When activism means that you can’t go home again.
Dedicated to the memory of our father, Mamoun Abdel Jawad Husain (1947 – 2011).
I had been anxious since I decided to go to Palestine. Maybe they would google me and realize that I am a Palestinian American writer and an activist. That can’t be good. But, they will also see that I am a lawyer and an adjunct professor, so that could help. I was just there a few months ago working on a film called The Coming Intifada, sensing something in the air. Now, I go back to be with friends and the family I have left. It’s the least I can do. I’ll visit our house in Al-Bireh and make sure it is still there with the settlers in Psagot and Beit El, each less than two kilometers away, expanding by the day.
I reach the border control window at the airport with a constructed smile. My U.S. passport and an email invitation from an Israeli Jewish friend are in hand. I am surprised that no one picks me out of the line. But still, I’m prepared. I didn’t wear a cap that day because I heard security considers it suspicious. I also wore baggy jeans and a checkered sweater, shaved my beard and head, and packed in a red rucksack to indicate I won’t be staying long.
It’s night now. Sitting in Tel Aviv’s airport detention center, surrounded by others like me, alone. I am not sure what is going to happen next. They told me to go with them, they told me to sit. They kept my passport. They said they’ll come back. My eyes wander from the door to my feet and back to the door for what seems like hours. I take out my phone. It’s been 40 minutes. I look around the pristine white room–a couple of families, men, women, children, but no one is talking. No one wants to say anything wrong, or speak to the wrong person. They just want to be done and get through. It reminded me of a Palestinian proverb امشي الحيط و قول يا رب الستيرة, “Walk with your back to the wall and pray to God.” We are all waiting for our name to be called, either into interrogation or to be allowed out.
I recall a conversation I had with my dad around our kitchen table in Palestine one lazy afternoon in 2010. He was still alive then. He said a lot of people ate shit; nobody fought; the whole town left; my dad said no way we leave; he said we are going to stay here; so we hid under the fig tree for months; people walked so many miles back from the Allenby Bridge; planes bombed people on the road; he laughed. We saw a lot of shit; after one night we understood where we were; in jail for three days, we didn’t do anything; just that we did not have a stamp on our passports; what story do you want?; there are a lot of stories, but thank God that He gives us forgetfulness… for three days, no one knew where we’d gone; Jews did not come to people’s houses until six months after. After the war? I asked. What war? he responded. There was no war. It’s just with what the Jews did in 1948, we were afraid. We thought they would shoot anybody. Amin, you had to remind me about all this shit. I don’t want to see it. You and your story.
I am finally named. I am escorted into a control center full of computers and phones. I sit down across from a pleasant woman in her thirties. “You’re confusing” she says. “You are a lawyer?” Yes. “We want to update your information. Is this your correct email?” Yes. “Phone number, address?” Yes, yes. “Do you have a Palestinian ID?” No. “Are you sure you don’t have a Palestinian ID?” Yes, my family does, but I don’t. The records were searched, and 15 minutes later they confirmed that I do not have a Palestinian ID. Satisfied, I am sent back out to the detention center. More hours pass. I’m tired of sitting. I wander out of the room. They escort me back in.
A while back I recorded a conversation with my sister about what she remembers of the First Intifada. She remembered asking Dad about the soldiers: “Who are these people?” He responded, “They are our enemies.” She remembered all the black flags on every home as a sign of respect for those killed that day. She remembered that satellite TV was not allowed. She remembered the day they signed the peace treaty and how we were up on the roof, celebrating. 15 minutes into the iPhone recording she shifted to the present:“I feel threatened by the Palestinian Authority? Yes. They have power. Those who do fuck up those who don’t. I’m being kicked out of my home, I survived two intifadas, and then the Palestinian Authority comes and kicks me out of my house?”
My name again. Another room. I edge towards my designated chair, already waiting for the questions to end. The interrogation officer, a twentysomething woman with dark angry curls, sits across from me. My eyes wander around the room with little scrutiny–one desk, two chairs, and a computer screen facing away from me. Once you’ve seen one interrogation room, you’ve seen them all. The first time I was interrogated, I was just a teenager. I’d been shot in the left leg with two rubber bullets–metal marbles thinly coated with hard plastic–for throwing rocks. I was chased down a street until the Israeli soldier put the barrel of his M-16 in my back. That room looked like this one, except there were no computers then.
Why is she staring at her computer? And why is it angled away from me?
I am waiting for her to speak to me. She’s typing.
Finally, she looks at me.
“Can I see your other passport? You have two passports, correct?”
“You mean my other American passport?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have it with me.”
“Why?” Her fingers moved quickly across the keyboard. I can’t see what she’s typing and it’s annoying.
Click, click, click.
“It’s expired.”
“I see. Why did you have two?”
“Sometimes you travel to places and if you have an Israeli stamp you can’t get in.”
“What places?”
“Like Lebanon.”
Click, click, click.
“When did you travel there?”
“In 2013.”
“Why?”
“I have friends there.”
“What kind of friends?”
“Artists.’”
“What are their names?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Huh… Interesting.”
Click, click, click.
I remember what matters. Conversations and how they felt. The sound of a person’s voice. The fact that I didn’t remember names made me guilty, like I was withholding information, but what if people don’t remember. Can you only return your country if you remember?
“Where did you travel?”
