1971 there was a war and I was two years old I remember, I remember the sirens and the—it’s like a flash coming like coming from a while—we had to turn all the lights off and we painted our windows blue, dark blue. - Hanadi AlSharif

 

What is it like to be the orphan of the Middle East? To be the problem.

 

The 1948 Catastrophe

Since 1917, Britain, who mandated territories of Palestine at the time, had plans to create a national home for Jews through the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The Declaration and Britain themselves did not have intentions to create a Jewish or Arab state, nor did they want immense populations of Jewish refugees to immigrate to Palestine (Office of the Historian, p. 2). Intentions were to avoid any conflicts of interest with Arab nations for political and economic purposes. However, in 1947, Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan) was adopted by the United Nation and put into effect soon after British mandate over Palestine ended.

 

May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was established simultaneously creating a war between countries. The Arab League rejected the partition on accounts of violation to principles of the international law of Self-determination (Office of the Historian). Surrounding countries such as, but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, who are apart of the Arab League, allied in combat. During the war,

 

Israeli militia occupied the Palestinian territories leaving the state to be a warzone in a war that was not being fought for them. When the war came to an “end,” Egypt was awarded the Gaza strip and Jordan took parts of the West Bank. The rest became the state of Israel.

 

To give geographical background, Gaza is the border between Egypt and Israel; it lays on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, there are two banks separated by the Jordan river: the West and East. Jordan is known as the East bank while Palestine was known as the West. In translation, when territory was gained after the war, Palestinians had land taken from them. In result, over 720,000 Palestinians were expelled by force or hazardous living conditions.

 

“1970 my father tried to come back from teaching in Saudi Arabia and by then the Israelis had erased Palestinian identity. We could not go back home,” Hanadi AlSharif.

 

It was the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Under military law settlers took residency in homes that were occupied by Palestinian homeowners. Palestinians’ only choice was to become refugees. While some went to the Gaza strip, others fled to the East Bank, Jordan.

 

Life in Jordan: Hanadi Alsharif

“It was a fun childhood..we didn’t have technology, so I used to play outside, outdoors like in the street with my friends, my neighbors. It was safe.” Hanadi Alsharif is a Palestinian refugee who spent the entirety of her childhood in Jordan. Her childhood sounded no different from ours, our parents, and possibly even our grandparents. She would play jump rope perhaps not Double Dutch, but she does remember playing a familiar game of hopscotch as it came to her mind in pieces and exited her lips as the game with stones and chalked boxes.

 

“..And, marbles usually for boys, but I used to play with the boys. I liked it.” As a Muslim girl she faced gender limitations put in place by her culture. Neighbors would complain to her mother about her playing with boys or even boy games. She was too young to be aware of the “shame” she would conjure when wearing shorts to comfortably play outdoors. “I remember my neighbor she told me ‘Why are you wearing shorts and playing outside you should go and put long pants on’ so I went crying to my mom and she said, ‘Don’t listen to her.’”

I asked how would you describe your mother and Hanadi described her as the in between. Her mother was not too old-fashioned and tried to be modern, but culture would only let her bend but so far. Hanadi described culture as this thing that “puts you in a small box. You cannot get out of this box... as much as you can make it wider, you can’t get out of it.”

 

What exactly is the divider between culture and religion in the Middle East? Islam is one of three Abrahamic religions and has roots as deep as Mesopotamia and Canaan. As of 2009, the Middle East and North Africa had a Muslim population of 91 percent of its total population, but Islam is also widely practiced in Central Asia (Liu, p.2). In fact, the 2015 census reported a worldwide count of approximately1.8 billion Muslims which makes Islam the second most practiced monotheistic religion worldwide (Lipka and Hackett, p. 2). The Arab population, however, is422 million. Arab is not Islam. “In general, it’s a Mediterranean culture plus Arab culture. They call it Islamic, but it’s not Islam it’s a culture.”

 

Due to a culture of male dominance, fathers and brothers were superior in Arab households. The father was looked upon as the “king” of the household who controlled everyone including the mother while brothers oversaw the sisters. A woman’s job was to clean, cook and do as told by the men of the household. Hanadi was expected to serve her brothers.

 

“I started arguing with my mother. ‘Why do I have to do this for my brother? Why won’t he do it by himself?” Such rebellion is not tolerated, yet Hanadi gained a sense of self. Her parents were the in-betweens, the ones who widen the box of culture. Her father spoiled her while her mother tried to understand. Her mother battled with the ideals of the culture and Hanadi served to be her way out. She mentioned how now looking back she believes her mother was bored of the title of being made to please a man and did not mean harm when she followed the tradition taught. As a mother, she struggled with treating her daughter and sons equally because she did not want to convey them as being lesser of a man by being treated equally with their sisters. Intrinsically it was a battle, but she loved Hanadi and wanted better.

