I grew up in a working-class family in Taybie, yet another segregated and impoverished town in the center of Palestine 48’. Taybie, like other Palestinian towns occupied and colonized by Zionist forces in 1948, is facing systemic de-development by the settler-state, limiting access to land and infrastructure to expand and develop. Taybie has been widely known for being “crime-stricken” in the Israeli media, constantly appearing in the news as a place where mafias organize Arab-on-Arab homicide. At the same time, many people — including Palestinians — assume it is a conservative Muslim town, with little freedom.
Yet the way I experienced it was quite different, and those experiences help us to confront the colonial myths that have helped support the occupation of Palestine and the massacre of our people. In those early years, I didn’t question my queer identity, since I knew that I was interested in girls my age, and when I later came to understand that my attraction extended to a much wider spectrum of gender, I simply embraced it without a challenge. That is because of the fact that my family was one that embraced pluralism.
I was the first grandchild to my four grandparents, who were all simple fellahin, the Arabic word for peasants and farm workers. My parents, as well as their siblings, were all Palestinian young adults who were very much engaged with politics and social issues, as well as art and culture, but only in their free time. I remember nights upon nights where my parents, my uncles, and my aunt would gather to drink together while they discussed plays and poems or got into arguments about their different political and religious beliefs, all in loud screams and with much love. In these gatherings, I also vividly recall the countless times they would crossdress and wear wigs, with my aunt helping them with makeup, so they can perform an improvised drunken sequel of their choosing. At times, I would join in to improvise, too.
I would always stay with them until the very end of the night. I would fall asleep on the green-velvet couch and wake up later with smudged lipstick covering every inch of my face when they picked me up to put me in bed.
In fact, what had continuously confused and challenged me in my childhood was being Palestinian. And one who was and is almost completely isolated from the wider Arab world and culture. I could not quite grasp the logic behind the fact that many of our family friends and relatives could never visit us, simply because they lived in particular Palestinian geographies. Nor could I fathom who these men in uniforms were, who showed up every once in a while on my grandfather’s farming land, to tease him and his Palestinian bedouin neighbors to the point of madness.
I also did not completely comprehend who and what I was, every time I went with my mother to a neighboring Jewish city to send something through the post office, which was not available in Taybie. On every bus ride there, I would witness how the landscapes changed drastically, knowing that piercing and judgmental eyes awaited us when we arrived. I remember how hard it was for my mother to go out and get us books in Arabic to read and how we consistently resisted embracing our mother tongue because it marked us as different.
These trips signified the growing sense of alienation I felt — and still feel — in my own homeland and in my own imaginary universe, where I used to occasionally hide.
It was a summer night, when I was 13, where I casually ate watermelon with Arabic bread and cheese with my parents and siblings while we watched music videos on VH1, MTV, and Rotana Music, changing between the three depending on the tune. “Amazing” by George Michael started playing only a second before my parents got up and began dancing and giggling. My siblings and I joined them laughing, as my mother began to tease my father, saying that George Michael was more handsome than him. My father — who was unbothered by the claim, confident that he is the more handsome one — replied, “Do you know that George Michael came out as gay? He announced that he no longer identifies as bisexual.” My mother, bummed, proceeded to say that she read the news and that he was now dating an Arab man, which in her eyes was enough of a reason to have betrayed his women fans in this way.
I listened in confusion because I was somewhat aware of what it meant to be gay but bisexuality was something I had never been exposed to before. I asked my father what bisexual meant, and his answer was: “You know, it’s someone who is attracted to both [genders], just like you.”
At the time, I didn’t quite understand what he meant, and our night continued as usual without interruptions, but I did visit that memory frequently, wondering if my parents did in fact understand who I was before I did.
Nowadays, I often joke about how my father made me “bisexual,” but what he really did was open my eyes to the fact that my queer experience did not have to be limited to globalized Western narratives that necessitate choosing an exclusive or binary identity. My parents never asked that I identify myself, although we would occasionally talk about my various partners, my sexual and romantic experiences, and the broader life experiences I was having. In this fluid environment, I never felt a need to look for precise or definitive definitions of my queer experience, and so remains the case today.
Since that day and for many years to come, I have gone through several interpersonal processes of understanding my queerness, as well as my indigenous Palestinian experience on colonized land. Throughout, I faced patriarchal violence from different people and systems, but I was never truly in a place where my queerness majorly weighed down on me. What did hold me back from embracing my queerness was the colonized aspect of it and how it intersected with my experience as a colonized person.
In navigating life in Palestine, I have witnessed many Israelis and Zionists claiming that no one should be advocating for Palestinians’ dignity or demanding an end to the siege and bombardment of Gaza. At the root of their dismissal of our liberation was the idea that Palestinians are inherently savage, violent, and backward and that they would kill every “free” woman or queer person living in the West Bank, Gaza, or in the 48’, given the chance. These individuals would emphasize the luxury of living under Israeli occupation, an assertion which disregards the military and colonial violence, as well as the ethnic cleansing, that the settler-state has been waging against us as a people, regardless of where we live.
Despite my own positive experiences, I internalized this colonial logic for a long time, believing that I will never truly be able to exist as a queer person within my Palestinian society. Despite the openness and fluidity I was exposed to within my extended family, I allowed myself to believe that queer folks would hardly ever find possibilities of living in dignity in Palestine.
It is important to emphasize here that I am in no way trying to present another flattened or one-dimensional image of queer life in Palestine. Many of us do face violence that prevents us from living and exploring our queerness with dignity and safety. Yet, as my own experience illustrates, our experiences are diverse and multiple, the same as they are everywhere else. We are human and changing. I do not and cannot isolate my experience from the varying experiences of my siblings, who are constantly confronting and challenging societal violence in order to create more welcoming environments for queer Palestinians.
In leaving Taybie as a young adult to pursue my independence, I refused to isolate and alienate myself from that broader society. I instead chose to engage and was lucky enough to have the opportunity of meeting and joining various queer communities across Palestine. I became involved with queer anti-colonial activism through national organizations and groups, and it was the joint work in these movements that re-established my sense of belonging — not just through our collective experiences, but also due to our similar struggles as queer Palestinians. I learned more about the multiplicity and diversity of queer experiences in Palestine and about the different Palestinian geographies I came to know.
Through these spaces and relationships, I realized that I truly love my society and that I am willing and committed to continue fighting for our liberation until Palestine is free. Real liberation is one that is accessible for all.
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