To be a Voice of Peace

My story begins in a small town of southeastern Idaho. Some call it the armpit, some call it paradise; I find it to be somewhere in between. Growing up in Idaho with a Palestinian background and an Arabic name, in my experience, was nothing short of humiliating. My name was consistently mispronounced and made fun of, my family and I were called terrorists, and I was labeled derogatory names, such as “rag head” and “sand n****r,” and was frequently told to go back to the desert where I belonged.

My father did not infuse much of a cultural understanding of our heritage for my siblings and me for his own reasons. I believe this mostly stemmed from his own propensity to blend in a little more with the predominantly white community. Also, being the oldest son of a family of 7 children in a displaced household, he was faced with a difficult childhood. I can see there is much he does not want to revisit during his difficult years growing up, but unfortunately, his lack of sharing directly impacted my siblings and me. It wasn’t until I was well into my teenage years where I learned that my father and his parents fled from Palestine just before the Six Day War and surrendered their rights to their land. I was completely uneducated about the occupation. My siblings and I were so different from the youth around us and had no cultural understanding in which to build an identity upon. And so, along with being isolated from our peers, we were also separate from a true sense of self.

As I progressed through the American educational system, I retreated further and further from identifying with my Palestinian roots. This continued on and then peaked around the time of September 11th, 2001 and for a number of years afterward. I was a natural target for terrorist jokes for so many years that I eventually became immune to it, and at times, I would even try to casually laugh it off. However, as time went on, I came to recognize the beauty in my uniqueness and began to feel more empowered. I believe it is the allure and mystery of the forgotten stories of Palestine so deep in my blood that had caused this awakening to happen.

Over the course of my teenage years and into my initial adult years, I became infatuated with the Palestinian side of me. I developed a stronger proclivity for Palestinian foods, music, and culture. I started reading Palestinian poetry, following Palestinian authors, and asking my father more about his experiences growing up and what our family is like. From there, this desire to connect to my culture has spanned into a beautiful array of endless synchronicities that propel me further on this path of reconnecting.

With this pride in who I am and where I come from that has been blossoming over the years has naturally birthed a deep desire to be a part of a larger movement for peace and justice in Palestine. Through my own experiences over the course of my life, I recognize the sadness of misinformation and disconnection that come from people who are uneducated about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, as well as the Middle East in general. It has been my hope to visit Palestine for a great number of years, as I still have a lot of family there that I worry I will never be able to meet. And so, it has become a strong inclination of mine to be a voice of peace, advocating for my people, and helping to build bridges of education and understanding of the Palestinian/Israeli struggle and for the possibility of real awareness and communication to arise so that we can naturally arrive at a position for palpable peace and justice in Palestine.