Palestine: The Pain of Exile · Global Voices
Palestinian refugees are one of the biggest displaced populations in the world, with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) providing assistance for some 4.7 million registered refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Millions more displaced and emigrant Palestinians live around the world. However, their attachment remains strong to the home they, or their parents or grandparents, left behind. 328
Two bloggers in Gaza have written about the pain of exile.
Earlier this week the Libya-sponsored aid ship Al-Amal (“hope”) attempted to sail to the Gaza Strip (but was forced to change course for Egypt). In Gaza, blogger <PERSON> was thinking of someone he wished were on the ship:
ترتدي وشاح الصلاة وتحمل مسبحة بين يديها وتدعو الله عز وجل – أو ربما تفعل فقط كما ترى والديها يفعلان حينما تضيق بهما السبل- فتناجي الله أن يحقق أملها أو بالأحرى أمل جدتها في رؤيتها واحتضانها وتقبيلها.
هي هلا التي لم تكمل سنتها الأولى في الحياة بعد، ولكنها تحمل بالوراثة كل مشاعر الفلسطيني المغترب، فهي ابنة للاجئ لم من يرى من أرضه شبرا واحدا طوال حياته، ولأم تعيش مشتتة الفؤاد بين الوطن والغربة بين الأهل والزوج بين الأم والبيت بين الأخوة والأبناء، فعقلها وجزء مهم من قلبها هناك وأهلها وبقية قلبها وذكرياتها هنا.
She wears a prayer scarf and holds prayer beads between her hands, and asks God – or maybe she is just doing what she has seen her parents do when things get tough for them – she appeals to God to make real her wish or more accurately her grandmother's wish to see her and hug her and kiss her.
This is <PERSON>, who has not yet completed her first year of life, but she carries the inherited feelings of every Palestinian exile. She is the daughter of a refugee who has seen not a single inch of his land his whole life, and of a mother who lives with her heart split between her homeland and a foreign country, between her family and her marriage, between her mother and her home, between her siblings and her children. Her mind and an important part of her heart are there, and her family and the rest of her heart and her memories are here. 102