Related Somehow to Africa
black
Palestinians and the search for shared identity
jewel bush
Samra and Suad at Suad’s home, June 2009.
© jewel bush.
In
the summer of 2009, I crash a wedding party in Deir el-Balah, a city along the
coast of the eastern Mediterranean Sea situated in the middle of the Gaza
Strip. The celebration is in honor of the son of Mama Ayda, a dark-eyed,
sober-faced matriarch. It is his groom’s party.
The
men drip sweat from dancing dabke outdoors in the Middle Eastern summer
heat. They heap affection onto the groom-to-be, often embracing him and
hoisting his chair high in the air as the women in his family and female guests
form a semicircle around the fast-paced movement. They sit watching the scene,
quietly chatting among them-selves. Scores of children chase each other in the
open field giggling into the night. At this age, prepuberty, it is acceptable
for the sexes to play together.
I
stand to snap pictures of this traditional Palestinian line dance— the
stomping, the spinning, the kicking, and the jumping. The ground pulsates under
the intensity of the dabke chain. My host and translator,
twenty-four-year-old Samra, grabs my elbow and shakes her finger for me not to
approach. With hand gestures, reprimanding looks, and tongue-lashings in
Arabic, other women admonish me from going near the testosterone-only action.
Under different cir-cumstances, at a wedding reception back home, I would have
joined
on
the dance floor. Someone would have moved over a bit to make room for me in
line to do the Bus Stop or perhaps the Cupid Shuffle and my presence would have
been welcomed.
If I am to dance tonight, it will be in a separate area for
women only. It is in this space that the
68 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
|
I have voluntarily entered a war zone and am
now plunged into a reality I had previously known very little about, only to
realize that the very little that I think I know is all wrong. |
women,
clad in their thobes—flowing garments rippling with intricate embroidery
and appliqué designs—are allowed to trip the light fantas-tic. With
outstretched arms, the women in various stages of womanhood dance with one
another, moving slightly off-kilter from right to left,
calling
out in loud, piercing tones, clicking their tongues, sometimes removing their
hijabs as they enjoy the camaraderie of fe-male company. I take my snapshots
from an acceptable distance as the children scurry around me, leaping in and
out of frames, touching me, smiling at me, standing close to me.
When Mama Ayda arrives, I am escorted to meet her. Word at
the event has spread that there is an American present, a black American. Based
on my own Southern rear-
ing,
I don’t have to fully understand this culture or their customs to know that it
would be offensive not to greet the pillars of the commu-nity. Paying deference
to elders is just as meaningful in Palestine as it is in Louisiana.
Mama Ayda is draped in a glowing white scarf; only a sliver
of her smooth, ebony face is exposed. She is prominently seated as the most
important person at the gathering. From this post, she receives gifts of heavy
burlap sacks filled with rice and flour, bestowed upon her from the
bride-to-be’s family. Samra leads me over. A large crowd of women and children
hover to hear my New Orleans drawl being translated into Arabic. With my
point-and-shoot, notebook, and ignorance in tow, our conversation begins.
Mama Ayda was forced from her birthplace, a village named
Nabi Rubin—believed to be the resting place of the Prophet Reuben—near
Jerusalem in 1948: The year of the Nakba. The Nakba, translated from Arabic as
“The Catastrophe,” refers to the year that more than 800,000 Palestinians were
expelled from their villages in what is known as the Arab/Israeli War or the
Israeli War of Independence. Israeli laws, es-tablished subsequently, prevented
them from ever returning. These peoples and their descendants, close to five
million, are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA). They live as the largest group of refugees in the world. UNRWA is a
United Nations agency that was specifically established in the 1950s to deal
with “the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem.” There are
fifty-eight recognized Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the
Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
Mama Ayda doesn’t know her exact age. Ninety is her best
guess. She has never met an American. I am her first. She calls me “nice.”
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
69 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
“I long for the day where I can eat, sleep, and be happy,”
she tells me through Samra’s translation, expressing her longing for the siege
to be over.
