Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora

382 Pages·2016·5.521 MB·English

by  Yasir Suleiman (editor)

Y
A
‘These thoughtful, poignant reflections bring forth vividly B e i n g
S
I
some of the human dimensions of one of the great tragedies RE
D

of current history, the forced dispossession of Palestinians SUIT
E
from their homeland.’ LD
E
B P a l e s t i n i a n
Noam Chomsky IMY
A
‘This handsome collection speaks in a multiplicity of voices and
N
textures that capture the enduring presence of the homeland in
every Diasporic home. Palestinians and non-Palestinians will be
moved by it in equal measure.’
Azmi Bishara
B
P e r s o n a l R e f l e c t i o n s
How does it feel when you cannot find Palestine under ‘P’ in the encyclopaedia your e
father brings home? Why cultivate fig and orange trees in the Arizona desert? What
o n P a l e s t i n i a n I d e n t i t y
i
does it mean to know every inch of a village you have never seen, a village that no
n
longer exists?
i n t h e D i a s p o r a
In this groundbreaking volume, 102 Palestinians in North America and the United g
Kingdom reflect in their own words on what it means to be Palestinian in the diaspora.

Men and women, young and old, Christians and Muslims, including well-known
P
academics, poets, writers, faith leaders and singers, reveal their tangled ties to ‘home’
and ‘homeland’, exploring how Palestine in the diaspora can be both lost and found, a
bereaved and celebrated, lived and longed-for.
l
Touching, often troubling, but full of character and wit, the reflections in Being e
Palestinian offer a radically fresh look at the modern Palestinian experience in the West.
s
And the time-honoured issues of identity, exile and diaspora give acute sense to these
t
very personal reflections.
i
n
Yasir Suleiman is His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa’id Chair of Modern Arabic Studies
and a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. His many published works include Arabic in i
the Fray: Ideology and Cultural Politics (2013), Arabic Self and Identity: A Study in Conflict and a
Displacement (2011), A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East (2004) and The
n
Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (2003).
Cover image: Sinan Malley © Kate Robertson. Jerusalem Old City and The Noble Sanctuary © Rostislav Ageev/shutterstock.com,
Edinburgh city skyline from Calton Hill © David Bostock/shutterstock.com
Cover design: Kit Foster. Design concept by Yasir Suleiman
E D I T E D B Y
ISBN 978-0-7486-3402-6
Y A S I R S U L E I M A N
9 780748 634026

‘These thoughtful, poignant reflections bring forth vividly some of the
human dimensions of one of the great tragedies of current history, the forced
dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. They bring to mind
experiences in a miserable refugee camp in Lebanon, where I was invited to
the “home” − a room − of a family expelled from the Galilee, who showed
me their treasures − a photograph, the key to their destroyed home, other
cherished mementos of a life stolen from them for which they yearn.’
Noam Chomsky
‘Diaspora is linked to displacement but is not synonymous with it, not least
because displaced people may re-root themselves in new places. In this
volume, Diaspora comes into being in the maintenance of personal and
collective roots to an Original place of return. This handsome collection of
essays speaks in a multiplicity of voices and textures that capture the endur-
ing presence of the homeland in every Diasporic home. Palestinians and
non-Palestinians will be moved by it in equal measure.’
Azmi Bishara, Arab Centre for Research
and Policy Studies, Doha
‘This combination of haunting and elegant prose, gifted metaphor for unut-
terable loss, the rhythm of dispossession and dislocation, and triumphant love
of life can only be Palestinian. What a remarkable collection of luminous
essays: these stories inform and attach the reader to Palestine and her people
more than a shelf of books on the “Arab–Israeli conflict”.’
Karma Nabulsi, University of Oxford
‘In diaspora, in Shatat, at home in exile, in historic Palestine, in refugee
camps, scattered in every continent on the globe, gathered around their
common cause, Palestinians are the masters of their own destiny, authors of
their own lives, a nation by virtue of not just their ancestral homeland but
also by a sustained history of struggle against the occupation and theft of
their country. Yasir Suleiman’s magnificent volume, Being Palestinian, gathers
a number of brilliant essays reflecting on what it means to be a Palestinian.
The result is an uncommon constellation of insights by some of the brightest
Palestinian minds on the open-ended nature of identities and alterities we
inhabit and invent as we go through a life dignified by a noble cause. A tour
de force and a must read!’
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies
and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

B
e i n g
P
a l e s t i n i a n
Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity
in the Diaspora
Edited by Yasir Suleiman
University of Cambridge
The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
© editorial matter and organisation Yasir Suleiman, 2016
© the chapters their several authors, 2016
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Baskerville by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Wales at
Gomer Press Ltd, Ceredigion
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3402 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0539 3 (paperback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3403 3 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0540 9 (epub)
The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights
Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly
Publishing Initiatives Fund and the Centre of Islamic Studies,
University of Cambridge.
In memory of Edward Said, 1935–2003
Edward Said (right) with the Editor picking up his Honorary Doctorate from the University
of Edinburgh, 2000.

