Researching + Archiving roots
through my maternal grandparents, Josephine and Michel.
Josephine's roots can be traced back to Armenian heritage, as her parents fled Aleppo, Syria, in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Michel, born in Jaffa, Palestine, experienced forced displacement during the Nakba in 1948.
Michel and Josephine met in Egypt and eventually settled in Beirut, Lebanon where they had my late Aunt Gehane and mother Joumana. With a significant part of Lebanese Christians having immigrated under the Ottoman and French occupations, some members of the Christian parties in control of the country agreed to provide several Palestinian Christians with citizenship after 1948. Between 1949 and 1952, around 31,000 Palestinian Christians were granted Lebanese citizenship.
As a Palestinian refugee with newly acquired Lebanese citizenship, Michel sought to minimize his identity in order to attain equality and provide the best life for his family. This survival strategy led to a deliberate erasure of origin.
My family embraced silence as a means of safety, navigating towards a secure so called post-colonial identity in a neighboring country-hoping for a sense of inclusiveness and belonging.
I have been contemplating how stories of exile shape my family's history. I acknowledge how fortunate they were to have had a second chance to create a new home—a privilege that most Palestinians today are denied.
The way in which heritage lives through the maternal side is not by resistance, words, stories but rather through cuisine, aromas, scents. Through nature and indigenous elements to the land, and most notably, through silence. A very loud and telling silence.
Now, having lived in Europe for the past 6 years and having experienced firsthand racism and the west’s view on Arab geopolitical issues and identity, I understand that they were all navigated by fear. I am too, but I want to take a conscious step not to. I do not desire to to spend a life hiding and pretending performing for the western gaze.
I am thinking about history, buried memories and erased heritage. My mother planned to visit Bethlehem on a religious pelerinage in September 2023 but got her visa rejected as she was born in Lebanon. I dream one day of being able to visit the land and dig deeper into my own roots, bury my feet in the soil.