 

After talks of culture, I wanted to take a step further into the outside portrayal of Muslim identity. I began to ask questions centered on how America reports on the Middle East. Is it true or biased? Can the American perspective really encompass what and who the Middle Eastern Muslim truly is? These questions lead to the conversation of America’s terrorism epidemic.  

 

9/11 from Jordan

“I was in Jordan. I will never forget that point. My son was six months, and I was playing with the girls and I saw two towers on the screen. It said, ‘BREAKING NEWS.’” Hanadi described America’s epic as if she were there. At the time, she called family over in America; she contacted her husband and sister frantically. Luckily, the attack was far from them. They were unscathed. She remembers the hurt of seeing people dying, but most importantly, she remembered the fear. “...After a couple weeks I thought, ‘Oh my God he is a Muslim what’s going to happen to us?’”

 

The Bin Laden family was well known and closely intertwined in Jordan in terms of business. They were responsible for many businesses and were a wealthy Saudi Arabian family. Hanadi even mentioned her sister working for one of their companies. “They were responsible for the construction.” Jordan is encompassed by Rocky Mountains and their business would maintain and build on the terrain. The Bin Laden family was looked upon with respect and were widely known as successful businessmen. I asked did you believe the story told about 9/11. She responded,

 

“You hear so many news and people saying their opinions, but it didn’t make sense to me. Even now it still does not make sense to me. I know it’s a game and somebody played that game..and we are the ones who got played.”

 

I then asked Hanadi if she feared for any tensions between world powers, and she responded Jordan was safe. However, she did fear for back home. “I was worried about Palestinian safety more because I know everything has to do something with Palestinians. Anything. In Middle East when something happens, they blame the Palestinians.”

 

How does it feel to be the orphan of the Middle East? To be the problem.

 

Resident to Refugee

1948 was the first Palestinian Nakba followed by the the second wave May 15, 1967. This was the exodus of, but not limited to, 700,000 Palestinians in each wave. When Iraq attacked Kuwait in the Gulf war of 1991, the aftermath was Kuwait expelling Palestinian residents from their homes. “.. they believe we are the people who are suffering so we might be a threat.” The common denominator in displacement is the Palestinian. Every home seems to be temporary. “Imagine you have a house, and someone kicked your family from your house, and you’re born in another house. And you know that this house is yours, but you cannot live in it. Then, this place kicked you from this house, so you’re always travelling around houses and you have your own house that you cannot get in.”  Hanadi used this analogy to convey the Palestinian who never lived in Palestine. She described the displacement of1967 as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians leaving their homes to walk borders and instantly change from residents to refugees in matter of minutes. There were camps, tents, and more heads than help.

 

In 1967, Hanadi’s father was in Saudi Arabia, where she was born, teaching after being recruited from Palestine. Hanadi was born two years after the Nakba, 1969, so when her father tried to return in 1970, Hanadi’s only thought of her family home was the house left behind. “Oh, I remember, I remember my friend’s grandmother she used to have a necklace of her house key in Palestine. And she said, ‘I’m going to hold this until I die because I believe I’m going to go back.’”                                                                                                                                                

 

Hanadi Alsharif

Now, Hanadi Alsharif has been a US citizen for 15 years and has never seen her home back in Palestine. After three years of paperwork, her and her three children became citizens in 2009. She lives in the Philadelphia area where she has found a Palestinian community. While she is not as active in the events, she did note the ADC, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in their efforts to spread awareness of Palestinian injustices. Times are changing and people are learning more about the whole story. Hanadi also noted her neighbors showing remorse to her after hearing about news in the Gaza strip. She believes that this is progress. Now people open their laptops or phones to see what is going on in the Middle East and even Palestine specifically. She is happy to see people at least talking about it.

 

I asked Hanadi what are some ways she reminds herself that she is Palestinian and she responded, “Everything...Everybody lives in their country, and we as the Palestinians, our country lives in us”

 

Work Cited

Lipka, Michael, et al. “Why Muslims Are the World's Fastest-Growing Religious Group.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 6 Apr. 2017, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/.

Joseph Liu. “Middle East-North Africa Overview.” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, 14 June 2013, www.pewforum.org/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population10/.

U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war.