A Love Letter To Palestinian Women

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am to have been born Palestinian. This identity comes with unending grief, but it also comes with the pride of being part of a lineage of the most steadfast people on the planet. More than that, I feel blessed to be a Palestinian woman. Part of the lifeblood of our community, part of a legacy of historians, caregivers, and storytellers.

Whenever I go back to Jordan to visit my mother’s family, I’m reminded that I was raised in a community of strong Arab women who taught me the meaning of strength. I have six aunts and countless cousins, but I am the youngest girl in the family. My cousins Rand, Shayma, and Lujain were my best friends during my childhood and into adulthood. We spent hours in the street playing football, running to our local market for ice cream, and bothering our grandparents with SpaceToon on the TV. For a great deal of our lives, being Palestinian didn’t feel like a political identity; it was simply part of our history.

As we grew older and learned the history of our family’s Nakba story (the displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homeland), we began donning our thobes and map necklaces. When the genocide started in 2023, I watched with pride as Rand and Shaimaa went to weekly protests in Jordan, keffiyehs wrapped around their hijabs and megaphones in their hands. Every Friday, immediately after Jummah prayer, they would take to the streets with the thousands of other Palestinians in exile. They have taught me what it means to fight for a cause amid personal grief and what true solidarity means in a time when people would rather stay home.

Read the full article from Byline Magazine.