existential crisis, take two.

As an instructor I am many things: feminist in politics, casual in presentation, strict in policy, detailed in assignments, sometimes funny, sometimes flip, sometimes focused in discussion. I like to think that I’m a good teacher. I can summarize difficult arguments in brief and clear language. I try to make space for students who wouldn’t normally speak to be heard. Though it is cliche and sentimental, I genuinely believe something powerful can happen in the classroom. I believe that people change how they think, or begin to change how they think about the world. And I generally perceive that change for the better.

This week, I was something in my classroom that I have never explicitly been before. This week, I spoke to my students not as an informed and (inasmuch as possible, objective) instructor, but as a Palestinian who had lived under occupation; as someone who approached the topic from a specific political perspective, with ideas grounded in theory as much as feeling, and with definite opinions regarding action and change. I have never done this. I have never been a Palestinian first. While I am unclear on how to describe that position in concrete language, I suppose the closest I can say is that to my students I stood in for Palestine. For many, I was likely the only Palestinian they had seen in person, or with whom they could converse. For many, I was the only indication that something like Palestine existed, that it was populated by real people, and that it was under occupation.

I feel incredibly conflicted about holding this position. I was clear when I began my sections that I would be happy to pursue our regularly scheduled activity. I was clear that if this was undesirable or unproductive, we could move on. And while it was productive and interesting for many of my students, I could tell that one student in particular was not comfortable, was not OK. While I wouldn’t characterize her posture as hostile, I would say that it was defensive. Now, 24 hours later, I still can’t shake the feelings of vulnerability and anxiety I felt in the classroom. What a curious effect of oppression, that in acknowledging your own personhood, you might feel guilty. Guilty to take a “biased” position, guilty to claim space, guilty to make those who would support your oppression feel at all uncomfortable. I know that this guilt is obviously complicated by the fact that I am her instructor, and we exist in a relationship that is unequal. And while I prefaced and reiterated multiple times that I was speaking that day primarily as a person with a clear position, rather than facilitating discussion and underlining concepts with no position other than conveyor of course materials, I feel so…icky. Did I do something wrong? Was this the correct course of action? Should I have stuck to the lesson plan? Isn’t it OK sometimes to be honest, to be me, to be Palestinian? I know that neutrality is a farce. I know that even when I play instructor, my personhood and politics don’t disappear, but neither are they as explicit as they were yesterday. I am afraid that I have alienated her. I am afraid that I was too transparent. I am afraid that the room will be altered irrevocably after this. I am afraid of my anger at feeling afraid in the first place. I am afraid I am not cut out for this job. I am afraid that now that I have been a Palestinian first, I will not be able to lie to myself– I was one always, throughout all things. I am afraid to be Palestinian. I am afraid to be.

the HoJo diaries

The First Night
I started the drive hung-over. Not exactly. In the words of David Cross: I wasn’t that pleasant euphemism, hung over. I was FUCKED UP. And though I felt better about 3 hours in, by the time the drive was over, I was as dazed as I had been when I started. I have driven 11 or so hours, alone. Out of Michigan, across Ohio, across Pennsylvania, into New Jersey. I spent the last half hour in my car, circling the same few blocks over and over again, because my GPS, Susan, does not understand that in order to make a left turn, you have to go right first. In fairness, how could she know? I certainly didn’t. Or maybe she knew and wasn’t telling me. In either case, I shut her down and did it the old fashioned way, asking the kind woman at the Hyatt how to get to a “rival” hotel. I use scare quotes because the Howard Johnson of New Brunwick is the shadiest hotel at which I’ve ever stayed. Even at midnight, I feel skeevy about the stairwells, the outdoor carpets. The indoors aren’t much better. A sad, thin mattress; outlets that don’t have three prongs; a table that wobbles; a hair-dryer that doesn’t turn on; and oddly, a small veranda. At 65$ a night, I suppose I can’t complain but I do anyway, elaborate strings of profanity to the empty room.

What was I doing here? A conference. On affect. Of course. This is the problem with studying feeling: you can drive across the godforsaken terrain known as Ohio, and still not be far enough away. Like a storm cloud that travels with you, all the things I’d tried to suppress leaked out in spurts and before long I am crying again, the fourth time today. By now, the tears are less emphatic and overdone, sliding down my cheeks with little care: more habit than affect. I try to tame my sadness in the dim lights of the HoJo (how the hotel *actually* abbreviates itself); it becomes manageable. A small tightening around my heart only when I let my guard down, instead of an incessant squeezing. Spent, I collapse onto the bed but can’t stop thinking. I read the remainder of a Nora Roberts novel and finally fall asleep, uninterrupted until the morning.

