Rawan was one of my second years from United World College. In my memory, she was often hanging out with her friends, laughing and making jokes about our canteen food. After graduating highschool from Norway, Rawan made the decision to go to the US for dentistry study. Today’s blog is a documentation of our conversations about her home and identity.
“My favourite thing about myself is being a woman from Palestine. Women back home are so strong and determined.”
While talking about Palestine–Rawan’s home, her eyes and tones are always filled with passion and love.
Since 1940s, Zionist military forces has been expelling over half a million Palestinians. The occupation is still on-going. Rawan comes from Gaza-strip, one of the conflict areas in Palestine. Her home city Rafah lies on the border between Palestine and Egypt.
“Many outsiders say there is no hope in our situation now. I heard that.” Rawan says, “But when I turned around and looked back into my people, they let me know that: here is hope, there is still something here. They are making their own happiness. They are making their own opportunities.”
For Rawan, one of the places where she finds happiness is the beaches in her hometown Rafah. The beaches she often goes to are very popular. She visits them with her family.
“It’s the smell and taste of the coast. I like to eat ice cream everytime I go there. Our family will always smoke shisha together, the smoke then blends together with other people’s smoke. When there are many people, you can smell a faint sweetness from the perfume they wear. But it is mostly covered by the food they make. Still with all of that, the air is so fresh. That is how home smells like.” She spokes slowly, with much softness in her smiling voice.
Rawan told me that opposite from who she is now, when she was living in Gaza, Rawan never thought of herself deeply connected with Palestine. However, when she started to encounter the outsiders with no knowledge about Palestine, a realisation came to her, as if someone grabbed her outside of her comfort nest. A voice started to speak in her head, saying: “I NEED TO TALK.”
“I want to of course talk about politics, but I also need to talk about my language, about my culture. Most importantly, I would talk about people. How friendly, strong and determined they are.”
Rawan criticises western media for its perpetuation of Palestine. “They do not bother talking about people when they report Palestine. I watched a Netflix series and it is so obvious that they did not put effort in knowing the people.”
She wants to tell Netflix that: “if you want to make other shows in Palestine or about Palestine. Go talk to people, get to know them, spend time with them, use a day to live with them, experience their lives. Then you are a little bit more ready to present this entire group.”
Without the clickbait ambition like Netflix’s, Rawan wants an authentic representation in her camera, “I would love to go back with a camera for months after months, just filming my neighbours and their neighbour’s lives. I would not even talk, I would just let them speak their own words, tell their own stories.”
At the end of the blog, I want to share with you something that connected me with Rawan. Both of our cities are not well-known by outsiders. Both of us were asked at least once in our lives: “So, do you ride camels?” Following are our conversations with the outsiders about the camel riding rituals, hope it will inspire you to be curious about other cultures without preconception.
For Yimin
Someone : “Do you ride camels in Lanzhou?” (my home city)
Yimin: “No, not anymore. Our population is five million.”
Someone : “But why not.”
Another person: “Do you ride camels?”
Rawan told them: “No I don’t.”
Another person told Rawan: “No no no but of course, YOU do ride camels, right?”
Funny enough, one of the desirable activities in Palestine is to ride camels on beaches. So yes, Rawan does ride camels, but not in the same way they imagined. I look forward to seeing Rawan’s documentary with videos of the shisha-smelling beach. I hope you are looking forward to our next blog with other inspiring Asian youths.
