On Being Palestinian
Embracing the contradictions and struggle of a life lived in Jerusalem.
A version of this story was originally published in GQ (Middle East edition) April 2022 issue.
GQ Middle East, April 2022 issue, page 104
Today, I find myself at peace. While everything around me feels like a wild hurricane – I’m somehow able to maintain a certain calm that allows me to observe what goes on and navigate it smoothly.
The person I’ve become today is thanks to my upbringing, my many curiosities, and the external factors that define the place I live in. It was a journey, with a lot of transformative stages that I can still recall vividly.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, I grew up witnessing live scenes of war and bloodshed. I thought it was normal to live under occupation. There was a young rebel somewhere within me. As a young teenager, I would argue with friends about religious interpretations and practices. I had the spirit of a rebel, yet I could not think of moral codes and philosophies beyond the religion and ethics I had been taught. I was reading a lot of history and politics, rather than prose and poetry.
The activism of Arab youth in 2011 stirred something within me; I became even more passionate about politics. My friendship groups diversified and were no longer restricted to kids of my age. I became friends with people who were older than me for the first time. The exchange of thoughts and ideas at that stage was intense. Every person left an impact. I was observing, experimenting, and learning fast.
That life was noisy, it felt chaotic. At the age of 18, I was on the receiving end of rubber bullets, and tear gas, and saw the inside of a jail cell. There was a lot of passion and optimism within me. The flag of Palestine symbolised a movement of liberation. Books affected me intensely. I read Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, and I wanted to put my energy into the emancipation of humankind. I really didn’t have much balance within me in those days.
My personal transformative phases continued. A combination of religious, political, philosophical, and psychedelic experiences, throughout my early twenties, contributed to the character I am today. Those days were colourful, jam-packed, and experimental.
When I discovered I could think about God and religion philosophically, everything changed. An invisible mental barrier suddenly came crashing down.
I felt like a pendulum swinging back and forth between firm belief in the existence of God through faith and logic, and between nihilism and lack of faith on the other side. Those phases of confusion were a necessity for the process of personal enlightenment. I felt like Bazarov coming back from college in Ivan Turganov’s Father and Sons.
After university, real life suddenly hit when I got my first desk job. It was sobering. I insisted on maintaining a routine and a healthy lifestyle. I drowned myself in humanist and existential science-fiction. I was particularly fond of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan. Around me were a few friends I could trust my life with. I focussed on small pleasures and took up running as a hobby. Long-distance running was my way to practise mindfulness; it was a personal refuge. Haruki Murakami would agree.
Eventually, I would settle upon my one and only answer to the frequently asked question: “Which famous person, dead or alive, would you choose to have dinner with?”. My answer would be Albert Camus. He was one author who made me feel an inexplicable amount of optimism. The Stranger was a particularly moving novella. The way his novels and essays discussed themes of absurdism and revolt gave me personal strength in defining my own reasons to live.
I understood that in order to carry on without tripping over, I had to recognise a few things about myself. I chose a few fictions to define myself by. My identity as a Jerusalemite came on top.
The bond I felt with my city felt most authentic in a spiritual and geopolitical sense. I felt lucky to be able to call the holiest city in the world my birthplace and my home. It gave me something to fight for; an eternal struggle I was willing to accept.
I am Palestinian and Muslim, too. They are undeniable parts of my identity. The local pub was central to my life, but so was the Dome of the Rock, as it symbolised the core of my Jerusalemite identity. I saw no contradiction, but rather a feeling of spiritual belonging to an eternal city.
I found my escape in techno music, and in my love for exploration and experiencing new things. One day, I would glorify the mighty Daft Punk. Their album Random Access Memories affected me in ways I could not describe. Today, I find myself driving to work at 7:30am, blasting a playlist of psychedelic trance. Not to everyone’s taste, but to me it felt normal and comforting. After all, the noise of society felt like a hurricane.
Sometimes, all I want is a good DJ set, a lovely sunset, and a few hours of dancing until my feet feel numb. This may seem hard to attain in Jerusalem, where every day constitutes an existential struggle. Below the surface level, the escapist adventures were aplenty, whether in Jerusalem, Ramallah, or elsewhere. There was an energetic, exciting, and inspiring underground culture. It symbolised daily exercises in people imagining liberation. The music was inseparable from politics. The philosophical chats were inseparable from passion. The people were full of life.
I had to accept the many contradictions in my own life, my place in society, and most importantly, I had to be honest with myself. However, I knew one truth for certain: I would choose life in Jerusalem over anything else, anywhere else, at any time.