Day One
The next morning, I take my time getting up. The HoJo fairs worse in the daylight. While clean, there is an unmistakable dinginess in the textiles, on the plastic basin of the tub and toilet. I make due, because there is nothing else to make. The hair dryer isn’t working, so I bend over the heater. I thread my computer cord from the bathroom, the only room with open outlets, let alone three prong, across the room to the table. I get dressed, put on makeup. I’m starting to get hungry, so I venture out to the conference site. I think I’ll park my car, and then walk around the campus, which will surely have coffee shops, sandwiches and the like. I am wrong. The Women’s studies complex on the Brunswich (a funny mistake I’m keeping), is in the middle of fucking nowhere, as far as I can tell. I walk around for an hour until I find a student center with an a la carte cafe. I eat outside, for the weather is perfect today, and revel in the rare feeling of accomplishment: I made it. I found food. Things will be OK.

The first day of the conference goes well: I learn that Rutgers is going to feed us for the rest of the conference, and am glad again that I made the decision to come. It also goes quickly, only one graduate student panel before the first keynote, David Eng. When Eng speaks, he is composed, comprehensive, elegant. He speaks about race and reparations, psychic and legal. I don’t pretend I understood everything, but I’m struck by his eloquence, optimism. When I get up the nerve to introduce myself the next day, he is charming in person as well. Graciously learning my name, gushing about how brilliant my advisor is. Turns out, theorists are people, too.

We end shortly after David’s talk, so I take my car back to the HoJo, getting lost for the last time in New Brunswich. When I get back to the hotel, I can’t bring myself to do actual schoolwork, so I read another Nora Roberts, the last in my latest trilogy, order a pizza, over-tip the driver and find comfort, unexpectedly in my isolation and solitude. Flushed from Eng’s brilliance, and transported temporarily to an Irish landscape of love in Robert’s, the lack of love, REAL love, is suppressed for another night.

Day Two
The conference starts unreasonably early. So from the outset, I’m already slammed, and the content and breadth of the day is no relief. There are 3 panels, 2 keynotes. One by Jasbir Puar, a second by Leo Bersani. At lunch I finally make friends, sitting on the shaded steps of the adjacent building. Bersani sits with us, and he easily becomes the most lovable, graceful, dapper surprise of the conference. He is frail and brilliant, thoughtful and kind. It’s hard to express how amazing he was, talking with me about my drive, Flint, movies. Straining to hear our conversations, picking at the well-worn hole in the elbow of his sweater, wiggling his toes in his chocolate suede loafers, which look like fancy house shoes. I’m so charmed by his demeanor, his wit.

The affects studied at the conference are mostly negative, while the atmosphere is convivial, collegiate. I find my mood wavers with each presentation, resulting mostly in sublimity. I am awed, humbled, stuttered into silence by the passion in the room, the brilliance of watching these virtuosos chit chat as though over Sunday brunch. After dinner, a beer, and small talk with my new friends, I return once again to the HoJo. This night, I stay up reading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. The night is Hitchcock, the hotel the perfect ambiance for reading Freud’s probing work. I might not buy into psychoanalysis, but that night my dreams are wild and vivid, felt in the fiber of my skin and I wake up tingling, out of breath–the taste of someone I just met on my lips. In dreams, I find the attachment I crave, my mouth muttering her name into hers, over and over.

Day Three
Is it an oxymoron to say it’s another beautiful day in Jersey? I’m being too cruel. Aside from the driving, Jersey has treated me well. Today, on this last day, the weather is perfect. The agenda is full, but less intense than the prior day. Two panels, followed by lunch, followed by Lauren Berlant’s keynote, and a concluding panel of the conference’s four major speakers, reflecting on what they learned, with what they hope to move forward. The vibe is, again, jovial and celebratory, due in small part, to the beer and wine brought out early. I couldn’t say what I’ve learned in these three days, so much volleying around my brain. I grapple as best as I can with the complexity, share a cigarette with my conference friend, have a last laugh with Leo. I have a sad sense of finality when he leaves the conference, wondering like my father would, I suppose, if he’ll make it much longer. He seemed so lightly tied to the earth, at odds with his brazen, defiant, wildly present writing.