Contents
Yasir Suleiman Prologue .............................................................................1
Samer Abdelnour Becoming Palestinian ..................................................15
Leila Abdul Razzaq Beyond Recitation and Ritual .................................19
Danah Abdulla Only Icons ......................................................................22
Ishaq Abu- Arafeh Resident of Both, National of None ..........................25
Nuha Abudabbeh Without my Jaffa: Other Seas .....................................28
Lila Abu- Lughod Buffeted By How Others See You ...............................31
Lama Abu- Odeh Disrupting the Peace of Others ...................................34
Mahdi Abu- Omar Fate: A Blessing ..........................................................37
Salman Abu Sitta The Invisible Face of the Occupier .............................40
Leena Al-A rian A Palestinian State of Mind ...........................................44
Sami Al- Arian No Land’s Man Determined to Return to Palestine ........48
Najwa Al- Qattan An Ornithologist from Iceland ....................................54
Samer Al- Saber A Recurring Sound. A Familiar Image ..........................56
Atef Alshaer A Journey in Progress .........................................................60
Hala Alyan In Dust ..................................................................................63
Kholoud Amr Citizen of the World ........................................................66
Anonymous Being Nobody ......................................................................69
Iman Arab Embracing Uncertainty .........................................................72
Sa’ed Atshan ‘Our Country Lives in Us’ ..................................................75
Abdel Bari Atwan Forever Gazan .............................................................78
Ida Audeh Ties that Bind, Ties that Sustain ...........................................88
Omar Aysha Pal.I.Am ..............................................................................91
Ibtisam Azem Things We Carry With Us ................................................94
viii Being Palestinian
Fuad Bahou The Sadness Continues .......................................................98
Aida Bamia Childhood Curtailed ...........................................................102
Ibtisam Barakat Forty Days of Mourning ..............................................105
Ramzy Baroud Seeking ‘Home’ .............................................................109
Sahera Bleibleh Voices from Within ........................................................112
Reja- e Busailah The Tree ........................................................................115
Selma Dabbagh A Road Taken ..............................................................119
Taysir Dabbagh Living in a World of Double Standards ......................122
Souad Dajani Walking in Her Years ......................................................125
Susan Muaddi Darraj Claiming Citizenship ..........................................128
Izzat Darwazeh Breathing Politics ...........................................................131
Dawoud El- Alami Motherland ...............................................................135
Najat El-Taji El- Khairy Painting my Way Back Home One Stitch
at a Time ...............................................................................................137
Sharif Elmusa A Demon of Hope .........................................................140
Doaa Elnakhala Contradictory Worlds ..................................................145
Amal Eqeiq Bint Liblaad on the Road .....................................................148
Randa Farah Darker Shades of Exile .....................................................151
Rawan Hadid Present in Absence ..........................................................161
John Halaka Inside as an Outsider .........................................................164
Anwar Hamed Caught Between the Taste of Sunshine and Chopin
Nocturnes ..............................................................................................168
Sousan Hammad I See Palestine in my Rear- View Mirror .....................171
Laila Hamzi I Am, and I Am Always Becoming ....................................174
Nathalie Handal Guide to Being Palestinian ..........................................177
Jean Hanna Memories that Live ............................................................180
Marwan Hassan A Boy from Mash- had ................................................183
Ghazi Hassoun Reconciling Araby and America ..................................186
Johnny Hazboun When Will it be Vacant? ............................................189
Khaled Hroub Living in Letters or the Arrogance of a Cityless Man ...192
Sarah Ihmoud Palestine in the Nepantla ..................................................195
Mohamad Issa Enduring Ties ................................................................199
Asma Jaber The Pain and Beauty of Dispossession ...............................202
Salma Khadra Jayyusi The Durable Cords of Memory ........................206
Salwa Affara Jones Mujaddara – Arabian Haggis! ...................................210
Fady Joudah Still Life .............................................................................213
Khalid Kamhawi Subversive Abstraction ..............................................215