Letters from Palestine (4 page)

Shireen Tawil grew up in Washington, D.C.,
and is currently working in Beirut on reproductive and sexual
health education. She has been active in the Palestinian struggle
in many facets throughout her life and knows her humanist views
have been shaped largely by her extraordinary family. She hopes
this book shows the human face of Palestine to those who do not
know it and to those who would deny it.

When I was a little girl

You see, when I was a little girl, I felt
guilty.

I felt very, very guilty.

I had pretty, frilly, poofy dresses to wear
on Christmas and Easter. I lived in a big brick house at the top of
a hill, with a swing set in my backyard. I went to a small school
where we had new books each year and went on fieldtrips to places
like the Children’s Museum. At birthday parties I did things like
go bowling or fly down waterslides in indoor pools.

I got to have fun and be Palestinian, and I
didn’t understand how that could be. When I was a little girl, all
we talked about at home was
‘adeyat phalastin
—the question
of Palestine. Words like “deportation,” “tanks,” “refugees,”
“rights,” “camps,” “torture” swam around me in adults’
conversations. Every night, Baba would come home from work, and we
would all gather in the living room to watch Peter Jennings’
World News Tonight
at 7:00 p.m.

“Hello and good evening, I’m Peter Jennings.
Tonight we begin in the West Bank where fighting has intensified
between Israel and the Palestinians . . .” Peter would begin. Gun
claps would explode from the TV. Young brown boys would throw
stones at tanks and barely visible soldiers and run away. Dust was
everywhere. Mothers would cry over their dead sons and jailed
husbands. The Intifada was raging, and I didn’t understand. We were
never allowed to talk during the news. Watching the news together
to see what was happening
bi phalastin
—in Palestine—was a
nightly ritual not to be interrupted for any reason. If Baba worked
late, Mama would watch the news, and we would summarize for him
what had happened that day. Always here and watching there through
our TV at night.

I was young and didn’t understand that life
is incongruent. I did not understand that I could be here, that
Baba could be from there, and my life could be like this. It did
not make sense to me. How come Baba was Palestinian like the people
on TV, but he is a doctor? (Palestinians were just faces on TV,
decontextualized from any profession or personal life really.) And
we live in a brick house on top of a hill, not in a camp. These two
distinct, yet related, realities did not make sense to me. I felt
guilty that I was lucky enough to be born where I was and have what
I had.

I felt so, so, so guilty.

I wanted to live in a refugee camp and
suffer. Then I wouldn’t feel guilty. Then my world would fit
together. I thought you could only be Palestinian the way the news
showed them to us—in camps, being shot at, crying.

But then, as I grew up, this desire to be
there evolved into a desire to do everything I could here for
Palestine. I began to understand that you are born into a position,
but you shape your life.

My respect for my father grew tremendously
as I learned more about our family’s history and his childhood. In
his youth, he worked himself to the bone and was clear focused on
one goal—becoming a doctor—to give him the financial security he
sought. I think it’s a kind of desire for, and appreciation of,
financial security that you can only really have when you have seen
your family lose everything it had and have to start again. He
worked his way through school, always focused, always driven,
knowing he had to get those grades to get those scholarships or he
couldn’t get to the next level. And he had to get to the next
level. He had to get to medical school.

His motivation and one-track mind has
inspired me in my education. His motivation was entering medical
school, mine has been, and continues to be, to educate myself and
you about Palestine. The guilt of my childhood has worn away into a
drive to arm myself with as much knowledge as I can about every
aspect of
‘adeyat phalastin
(the question of
Palestine)—historical, cultural, political, legal, health,
artistic, philosophical. As my friend Hind said, “We are part of an
army of educated Palestinians coming to take it back.” When you
don’t have a country, education is all you have.