I return to the HoJo with wry affection. My plans for the evening have fallen through, so I improvise: I’ll take a nap and get up and read Freud instead. My dreams are vivid again; I imagine in sleep that I am opening a door to a well-lit, buttery yellow kitchen, and when I pass through it my eyes open to the off-white popcorn ceiling. It’s dark out now, and the door to my veranda is cracked open. I swing it wide, take in the cool night air–prepare myself to again fill the hours, push away the tenderness in my chest cavity, muddle through the tedium. I echo Liz Grosz’s closing remarks, an idea that has saturated the presentations: every ontological project has an affective register. And the affective is neither about optimism or pessimism. It is simply making life livable. I promise myself I’ll remember this tomorrow, on my long long drive, out of New Brunswich, through Pennsylvania, through Ohio, into Michigan: all alone. I am not optimistic, but I can do this. Alone if needs be, I can live.

Gilligan Does “il Dakhil” (Part One)

Maybe I am biased, but none of the many drivers I’ve ridden with here can compare to Saalih. On Wednesday morning Rula and I make my third attempt to enter the Israeli territories;  a driver named Shakir picks us up at 6:30am. This time, we are attempting to cross the mahsoom/checkpoint in Beit Sahour, which, like Mahsoom al Nafuck, allows vehicles through. Shakir is an Arab Israeli from Nazareth, fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew. His van is tidy, and he offers us ka’ak (a delicious sesame bread) as we make our way to the mahsoom.

We came to know Shakir through my cousin Rafat, who works as a tour guide for a Palestinian agency. Rafat, in addition to arranging for our transportation, has also arranged for Rula and I, should we get through the checkpoint, to join a tour group for two days as they visit Nazareth and Jerusalem. I should say I never got the opportunity to apply for tasareeh (the visa or permissions for Palestinians to access Israel) since Beit Sahour residents can only apply on Thursdays, and last Thursday was my Uncle’s funeral. Even if we are turned around, I have already decided I will not apply. Perhaps it’s stupidity or stubbornness, but I won’t put myself at Israel’s mercy more than I already have.

When Shakir sees the guard at the mahsoom, he curses briefly under his breath. This guard is new, and doesn’t know Shakir. Still, Shakir smiles widely, converses with him for a moment in Hebrew, before requesting our passports. As we oblige, the guard walks away, and Shakir hops out of the car to follow, passports in tow. He is gone for less than a minute, though it feels longer. Upon his return, Shakir says we have been rejected, and I feel nothing. I expected this. But Shakir guns the car anyway, and it takes me a few more seconds to realize he’s joking. The guard was having breakfast, and didn’t even open the passports to check for visas. Suddenly, I am officially in Israel, my access the result of some random man’s hunger. Shakir and Rula congratulate me, but I don’t feel victorious. I feel sick; how arbitrary and cruel these stipulations and manipulations are.

Shakir drives on, for we are trying to make it to Nazareth (al Nassra) in two hours. He is a genial driver, mostly quiet. He offers bits of information as we drive through the diverse terrain of the (my? our?) country: here is Abu Ghosh, the last Arab-occupied space between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Here is Megiddo, the military and political prison for Palestinians. The way Shakir imparts this information reminisces of a museum tour: here are some curious things, some things from the past. It’s as though the Arab population and the reality of political prisoners in Israel are not part of the present, not part of daily life. At some point, I must tune him out, because he seems to think that the reason the Palestinian territories are poor is merely a matter of laziness. I feel like one of my students: Shakir is a nice guy, except for the little bit o’ racism. Still, I am grateful he can show me these things, grateful that for as much as he expresses distaste for the “Arab work ethic,” he is also happy to help pull one over on Israeli security at the checkpoints.

We stop only once before Nazareth, pulling into a small convenience store and gas station. It must be near a military base, because there are dozens of soldiers milling about. They are so young, so casual with their machine guns strapped across their bodies. They flirt and joke with one another like the teenagers they are and I am sad for them, sad for us. I know Palestinian boys who dropped out of school because the Intifadas made attendance impossible, because they lost families and loved ones, became disaffected by the war, the incontinuity of their lives. They are casualties, the cost of occupation and its resistance. I wonder about these Israeli soldiers, their uniforms heavy on their bodies, aging them in ways I couldn’t imagine. Do they believe in what they represent? Do they resent it? I can’t pretend to know what they think or feel, but to me, they too seem to be casualties, collateral damage of a different sort.