Before this, I had no concept of black Palestinians; yet
here I am, deep in a community of black Palestinians, black people—a gumbo of
complexions—who look like they could be from Haiti or Harlem or Ghana or out
the Tremé. These black people were born in Palestine and live there, too: the
African Diaspora in the flesh, the Gulf Coast meets the Middle East. And
somehow, I manage to hook up with a clique of sisters. Maybe I could have fit
in, gone unnoticed, except for my inability to speak or understand the
language—and my American-ness, impossible to conceal, not even in my oversized
backpack.
It is unclear how many Palestinians of African descent are
in Pales-tine, but what is certain is that I had stumbled upon a strong enclave
of them in Deir el-Balah. Their existence is swallowed whole in the dilemma
that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where religious and po-litical
oppression and restriction of movement in a sixty-plus year fight hardly leaves
any room for an identity separate from the national one.
• •
•
I
first meet Samra, an English teacher, at Al-Maghazi Cultural Center, a social
service nonprofit organization dedicated to the needs of wom-en and children in
the central Gaza Strip. Her silver bangle bracelets clank as the woman, who
knows sign language too, uses her hands to help convert Executive Director
Talal Abu Shawish’s address back into Arabic while he speaks to our group in
English.
I am part of a New Orleans subgroup that has spent the last
week with other do-gooders, activists, and journalists from around the
world—including noted activist, political scientist, and author Nor-man Finkelstein—traveling
on charter buses throughout the rubble and ruins that are unfortunately much of
Gaza. The delegation is orga-nized by CODEPINK, an anti-war group run largely
by privileged white women. We arrive in the Egyptian North Sinai border town of
Arish with a special letter from international diplomats recommending we be
allowed to pass through the Rafah crossing into Gaza right away. My head is
swimming with other people’s analyses of the Israeli occupation, whether the
1948 or 1967 borders should be honored, one or two state solutions, and Hamas
vs. Fatah debates. This disaster awareness-raising tour weighs on me
emotionally, as do the sounds of shelling in the Mediterranean Sea by the
Israeli Navy, rolling blackouts throughout the region, bombed out edifices
scattered across the landscape, chunks
70 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
|
We ask each other intrusive questions that
under any other situation would seem flat-out weird. But here, it is okay.
Why? Because none of this is supposed to be normal. |
of
concrete sprouting from the ground, and bullet holes everywhere. I have
voluntarily entered a war zone and am now plunged into a reality I had
previously known very little about, only to realize that the very little that I
think I know is all wrong. Wrong information fed to me from sources dead-set on
criminalizing and vilifying a people as terrorists.
When I walk into the Al-Maghazi Cultural Center, I am weary
from a daylong itinerary of visits to numerous social service agencies and
stuffed from eating at every stop. It would be rude to turn down meals offered
by a nation of people who live daily with food insecurity. I say shukran and
consume respectable, yet minimal, amounts of the Mirin-da orange soda and maklouba,
a popular chicken and rice dish. By this time, my stomach is bubbling. I need
water, Pepto-Bismol, and a nap.
Immediately prior, my group interviewed Dr. Mariam Abu
Daqqa, a well-known resistance leader from the Popular Front for the Liberation
of
Palestine (PFLP), who spent many years in Israeli prisons for her role in armed
re-sistance in the 1960s and 1970s and in the First Intifada in the late
1980s/early 1990s. Now, her efforts are focused on medical treatment and
education for women, like providing eyeglasses and first aid classes, as well
as tackling the psychological needs of women and kids living under siege. A
cluster of us huddle to hear tales of a life dedicated to revolution, and
marvel at pho-tographs of her in younger days—among
them,
a photograph with Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bulgaria. The non-smokers don’t mind
her chain-smoking as we cling to her words in much the same way the thick smoke
from her Marlboros grabs the air in her tiny, dank office.
Just like I notice Samra at the women’s center—the black
Palestinian woman cloaked in a white, sequined scarf that covers her long,
slender face, a silver necklace dangling down the front of her blouse—she
no-tices me, too: the only black face among a sea of white ones. The three
other black Americans traveling with the delegation weren’t in my unit that
day. This fact hasn’t necessarily dawned on me until this point.
Once the presentation is complete, I make my way to Samra.
There are several other black Palestinian women milling about the center, too.
Samra and I become fast friends, an instant kinship undoubtedly based on our
black skin. Within minutes, she and a few of the other women from the center
surround me. We flip through a small picture album that I have brought with me,
sharing glimpses of my life in the States as a mother, sister, and friend. We
ask each other intrusive questions
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
71 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
that
under any other situation would seem flat-out weird. But here, it is okay. Why?
