My Palestinian Shirt

“In the airports we were born. We know the story,
but … we will not die in the harbors”
Samih Al Qasem*

My dear diary, what if my father were to read this? And what if my mother were to read this as I disrobe letter by letter before their very eyes? Would they discover my secret or would they believe this to be fiction not related to reality in any way? I’m afraid it may sadden them to discover how lost I am, how afraid I am of my present, of my future, of a heritage I inherited not by choice, within an existence where I ask myself everyday: when will my life begin?

I was named after Fadwa Toukan, but on the inside I am nothing but tumult and turmoil. My inner turmoil started long ago, somewhere between the consciousness of a child and the uncertainty of a consciousness. I wrote my hesitant words in my mind before jotting them in this notebook, in English, in Arabic, using new colours I invented to draw my own shades. I scribble my words here, putting no date to a life that exists outside the boundaries of time. I walk through non-history; existence senses not my existence nor does absence sense my absence.   

I spent my whole life scattered between Arab cities where one felt no Arabness, and in foreign cities where one had the right to feel whatever one wanted. I belonged neither to city, nor neighborhood, neither to walls of a house, nor to soil. Nothing but a gypsy carrying my memories in a bundle, upon my soul accumulating more dust with every new trip. I leave behind the echo of my voice to melt into nowhere, and my footsteps on the sands of the beach to be swallowed by the waves of timelessness. When I stop to catch my breath, I look behind me and I see no evidence of my passage.

But … when I am asked where I come from, I reply enthusiastically that I am Palestinian. Yes, Palestinian! I wear my Palestinianness like a valuable old shirt that warms my existence. Its sleeves too long, its shoulders too wide. I do not know when I wore this shirt or when it wore me. I walk on, apprehensively, nervously, eagerly, cautiously, in bewilderment. I find nothing that pleases me nor anything that comforts me. Every time I move to a new place, I remember, with warmth and nostalgia, the old place which, at that time, neither pleased nor comforted me.     

Wherever I go I am surrounded by words and labels which frighten me, words which increase my nervousness and my apprehension; words which squeeze me into a tight container, which is in turn squeezed into an even tighter container, then into another and another . . . like Russian Dolls. Ever since I can remember I have been feeling my way across the shrapnel of the word “Palestinian.” There are the Arabs of Palestine, Israeli Arabs, the Arabs of 1948, Palestinians with Arab citizenship, Palestinians with foreign citizenship, Palestinians returning from Kuwait, Palestinians fleeing Kuwait, Palestinians fleeing Iraq, Palestinians who hold passports, Palestinians who hold travel documents, Palestinians who hold travel documents and ID cards. There are terrorists, nationalists, suicidal-bombers, martyrs .. there are Palestinians who do not know Palestine.

And there is me and my shirt. My shirt which is woven from the delicate threads of my father’s memories and my grandfather’s stories. My shirt, which is soiled with racism and tattered from constant upheaval. How I wish that I had remained in one corner all my life, a corner which I would have memorised and which would have memorised me, so that if I moved away I would miss even its garbage cans!      

* * *

My corner is but my shirt.
My boundaries are but my shirt.

My shroud is but my shirt, for there is no equality even in death. I realized this when my father-in-law died. He was a man saturated with his city, Jerusalem; if he left it for a few days, its scent would seep from his fingertips, from his breath. He wrote his own history in the pain of his city’s history, and on his death, his city carried his coffin upon its shoulders.

As for me, I will end up a stranger in a strange land, even if fate would have me die in Palestine. Despite my shirt, I am a stranger to it, and it to me. It will not recognize me. It will reject me, like a body rejects the implantation of foreign organs.

I will soil its soil.

My dear diary, I will bury you before I am buried. I will shroud you with the remains of my shirt into which I used to shrink and which now shrinks inside me. I will bury you under the first olive tree I meet along my way. I have only written in you when I have been very sad, and I have written in you very often. You are the wall on which I can express the freedom of writing freely, and my freedom has only been the limits of your pages.

You only know that with which I have defiled your white pages. With the axe of my words I have dug into you a well for my pains. You have contained my vacuum. You have eagerly awaited our meeting every sunset and I have emptied myself into you, my dear diary. Where should my vacuumness emptiness go now? Nothing left of me but letters that dampen my feet. I bend down to dry them in vain. My letters are many, and my shirt, darned so many times, can withstand no more.

How, from the very beginning, I had feared this to be my end! How I had feared finding nothing but tatters when I grew old!

I grew old, my dear diary, but my shirt did not. And no matter how much I wash it, never again will it return to its original whiteness. I wear it, I feel cold. I feel cold, my dear diary, I feel cold yet I forsake it not.

Every harbor knows me, it is true, and every airport … and there I remain still, writing my story in the waiting room.

Fadwa Al Qasem
Dubai, UAE
Originally written in Arabic, and first published in Al Adab Magazine, Lebanon, http://www.adabmag.com/
Translated by the author herself.
*Author’s own interpretation/translation
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