An Interesting Arrival

by Sharifa Barakat

I am pleased to share the following essay written by one of my former students from Social Justice at SLU, Sharifa.

Palestine, Jerusalem, the Middle East—all conjure up various images and thoughts. For me, it’s the birthplace of my parents and the part of my heritage that I’ve grown up with through photographs and stories, the language and food, and, most outwardly, through the conflict that has been stewing for more than half a century as noted in our history books and the media. I felt like I already knew this place, but I had never visited it until last year. This past summer, my family was able to make the trip there, and I had an eye-opening experience that cemented my perception of the world before I even set foot in my family’s hometown of Ramallah, Palestine.

Ever since my mom immigrated to the United States twenty two years ago, she had not been able to visit her home for various reasons, but her dream finally became a reality last summer. Getting the passports and booking the tickets did not make it real for me until we got on our first flight to Atlanta. The flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Tel Aviv, Israel was twelve hours long, but I had enough movies and music to keep me occupied. The anxiousness and excitement kept me from sleeping.

Although we were going to the West Bank, the only airport we could fly into was Tel Aviv, which is notorious for its harsh treatment of Arabs. My mom had been worried about how our family would be treated at the Tel Aviv airport since we reserved the flights, and I thought she was making a big deal out of nothing; nevertheless, she quizzed us on the correct responses to questions that we would supposedly be asked. I assumed that since all of us were American citizens that things would go smoothly, so I didn’t worry about it much.

As our plane landed, there were Hebrew, Arabic, and English welcomes over the speakers, and I was now officially in a place I’d never been, and I felt so utterly aware of that. My heart was racing, and all I could think of was what my grandparents and cousins would think of me and how my dad was sitting at home alone and would be for the next two months. A mixture of nervousness, anticipation, and sadness hit me all at once, but I had to get over that pretty quickly, considering the unexpected ordeal that we would face once we got out of the plane.

We got off the plane and were greeted by a huge, fierce-looking security guard who asked us some questions and then let us go. I thought that this was the hurdle my mom was afraid of, but, apparently, I was wrong. Our flight was the only one that had landed, so I recognized a lot of the people who were waiting in several lines to get through Customs. I saw the lines without Arabs zooming by, but we were stuck behind a Palestinian family for thirty five minutes. Seeing them get sent in the opposite direction of baggage claims was a bit disheartening, and that’s when I thought, “Maybe this won’t be as easy as I assumed.” I still figured that we would definitely be let through without much trouble, though.

At last, our turn came, and the tiny woman behind the desk carefully studied our passports and asked us few questions in that long silence. After about ten minutes, a man came over and said, “Sharifa and Barakat, come with me. Faeka, you go with him.” As he pointed to the room to go to, laughter welled up inside me and threatened to come out when I saw half the Arabs that were on our flight stuffed inside that room; all were waiting the same way my family would have to wait for the next few hours. The tension and frustration was so dense in the room where restless children continuously asked their parents when they could leave and why they were waiting. The room was full, so there were no seats left, but one man got up and gave me his chair. I said “No, it’s okay,” but he said, “Take it. You’re going to be here for a while.” I felt somewhat relieved that it wasn’t just my family that was sent there; I realized that it was likely that no Palestinians got through without these hours of questioning.

Once in a while, an Israeli officer would come in and ask for some people’s tickets or whether they had a laptop on the plane. They asked one man in particular who was there with his wife and kids, and when he said he didn’t have a laptop and explained again where they sat on the plane, one of the security guards came in, and yelled, “You’re lying!,” and he was dragged out forcibly. I felt horrible witnessing this because he could not protest or else his family would likely be kicked out of the country or, even worse, be punished with jail time. This was only some of the humiliation that Palestinians endure daily due to the illegal occupation by Israel, and I was now witnessing it firsthand.

An official came up to me after some time and led me to an office where a stern-looking woman would question me. At this point, I was a little frustrated but tried to be as pleasant as I could in answering questions, hoping that the nicer I was, the faster this ordeal would be over. She began by asking me what would become the pervasive question of the day.

“What brings you to Israel?”

“I’m here to visit my grandparents—my mother’s parents, who I haven’t seen since I was seven.”