Because none of this is supposed to be normal. Suad, a thirty-five-year-old
secretary at the center, is in the cipher. As my group’s time winds down, she
blurts out an awkward invitation for me to attend a party with them that night.
I decline the offer. I am insultingly underdressed, wearing
ratty brown canvas sneakers, a long, cobalt button-down top, and puke-green
yoga pants—a dusty, mismatched traveler whose luggage never arrived in Cairo. I
am living in two outfits, emergency late night purchases from Khan el-Khalili,
a major souk in Cairo.
Suad, who speaks a fair amount of English, says “no
problem,” and before I can object again, I break from the rest of the group
armed with a list of cell phone numbers and the address of the hotel written on
a slip of paper. We leave in a beat-up cab with Samra and Suad, off to Suad’s
house to choose an outfit from her closet to wear to what I discovered during
the ride isn’t just a get-together, but a marriage celebration.
• •
•
Brothers Soad Ali and Khaleed in Khaleed’s
backyard, June 2009. ©
jewel bush.
When
we arrive at Suad’s two-bedroom home in Deir el-Balah, her two sons—Wesam,
five, and Islam, six, dressed alike in yellow and khaki short sets—greet us.
Here, Suad’s second shift starts. She has to prepare dinner for her family
before she can head out for the evening. She whips up something quick on a
stove of two propane burners.
Her husband, Khaleed, about ten years her senior, is in the
fami-
ly’s backyard garden of olives, plums, apricots, figs, and
grapes with
his brother, Soad Ali. A mud oven rests in the corner of the
yard for
use during the many
times electricity is
cut by Israel. The two
men sit at a round
white table drinking
chai with maramia, a
sweet sage, Khaleed in
his green thobe, and
Soad Ali in a blue-and-
white checkered shirt
and dark slacks. They
read the newspaper
and discuss matters
of state.
72 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
|
The men are flabbergasted to learn that I am
traveling with people of Jewish heritage and faith who stand in solidarity
with Palestine. “But the Jews are our enemies,” Khaleed says with certainty. |
Suad was born in Libya and is part Egyptian. It is not made
clear to me why she emigrated from Libya to Palestine. “She came to Palestine
because it is our country,” Samra jumps in to help Suad explain it to
me.
I still don’t understand, but I don’t press the issue. The importance of that
detail shrinks as I talk to her husband and brother-in-law. They grill me as to
why I am visiting “their country.” The men are flabbergasted to learn that I am
traveling with people of Jewish heritage and faith who stand in solidarity with
Palestine.
“But the Jews are our enemies,” Khaleed says with certainty.
“They care?”
Both men have spent seven years in Is-raeli jail camps for
what I understand to be the equivalent of American racial profiling,
under
“administrative detention,” an Israeli form of incarceration that requires no
formal sentencing and effectively eradicates due process for non-Jews. As of
April 2013, there were approximately 4,700 security prisoners in Israeli jails,
169 of them held under administrative deten-tion without having been charged
with any crime. Most of the prisoners are Palestinian men from the West Bank
and Gaza areas, accused of participating in terrorist attacks.
• •
•
From
life-sustaining medicine to common household supplies that we take for granted,
everything that moves through Gaza is heavily regu-lated, even what is snuck in
through the tunnels, dangerous, under-ground routes of commerce. The region
doesn’t have a commercial airport. It used to, but the area where folks could
fly in and out is now bombed out. Border crossings can take hours, days, weeks.
Or never. The region has been likened to the largest, open-air prison in the
world, with Israel as its warden. The people live under an apartheid system,
which some argue is more severe than the one South Africa toppled in the 90s,
if you believe in a hierarchy of oppression. “We know too well that our freedom
is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” said Nelson Mandela
during a 1997 speech for International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People in Pretoria, South Africa.
Venture about three miles from the shore into the
Mediterranean Sea—even a mile more—and the Israeli Navy will fire. Fishermen
are
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
73 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
forced
to overfish the waters, trampling their livelihoods and causing an
environmental calamity. Farmers along the borders face a similar scenario.
