Fady Joudah

Three days into this Palestinian uprising I realized I had not spoken with my parents. I was avoidant, concerned that they were reliving anguish in ways I can’t fully know, even if throughout my life I’d witnessed and continue to share numerous Palestinian tragedies alongside them. I did not grow up in a refugee camp nor did I experience war or occupation. My world was not cleansed out of me quite as theirs was. My world is not in perpetual unraveling and maiming as that of millions of Palestinians within historic Palestine (Gaza, the West Bank, Israel) and other places. My father was born in Isdud/Ashdod in 1934, a village then. In 1948 my mother was in her mother’s belly as the latter marched on foot to a refugee camp in Gaza. My parents’ childhood was torn. And they watched their parents die broken, expelled. The cycle repeats for an inordinate number of Palestinians, in the flesh.