Returning - Leen Qandeel

What does it feel like to be back home? Naturally, welcomed. Normally, eased. 

That wasn’t the case with me though. 

I left Palestine helplessly, and returned to it desperately. Perhaps to dig my guilt in Yafa’s sand. In Palestinian beautiful land that I regret leaving everyday. 

Why do I feel guilty? 

I’ve been to many therapists, thinking I’m a maniac who did something unfathomable, like killing an elderly woman's only son and family, watching her grief for months and years and driving herself to death. Or as if I was the one who held the gun, pointed it to a child and was annoyed by the fact they were simply passing by to pet a cat, or check on their olive tree, and pulled the trigger. 

It’s not like I was the one who barged in a random home, knowing very well how long it took to build, and how difficult it must have been, and claimed it as mine.

But I wasn’t a victim. What does it mean to be one anyway? When can we call a person a victim? It’s controversial. 

A person who lost their dear ones due to war can be called a victim.

Likewise, a person who survived a car crash.

Both are victims, that’s for sure, but some may disagree. They'd argue whether you're enough of a victim to them, and based on what? Based on the horrendous stories they've heard of before (or perhaps have been through), and they compare you to them.

And that plays a strong role in the mind. Even if you think you’re a victim, or if someone else says you are, if you ever received a “you’re dramatic, it could have been worse”, you’ll disagree with yourself and that someone. 

So can we call a person who fled home, returned to it as a stranger, and unwelcome, a victim?

Victim to being unwelcome? Victim to finding difficulties in returning, even though it's your own home? Land? 

It doesn’t matter. I still feel guilty, whether I’m supposedly a victim or not. 

And sometimes I don’t get to understand the root, the cause of the guilt. Is it because I left?

I didn’t have any other option. I couldn’t stay. Maybe if I fought harder, maybe if I resisted more just like the rest of Palestinians, then I wouldn't feel guilty. I thought of everything, every possible reason why I feel this unexplainable, unreasonable guilt, but for every reason I come up with, my therapists oppose me. And something I had never admitted out aloud for some reason, as if it's such a forbidden confession, is that they were right. They were completely sensible. And that made me furious, made me not understand myself even more. I felt like I was lost, and I was. But arriving in Palestine after leaving for years is the definition of ‘being lost’. 

So what I felt back then wasn’t as close to what I’m feeling at the moment. 

Yet, I can’t explain the feeling. Even though there are more rational reasons to not feel guilty, I felt guilty.

I am back home, the home I protested for, and the home I waited more than 3 years just to enter.

Returning home shouldn’t be this difficult, and shouldn’t be this strange.

I can recognize the streets, the villages, the trees, but I can't help looking at what changed the land. 

I can't help looking at the traces the bulldozers left behind, damaging the homes. The same homes I’d knock and run from, the same homes where I’d also help their farms.

Even the simplest things that bring joy to everyone in this village have changed.

From the young kids yelling and laughing to the crying and screams of agony.

It started with the sweet smell of baking, then moves on to the smell of smoke.

Regardless, no matter what occupation does to ruin this village, it’d still be recognizable. 

And the resistance will just get stronger.