I am different than most of you

I am different than most of you. I’m really different than most of you at so many levels. Allow me please to demonstrate.

I was born a refugee, both in the literate sense of the word and also figuratively. My father was born in Palestine in 1948, and at 2 months old he became a displaced refugee in Lebanon. My mother was born into displacement to Palestinian parents who were also expelled from Palestine in 1948. And so I was born as a refugee to refugee parents. How many fellow refugees are reading this piece? Well, I am also a Muslim. I’m a woman. I’m brown. I’m a Brown, Muslim, Refugee Woman. See how different I am from you?

But in all honestly, that’s a lie. Take for example my refugee status. I believe, in many aspects, we are all refugees. Allow me please to demonstrate. Definition of a refugee: “Someone driven by harm or fear escaping to seek safety”. Here is my question to you: How many times were you driven by harm or fear into escaping situations, memories, emotions, experiences, relationships, jobs to “safety”?

At 4 years old

In my first conscious memory as a child I was about 4 or 5 years old, locking myself up in the bathroom, shutting my eyes and plugging my fingers into my ears, rocking my body back and forth and humming a song to myself to block the yelling that my parents were exchanging outside. I was fearful of the violence unfolding in many ways on the outside of me, and I escaped inside myself to seek safety.

Do you recall a time when you were a child where a sense of loneliness, a fear of abandonment or the momentary panic of getting lost penetrated your heart? Do you recall how badly you wanted to escape that ? A little older as a child and in various instances, I felt deeply shamed and I “escaped” through various ways. I read, I wrote, I argued, I played, I searched for answers and in many ways I felt different. Do you recall times when shame penetrated your heart? Do you recall times when you felt different? How did you escape?

As a teenager I would see my friends taking off on their summer holidays to go back to their home countries. I had no home to go back to. The summers were always difficult emotionally in that sense. They always reminded me of not belonging. Do you recall a time when you felt like you didn’t belong? Like an outsider, different in some sense or another, unsure where to and how you belong to places or people, to thoughts or ideas? Your circumstances might have been different than mine, but every time you and I felt fearful, shamed, different, heartbroken, betrayed, abandoned, that’s where you and I were the same. Exactly the same. No labels separating us.

But why am I telling you all this? So you can imagine with me an alternative world that doesn't look like the chaos we have created because of dividing labels. Imagine if we consciously choose to step back into moments within our own emotional history that match those of the “other”. No go ahead please, step back. Recall now your “refugee” moments and sit in them for a while. Fight the discomfort that’s trying to distance you from these moments. See how long it takes you before the urge to “escape” them sets in. Now simply recognize this sameness in the “other”. In this sameness, we all meet. We hurt in the same ways, but we also heal in the same ways. I will leave you with a parting thought to reflect on. There is only one escape route for all of us: Each other.