Many homes have been destroyed by Israeli air strikes,
bombings, and heavy artillery fire, the scars of Occupation. The bombings are
evident in Suad’s neighborhood, the equivalent of a lifetime of post-Ka-trina
blight that never gets rebuilt. You may have a lived-in house next to one so
ravaged that it’s hard to imagine it was ever called “home.” Cement, wood,
steel, glass, and other building materials are banned from entering Gaza or are
never allowed to pass through the border crossings. Whatever is smuggled in is
expensive, which makes recon-struction for those of a certain privilege and
those willing to take the risk.
• •
•
Suad’s son, Wesam, June 2009.
© jewel bush.
I
thank the men and exit the garden with Suad. She pulls several gar-ments from
the closet in her bedroom. We are about the same size. After showing me a
couple of pantsuits that don’t quite fit my tastes, she lays out a black one
with a gold-embroidered neckline. “That one,” I say, choosing it from the
lineup of possible selections. I go into the bathroom to change. Right before I
shut the door, Suad hands me a fistful of white napkins and smiles.
Dinner isn’t quite finished when it is time for us to leave.
The
surreal normality of the song of the ice cream truck
meandering its
way through the neighborhood
is as magnificent as the call for
prayer
heard throughout Gaza. Suad fishes coins from her bag and hands them to her
boys. Her husband comes to see us off. As we pile into our second cab of the
adventure, he stands on the sidewalk, steadying himself with a stick. While we
drive off, I watch the chocolate ice cream trickling down Wesam’s and Islam’s
hands as they stand in the alleyway enjoying their sweets.
• •
•
74 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
I
left Gaza with Samra’s email address. I wrote to her when I returned to New Orleans,
only to discover that it was invalid. Anxious I had lost contact with her
forever, I did what everyone does these days when searching for someone: I
looked her up on Facebook.
jewel bush |
6/12/09 |
Hi . . . Not sure if I have
the right person since you don’t have a picture of yourself up . . . I was
wondering if this was Samra, whom I met last week in Palestine. If so, please
add me as a friend.
Moments
later, from the other side of the world, Samra added me and sent this message:
Samra |
6/12/09 |
hi dear. it is me who met
in Palestine. and I added u. this photo is noumy cambel the model. all love
A
second message from her followed within a few minutes, but it was in Arabic.
Then,
Samra |
6/12/09 |
iam sorry. so u
have to learn some Arabic
While in Palestine, I asked black Palestinian women if the
color of their skin negatively impacted their lives as Palestinians. Over and
over again, the answer was “no.” They said they experienced no dis-crimination
and were quite confused by the question. They found it difficult to fathom
being mistreated by fellow Palestinians. “Israel is our enemy,” I was
told. However, eventually, some admitted that, when it comes down to marriage,
families seek lighter-skinned brides or Arab brides. Even Samra confessed in
writing, “Once I loved white one but we broken down cus we will not marry cus
of tradition. My family who refuse to let my marry with white basicly/ in the
same time his family refused too.”
One non-black Palestinian woman in Gaza told me that black
wom-en are not as good-looking, which is why they oftentimes don’t get marriage
proposals. She meant no insult, but stated it as a matter of
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
75 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
|
She meant no insult, but stated it as a matter
of record: Black people are inferior, the truth of being black and
Palestinian. |
record:
Black people—referred to as sumr, Arabic for brown, or by the racial
epithet ‘abd, which means slave—are inferior, the truth of being black
and Palestinian. To be Palestinian in the Occupied Territory means you suffer
from a profound isolation and persecution. But to be black in Palestine means
you suffer from an even deeper sense of isolation. Yes, it is possible.
• •
•
By
now, it seems to have become a requirement of the global community that all
societies determine the measure of beauty and charm by the lightness of the
skin,
and ours is no exception. Black Palestin-ians are the subject of extreme
prejudice and social profiling as children. As adults, they find it difficult
to integrate into society and be treated with respect and equality by fellow
Palestinians. Suffering the brunt of it are our Black Palestinian women who,
under this racist framework, find it impossible to live up to such standards of
beauty. They are often
shunned and declared unfit
for love or marriage because blackness has become akin to ugliness.