We make Nazareth in the predicted two hours, though it costs us the more scenic drive along the coast of the Mediterranean. Shakir pulls up outside of a strip of stores, and a second driver, Yousef arrives to take us to meet the tour group. We thank Shakir (which, incidentally, means “one who thanks”) and transfer vehicles. Yousef also works with Rafat,  also speaks Arabic and Hebrew. As we drive to catch up with the tour, we inform Yousef of our newly hatched plan to travel with the tour on day one, and then ditch it the second day, to visit Yaffa and Jerusalem on our own. Concerned with our shenanigans, Yousef calls Rafat, and together they agree that Yousef ought to stay with us for the whole two days instead, acting as our personal guide/driver. Though this idea grates at my nerves, Rula is ecstatic to have someone cater to her every desire and a place to leave her things between locations. Her enthusiasm trumps my tourist-sex fantasy, and we plan our itinerary with Yousef. Nazareth to Tiberias to Akka to Haifa on day one. Yaffa and Jerusalem on day two. It’ll be a miracle if we manage it.

Boom Goes the Dynamite

When my cousin Rula comes to visit Palestine from Amman, she convinces me to attempt to cross the mahsoom, or checkpoint again, without a visa or tasareeh in order to visit Jerusalem. That first time, we attempted entry from the Beit Lehem point. This time, Rula and I go up to Beit Lehem, and take a bus that will take us to a mahsoom in Beit Jala, a neighboring city. This checkpoint is called Mahsoom al Nafuck (insert joke here). Nafuck apparently means bridge, and so there is. The bus costs 6 shekels, and pulls aside at the far left lane of the mahsoom. As the bus pulls off, my stomach is pulled in a hundred directions–into itself in anxiety, into my throat like bile, into my knees like shock. We disembark, and stand behind a guardrail in queue while a soldier searches the bus. Meanwhile, a second soldier gestures us forward and asks for our identification and paperwork. There is only one person ahead of me, an adolescent boy with a blue howwiyyah (ours are green). The soldier keeps the boy’s howwiyyah but indicates he should return to the bus.

When I hand the soldier my passport, she speaks to me in English, asks me where I’m from. I tell her Michigan, and she repeats the word, curiously, like a novelty. She looks at my picture, back at me. Without checking for a visa she hands me the passport, and tells me to have a nice day. I re-board the bus, in disbelief. Behind me, the soldier looks over Rula’s paperwork and passport. She has Jordanian citizenship, and was granted a visa in order to attend the consecration of another Shomali cousin, William, into Catholic bishop-hood (bishopness? bishopity?). The soldier sends Rula back to the bus, but keeps her passport. Rula sits next to me while the rest of the passengers are screened, each presenting a blue howwiyyah, each returning to the bus without it. A third soldier takes the stack of IDs and Rula’s passport to look them over. When he sees the Jordanian emblem, he calls Rula off the bus, and informs her that she cannot enter, even though she has a visa. He claims that this mahsoom is only for people with blue howwiyyat, ie, Arab Israelis. The guard who let me onto the bus gestures me off, and we are both sent away.

The thing is, Mahsoom al Nafuck is not only for Arab Israelis; people pass through on visas daily. The bus driver, with whom we had consulted regarding my visa-less passport, was sure Rula would pass through without fuss, and if anyone was sent back, it’d be me. Instead, for reasons unbeknown to me Rula was turned around, and I, the only passenger who was sent back to the bus with her identification, was asked to leave after being cleared. I can only assume that they saw us sitting with one another, and assumed guilt by association.

The Nafuck, unlike Mahsoom Beit Lehem, allows individual cars to pass, so there aren’t any taxis waiting around for passengers. It also does not function as a bus stop. So Rula and I walk back to the road the bus came in on, approximately half a mile from the checkpoint. We wait there for a taxi. Several white ones pass before we realize that white taxis will not stop; they are Israeli companies, with the yellow Israeli tags. My mood, which is already dangerously morbid, drops a bit more, and I match my internal fuming with external. Lighting the cigarette my hands shake, and I barely manage it. I’m so angry, so frazzled, I don’t even realize I’ve dropped the pack until a yellow taxi stops, and we ride a few minutes. By then it’s too late to retrieve them.

