EPILOGUE Half-Belonging in the World

In 2012, I visited Toronto with my mother. We had dinner at the same elegant hotel where we had been treated so kindly more than two decades earlier, when she had moved us across the country in distress. I don’t think she remembered the place, but I did. I did not want to remind her, so I simply watched her enjoy the ambience of the hotel restaurant. We had a beautiful meal and enjoyed our time together, laughing about family stories and crying as we shared stories of our difficult past. As I continue to face the effects of occupation and displacement in my family, I need to share the complexity of my individual and our collective experiences as Palestinians.

From Edmonton to Hebron, every Palestinian I meet is affected in some way by the occupation. I saw this during my time as a young returnee in Palestine, and I have seen it more recently while working as an instructor in the Gulf. Meeting Palestinians, other Arabs, exposes me to the spectrum of care and dignity in Arab cultures. My parents struggled to repair, reclaim, and represent this, both before and after being displaced to Canada. The relative stability of a Palestinian family in the diaspora changes people’s lives but not their collective memory. Passports are granted, temporary shelter is offered, and reunions are made possible. As Palestinians in exile, away from the occupied territories, we sit together, share food, and pray for our families in the diaspora and the homeland. We pray that our efforts will secure our territory and sustain our culture for future generations. Home and land are inseparable in our psyches and hearts. In a different region, like Jordan, Canada, or Syria, a tent, a concrete shelter, or a house might feel familiar, or even comfortable, yet we inherit this fragmentation like cuttings from uprooted saplings. Until we return to the original soil that has nourished our ancestors, we wait and struggle in the long shadow of the Nakba tree.