(Re)imagining Palestine

Words by Ayat Al-Muhaisen, edited by Nooriyah Qais

I sometimes imagine myself in the heart of the city; following my paternal grandmother, my Tata, through the gardens of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, located in the Old City of Jerusalem. The year is 1940, it is springtime, so we run outside, up and down the stone pathway. We collect fallen olives from the ground and throw them at one another. Happily playing, peacefully existing. Oh to play in Jerusalem; to run in Jerusalem; to be a young girl, free, in Jerusalem.

While this mental scene is a fanciful, romantic vision that I routinely create and internalise, it is also concrete. As the daughter of the leading Islamic Judge, Tata did grow up within the walls of Al-Aqsa. Fictional details aside, there lies a raw honesty to such imaginations. Their construct serves a purpose; an investigation of a resilient woman and perhaps an investigation of the self. I absorb the oral histories passed on to me by family members and conjure up images of my grandmother’s past in order to meet, see, and learn her. I seek to feel connected to the land she loves, the land she suddenly, forcefully, came to lose.

This month, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to announce Israel’s annexation of the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea. Hearing about the latest round of Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation and policy of land-grabs I instantly think of my Tata. I picture her, holding the hands of her two young children as they cross the bridge, by foot, to the Jordanian border. 1967 war. Goodbye Palestine, forever. As Palestine continues to shrink geographically I hold onto the fact that I feel fiercely connected to a land I have never set foot on. Palestine continues to exist because Palestinians, worldwide, have actively chosen to remember it.

While the establishment of the British Mandate and the struggle against Zionism intensified the maturation of a distinct Palestinian identity, it wasn’t until the 1948 Palestinian exodus, the Nakba, that a real crystallization of their ethnic identity developed. The 1948 Nakba, which is the Arab word for catastrophe, expelled more than 726,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes, turning them into refugees or into a minority within their own homeland. The Nakba contributed to the formation of a unique Palestinian identity as the specificity of their experience came to distance them from other Arab populations. The Nakba also resulted in Palestinian identity gaining a significant territorial element that came to occupy a central position in the greater Palestinian national narrative. Palestinians have continued to stress that the land is rightfully theirs, linking it to events and personages of earlier generations of their people. Seemingly, Anthony Smith’s term of an ‘ethnoscape’ may be applied here as territory, in the cultural and political imaginary of Palestinians, has transformed into a “poetic landscape that is an extension and expression of the character of [their] ethnic community.”

Even though many Palestinians did not actually experience displacement in 1948, the feeling of expulsion remains a major hallmark of modern Palestinian identity. The joint effort to create a unified, singular imagined past among all Palestinians continues to be actively pursued. Such intergenerational filtration of a cohesive body of memory explains the emergence of a Palestinian national identity as a collective phenomenon. It is through numerous oral traditions, stories, and memories of the Palestinian past that play a significant role in educating the younger generations of Palestinians, both inside as well as outside of its borders, about their homeland. For Palestinians living in the diaspora, these stories constitute the missing link to their country of origin. Yet the architects of these mechanisms of preservation are rarely credited. We owe our sense of “Palestinian-ness” to our Palestinian Mamas, Tata’s and Aunties. Most of the time, it is Palestinian women who are doing the active work of keeping the (re)imaginings of Palestine alive.

In her article, Palestinian women: identity and experience, Ebba Augustine discusses how many Palestinian women preserve a sense of national and cultural identity through the medium of art whether that be painting, sculpture, etching, graphic design and/or ceramics. Driven by the urgent need to protect their endangered national and cultural heritage, the visual expressions curated by Palestinians artists signify art’s powerful ability of display/addressing important elements of Palestinian identity. The art and the power of food must be included here too. In fact, it is through my Tata’s culinary mastery that she presents us, her family, with elements of her beloved homeland.

The unforgotten memories of my grandmother’s Palestine arrive at the dining table through the medium of food. Throughout the years, I have come to learn stories about my family and culture through specific tastes and smells that we collectively create, experience, and embody. Perhaps it is through my grandmother’s dining table that I arrive in Palestine. I run with my Tata through the gardens of Al-Aqsa because she nourishes me with rituals and anecdotes that keep her homeland growing far and wide in our hearts and minds.

Find more of Ayat here: @ayat.almuhaisen