Watching Boston as an Arab-American in Palestine

When I heard that two bombs had exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, my heart sank.

Please, please don’t be an Arab-American. Please, please don’t be one of us.

I know this isn’t what I am supposed to think. I know I am supposed to be outraged—a terrorist attack? On American soil? Who are these terrorists and when will they be brought to justice?

But all I can think about was the last time there was a terrorist attack on American soil—it was only a matter of hours before the perpetrators were identified as Al-Qaeda and every brown and bearded man in the United States became a suspect of the next horrifying, inhumane attack. It was only a matter of a few more hours before a Sikh man—whose
only commonality with the Al-Qaeda’s terrorists is a turban and a vague physical resemblance—was beaten to death at a gas station. It was only a matter of weeks before the United States was dropping bombs on Afghanistan with abandon, spewing lies about liberating the burqa-clad women of Afghanistan from the evil grip of the Taliban—all the while searching for an Osama bin Laden needle in a haystack of innocent lives.

It was only a matter of time before racially and religiously profiling Arabs and Muslims as terrorists became routine and expected. Before going to the airport with my parents resulted in rolling my eyes at the phrase, “random searches” while by pure coincidence my brown mother was pulled aside and my white father could have had a suitcase filled with explosives for all they cared.

After all, if he had a suitcase filled with explosives, he would have just been a crazy white man who snapped. But if it had been my mother—or better yet, my father and my mother’s ethnic backgrounds and family names were switched—he would be a politically-motivated terrorist worth going to war over.

It did not take much time for my sinking suspicions about Boston were confirmed everywhere, anyone that could be Muslim or Arab was guilty and impossible to prove innocent. Two people speaking Arabic were asked to leave a plane and missed their flight. A Palestinian-American woman wearing a hijab was assaulted and harassed on the streets of Boston. A Bangladeshi man was beaten at an Applebees in the Bronx. Numerous other stories were told, yet unreported in the mainstream media—mostly Arab and Muslim-Americans reporting being treated with suspicion and overt bigotry in
public spaces.

The news that the suspects are actually Chechnyan—quite literally Caucasian, yet still Muslim—doesn’t erase this collective trauma of profiling, bigotry and violence that our community has endured, and holds their breath anticipating any time news like this breaks. It doesn’t erase the fact that these experiences keep us from grieving in the same way as other Americans, the way we should be able to in the wake of such a tragedy—because our race is automatically implicated.

Here is the other thing: I happened to watch the news of the blasts from Palestine.

I am not one to respond to an American tragedy—such as this one or the horrific Sandy Hook school shooting—with the rhetoric that these things happen everyday in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and the string of countries devastated by US foreign policy implications. A tragedy is a tragedy, and though both are horrific—on the
day of the Boston bombing, a bombing in Baghdad killed 30 people alone—they should be treated as such, rather than compared and reduced.

However, after spending almost three months reporting on what feels like invisible, yet daily—to the point of normalized—violence, I can’t help but wonder why some of these stories garner so much more attention than others.

For example, in Palestine, violence is so routine that it becomes a little part of every action and interaction—even the most mundane. It is a close friend rolling up his shirtsleeve in an ice cream shop to show a permanent scar of a bullet wound from when he was a child during the Second Intifada. It is hearing a sudden bang while spending time in Aida
Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, and instead of jumping, calmly taking in the laundry from hanging off the balcony so that it won’t stink of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) teargas filling the refugee camp’s narrow alleyways as it wafts towards the windows.

It is the posters of martyrs who weren’t as lucky as my friend rolling up his shirtsleeve in the ice cream shop to show me his Intifada battle scars or the kids running from teargas in the alleys of the refugee camp, only narrowly escaping being hit with teargas canisters, rubber bullets and sometimes live ammunition and creating their own battle scars or becoming martyrs themselves.

It is the lack of addresses in Palestine—even the major cities like Ramallah and Nablus. It is that the reason for this is that these cities have endured so many bombings—so much violence—that it doesn’t seem worth it to have a permanent address because the one constant is that physical structures are never permanent under an occupation. It is the empty spaces left behind from these buildings that might have once had addresses—buildings bombed during the intifada, targeted in air raids, bystanders of car bombings or simply bulldozed.

It is the way the light pours in through the empty spaces.

Like the empty space in the New York City skyline that emerged almost twelve years ago—a coupling of light and rubble against a backdrop of paralyzing collective trauma. Like the more than 3,000 lives lost, bodies buried in the rubble of those who did not know they were dying a political death—and the far more than 3,000 families and loved ones of those lost—mourning their “martyrs,” some craving vengeance others simply yearning for justice for the political forces that so unjustly chose to circumscribe their lives in that inopportune moment. Like Boston, traumatized by two blasts at what was supposed to be a joyous event—something all too familiar to this part of the world—hurting, vengeful, seeking justice, seeking answers as to why someone would possibly do this, seeking some kind of accountability for those who are guilty.

The only difference is that in New York City and Boston the world stops turning—all other stories are eclipsed by the front page picture of the blasts, the deaths, the grieving families and the ensuing ruthless, tireless manhunt for the culprit. Meanwhile, when the blasts go off in Palestine they simply take in their laundry from the balcony and carry on with their lives. And those of us between two worlds—carefully straddling that little but ever-present hyphen between “Arab” and “American” —are never quite sure how to feel.