In the eighth grade, we studied Asian
history. While most people wrote about China and Japan, I
approached Mr. L and told him that I wanted to write about
Palestine and Israel, arguing that they were technically in Asia,
so my paper would be appropriate. He must have been a bit shocked
and intrigued because he let me write my paper, which was on
Israel’s use of torture on Palestinians. Ever since then, I have
found myself writing about Palestine, perpetually. It is a
privilege to be given the opportunities I have had—educational and
otherwise—but more than that, I feel it is my duty to use those
opportunities to speak and educate about Palestine. Giving back to
Palestine is my ultimate motivation in everything I do. Even now,
as I sit and write this to you—for you—I am very uncomfortable
sharing these deeply personal feelings and thoughts with you, but I
write in the hopes that you will see Palestinian with a human face,
and not just anonymous figures in the news. That maybe this will
help you see us as people who laugh, sing, feel, cry, hope, have
secrets, think, create, love. I want you to see me—see us—as
humans, not death tolls, not nameless, ahistorical people. We are
real. Like you.

Sometimes I feel I take myself too
seriously, that I should lighten up, but deep down in my core I
know I can never be distracted from Palestine and my dedication to
it. There have been times I have felt burned out and strayed away,
getting caught up in the privilege of being able to turn off misery
thousands of miles away. But each time I stray, something pulls me
back in, and I feel a deep sense of shame of having turned my back
on Palestine. Because in the end, to me,
‘adeyat phalastin
is the ultimate fight for humanity and justice.

And being Palestinian reminds me every day
that justice and human rights can never be taken for granted.
Because, in theory, every person is entitled to equality and his or
her rights. In reality, they are a privilege a select few enjoy.
Being Palestinian, and active in the Palestinian struggle, has been
a blessing for me in that it has helped me see the connections
between other struggles for justice always first and foremost
through the lens of human rights. It has clarified my vision of the
world to be one of human rights and equality. It has helped me
resist racism. It makes me question myself over and over and over,
but in the end, my stances always remain firmly rooted where they
started: humanity, justice, and human rights.

Being Palestinian is an honor, but with it
comes duty to give back to Palestine and speak out about it.
Because, as Dr. King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we
become silent about things that matter.” Working for Palestine
gives me meaning. It grounds me, and I cannot remain silent. I
cannot be at peace with myself knowing I was silent. I cannot
respect myself if I am silent. Those times I have been shocked into
silence by a racist comment still shame me, because I lost my
voice. Because for a moment, I let bigotry win over humanity. But I
remember those times when I did find my voice, and they drive me
forward.

I will forever be exhausted by Palestine and
driven by Palestine. It drains my energy and emotions and
revitalizes me and gives me meaning. It has given me the ability to
always choose humanity over politics, no matter how uncomfortable
that choice might be, and the self-confidence to doubt myself and
question my beliefs—always driven by the desire to be human first,
everything else second. I write about and speak about Palestine
incessantly out of love and obligation, so everyone whose life I
have passed through—whether for a minute or the duration of our
lifetimes—will have thought about Palestine for at least a minute.
They will have heard about the building of illegal settlements; the
economic siege on Gaza; the illegal detentions, jailings, and
extrajudicial killings; the skyrocketing poverty in Gaza; that now
fifteen percent of Gazan children are intellectually impaired due
to malnutrition; that many Palestinian children wet their beds
through their early teens because of mental distress; that we have
a whole culture, poetry which lights up the imagination; that there
is an occupation of land; that there was and is a Palestine and
Palestinians exist. We exist. And we will not be silent.

And now, I write this for you—to you—so you
can never say, “Oh, but I didn’t know . . .”

Where are you from?

I lean over the bar and follow the bartender
with my eyes, hoping to catch his attention. My hair is long,
chestnut, and curly—with that carefully tousled look that only
hours of deliberate styling can achieve. My lips glisten with
Chanel lip gloss and I am wearing my “Arms are for Hugging” T-shirt
that casually hangs off my left shoulder, exposing a pink bra
strap. T.I. and Rihanna blare overhead, “Ain’t got no time for no
haters, just live your life.” Finally the bartender comes over to
me.

“Stella, please,” I half yell, half mouth to
him.

