wanderlust

on where our souls belong

as a child, my grandfather watched the iof shoot and kill his friend on this street in jerusalem.

my sedo has wanderlust, according to my dad. “he just likes to travel”. my grandfather’s restlessness is attributed to simply a desire to see the world, and yet i’m not so convinced. over the last year in particular, i have come to believe that his inability to stay in one place has less to do with “wanderlust”, and more to do with the desire to return to a stolen home. he came to the united states in 1967, after the naksa (or “setback”) in which the iof seized control over the remaining palestinian territories. expanding “israeli” occupation and the increasing danger of life in jerusalem pushed him (and later my grandmother) to leave palestine. since then, my sedo has taken every opportunity possible to travel, even now into his 70s. i think he might roam the entire earth looking for a place that feels like home. a part of him knows that southern california is not where he’s meant to be. a person may be stripped of their homeland, but the longing to return lives on in them always. he will spend forever searching for a home that doesn’t exist anymore, at least not in the way it used to.

my tata has lost her home too, but she processes it differently. instead of the fruitless search for a place like the neighborhood she grew up in, she throws herself into building a connection with the land she lives on now. my grandmother grows every plant under the sun in her vast backyard. tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, za’atar, mulberries, oranges, grapes, strawberries, molokhia all take root in the garden. she plants everything that palestinians are restricted from growing on their own land as her form of resistance. tata remembers the way that palestinians interacted with their land back home, and she recreates it here the best she can. she doesn’t feel the push to travel, but she goes away reluctantly. everytime she leaves her plants, something small in her worries that she may not return. when you are forced out of your home, every house after that feels like it may be temporary. she does not know if tomorrow someone will come and threaten to kill her if she tries to stay. she will spend forever trying to grow enough plants that all of their roots may make her impossible to rip out of the earth. 

my dad was born in america, and yet he hasn’t been spared the trauma of displacement. he has inherited sedo's anxiety, and also his desire to travel. but a new tactic emerges as he creates a “home” in as many places as possible, and becomes extremely reluctant to let any of them go. deep down dad knows that none of these places are quite right, and yet he builds as many backups as possible. he spent time in palestine as a child, he’s seen what home should have looked like. subconsciously, he holds onto the experience of forced removal and having nowhere to go. events that happened long before he entered this world live on in him, even if he doesn’t realize it. so he sets up in san diego, in fresno, in utah, in new york. maybe if he creates enough homes then he can escape the destruction of one by retreating to another. he will spend forever creating a foothold in as many places as possible to ensure that he is never left without somewhere to go.

i am 21 years old, and almost 4 decades separate me from palestine. i’ve visited once, but never gotten to know it as any kind of home. my entire life has been spent with a persistent feeling that i’m in the wrong place. i’ve gotten close to feeling at home, but it’s always just out of reach. each of the 4 cities i’ve lived in has been missing something, and i’m constantly slightly uneasy. since something is off no matter where i live, i instead build my home in the people that i love, hoping that maybe the next place will be the right one. as i’ve gotten older, i’ve started to believe more and more that my body can tell that i’m supposed to be somewhere else. i know that home exists, and i know that it isn’t here. i will spend forever trying out different towns, knowing none of them will ever really fill the gap i feel where home should be. even when we’ve left a place, even generations later, our souls know where our bodies belong.

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this post is dedicated to my dad, eyad, and my grandparents, hani and ahida. i carry them in my heart in all of the work i do for palestinian liberation. monday, october 7th, marked 1 year of the ongoing genocide in palestine. this week, i take the time to honor our martyrs and the unwavering resilience of palestinians in gaza and the west bank.

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