Return to Haifa

by me! (To be taken with a grain of salt, lots of sugar, tea and laughter!)

Mahmood Darwish, a Palestinian poet, writes, "All the people's hearts are my identity...so take away my passport!"

His words have continued to carry some truth. I used to believe in his poem, by choice, but continued to live his words, by force. I am a woman who was born in East Jerusalem 30 years ago and who holds only temporary documents that identify my name, place of birth and my nationality as Jordanian. Nonetheless, I hold no official passport of any country.
When I was younger, believing Darwish's words seemed to be a matter of default and fate of being Palestinian. What else can one do but have people's hearts for a passport if one does not have one? And yet embedded in Darwish's poem is a continous struggle: that of belonging, home and love, somehow pervasively connected to a passport.

I come from a culture that strongly believes in fate, like many other cultures around the world. And sometimes, one learns as one grows up which parts of one's fate to accept, and which ones to reject. I would like to reject the part of my fate Darwish talks about: the reason being that people's hearts dont allow me to cross checkpoints, enter countries, study at universities and be employed. They leave me outside of the Old City of Jerusalem, at refugee camps, at ministries of interior affairs, at embassies, or demonstrating at closed off zones. With the feeling of being stuck, waiting and angry.

Yes, I choose to reject this part of my fate by proposing to any guy to marry me, provided that he is not Palestinian, and that he holds a passport. He could be called Israel, having been born anywhere in the world, even Haifa, and then decided to return to his birth place with his passport. And when I would get married to such a guy, finally having obtained a passport, I would like my children to have a normal life: without a past, filled with the future of possibilities, options, no borders. And, if my children were to ask me where I have come from, or why my name is what it is, I would say that there is no story, no past.

I only would hope that my children would have blond hair, blue eyes and no tint of dark skin, curely hair, accent and above all a memory.

And only, then, we would have returned to Haifa with a passport, having left people's hearts that Darwish writes about.