Growing up Palestinian in the Holy Land
“You must not tell people you are Palestinian. You must not speak Arabic above a whisper or you will be followed. When you talk about where you’re from, you must only say ‘the Homeland.’”
On her first plane ride, five-year-old Haneen Qutami was much more frightened by her mother’s urgently whispered words than she was by the mysterious vehicle carrying her through the sky. After living in the U.S. since birth, she was used to being different but she was not accustomed to hiding it. These words would begin a clash within her identity that would last during her entire upbringing in Jerusalem.
Qutami descended from Palestinian grandparents who were given Israeli citizenship after refusing to flee their village when Israel invaded in 1948. The tension between Israelis and Palestinians that has existed and exploded for years created a tense environment for Qutami to grow up in. According to Rhashid Khalidi’s “Resurrecting Empire, “despair and anger spread among ordinary Palestinians as their daily life grew harder and harder” after the second infitada. Partially affected by the hardship of her people, but also connected to an Israeli city, Qutami grew up in a split world. Her mother practices her own interpretation of the Muslim faith (one that keeps the long sleeves but casts off the uncomfortable hajibs and burkas) in the center of Judaism. Her family is Palestinian, with most relatives living “across the strip.” Her coloring marks her as an Arab, a characteristic that resulted in her being stopped nearly every time she ventured so far as the half-mile to her grandmother’s house. In her hometown, she was treated as a second-class citizen and upon coming to the U.S., she said she felt the most connection with discriminated-against black people.
It was not until her return to the U.S. for college, this time at 20 years old, that Qutami felt she could fully embrace her Palestinian identity and realize the injustice of the situation that she had become accustomed to.
“Then I didn’t know how bad it was. I grew up with it,” Qutami said. “Now when I think about it, I realize how awful the way I was treated was. We were second-class citizens.”
The discrimination that surrounded her led Qutami to seek a college education in the United States. In Israel, she would have had to wait until she was 22 years old to enter most universities because that is the age when the Jewish men and women would be finished with their mandatory army service.
“I didn’t feel like I would have the same opportunities there,” she said. “You can be what you want to be here. There, you have to be excellent to even have a chance at success.”
In terms of success, Qutami is thriving. She is about to graduate from San Francisco State University with a degree in speech therapy, and hopes to return to Jerusalem and become the second speech therapist in the entire city who speaks Arabic. She feels a sense of duty towards the Palestinians still living in Jerusalem and unquestionably plans to give back for the opportunities she has been afforded here.
The mixture of cultural traits she has developed from her varied upbringing results in her appearance today—she smiles easily but holds herself with a sense of detached grace, wearing an elaborately embroidered shirt her mother sent from her homeland with pearl earrings and Converse sneakers. After moving and changing for years, she has cultivated an identity that lies somewhere outside of race.