The other passengers in the cab are both men, and they are douches. They laugh with condescension when we get in, and I’m at a loss as to the hilarity: is it because we are Mahsoom rejects? Is it because I was smoking in public? Is it because we are two women, on the side of the road, at a loss? I can’t find it funny, though maybe, sometime later, I will. The cab takes us to my other priestly cousin’s church, where we get a ride from my Uncle George. Rula elects to go to Mahsoom Beit Lehem, but I am furious, and can’t bear to be turned around again. I curse in multiple languages, with multiple registers. My mobility is at the whim of another person on both a macro and microscopic level.  I hate relying on other people for transporation. I hate feeling caged in. I hate feeling like a second class citizen. Because I’m Arab in Israel. Because I’m a girl in Palestine.

When I get home, I retell the story, over and over again, to my family and random other people who want to know what happened. I wish I could stop. I wish they wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t make me repeat it.Each time I do, my gestures become bigger, my voice louder, my emotions…I can’t. Everything spills over, and I sob on my bed in my room, the room I had as a girl, in which I had doubtless cried a million times. I can’t catch my breath, my mascara bleeds into my eyes, so I cry harder, and my body shakes shakes shakes. Even here,  so little control. I ask myself how people live like this, how they survive this dehumanization daily. I am angry that I know what it feels like, angry that I know why people put up with it. Angry at myself for forgetting, angry at myself for forcefully remembering. I think, if I lived here, I might die. And then I am angry that I am too weak to stay and fight, and angry that I dare judge or question the people who do.

I gather myself to go out onto the veranda and have another cigarette. The rhythmic inhale, exhale calms me down for a moment, but midway in I am crying again. Quietly now, my quivering confined to my face, my shoulders shuddering randomly. I think, what now? What next?

Purple, Passport, and Other “P” Words

Per the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s request, I head to Beit Lehem to apply for my Palestinian passport on Tuesday. Since arriving here, I have been repeatedly told that I need to *do* something about my cleavage. Of course, my wardrobe consists entirely of stretchy low cut tank tops, and those do very little in terms of disguising the ladies. That morning, I slap on a second tank top over the first in my signature color (purple, you know), apply eyeshadow and mascara liberally, and brave the city.

We head first to an office decorated with collages of Yasser Arafat, Sadam Hussein, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. The choices seem odd to me, but then, I’m not familiar enough with the history to make sense of it. This office, or maktaba is a one stop official paperwork shop. One woman takes our passport photos, another types out our paperwork on an actual typewriter, and a man stamps the papers before placing them in a plastic sleeve. We pay up, 235 shekels per application, and take our documents next door to the Agency.

The passport office is on the second floor, and I take my howwiyyah and application to a cherubic middle aged man with a cigarette clamped between his teeth. People smoke everywhere here. He looks over my ID and tells me I cannot apply for a passport until I renew my ID, which was created in 1999. While this is certainly reasonable, I am now so wary of “people behind desks” that I feel like maybe I’m being treated poorly. He sends me back to the maktaba to get a renewal form.The folks at the maktaba are sympathetic, and the woman typing up forms rolls her eyes at their request, while the man with the stamps claims that it’s routine; all IDs must be from at least 2000. They print another set of pictures for the ID, and complete a new round of paperwork for an additionaly 65 shekels. I take it to the first floor of the Agency, where once again, the irreverence for lines makes negotiating the space difficult. My brother in law is with me, and we push at the other applicants before locating someone he knows on the inside. We are given a wait time of 30 minutes. Tariq takes Rachel to address some other paperwork, and I stay on in the crowded square room for my name to be called.

