"Never forget where you came from," my late father told me as a child. "And never be ashamed of who you are. Be proud. And when you see something wrong, Eman, fix it."
Conversations that included those phrases were usually after he watched the Arabic Channel and saw what his people, what our people, were going through in Palestine.
At 7, I didn’t understand why it was so hard for the Jews to get along with the Palestinians and why they couldn’t share the land. But watching my father, who was a very "macho" man and a child of the occupation born in the early 50’s, cry when he watched the news—watching him weep as he spoke those words to me was enough. Enough to help me understand and to realize early on that it was going to be up to me to make the world a better place.
Remembering my father and his words helps me to remember where I came from, who I am and what it means to have the blood that I have. Makes the victory of liberating my people and those like me even sweeter. |