“Two, please,” corrects the guy standing
next to me, holding up two fingers to the bartender as he turns
away to grab the beers. “Sorry, it’s just impossible to get their
attention. I have cash, don’t worry about it.”

He smiles. I smile back and turn away for a
moment, then turn back to see if he’s still looking at me. He is. I
give him an inquisitive look, letting him know he better start the
conversation if he expects to have one with me. He opens his mouth
and is about to say something when the bartender brings us our
beers. He reaches for his wallet and pays for both of them.

“Hey, I’m Nick by the way,” he says in my
ear. “What’s your name?”

I smile, knowing where this is going.

“Shireen.”

“Sherry?”

“No, Shireen!”

“Shiri?”

No—Sheereen, S-h-i-r-e-e-N.” I emphasize the
last syllable so he hears it.

“Oh, that’s a pretty name. I’ve never heard
that before,” he says, leaning his head back. And then he asks the
dreaded, seemingly innocuous, yet highly loaded question, every guy
asks you at a bar in New York.

“So, where are you from?”

I sigh to myself a little. I have been asked
this question upward of a million times and have a number of
different answers, which I use at the discretion of my mood. I try
to decide which answer to give the cute boy with sandy brown hair
who just bought me a beer.

I’m from DC

“I’m from DC,” I say lightly, taking a sip of
my Stella.

“No, but, like . . . originally, you know .
. . where are you from?” He stumbles over his words, looking at me,
trying to carefully phrase his question of why I don’t “look”
American.

“Oh, I was born in California . . . in San
Diego.” I play with him a bit, knowing what he wants to know,
waiting to see how he’ll phrase it.

“Oh cool, I mean though, where’s your family
from?” He recovers and clarifies.

“My father is from Palestine and my mother
from Lebanon.” I lay out my family history, leaving out a few
muddled details.

“Oh wow, that’s so interesting.” His eyes
widen a bit as he watches me drink my beer.

Is it really so interesting, I wonder? Why
is there always this reaction of intrigue of being Palestinian? As
though I’m a rare specimen he’s heard so much about—glimpsed once
or twice on TV, but never actually witnessed in real life. Now he
was experiencing “Palestinian.” The Palestinian stares at her beer,
wondering what his next question will be. She is no longer the
pretty girl he’s chatting up: she’s the Palestinian girl.

I’m Arab

“It’s an Arabic or Persian name . . . but I’m
Arab,” I tell Nick.

“Oh cool. From where?” he probes.

“I’m Palestinian.” I take a sip of my beer
and hold his gaze, waiting for his reaction.

“Oh cool . . . have you ever been there
before? Man, that shit is fucked up. Why do you guys keep fighting
with each other? Everyone needs to just chill out,” he
exclaims—proposing the ultimate solution, ‘chilling out.’

Brilliant. Thank you, Nick, for the nuanced
advice.

“Been where?” I ask, goading his reply.

“To Israel. I had a chance to go in high
school. It’s supposed to be really beautiful. But I’m not trying to
get blown up, you know? I don’t know why you guys are all about the
suicide bombs ’n’ shit.”

“I have been to Israel.” I choose my words
carefully now, ignoring his gratuitously racist comment. “And to
Occupied Palestine—the West Bank, but not Gaza. I’m
Palestinian—like, from Palestine. I’m not from Israel,” I
clarify.

“So what do you think of it? What’s the
solution?”

Nick grills me, leaning over his beer. He
asks this, again seemingly simple question, expecting a 1, 2, 3
answer. I want to ask him if he even knows what the problem is
before he asks what the solution is. But I know that whatever
answer I give him will not be what he’s looking for on a Saturday
night. He expects the nice little “two-state solution” sound bite
that leaves most Americans happy without having his Saturday night
dampened hearing about the atrocious realities of Occupation. My
reality, my thoughts . . . they’re not what he’s asking for.

I’m Palestinian

I take a deep breath and look Nick in the
eyes. “I’m Palestinian,” I say, with what I think is an air of
defiance. My stomach tightens a bit, and I am ready for an
argument. I look at him, waiting for a reaction.