Palestine.
I can’t seem to be able to get off Instagram. When things like this happen, most people I know need to step away, understandably. I move in. I post incessantly, watch videos, curse under my breath. I get emotional. I get angry. I get sad.
Today I saw a video of a little girl in Gaza rocking back and forth, chanting those simple Arabic phrases I learned at the age of 3 or 4: “SubhanAllah, wal Hamdulilah, wa la ilaha ill Allah wallahu Akbar.” Simple phrases glorifying God. Around her, the sound of rockets, missiles, planes. The camera shook when one landed close by. She kept going. “SubhanAllah…”
I had to stop for the first time in a week. I put my phone down and went for a walk, allowing the sun to drench up my discomfort.
I am familiar with the feeling of what it’s like, in a very, very, very pared-down, miniscule way— a breathy shadow of a way— to live out your childish innocence while chaos and corporeal fear envelope your surroundings. I didn’t grow up in a war, I grew up in suburban Maryland, with a lawn and a bike and all the kid stuff that makes for a very normal American childhood. I didn’t grow up with bombs exploding around me, but I did grow up with violence. I know what it’s like to hide in a room, gauging what parts of your home are being destroyed from the particular thuds and sounds of shattering glass you pick up on. I know what it’s like to calculate how dangerous things may be for you when you unlock that door and venture out.
I spent the majority of my twenties recovering from those experiences. They are nothing compared to what Palestinian children are living through today, lived through in 2016, 2014, and all the years before. About half of Gaza’s population is made up of children under the age of 15. I think about that little girl rocking back and forth in the video I saw today, the one that finally got me to put my phone down: “Subhanallah, wal Hamdulilah…” Bombs explode around her. It has taken me about 8 years to recover from my own experiences, softened with memories of pool days and bike rides and sleepovers and my favorite cotton candy popsicles from the ice cream truck. That little girl and I are not the same, and I am not fully healed. With all my privilege and all my safety, my access to therapy, and having grown up so far away from a warzone.
Gaza’s children are playing games and rescuing pet fish and chanting prayers in the night as bombs explode around them. They will never be the same.
One habit I developed years ago was going on the Library of Congress’ website, where you can access the most beautiful photos of what life was like in Palestine before the Nakba, before expulsion, before checkpoints and institutionalized narratives and rockets and missiles and bombs and rubble. Jaffa looks like a dream, people in long robes mulling around markets as the sea sparkles in their surroundings. Women in Ramallah are dressed like queens, carrying clay pots on their heads. Nazareth is just olive groves and mountains and tiny villages of homes in between. It takes my breath away.
If I were to go to Palestine in that era, I wouldn’t know the language. I have no lineage, no connection to that land. My love for Palestine is spiritual, mellow, dreamlike. And I know Palestine is mine. And I know that child is me. And I know this pain is my own to mourn.