmook camp in Syria is a camp of about 140,000 Palestinian refugees who are not struggling for survival in the Syrian war. Lebanon's refugee camps Sabra and Shatila underwent massacres in the 1980s that startled the world when 3500 men, women, and children were killed. The city of Amman (capital of Jordan) itself has about 3 Palestinian refugee camps, one of which I had the opportunity to visit today.
The last time I visited Palestinian two years ago, I remember distinctly asking multiple people if there was any way we could visit a refugee camp. Each time I received the same answer: "Why would you want to go see how they live and upset your life? They don't need your pity." At the time, I had a good idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to study medicine and write the stories of my people for fun. When I volunteered at one of the worst hospitals in the region, I was repeatedly asked by any doctor who found out I was visiting from America about why I would even think to come back. Home is home, right? Turns out it's more complicated than that.
Now, I have a stronger grasp on how I see myself in the future. I want to not only study medicine, but to use medicine as my way of obtaining the stories I want to tell. Pursuing medicine gives me a job that allows me to fuel my passion for writing. It gives me access to those who need voices the most, to families who have been through the worst. Some people need BMWs to get places. I need my education.
Although I found myself once again hearing the same comments about not needing to go see people living in such difficult situations, there was nothing that could stop me this time. I keep thinking back to how they all originate from Palestine the way that I do. The only difference is that I got lucky and left to America. They did not and ended up in camps.
So there I was in weather that felt like 90,000 degrees by that point walking in the middle of homes that were barely homes and mostly stone walls with holes they considered windows and doors. I spoke to a family with 9 children who all slept in one bedroom. I met a grandmother living in a home without electricity, who had a sink in the living room next to a corner in the room she considered the bathroom. At the same time, she was raising her three grandchildren and was taking 9 different medications that she could only get aid to pay for every other month.
I continued on with the assistance of a woman who had been financially assisting various families to the most that she could and collected donations for them from others. She had been seeing these families for the past 10 years, some even 20. She knew their children since the day they were born, many of them now orphans. We visited a home in which the mother was ill and could not see us. Her 17 year old son led us into the house, his solemn face hiding any kind of reaction to us being there. First, to reach the home, the climbed flights and flights of stairs due to the way the houses are build on top of each other from the bottom to the top of the mountain that the camp lies on. Once we made it through the door, it seemed as though the temperature got even hotter as the space was small and cramped. I felt as though I was invading and wanted to apologize to the boy and even thank him multiple times the way my American mind was accustomed to, however as a young Arab man, he avoided eye-contact. On my way up the stairs, I saw little boys who would not talk to the stranger that I was to them, but I managed to let them tell me their ages. I was longing to ask them more, sit with them and find out their dreams, favorite games, and even favorite foods but I knew that was not something they could give me. However, I found myself hoping that the 17 year old boy could answer those questions for me.
"What's the most difficult part of living in the camp?" I finally asked him. It was probably the only time he looked up, shrugged, smiled shyly and gave me an answer I am still dwelling on hours later: "Nothing."
I could name about 15,000 things I could only imagine were challenging. One, the heat as I was melting as we spoke. The lack of financial support. The difficulty to obtain any kind of job. However, there was one thing I found they believed was their strongest weapon: their education. This boy's older brother was in college. The boy himself was studying to be a technician at a local center. Another family we spoke to lived in what I personally considered to be a cave with doors and furniture. It was dark, cramped, and hot. Their fan was broken, as the mother proceeded to tell me. The mother herself had just returned from the hospital with new medication. Since she was from Gaza, she was unable to obtain a Jordanian ID since Gazans do not have a Palestinian ID either, and so the only assistance she was able to obtain was from the hospital. Other Palestinians receive small monthly stipends from the government similar to WIC checks in the states.
As the woman told me of her situation, she smiled and pointed to her "living room" area and said, "Do you see how good it looks? We just had it redone." I took note of her smile and held myself from wiping the sweat on my forehead that seemed to have no end. I tried my best to return her smile because it was at that moment that I believed that I was a Palestinian like many others who got the easier life. We may be strong to be living far from home but we were not the strongest. This woman, her family, and those like her, those are the ones we can only aspire to be like. Ones who are able to sit in darkness and see the light even when I had no way of seeing that.
I asked her about what her dreams were for her sons. She commented that her second son, who was about to be a senior in high school, was a great student and she hoped he'd be a a doctor. You can call it a cliche or call it an Arab stigma, but a doctor there gives hope to their family. A doctor is able to have a life that their family could not have. Later, I asked the boy what he wanted to become when he was older, and he hesitated before saying, "Maybe an engineer or a doctor. It all depends on what scores I get when I graduate."
It was then I noticed the lack of dreams once again. Reality struck hard to the youth and there was no "youthfulness." Most of these families had grown up in these situations and grew accustomed to the struggle, something I don't even like to say but I see it to be true. Could a person who was born blind feel as though they are missing out on what certain colors look like if they had never seen it before? That is what life is to them. A life they have to fight to live and that is all they may have ever known.
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