—Budour Youssef Hassan
I
have many follow-up questions about race in Gaza. I sent Samra a link to a
website with an article by anthropologist Susan Beckerleg (http:// yajaffar.tripod.com/african.html)
that discusses the history of black people in Palestine, focusing especially on
the history of black Afri-cans being brought to Palestine as slaves and
laborers. The following exchange ensued.
Samra |
7/13/09 |
it is nice
article and interesting
it has valuable
information about palestine
but frankly I wondered that
the writer describe black people in palestine as slaves in fact they do not
call slaves . . .
another thing writer see
that black people in palestine related somehow to africa but I think we are not
we are just Palestinian born here
76 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
I
attempted to clarify, explaining to Samra that the author simply meant that, at
some point in the past, black Palestinians had a genealogical connection to
Africa. For example,
jewel bush |
7/13/09 |
. . . i was born in the
united states. my parents were too. and so were my grandparents, but as a black
woman and taking into consideration the history of the united states and
slavery, my ancestors do come from africa; even though i may be un-sure of
where they came from in africa. i know it is the past, but knowing and acknowledging
the past is also part of the present and future.
|
|
Samra |
7/13/09 |
ok thanks for making its clear |
|
but I still have question
are all black people related to africa?? about past I really appreciate the
past and who has no past has no future . . .
The
instinct of knowing a sister when you see one, that very sameness that drew
Samra to me, was also the very thing that separated us, this diasporic identity
I had that she could not comprehend, regardless of her proximity to the
continent. We both carry it in our DNA: Africa. However, Africa is also what
separates us, both in terms of consciousness and identity.
For me, blackness is the crux of my political identity; for
Sam-ra, that is being Palestinian. The very act of being black in America is
political—from how our ancestors arrived, to where they could use the bathroom
and drink water and live and work and shop and walk, drive, ride and go to
school, wages, healthcare—all political. In all of my Pan-African idealism that
I carried with me to Gaza, I made as-sumptions about racial identification
based on phenotype. For Samra, being black doesn’t cultivate feelings of racial
pride as it does for me. Blackness for Samra is not an identity marker.
Palestinian, Muslim, woman, daughter all trumped—superseded—a notion of
blackness as critically important.
However, the fact that blackness—and a sense of connection
to Africa—is not of great importance to Samra’s sense of identity does not mean
that this is true for all black Palestinians—or that it was al-ways true for
the black Palestinian community. In an email exchange
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
77 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
with Susan Beckerleg, she
clarified some of the history behind this distancing.
Palestinian
history is all geared towards promoting the idea that they are the original
inhabitants of the region. This is a reaction to the Israeli claims that the
land is theirs and the snatching of Palestinian land. People are not interested
much in history for its sake, and many people do not want to delve into slave
pasts. Being called ‘abed’ is bad enough. People of African descent told me what
they knew of their parents and grandpar-ents and their lives in Palestine. Some
older people I spoke to in Jerusalem had been born in Africa, while others in
the Negev and Gaza told me what they knew of how their ancestors came to
Palestine. For many other people the link with Africa had been lost and all but
forgotten.
Beckerleg
conducted interviews with black Palestinians in Gaza, the Negev, and Jerusalem
between September 1995 and January 1998. It was this research that formed the
basis for her article, “Hidden Histo-ry, Secret Present: The Origins and Status
of African Palestinians,” to which I had linked Samra. In it, she goes on to
clarify that the failure of the Oslo Accords proved a turning point in the
identity politics of many black Palestinians. In her words, “as the political
situation worsened it became more difficult to talk to people about the highly
sensitive and political issues of ethnic origin, the legacy of slavery and
their current status as Palestinian or Israeli citizens.”
By contrast, my own ancestral connection to Africa has never
been in doubt. Growing up in Louisiana, I developed a Pan-African viewpoint at
a young age. In the 1990s, we repped RBG, wore “Free South Africa” medallions,
learned about Marcus Garvey, and studied the principles of Kwanzaa. Even
without knowing exactly where in Africa my ancestors were captured, all
Transatlantic slave routes lead from Mama Africa. Unlike Samra, I have the
privilege to be able to embrace this triple identity—black, American,
African—without fundamentally having to give up one for the sake of the other.
