“For our fatherland, poor as a partridge, sacred books… and a wound in identity.” – Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)
On a visit to my great-grandmother in Mexico City, when the memory of COVID-19 still hurt, just one look was enough to immerse ourselves in the following story.
–”Those deep eyes of yours… as Turkish as your grandfather’s,” she recited absorbed in her reminiscence as she gazed at me approaching her. A glimpse of wonder, an infinite embrace, a long-term memory and a historical feeling for a life never forgotten.
And so it was that without looking for it, our identity makes its magic to meet again with our root in a time travel of more than half century, I would never have imagined that my eyes could give way to a lovely Sunday afternoon full of stories and family anecdotes shared by a person whom I so admire.
We dusted off the stored portraits, told me about the poems his father recited to him, about the long rides on horseback with my then young great-grandfather, and about the first time he held my father, his first grandson. At times, those people were no longer just sleeping photographs in a trunk and took the life of what they always were: my ancestors, my roots, my origin.
Contrary to the good prognosis, my grandfather was not the suitor she would have wished for my grandmother, her daughter. My great-grandmother, of Creole-European origin, saw everything related to the Middle East as something negative, certainly influenced by its socio-cultural context, since from the West it was seen as a backward geographical area, with too «different» customs and therefore, that young Palestinian man, with pale olive skin and “Turkish” look, as she would say, was not worthy of her blessing but, it was his humble soul, united to his prodigious mind, that made him shine in the society of his time and win the ground to the hostility of all those who made it difficult.
I am a young man of the new century, Salvadoran by birth and slang, but with Arab blood and Mediterranean heart, from where the land spilled milk and honey: my Palestine. And activist for just causes. Feelings do not understand geography and dreams are not sealed in a passport, and without living all that preceded me, my heartbeats already cried for a cause that my eyes still cannot. It is the moment in which we understand that in every vestige of our essence we dress with fragments of those who precede us.
It is said that identity is the set of characteristics and traits that differentiate us from others. In ethnic terms, it could be defined as the sense of belonging to a particular group: Amerindian, Chinese, Arab or any other people. However, I would dare to redefine the term with a more subjective approach. The identity is modified and changed over time, with our development as individuals. It is from where we feel that we belong. For me, identity can be a country, a kuffiyeh1, a beautiful tatreez2, a religion -Christian or Muslim-, a dance of dabke3, a poem from Darwish, my mother’s maqluba4 recipe or my father’s cheerful singing Ya Mustapha.5 Identity is changing, not fixed, and it is valid to feel part of one people, another or both.
My great-grandmother, without realizing it, helped me to find myself again. I know where I come from, and also where I want to go. I want to follow a few steps that lead me to who I am. I am the union of two cultures and the result of two stories, characters from a difficult story and the love of a past forged by dreams that can be achieved.
This process of self-identification is not always easy. Sometimes, we are forced to delete parts of ourselves to fit in. My grandfather experienced it firsthand. Through her sisters, I learned that in El Salvador the first half of the 20th century was hostile to Palestinian immigration.
The term «Turkish eyes» given to me by my great-grandmother contains a complex story. For a long time in El Salvador, Palestinian immigrants were called «Turks» because the first to arrive carried passports from the Ottoman Empire. But over time, the word acquired xenophobic connotations. My grandfather, born in 1931, received a passport issued by the British Mandate of Palestine, but the label «Turkish» accompanied him all his life.
In March 1929, reforms to the Salvadoran Aliens Act imposed restrictions on Palestinian immigrants. An article from the time read:
«The country is pleased that a decree has been issued prohibiting the entry into the Republic of Chinese and Arabs, Palestinians or Turks as they are generally said to be, for being considered pernicious.» , source: Isabel M. Cromeyer, “No more Turks or Chinese will come to the country,” from Diario del Pueblo, 25 April 1929.
Decades later, the Palestinian community in El Salvador has managed to integrate and reclaim itself. However, identity remains a complex journey. It is not a matter of choosing between one people or another, but of accepting that we are the result of multiple influences.
Identity is like a traveller: it changes routes, landscapes, languages and cultures, but never loses its essence. It transcends borders and draws on personal history and the context in which one lives. At the end of the day, we all share one planet. The differences that separate us are paradoxically what unites us.
As Thor Heyerdahl put it: «Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard that they exist in the minds of some people.»
Identity is my friend, my compass. It reminds me of who I am and where I come from. No one should be ashamed of his origin, what he feels or what he can become.
I am «the Turkish eyes» that my great-grandmother remembers. Although I have never set foot in Palestine, my being will always have a piece on the other side of the sea.
Moisés Saca,
Defender of a story, heir to a cause.
El Salvador, C.A.
Glossary
- Kuffiyen:Traditional Middle Eastern scarf. ↩︎
- Tratreez: Palestinian embroidery with symbols like birds, trees and flowers. ↩︎
- Dabke:Traditional dance of Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian folklore. ↩︎
- Maqluba: Palestinian dish of rice and other ingredients. ↩︎
- Ya Mustapha: Egyptian song popularized by the Lebanese singer Bob Azzam in 1960. ↩︎
