18 Crossing Borders

In early December 2000, before returning to Canada, I travelled to Lebanon. My Israeli visa was going to expire before my departure for Canada, and the only way I could renew it was to leave the country and re-enter. This gave me a good excuse to look up a friend from Edmonton, Wassim—a brilliant anti-authoritarian who had become a successful businessman and was in Lebanon at the time. Although we had known each other in high school, we became close during my two-week visit to Lebanon, and remain so to this day. There was another reason, too. Uncle Yazan—who was encouraging me to stay, explore, and network—had sent a thousand dollars to Wassim, asking him to pass it on to me. I needed the money, but my pride prevented me from accepting it. In the end, Wassim said, “If you don’t take it, I will burn it in front of you.” I knew Wassim was serious about doing that and since Uncle Yazan had sent the money as a gift, I relented and accepted his generosity.

I took several servees taxis to get me from Palestine to Jordan, where I spent a few days with family. It was lovely to reconnect and share stories. Being in Palestine in the midst of all the violence had taken its toll on me, and I welcomed the break. So, I am sure, did my parents, for they worried from a distance. Visiting family in Jordan would reassure them that I was safe and healthy. From Jordan, I took a taxi to Syria, and then found a ride that was headed to Saadnayel in the Beqaa Valley, which is where my family fled from during Black September, which is the name given to the 1971 conflict between the Kingdom of Jordan and the PLO under Yasser Arafat.

It was Ramadan, and the fertile beauty of the Beqaa Valley contrasted sharply with everything that had been happening around me, making me yearn for peace in the country of my people. We fasted from early morning to night, and I did not have to travel far to find a masjid. It was cooler now, since Ramadan began that year on the evening of Monday, 27 November, and ended on the evening of Thursday, 28 December.

Despite the support from Uncle Yazan, my money was running out. My sister back home was having a baby, my birthday was coming up, and the visa extension I’d arranged when I went to Lebanon was about to expire. I needed to return home to Canada. The three months I had spent in Palestine had exhausted me physically, and not even the short break in the Beqaa Valley could fix the weariness inside me. As I drove back from Lebanon, I thought about how this short time had affected me and wondered how people could face every day of their lives what I had endured for a short time and still survive.

As soon as I got back to Abu Dis, I started planning for my flight to Toronto. At the checkpoints on the way to the airport on the day of my departure, police and soldiers with guns were checking under the cars for bombs. As I made my way through Customs and Immigration, I set my bag down for a few seconds at one of the checkpoints. An officer quickly approached and told me not to do that.

“You are Canadian?” the security officer asked, even though that is what it said on my passport.

“Yes,” I replied.

He looked up. “Where were you born?”

“Canada,” I said. The tone of in the officer’s voice put me on guard. I was ready to go home and did not want to get into any trouble. I had spent the last of my money and did not know what I would do if they didn’t let me through.

“Where is your father from?” he asked.

“Palestine,” I replied. It was the first time I had said that without hesitation, and it felt good.

While the officer had been asking me questions, another officer was looking through my luggage. When they had finished look at my bags, the office said, “We are going to strip-search you now.”

I did not know what the law allowed Israeli officials to do, and I worried he might detain me and make me miss my flight. The officer and took me to a private room and made me remove all my clothing, except my underwear. He was very professional, but I will never forget that feeling of my body being thoroughly examined and invaded. It filled me with rage. It took going home to Canada to understand what it was like to live in Palestine, I thought during the flight home.

When the plane touched the ground in Toronto, I cried. It was as if I had just awakened from a nightmare and had realized that I am in a safe place among family. The nightmare was over. As I made may way to Customs and Immigration and into Canada, the war, the sad stories, and the checkpoint experiences flooded through my mind.

The passport officer stamped my passport.

“Welcome home,” he said. A sense of relief washed over me as I walked away. It was not just relief at being home, but of knowing that I could now grieve without fear for my people who lived under occupation. I was back in a familiar zone, among people I could trust, and this trust came from the vision and protection of my parents, who had planned and worked to support the family for more than two decades. I knew that, in the 1960s, Uncle Faisal could not have foreseen our paths as he arrived in Canada—the first of many refugees in our family. Similarly, my grandmother had hoped to offer my father safety when she saved him from under the Nakba tree. What I was now feeling is what they dreamt of, and still dream of, for me—Salaam. Peace.

In Edmonton, I felt happy to be home and less preoccupied with day-to-day violence in a place where education and health care were within reach—unlike Palestine, where getting access to even basics is a struggle. And yet, I also felt uneasy in a place where I felt I did not fully belong. My father says Edmonton is his home, but it seldom felt like home to me. I was always wandering, searching for my physical and spiritual home. My time in Palestine had confirmed for me what I had experienced as a child growing up in Edmonton: for Palestinians, the places we call home are places of heartbreak, wherever we find ourselves in the world. But home is also a place where the heart can mend, and my heart needed to mend in Edmonton.

When I arrived in Edmonton after my time in Palestine, I had little money left and knew I would have to get a job soon. I found work as a security guard and that tided me over for four months until I got work as a systems analyst at the Capital Health Authority. The year following my return to Canada was filled with momentous world events, but the standout event was undoubtedly the bombing of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. I was staying at Uncle Faisal and Aunt Khadija’s house at the time, and my aunt woke me up to come and see the events unfold. I could not believe it. I felt sick to my stomach. I went to work, where everyone was talking about it and watching TV in the corridors of the Royal Alexandra Hospital. My mind was racing. I heard a Muslim brother say, “Why did it have to be Muslims? This will kill us.”

My colleagues who were not Muslim were horrified at the thought of everyone who had died, and of those who would die. For marginalized communities who are accustomed to collective punishment, the terrifying pause between hearing about a violent crime and waiting for media reports about the profile of the suspected attackers is like holding your breath underwater. When the answer comes that Muslims were responsible, we know these events will be used to justify sweeping Patriot Acts, Security Certificates, imprisonment without charges, violence against women in our communities, bullying of our youth and children, and renewed invasions on false pretenses. It is like coming up for air and taking a full breath of tear gas. Memories of the First Gulf War, which happened while I was a kid, came flooding back, and I could only expect that it would be worse this time.

But the Edmonton I returned to was a different city to the one I grew up in. While the Muslim voices had often stayed silent when I was a youth, the city had become a place where dialogue was more accepted, and more common. Jewish and Muslim leaders created news releases together, condemning the attacks, offering sympathy to the victims, and vowing to work together. As well, the members of the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities, who had often been at odds with each other, pledged to work together.

At a time when suspicion was growing towards anyone in a hijab or prayer cap or who had darker skin, we found that in Edmonton people were coming to the Al-Rashid Mosque bearing flowers and cards, even though they were not Muslim. One man hugged the imam, saying, “We know you are part of this community. You’re not like those terrorists.”

As I grew tired of the monotony of systems analysis work, I sent my application to the University of Victoria for a PhD program in health informatics. Four months later, I got my response: I had been accepted into the program. I now had a plan to get my career on track, and I wanted a companion who would share with me the experience of connecting to my culture as a parent, passing on our ways to a next generation. With my acceptance to the University of Victoria in hand, I set out for the Garden City, known as the saying goes for its two main age groups: the newly wed, and the nearly dead. I hoped to become one of the former.