You Exist Too Much

by Zaina Arafat

These were my first images of the conflict that shattered our homeland and scattered my family. Terms like civilian casualties and Molotov cocktails and cease-fire, later replaced by negotiations and peace talks and Camp David, resounded in the Peter Jennings voiceovers as the footage of violence played on screen. We watched at a cool remove while enjoying the comforts of our American suburb, seemingly untouched, oblivious of the underlying trauma.

Yet it’s the idiosyncrasies of culture that keep me an outsider, and leave me with a persistent and pervasive sense of otherness, of non-belonging. Basic but nuanced knowledge; the stuff that no one really teaches you.

“The thing about education,” her father told her the day of her college graduation, which coincided with a sharp increase in Israeli settlement construction on confiscated land in the West Bank, “is that no one can take it away from you. Everything else can be stolen. Everything else can be lost.”