In general, I try not to pay attention when I’m being ogled, but the number of eyes watching me today feels overwhelming, and today I am surly enough to simply stare back. I glare generously at a woman speaking to her husband about our quick ascendancy to the head of the line. I return the extended scrutiny of a 12 or 13 old year boy. He is wearing a purple and white striped shirt, slim and fashionably faded blue jeans. His hair is shaved short at the nape of his neck but grows thicker at the crown, and is styled forward, each black strand shining blacker as product holds it steady. He is painfully thin, his upper back curved slightly forward, his arms held out an inch or two from his sides. When he walks there is a tight energy in his step, a slight bounce in his heel as though he could begin to run at any moment. Even so young, he’s already learned how to take up space. It’s so Arab of him I can’t help but smile. I know that walk, that posture. It is every Palestinian boy I’ve known, and at least two that I’ve loved. I know it’s supposed to project strength, but this kid is so small, so sweet you can’t help but know it for what it really is: vulnerability, insecurity. Earlier I saw a 20-something boy deviate between that posture’s softness and hardness within seconds: gently as he greeted an old schoolmate, hugging him with both arms, genuine delight on his face, and smugly as he lit his cigarette and teased the same mate.

This Arab masculinity, I can’t place my fingers on it exactly. Everywhere I go men look you directly in the eye, assess you openly. When we are driving around, they saunter into the street in front of the car, locking eyes with the driver as if in challenge. There is so much open and obvious aggression and assertiveness; I’m tempted to link to our political situation–that it’s an angst misdirected, but I can’t be sure. I know that there is something about the bravado I find simultaneously charming and obnoxious, sexy and stomach turning. It feels Orientalist of me, but what the fuck. I want to watch them as they watch me.

The cherub from the passport agency sees me sitting, and asks why I haven’t returned for my passport yet. I explain the wait, and he goes inside to check on my paperwork. Chest hair is curling out of his black shirt that I didn’t notice before, and he sings to himself as he goes about his business. He has decided, it seems, to take me under his wing. Is there something about Mejdu in Palestine that demands care? People are always trying to do things for me here, take care of me. It’s odd, given how differently I feel about myself and my personality when I’m at home in Michigan. He rushes along my howwiyyah and we go up to the second floor where the process is now surprisingly easy. I fill out a few lines in English, give a left thumbprint in purple, and sign my name in blue. The passport will be ready on Sunday.

going home

it’s been 10 years since i was last in palestine. since eating a fig right off the branch. since sitting on the veranda and listening to my father, uncles, aunts and cousins sing arabic folk songs, tell silly jokes, and play tricks. since walking to my old school from my old house. since seeing the boys wait outside the orthodox church and leer at the girls going in. since getting shawarma fee nuss il balad. 10 long years.

living in palestine changed my life and though in the past 10 years i’ve disassosciated from my arab identity, i feel the pull of it so strongly now. i can smell the fresh bread from the machbez, hear the faint rustle of dahlias in my father’s garden, see the dome of the rock on the horizon, feel the walls of the old city under my hands. i can hear the daily ithan.

i want to go home. i want to smell the dirt, run it through my fingers. i want to go to the montaza, kasdir along steih street.  i want al sikeen ya batteech, booza rukkib.  i want things i’ve forgotten. memories i didn’t realize i would need so dearly.

home. home. i am famished without you palestine. malnourished.

when i go home, i cannot fly into tel aviv because i have a palestinian passport. instead i will fly to jordan and cross the jisr (a day’s journey) into jerusalem. i cannot stay in jerusalem without a visa. instead i will take a taxi along wadi il nar into beit sahour. i will try to cross the checkpoints back into jerusalem without a visa and if i am lucky, the guard on duty will see my American passport without checking for a visa and wave me along. if i am lucky, i will take another taxi back into the city. i will get falafel and ka’ik from a street vendor, go into the old city and buy candy in bulk, silver jewelry at bargain prices. if i am lucky.

my identity is always already political and i wish i could say something about home without politics marring it’s simplicity or beauty. but the politics exist. the continued occupation exists. the fighting and the murders and the curfews and the walls and the bombs and the bullets. those exist, too. and my anger, my anger unspeakable because i am just an arab or an american. because my people are savages, brutes. because any comment about israel is read as anti-semitic. this anger exists, too. what i wouldn’t do to let go of my anger. what i wouldn’t give to not have anything to be angry about. free palestine. free me. free my father. and his father. free the poets and the poetry of palestine-its olive branches and fackoose fields.

in arabic palestine is pronounced falasteen. it nevers feels like my home when i call it palestine and not falasteen. and wahashtini means, roughly and in a round-about kind of way, that you’ve made me miss you, you’ve driven me near mad with missing you.

wahashtini ya falasteen.