• •
•
78 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
Oral
testimony about ancestry can be hard to obtain directly from black
Palestinians. Despite the tabooed connection between black skin and slavery,
slavery and forced labor cannot account for nearly all of the black people in
Palestine. Their origins are in fact quite diverse, includ-ing voluntary
migration and religious pilgrimages to the Holy Land from African nations with
sizable Muslim populations, such as Chad, Senegal, Sudan, and Nigeria. Kali
Akuno, a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, who has done Palestinian
solidarity work in the United States since 1987, adds,
Slavery
was much more complex within the Islamic world than it was in the West. Part of
the complex leg-acy of slavery is it encompassed peoples of all races in the
region despite that it still came to be associated specifically with people
with ‘black’ African phenotypes in the Arabic speaking world even though the
‘black’ Palestinian population is as much a product of military operatives
(soldiers and mercenaries) that served vari-ous caliphates over the years, as
it is of those Africans who were enslaved and brought to Palestine before the
19th century.
I
ask Samra where her parents were born? Her grandparents? She says her
grandparents were born in Bir al-Saba’ (Beersheba) in the Negev desert, on
occupied Palestinian land, and expelled during the Nakba. Her mother, who is
significantly older than her father, was also born in Bir al-Saba’. Her father,
a teacher, in Gaza.
• •
•
We
tour classrooms and workshops while visiting the Afaq Jadeeda Association, a
center that provides a creative outlet for children in the Nuseirat Refugee
Camp through sports and the arts. There is a pair of pre-teen boys who are
smitten with me. At one point, they are so close that I stop suddenly and they
trip over desks so as not to touch me. Their faces are bruised and their
clothes are tattered. They speak enough English for us to engage. They are
silly and make jokes. I am the butt of some of these gags, I infer. They
question many times, “You Sudan? You Somal?” They lead a young girl of about
six over to clarify.
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
79 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
“See,” they say, pointing at her, “she Somal.” Again they
ask, “You Somal?”
She is a foreigner to them. She is African. She is black
like me.
“No. I’m not Somal. I’m from America,” I say.
They initiate their own tour to show me their drawings and
the rest of the room. We get to a bookcase and they remove a glossy magazine
from the shelf. The cover is of bloodied and bandaged babies and wreckage.
Without flinching, they tell me in clear English, “America did this.” I don’t
know if they recognize the gravitas of that statement. Some of the instructors
shoo them away now, but it is too late. I am already indicted.
When we leave, one of the members of the delegation starts
to give her possessions to the children, ranging in age from about five to
fourteen. She empties her small tote, handing out apples, individually wrapped
snack bags of cookies and crackers, miscellaneous trinkets she was carrying,
and all of the shekels in her pockets. The boys who chided me for the U.S.’s
role in the Occupation are among the youngsters.
As I ride off in one of the luxury buses CODEPINK uses to
travel around Gaza, I am ashamed. I burrow my head in my purple notebook that I
use for jotting down my thoughts. I don’t want anyone to witness my tears,
tears of the privileged American, who can leave just as quickly as she arrived.
The boys tap on the window where I am seated. I look up and
feign glee. The bus takes off as we head to another site to see more despair.
They run behind the bus calling out, “I love you. You will come back?”
I take down the window and sit on my haunches.
“I’ll try.”
• •
•
When
I posted the images of my trip on Facebook, my cousin, Klas-si, commented on a
snapshot of me next to Suad, Samra, and Sally, another black Palestinian woman
at the community center. My short curly locks were covered in a scarf similar
to the Muslim women I am standing with. “You look just like one of them,” she
remarked after liking most of the pictures in the album, “Frontline Gaza: Women
and Children First.”
I look like them? Or they look like me? Who am I, other than
the descendant of Aliza “Mazie” Martin—the oldest person to whom my family can
trace our lineage? In the early 1800s, French sugar planters packed her up,
along with the rest of their property, and left southwest France (Department of
Basses-Pyrénées), headed for Pointe Coupee
80 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
|
We get to a bookcase and they remove a glossy
magazine from the shelf. The cover is of bloodied and bandaged babies and
wreckage. Without flinching, they tell me in clear English, “America did
this.” |
Parish
in Louisiana. Mazie, who died in LeBeau, Louisiana in 1910, was born somewhere
in Africa between 1820 and 1830 before being brought to France as a slave, then
to Louisiana as a slave.