She asked me about my reasons for being there, my career, home phone number, grandparents’ number, and so on. Some questions were a little surprising because they were about uncles and aunts that weren’t even in Palestine, but I suppose they have files on everyone in their system. I answered everything as patiently as I could, and then she sent me back to the room where my brother, Barakat, was still waiting. He was questioned next and was asked the exact same questions. They told us to continue to wait, and, by that point, I wasn’t sure what they even wanted anymore because they had already questioned us, so what was left to do? We waited for another hour and officials would informally take us aside and ask us the exact same questions again, and my patience was wearing thin by that point because after two hours, I still didn’t see my mom and siblings, and there was no apparent reason for detaining us.

As I sat down in the middle of the now empty airport, I watched the officials walking around, joking around with each other. There were many girls that were only a few years older than me that were working there. Out of all these people, only one of the officials seemed to make an effort to be friendly in questioning us, but I wasn’t buying any of that anymore. The frustration and anger built up as time crept by, and I became resentful of the flirtatious smiles that the young male and female workers exchanged with each other. How could they be joking around, doing absolutely nothing to help us along, while we were sitting on the floor of the airport, wondering why we deserved this treatment?

At last, Barakat and I saw my mom and siblings walking towards us from the other side of the airport. I thought, “Yes! We can finally go now!” Instead of hearing confirmation of that sentiment from my mom, she glanced at us as she passed by to the next room. My little brother and sister, who had been with her, told us that there was some big fuss about my mother’s name not being in their system, and that was supposedly the reason why we were detained. I tried to get as much information out of them as I could, but they didn’t really know what was going on. They mentioned one of the officials yelling at my mom, saying she was lying. I could tell that his temper had scared them. Basically, they did not find her name in their system and wondered how she even left the country twenty years ago, and she explained over and over that she was born in Ramallah and named all her family members. They found records of the relatives she named but continued to question her, hoping she would break with whatever they wanted her to confess, but there was nothing to confess.

While my mom was told to wait, my brother and I were given our passports back with a slip of paper that would let us through the gate. This approval meant nothing to us since they still would not let my mom go with us. She had lost her patience a long time ago and pestered the official that was watching the room to let her go. He wouldn’t budge, so she told Barakat and me to go get our luggage, which was past the gate.
We collected all our suitcases, which was a little difficult considering it was just the two of us getting eight suitcases together. When I realized that we couldn’t go back to our mom because we had passed through the gate, we decided to just sit in the middle of the floor near baggage claim and wait. Of course, some guards came to ask us questions, and I curtly told them we were waiting for my mom and siblings who were yet to be released. It must have been a funny sight, seeing the two of us on the ground surrounded by suitcases, but nobody was laughing.

I watched people passing by us, envious that they had it so easy and angry that they were glaring at me in a way that made me feel so small. My brother and I tried to keep up our spirits with our usual sarcastic banter, but, even today, those glares remain engrained in my mind. Out of all the Israelis that passed, I got about two friendly glances. I still don’t think that every Israeli is evil the same way I don’t think that every Arab is dangerous, but I felt prejudice that day in the airport more than I’d ever felt in my life. As I saw children pass by with their parents, I looked at them differently, thinking, “Are they going to grow up with the same seed of hate that their parents have? Do they already see me as a threat through their innocent eyes?” Then I thought about the Palestinian children still waiting on the other side of the airport with their parents and how they must feel towards the officials that were detaining them. It was hard enough for me to understand why this detainment and provocation was imposed on us, so I wondered how this would shape their perceptions of the world.

We kept looking over at the gate to see whether my mom and siblings were let through yet, but a different family would always come out. I had already stopped looking for them when Barakat said, “Look! I think it’s Mama coming through.” Sure enough, I saw my mom and siblings hurriedly shuffling through the gate, and we were finally on our way. Fortunately, our taxi driver was still waiting after what seemed like an eternity of three hours, and he led us out of the airport.

As I stumbled through the parking lot, I looked up at the dark sky that overlooked this tiny piece of land that has been the site of so much pain over the last sixty years. My experience that day was a result of that conflict, and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. This is a cycle that seems never-ending, and it pains me to think that it will likely continue, generation after generation, on both sides of the conflict. It was in those few hours of that summer that I slowly came to realize that this conflict will never be resolved in my lifetime. This kind of hatred and lack of sympathy can never amount to peace.