In the tenth grade I had a science teacher names Mrs. Jones.

Every once and a while she would take a break from the lesson of the day to ask us a question about ourselves. The questions were a fun way to distract us for a moment: If you could switch gender for a day, would you? or Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? These questions gave us a little break from cell structure and energy circuits that was much appreciated and often anticipated. During one particularly hard lesson Mrs. Jones stopped in the middle of scribbling notes on the board. She set down the heavy textbook and capped her whiteboard marker before turning to the class. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? she asked with a smile. Most of my class gave the usual light-hearted answers. One girl near the front said she would be in an al fresco caf in Venice, drinking coffee by a canal; a boy said something about going to the moon to watch the earthrise. Eventually, it was my turn and many eyes were watching me. Luckily, I already had my answer ready and it hadnt taken any thought. My whole family, going back thousands of years, is Palestinian. They were the kind of people who cherished their Palestinian accents and hung the countrys flag in their living rooms. Of the hundreds of people in my very Palestinian family, I was the first born outside of our homeland. Because I had never known Palestine, everyone in my family took it upon themselves to surround me with stories of our home. Everyone from Aunts and Uncles, to cousins, to my overly traditional grandparents who lived in Saudi made sure I grew up knowing the culture I would have if I had grown up in Palestine. When I was very small, my father would pull me onto his lap and tell me one such story that started with a key. My father always wore a tattered leather string around his neck on the end of which dangled an old house key. He would take the string off of his neck and hand me the key that dangled from the end of it. Bunayati1, he would start in his pure, deep, Palestinian Arabic, This key has come a very long way, from the across ocean all the way on the other side of the world. Your mama and I have come a very long way too. Before we lived here, we lived in a country called Palestine, and our country was good. This key belongs to a door that I remember very clearly; it was made of the wood from an olive tree, carved by your ancestors and polished by the many hands that touched it through the years. This key belongs to the door of our house in Palestine. Our house was old, but in a good way. The bricks that it was made of were dusty yellow, the colour of the desert in Mecca2, and the house blended in perfectly with the surroundings, as if it had always been in that place. My father passed that ancient house down to me and that ancient house was passed down from his father. It was where I grew up, and where I lived when I was your age. Not only was our house extraordinary, but the land around it was too. It was surrounded by a field of
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Arabic for My little girl Islamic capital in Saudi Arabia

olive trees like the ones you see in pictures. These olive trees were older than you could imagine, twisted and gnarled with age. They grew scattered through the yard, providing a splash of thriving life in a field of sparse desert grasses. The trees grew all down the slope of a hill and up on the other side. Behind them, you could see the mountains that continued all of the way into Lebanon, and further still. On the other side of the hill, the side that wasnt a part of our land, there was a very old mosque. It was in this mosque that I learned about Islam, and it was the call to prayer from this mosque that woke me up every morning. When I was young, there was peace among the olive trees. We used to go for walks in the field and pick olives right from the trees to then turn them into olive oil. It was among those trees that I learned how hard it was to make the food we need to survive. In fact, it was among those trees that I learned almost everything there was to know. I learned that no matter how harsh your environment may be you can always find a way to survive. I learned that there are certain majestic wisdoms that can only come with age. Among those olive trees I even learned how much it hurts to fall out of an olive tree. When your mama and I agreed to get married it was among those olive trees. We imagined starting a family in that house the colour of desert sand, and letting them learn the same lessons that we learned from the olive trees. Your Jed and Jeddah3 would have live with us and we would have raised our family where your mama and I were raise. I grew to know this story well because I heard it hundreds of times. Some times, the small details would change, but the ending never did. Despite that, I always wanted there to be more. I wanted to know more about this magical country on the far reaches of the world, so I would always ask, Why did you leave Palestine baba4? My father would smile and set me back down on the ground, Because, Bunayati, there was no longer peace among the olive trees. Of course as I grew up I found out the answer to my question. Palestine became the site of many wars between angry men. The main conflict was one between religion and nationalism that still continues countless years, and countless lives, later. That war resulted in the deaths of my family members, and the destruction of the house and in turn the olive trees that my father would so fondly tell me about. When I was small, my fathers answer would frustrate me because I wanted to know more. However, I will always be grateful for his withholding of information. When a child is growing up, their world is small and they know very little about it. What they do know has been told to them by family or family friends. What
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Arabic names for Grandfather and Grandmother respectively. The Arabic alphabet is lacking the letter P, so Papa becomes Baba when referring to a father.

facts a parent chooses to tell their child, and what stories the parent chooses to share shapes that child. My parents had a little less control over my environment than they wanted to. They wanted me to grow up in Palestine where they themselves had grown up. They wanted to share with me the olive trees but they didnt get to do that. Since they were unable to raise me in that setting, they had to convey that upbringing in other ways. They shared with me stories of praying in ancient mosques, and riding bicycles down dusty cobblestone streets because that romanticized Palestine. If they had instead chose to share stories of war and fighting, I think I would become a very angry person. Angry at the Israelis for stealing my country from me, and angry at the world for not doing anything to stop them. Instead, I am able to understand what they are fighting for, while also seeing that the fighting needs to stop. From the stories that I grew up hearing, I know that Palestine is a beautiful country, one filled with history and culture. The stories that my parents chose to tell me highlighted the good of Palestine and showed me that it was a place worth fighting for. Even though Palestine is no longer a country and my parents Palestinian citizenship isnt recognized, I am Palestinian. I was born and raised in North America, but citizenship is made up of so much more than a piece of paper. It is culture, and family, and the stories that make us who we are. Absent mindedly, I pulled at the bottom of my hijab5 in order to straighten it out. I smiled at the class full of eyes on me and spoke clearly, I would go home to Palestine and if there were peace, I would walk among the olive trees.

Head-covering worn by Muslim women

Reference List:

Samir, S. (2013, November 18). Personal interview.

Muhamoud, N. (2013, November 17). Personal interview.

Green, J. [vlogbrothers]. (2009, January 4). Israel. Gaza. PUPPY! [Video file]. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Jk1kpKvfs

Beinin, J. Hajjar, L. (n.d.) Palestine, israel, and the arab-israeli conflict: A primer. Middle east research and information project. Retrieved from: http://www.merip.org/palestine-israel_primer/intro-pal-isr-primer.html