Me, Samra, Suad: We resemble each other, as we should, as
daughters of the Diaspora. Suad from Libya. Samra from Palestine. My ancestor,
Mazie. And me, related somehow to Africa.
• •
•
Social
media allows Samra and me to foster a relationship akin to that of
old-fashioned pen pals. She asks about my son. I ask if she’s found work since
her contract at the nonprofit has ended. She keeps me abreast of her quest to
study abroad to pursue a degree beyond her
English
degree from the Islamic University in Gaza. I ask how the translation process
is going for an assignment she is working on, a book about children’s artwork
in Gaza. She follows me on Twitter. Adds me on Skype. Instagram, too.
As the upheaval in the region inten-sified over the years,
seeing Samra again seemed like a fantasy. Keeping in touch via cyberspace would
have to be enough. But then, I receive a Facebook message one day, three years
after we met: Samra is com-ing to America. The Palestinian Authority
has
granted her special permission to participate in the International Visitor
Leadership Program (IVLP), a program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Her month-long residency, focusing on
education and activism for young women, will include stops to Los Angeles,
Washington, D.C., and New Orleans.
Samra’s New Orleans schedule is packed with meetings, visits
to various places such as the World Trade Center, some sightseeing, and a
graduation ceremony with the seventeen other program participants— all in two
days. I pick her up at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown New Orleans the
night she arrives in my city, a week before Christmas 2012. I am eager to repay
her for the hospitality she showed me those years back. With the few resources
she had, she gave generously, even the bracelets from her arm when we hugged
goodbye in 2009.
I trade text messages with the coordinator of the group to
ar-range our meet-up. It is not lost on me that, this time, I am
guar-anteeing Samra’s safety. I pull into the hotel driveway and spot
her
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
81 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
Woman dancing at the wedding, June 2009.
© jewel
bush.
right
away sitting outside on a bench with the delegation leader. Samra cradles a
sheer black scarf outlined with sequins. Her skinny braids flow down her back.
She wears a white miniskirt with dark tights underneath.
After
we embrace, she calls my attention to her ensemble. “Do you like it?”
“Samra!”
“I’m in the USA,” she beams.
We
drive off into the chilly New Orleans night, accompanied by her new colleague,
Laura from Romania. I ask about the things they’ve done so far. Samra loved Los
Angeles and was able to go to a “disco” there. In Washington, D.C., they toured
the White House. She hated Cincinnati because there was a shooting near the
hotel, which made her afraid to go outside.
We
pass the Superdome and ride down South Claiborne Avenue, heading Uptown to the
holiday potluck a writer friend is hosting.
“I’m
so sorry about Hurricane Katrina,” Laura says. “Is everything better?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Your leaders, what’s wrong with them?” Samra asks.
Samra
mingles confidently at the party. When it is time to fix some-thing to eat,
Samra asks about the spread. She points to a mountain of confectionary nibbles.
“What’s this?” she asks, when she sees me add a couple to my plate.
“Rum balls. They have alcohol in them.”
“Oh,” Samra passes over them, continuing to the next dish.
Laura helps herself.
It is no different from a night out with old friends, who
meet up often to go shopping or to the movies or for Sunday brunch. We pose for
pictures in front of the Christmas tree in my friend’s living room. The glimmer
of the red and green lights reflects bril-liantly off the sequins on Samra’s
black blouse.
“Wait,” she grabs her scarf before the picture is taken,
this one with me, and then a few ad-ditional ones with others at the shindig.
82 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
We don’t stay out too late. I have work in the morning and
Sam-ra’s day begins at 7:00 a.m. We make plans to hang out the following
afternoon, once she is done with the program’s closing activities. The next day
is one of many goodbyes, as her delegation separates and its participants begin
returning to their countries of origin.
Samra wants to go shopping to buy souvenirs for her
girlfriends and her big family back in Gaza. She also wants to purchase a
laptop for her uncle who lives in Cairo. I take her to a few electronics stores
so she can take advantage of the season’s deals. She wants to buy clothes and
cosmetics for herself. We don’t go to touristy shops. I take her to a strip
mall where merchandise is abundant and reasonably priced. This won’t be the
case once she is back in Gaza. We have until 11:00 p.m.—holiday extended hours.
