“Unwritten memories: it should have been me/it could have been me”

Hand-stitched Palestinian tatreez and photo collage on canvas, 2024

These questions unsettle me: “Why not me?” and “What if it had been me?” Both possibilities run through my mind in idle moments. 

This piece explores a duality I feel as a Palestinian in diaspora: yearning and anguish. On the one hand a yearning to have had childhood memories in Palestine–why not me? On the other hand an anguish at the thought of what could have been had our family fled to Gaza and it were me there right now–what if it had been me?

My mom snapped this photo in 1996 of me and my dad as we took a family trip to the Pacific Ocean, just an hour’s drive from where we lived. I was 9 years old.  

Why not me? I often imagine what my life could have been like if I had had childhood memories in Palestine… especially in my fantasy of a free Palestine. Maybe we would have visited the Mediterranean Sea for our family trips.

What if it had been me? I also often think about how my reality of exile could have been a different fate. Had any of my grandparents made a different decision and went south, we would also be in Gaza right now. 

I combined a few elements onto the photo: 

• Below it in the sand an amulet that I saw on a dress from Yaffa, which is where some of my family resided before 1948.
• On my back is a tree. I remember some key difficulties I experienced during that age, connected to growing up in exile, but nevertheless I carry the family tree with me.
• A form of the famous Gaza necklace dominates in the sky. I wonder what my life would have been like there. 
• Cradled in/above the Gaza necklace is a form of my past/present/future symbol but shuffled and with a weighty focus on the potential for a different future.

*This piece was featured as the album cover for SoliTunes by Your Mom’s Agency.