planted miles away from "home"
Collage by Sarah.
I don’t think my parents intended to plant my four siblings and I across the world, but I am grateful that they did. Born in the US of A, relocating to Jordan and the UAE soon after. I do think they intended for our move back to the Middle East to be a form of growth. They planted the seeds, watered us, nurtured us, and we blossomed—much quicker than they expected. I don’t think I grew solid roots until this year. Falasteeni revolution. Nakba reimagined in a digital world. Seeds like me; we only flourish unapologetically.
I don’t think my seventh grade teacher realized how far she pushed me to read and write in Arabic. I do think she intended to make sure I grew fluent in my native tongue, creating a bridge to home so that when I write بقدر to express myself بلغتي الأم. She planted a seed and it flourished, living in it are memories of her when I speak to my Jido and Tata. I know I have been falling short lately, long-distance is hard. Bas I’m trying, والله.
I don’t think I meant to minimize the definition of home by putting it in quotation marks—but if I’m being honest, maybe I did. Just a little. Our subconscious has a tongue of its own, eyes on the inside of our heads. Home is complex and words cannot articulate how true that is. I envy people who can simplify it. I think I wanted to show that I, like millions of Palestinian refugees, do not fit into the boundaries of land and statehood and have learned that home for us is disoriented, distant, and detached. Seeds planted miles away from home, fighting for this home, to allow for its rebirth and for our own, both of which have become inherently intertwined.
I think I think I think but I can never be certain. I stutter and stumble and lose my footing.
I scramble to put words to paper or turn on a voice recording, and when I don’t have all the technology to help me, I try to retain as much as possible as I listen and try to remember verbatim each and every word that my mom, my dad, my grandma, my grandpa say about Falasteen.
Jido, my mom’s dad, is almost 80. He sits outside on the balcony on the ground floor of the apartment building he owns in Amman every night, radio in hand (it usually sits on the headboard over the bed), playing Umm Kulthum or Abdel Halim or other artists that remind him of sitting on the rocks listening to the sound of the ocean as he goes from Yafa to Haifa to Gaza (if I’m remembering correctly) for Eid. Fairouz is for the morning, with breakfast; he makes sure I remember. How could I forget? My mom played “صباحيات فيروز” in the car on the way to school and when she made her morning coffee and in the background as she read one novel after the other. And not too soon after, I mimicked. My vinyl spins at sunrise as I alternate between the two Fairouz records I own. My Umm Kulthum one gathers dust. I wish I could take my record player with me to Amman to show my Jido. I’m not sure if he’d love it or hate it.
Stories are fleeting, details ever-changing, and my memory fails to retain as much as it thought it could. Oral storytelling has long been dismissed amongst academics with a colonial backdrop, but they fail to consider that it is what has kept me afloat. I want to say it drew the metaphorical line between me and Falasteen, but it didn’t. It merely allowed me to draw an outline of the life my grandpa had, the summers my mom had, the future I may have. The latter has become more accessible lately, more realistic, something I can almost touch. In Nablus or Al-Lid (where my mom and dad are from, respectively) or beyond.
My siblings and I are privileged in the context of the diaspora (and in other contexts as well). American passports give us easy entry into our homeland—VIP, they call it, according to 3mtu Sana, my mom’s aunt. Fear kept my parents away as intended by both the occupation and the colonial entities supporting it. Witnessing the destruction of war, Palestinians of any gender detained at any age, homes demolished, the use of force frequent. The images in my mind, the collective memory of Falasteen that I have gathered from smaller memories retold, are intangible. It is that thought that terrifies me. Others like me, we write about it, post about it, share old photos, take new ones, listen to and hear one another, gather and protest for one another.
But without reconciling our grief for a past we never experienced, it’s hard to imagine a future for Falasteen; for a people scattered across the border in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, or across continents; in Chile or Germany or the US. In Arabic, the diaspora is called الشتات الفلسطيني. The term in both languages is derived from the Greek verb διασπείρω (diaspeirō), "I scatter.” For me, the Arabic translates more accurately as: the Palestinian fragmentation. It is high time we call it what it is. Forced fragmentation of the people, of the land; intentional and cruel and inhumane. Many long for a past that I too wish I could witness. The pain of heartbreak from afar leaves me feeling guilty: “Where do I go from here? Where do we go?”
My parents, being second-generation refugees, were raised with clear communication of the quote-unquote politics of the occupation. If you asked them for a solution, they could map one out verbally. They can tell you which countries betrayed us, which supported us, and how to deal with the delicate line in between. My dad tells the same story time and time again; of Jordan’s country-wide shut down for three days after the peace treaty. Time to mourn. The official death of one’s home, how do you grapple with that?
As a third-generation refugee, I have to make clear decisions to educate myself, to draw connections, to stay close to my roots, to imagine a home rebirthed, and better yet, to help rebirth it. ◆
Sarah Afaneh is a poet and journalist based in Abu Dhabi. The intersectionality of her identity informs her writing, speaking to the experience of the female body in the Middle East. She is graduating from NYU Abu Dhabi in May 2022 with a double major in Creative Writing and Social Research. Her latest creative project focuses on her Palestinian heritage, exploring themes of belonging and migration. Find her on Instagram and Twitter.