Heather Mousa

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I think this major is a mistake… I have always loved languages, Arabic, English… (I want to say Chinese, but I am not Read the rest of this entry »

I met a French guy today. We talked, and there came the question: “Where are you from?”. When you tell someone you are from Palestine, the conversation usually takes either one of those two routes:  

 

First scenario: 

 

- Oh, Pakistan

- No, no, Palestine… 

- (Silent and puzzled)

- Do you know Jordan, Lebanon… Egypt…?

- Ammm…. 

- Jerusalem??? The Holy Land???

- Ummmmm… 

- The Middle East…?

- Uuuhh…

- Israel????

- Oooh, okay… 

- Yes, Palestine is “where Israel is”. 

 

(Or, you can just stop right after when they do not know where the Middle East is, and say: “Never mind!”. I mean, if they do not know that, then why would you go through the hassle of explaining.) 

 

Second scenario:

 

- OOH WOW… Palestine!!! How is the situation there now?

 

And so, I told the French guy: “Palestine”… and he said: “OOOHH WOW, how is it there now?”… He asked which part I was from, and I asked whether he was familiar with the area, as I always do before sweating an explanation. He responded saying that he has been to “Israel” twice. “Not to Palestine?” I asked. He nodded and said that he had only been to “Israel”, then asked me if I had been to “Israel”. “I would like to think of it as the occupied Palestine, and yes I have been there, of course.” 

 

“Israel”… Although it has been created since 1948, it remains difficult to acknowledge its existence.

 

Personally, I was not one of the people whose parents were forced to leave their house and land from Haifa or Akka or other Palestinian cities. I was not born in a tent, or a brick house of one room in a refugee camp like thousands of children.  My parents were not forced to become refugees in other countries, like Palestinians who ended up as outsiders in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and many other countries. I am not one of the Palestinians who have to work in another city 20 minutes away, but with checkpoints and humiliation, turns into two hours of agony every morning and evening, if the soldiers were in a good mood.

 

I am one of the few who can travel – using my other passport, as my parents were lucky and hardworking enough to “ensure” that we have another passport. You would not appreciate how important that is until you are denied a visa to most countries, and until you are treated with mounting levels of disrespect, and condescending attitudes in every airport you set foot in, only because you are Palestinian. The Israeli apartheid wall does not go across my backyard, nor does it cut through the land with our olive trees which my family had owned for generations. In fact, Israeli’s did not cut those trees down, like they did to thousands other olive trees around the area, and they did not tear down my home, like they did to my friends and thousands of Palestinians.

 

The Israeli army did not kill my brother, nor did I see soldiers hit my father or rape my mother, like many other Palestinians had seen. My mother did not have to give birth to any of us on a checkpoint when denied entry, nor did she have to suffer all kinds of degradation trying to visit my brother in an Israeli prison like thousands of Palestinian mothers, nor did she have to hold my sister murdered by Israeli bullets. My father did not have to bury my brother like thousands of fathers who buried their sons, “shot down” by Israelis.

 

Among Palestinians who were put through -literary- hell, I was one of the few who are very fortunate; I barely felt the tip of it.

 

And yet, when asked: “Have you ever been to Israel?” I choke, and find it extremely difficult to say “Israel”. I find myself saying that I had been to that specific occupied part of Palestine.

 

If I was one of the few who were that fortunate and still find it difficult to acknowledge Israel’s existence, how can we blame most others who were less fortunate? How can we ask others who now, in Gaza, look for their dead children between mutilated bodies, to live in peace with Israelis? How can we ask a mother who lost all her children for an F-16 to live in peace with an Israeli neighbor, who, as far as she is concerned, might be the one who pressed the red button in that F-16? What are we asking those less fortune Palestinians to do???  Are we really allowed to compare heavy military artillery that killed 800 Palestinian with rockets that killed 5 Israelis so far? Is this war on Gaza really going to “ensure peace for Israel”, or will it increase the piece of “less fortunate” Palestinians who have lost too much to “settle for peace”?

In any other city, blue skies are an invitation to go out… not in the capital of the Middle Kingdom though!

Today in Beijing, the temperature is -3°C outside, with wind of 14 km/h arriving from the North – as if we are not high up North enough! In Beijing, a January clear blue sky is a clear statement of a clean, cold, dry, pollution-free wind, that finds its way into my lungs, freezing anything that moves. Thus, if my lungs had survived after inhaling all the smog from yesterday, they are to be frozen today by the clean North avalanche.

But it is okay, my lungs adapt.

Then there is the 14km/h issue…! I was never someone who would follow the wind this closely – even when I was in love with it. But when the wind is moving at that speed – or any speed – at that temperature, it cannot be good. I actually feel the particles of the wind going through whatever layers of clothes I am wearing, and stinging my skin. It is like flirting with a cloud of angry bees, however, there is no honey involved. Try adding a bike ride to that!

Winters are strange in the North Capital. There is a sun in the middle of the blue skies, no clouds, no rain, and no snow – yet. Coming from Palestine, where winters are “real”; rainy, cloudy, foggy, gray and sad, I cannot help but feel confused. It is like a fake winter here – no offense! There is a sun, but no warmth, the skies are blue, against “normal” winter behavior! The wind stings while it carries away the smog and the clouds, there is no fog, no rain… Is it a winter, without the rain, or the fog, or the clouds? When it is dry, cold, and bitchy, like a Dry Dirty Martini, does it qualify to be a “real” winter?!

After all, most of what is around here is fake, imitation seems to be the hobby here, “another kind of innovation” as I lately heard! Things are fake and unreliable. Like people. I look out and see the many factories, with all the smoke coming out. I remember what my friend said: “this is where they make the clouds”. Well, they do make almost everything here. Will I be surprised if they made clouds?

I live where they make the clouds – amongst other things. The fake clouds, like the sun, and the winter.

Love,
Heather.