Another Eve, El Sawafeer, United Arab Emirates

When I return to Palestine, liberated, I will get in touch with the identity I that I never felt at ease with, I will forget all the passivity I had to live in, I will not be afraid to speak my mind, I will love freely and worry less about what tomorrow my hold, or what might come from behind the border.

I will learn to love Palestine again like I did as a simple child, I will also teach the children that Palestine is not all blood and bullets, but a cradle of peace, where we all live together facing much simpler problems than waking up to news about a dead relative.

I will teach my children that hate only consumes you and your loved ones like a vicious circle. There is no enemy, there will be no enemy, because we would have learned from our past mistakes of standing by and watching the wrong people speak in our name and provoke further hate against us.

I will prove to the world that we do not deserve to be hated, do not deserve to be forgotten. That our children are just as precious as any other nation’s children, they deserve to grow up loving and be loved, shielded and protected from harm and oppression.

I want to teach our children about the other nations now that they can sleep safe at night dreaming about them, not because they want to run away, but because they want to explore and learn so they would come back home and tell their mothers and fathers what a beautiful world we live in, and how much they would like Palestine to become a part of it, welcoming other little explorers from every place on earth.

I will teach our children that now it’s time to plant our olive trees again, because we know that no one will tear them down, and teach them once again how to make that beautiful melted jade from our precious olive trees, for it will not be mixed with blood and repression anymore.

I will teach our children that hate births hate, death brings only death, and that life brings life, and hope beckons hope, and one day we will all rise above all those differences…faith.. race..religion and work as one big entity towards our rightful place among the other nations, where the only difference that matters is how much we contribute to humanity.

I have never been to Palestine, yet I feel it is my rightful place to be, and writing what I did reminded me of how priceless one’s homeland will always be, 25 years did not make me forget, sleeping comfortable every night, and getting my heart’s every desire did not make forget, it’s my gentle lullaby that I never really heard but my heart still listens to. But all I ever knew about Palestine is tainted with blood, rage and hate. I want to love Palestine, I want to live as a Palestinian.