I use this time to get some of my Christmas shopping taken care of, too.
I am embarrassed I don’t get to take Samra anywhere truly
special or authentically New Orleans and for this I apologize. She says no
need, at least we get to be with each other. We end our night eating mediocre
American fare at a noisy sports bar. We keep the talk light, but there is a
numbing silence on the drive back to the hotel. It is nearly 1:00 a.m. when I
drop her off. I give her a book on New Or-leans culture, a nondescript hardback
about crawfish and Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, Café Du Monde and
the Mississippi River.
We rush our goodbyes. I tell her that we will see each other
again despite there being no guarantee when or if she will ever be allowed to
travel outside of Palestine again. Or I allowed in again. Tears run down my
face when I open the gift she leaves for me, a copper Pashmina scarf and dangly
earrings.
• •
•
Long
after she has returned home, Samra tells me of something that happened while
she was in the process of securing her visa to travel to the United States.
Samra |
10/6/13 |
when i went to westbank fot
the first time for visa meeting in amircan conslate , i passed in front of the
entrance to Bair saba’
, i was so excited and really wish if i could go
there , but i can not so i took pic with road sign indicate to my home . . .
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
83 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
My grandparents born in Bair saba’a too.. and
really I do not know if we have orign roots in africa
U told me
before that all black pepole come from africa
Samra
and I continue to discuss heritage and politics, but mainly we talk about the
things friends do. I tell her that I am still writing about my trip to Gaza all
these years later. She asks me to read her concept paper for a grant proposal
she is writing. A few months go by and she messages me that her proposal has
been selected from a pool of 681 others to be funded. Her empowerment project,
Girls Make Difference, modeled after the fellowship program she participated in
in the States, will be implemented. I tell her how proud I am. She asks me to
like the group’s Facebook page.
Samra |
4/20/14 |
I hope we can
meet again
Insha’Allah or as we say in
the South, “If the Lord says the same.” Coda
Israel
began an assault in Gaza on July 8, 2014. According to the Gaza Health
Ministry, 1,915 Palestinians have been killed and at least 10,000 wounded, most
of them civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. I reach out to
Samra via Facebook.
|
|
Samra |
7/9/14 |
its sooo bad dear we smell death around like
movies . . . |
|
airstrik never stopped since last three nights
|
|
|
|
jewel bush |
7/9/14 |
How can you work like this? |
|
What are you doing to stay safe? |
|
84 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
Samra |
7/9/14 |
people go work and pretending its ok / and
majourity stay home do nothing just hearing bombing around u know there is no
shelters
Samra |
7/10/14 |
till this
moment 88 civil palestinian and more than 610 injuries
|
|
jewel bush |
7/10/14 |
Have you been safe? |
|
|
|
Samra |
7/10/14 |
Yes I stay at home with family |
|
U know,
many ppl now r forced to leave homes in north of gaza and go to unrwa schools
Samra |
7/12/14 |
160 martyrs and 1070 injuries till this moment
during 5 days Most of them children and women
|
|
Samra |
7/15/14 |
Hey dear |
|
Um fine with my family |
|
|
|
jewel bush |
7/18/14 |
Any word about what’s going on?
|
|
|
|
Samra |
7/18/14 |
Since two days and um speechless |
|
I can’t recognize or analyze what is going on |
|
Just innocent kidds killed |
|
And whole families murdered |
|
As I finish this writing about black Palestinians, Israel
and Hamas have agreed to and broken at least three ceasefire agreements to give
civilians a break from the violence, allowing them time to bury the
bush • Related Somehow to Africa |
85 |
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions
dead,
tend to the wounded, and gather food. Samra hasn’t responded to any of my
messages in more than twelve days.
Immediate survival understandably usurps identity.
For Samra, to concern yourself with blackness is to zero in
on a headache, when you have bullets lodged in your skull. It is to point to a
rash when phosphorous acid is raining from regular air assaults. Yes, the
headaches or the rashes irritate you, but they’re not the biggest of the
problems you face. You could be dead.
But Insha’Allah, or if the Lord says the same, you will live
another day, occupied.
86 Transition 115
This content downloaded from 140.247.162.13 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:07:47
AM
All use subject to JSTOR
Terms and Conditions