“All over, including Baqaa.”
“You’ve been to Baqaa?”
Click, click, click.
“Why what’s wrong with traveling to Baqaa?”
“It’s a terrorist safe haven, Hezbollah hotspot.”
“I didn’t meet anyone from Hezbollah. Have you been there? It’s beautiful.”
“If I go they will kill me.”
“Huh… Interesting.”
Dad went to Kuwait when he was 17. He said you don’t remember everything; in 1967, after coming back from Kuwait, the war started, before that I opened a garage, then when the Jews came, they took all the tools, so we had no income and no money; but a Jordanian doctor in the army, told me I can buy his car with no down payment. I could drive people to and from the bridge, then people started coming and I made good money; the mayor of Al-Bireh, died; I got the Chevy and business was good; people didn’t have cars; I would take the Chevy to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan; but that was 40 years ago, you can’t exactly remember the details; the color of the car was white.
“Are you going to travel?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Ramallah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“See family.”
“You are just going to see family?”
“Yes.”
“But you were here in July. Didn’t you see them? Or are you here because things are exciting?”
“I see them every time I am here.”
“You want to go to Ramallah. Mashe. Who are your relatives?”
I tell her.
“What are their phone numbers?”
“I don’t remember.”
She pauses for a long time. Finally she shakes her head. “You don’t have their number, interesting.”
Click, click, click.
I feel like a liar.
“Who else?”
“My aunt.”
“Where does she live?”
I give her the address.
“No, that’s wrong.”
“It’s not wrong. That is where she lives.”
“No, it’s not true.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
She squints her eyes at me. She looks Arab. “That’s not the address.”
“Maybe she gave you a different address, she has family in U.S.”
“What are their names?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Huh… Interesting. It’s amazing that they ever let you in here. Continue.”
Dad has lunch on his chair at the balcony overlooking his olive trees in the backyard. He says we have the best land in the whole town. He talks about wanting to get me married and how I did not agree. He likes the sun, it feels comfortable, he likes to watch the olives, relaxes, smokes, has his coffee. You don’t see people and that’s another reason he likes it. I ask him about the diabetes; he says he is not going to test it; says he thinks it’s nothing; he talks about what he eats and talks about the sweets. He would love to have more time, God willing. He talks about his weight loss and about being healthy. People pay money, he laughs, to lose weight.
She swivels her chair away from the computer screen. She does it in one strong sudden movement. I jerk back in my chair.
“Do you just want to come clean? want to tell me why you are really here? It will be easier for you.”
“I told you why I am here.”
She is leaning forward on the table now, her fingers linked together.
“Are you sure? We can keep going. I have all the time in the world.” She turns back towards her computer and continues typing. Click, click, click, click.
The truth is complicated in this room.
“Can I look at your phone?” She looks. “You know Khader Adnan… the Khader Adnan?”
I am back in the detention center. My fate is already decided. I’ve been here for 15 hours, and at some point they brought me two sandwiches. I watched two guards in the hallway stare at the television screen on the wall. They were watching today’s clashes in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Things get reshuffled: the same actions undertaken by different subjects. People are glued to the TV, watching the news. Two generations ago, Palestinian refugees were told by their Arab brothers and sisters, “You watch TV all the time.” People ridiculed them. Now Syrians are the ones watching TV, hanging on to every word, every false promise.
At midnight, the guard informs me that they are taking me to check my luggage. I am being deported. I tell him that no one told me. He comes back with the letter. Huh… Interesting.
I see her pass by. She doesn’t acknowledge me.
My flight is scheduled to leave at 6am. At 3:30 they take me into a room for the strip search and the cavity search. I don’t have any information about where they’re flying me to or what airline. Forty-five minutes before my flight is scheduled to leave two security guards come and collect me. They ask me if I need anything, water?, food?, etc. As if I was on death row and these were my final wishes. I ask for a cigarette. I had quit but they don’t know that. They take me to the side of the building and hand me a cigarette. They are talking to each other in Hebrew, discussing democracy, whether it was good thing or a bad thing for the state of Israel to deport a U.S. citizen. The Russian guard takes issue with it, saying it’s a bad move considering how much the U.S. supports Israel. The other guard looks Arab. He thinks it’s okay. Security reasons.
The Arab one asks me if I live here. I tell him, “I was raised here. This is my home.”
The Russian raises his eyebrows. “Ooohhh, then you have to go.”
I shake my head. “I was raised here. This is home.”
They nod their heads in agreement. “But Palestinians want Jews dead. They hate them. The United States did the same to the native population. It’s necessary.”
“And they fought back,” I say. “We are still here.”
The Russian guard motions to me with his hand. “It’s time to go.”
*
Photo credit: MTL Collective.
Amin Husain is a lawyer, visual artist and activist based in New York. He has a BA in Philosophy, a JD from Indiana University Law School, and an LLM in Law from Columbia University. He practiced law for five years before transitioning to art, studying at the School of the International Center of Photography and Whitney Independent Study Program. Amin currently teaches at the Gallatin School – NYU, the Media Culture and Communication Department – NYU, the New School’s Media Studies Department, and PRATT’s Graduate Writing Program. Amin is a co-founding member of MTL, a collective that joins research, aesthetics and activism in its practice. Currently, he is working on a film, The Coming Intifada (@comingintifada).