One stitch - A World of Meaning

Summary

Podcast Summary: Migrant Odyssey – "One Stitch – A World of Meaning"

Host: Stephen Barden
Guest: Hajar
Date: January 28, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Migrant Odyssey, host Stephen Barden speaks with Hajar, a young woman of Lebanese and Palestinian heritage. Together, they explore themes of migration, belonging, family, and the value of stories and cultural memory. The conversation is woven (much like the embroidery it discusses) with reflections on personal and collective identity, displacement, activism, and the ways history is preserved and reclaimed—often, literally, one stitch at a time.

Hajar’s story is one of crossing borders, physical and emotional. She discusses how diaspora changes the fabric of identity and how the act of telling and preserving stories is itself a form of resistance—a way of stitching together connection and meaning even in exile.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Loss and Reinvention of Community

[00:15 – 02:08]

• Opening reflection by Stephen: Migration threatens not just the loss of home, but “the weave” of community—the small, intimate stories and shared experiences beyond food, language, and music.
• “Those who wage war to expel others from their homes seek not just to kill people, but to unravel what I call the carpet of fine threads that gave them their belonging.” – Stephen [00:42]

Early Identity and Awareness of “Difference”

[02:31 – 05:26]

• Hajar grew up assuming everyone was “half Palestinian” due to her surroundings and upbringing, only realizing the significance of her identity after being called out in middle school.
• “It felt so unfathomable to me that someone would just be fully from one place... It felt impossible to grasp.” – Hajar [03:19]
• She notes she’s never really noticed facing racism herself, attributing it to living “in [her] own bubble” and ignoring what doesn’t serve her.

Family History, Activism, and Statelessness

[06:29 – 08:20]

• Parents met at Pan-Arabist conferences; father Palestinian, mother Lebanese.
• Legal complexities: As a Palestinian, her father could not pass on nationality; her parents’ first act as a couple was to secure Canadian citizenship to avoid being stateless.

The Endless Motion of Displacement

[08:21 – 09:53]

• Life as a perpetual movement: “Once you’re out of the homeland, you’re never going to come back fully.”
• Attachment shifts from a single “homeland” to the geographies and communities they traverse.

Belonging: Geography, People, and Water

[09:53 – 13:11]

• Hajar’s sense of belonging pivots between places—her heart aches for Southern Lebanon and “Palestine being [her] ultimate compass.”
• She feels attachment both to people and physical spaces, especially to bodies of water: “I measure geographic places by the bodies of water... I’m so attached to it.” – Hajar [11:44]

The Toll of Political Imprisonment

[13:28 – 17:41]

• Family members have spent years in Israeli and Syrian prisons; trauma not only affects the imprisoned, but their families.
• The reference to “obliteration” and the deliberate attempt to erase memory as a weapon of genocide.

The Search for Roots: Hajar’s Bedouin Grandmother

[18:17 – 24:17]

• Hajar entered anthropology “as a form of spite” against the erasure and lack of documentation for Palestinian experiences.
• Her research into her grandmother’s tattoo symbols and family lineages uncovered precious little; she relies on voice messages and oral histories to reconstruct her story.
  • Notable Quote: “I really wanted to document the oral history... I had a lot of questions about her tribal tattoos, and I couldn’t find absolutely anything.” – Hajar [19:04]
• A voice message from her grandmother, initially thought to be poetry, turns out to be a jokey, poetic parable about love and respect for mothers. The story illustrates the importance of care and familial bonds, as valued in their culture.

Art, Literature, and Resistance

[25:04 – 30:25]

• The new generation aims to reclaim and narrate their story through art, poetry, and academic work that does not sanitize or “sterilize” vibrancy and emotion for academic consumption.
  • “We’re all stitches in our own way to make the final patriarchy embodiment. It doesn’t make sense to come in and only make it academic because we’re not a still community. We’re a very vibrant community.” – Hajar [27:09]
• Palestinian men are, contrary to stereotypes, deeply expressive and poetic.

The Political Nature of Survival

[29:30 – 32:38]

• The politics of daily life—from food to water rights—are highlighted.
  • Example: “Collecting rainwater is illegal in Gaza.” – Hajar [30:41]
  • Extreme examples from the US and other contexts underline how disconnected current policies are from the natural order.

Research in Athens: Diaspora and Identity

[32:38 – 39:45]

• Hajar’s research took her to Exarchia, Athens—a center of activism with a strong Palestinian community.
• She created a composite character, “Arabella,” merging the stories of many refugees into a narrative written in poetic form. This method preserved anonymity while highlighting the shared pain and resilience.
  • “Everyone became Arabella... these experiences are so shared and they’re so common and they’re so felt through the international Palestinian community.” – Hajar [37:00]
• Despite fragmentation by class, sect, or background, Hajar argues, “the lack of an international community is still a presence of an international community—just not in the ideal way.”

Internal Dynamics of Exile Communities

[39:45 – 43:20]

• Dynamics in exile reflect differences based on class, refugee experience, or time since leaving the homeland, but in moments of crisis, these distinctions fade and unity emerges.

Embroidery (“Tatreez”): Culture, Memory, and Resistance

[43:20 – 48:25]

• Palestinian embroidery is both art and history; patterns once identified the wearer’s village, status, and life events.
• Hajar learned embroidery while alone in Canada to stay connected to her roots—a response to the aging of community storytellers and tradition-bearers.
  • “When you think of it as we’re all part of different stitches... coming together to make the whole idea of a taub, it’s a lot easier to feel connected.” – Hajar [44:41]
  • She is making her first taub (traditional dress), intended first as an engagement taub but now as an “intifada taub” in honor of resistance.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Those who wage war to expel others from their homes seek not just to kill people, but to unravel what I call the carpet of fine threads that gave them their belonging.”
  Stephen Barden [00:42]

• “It felt so unfathomable to me that someone would just be fully from one place... It felt impossible to grasp.”
  Hajar [03:19]

• “I think, honestly, I measure geographic places by the bodies of water and the places, because I’m so attached to it.”
  Hajar [11:44]

• “I really wanted to document the oral history... I had a lot of questions about her tribal tattoos, and I couldn’t find absolutely anything.”
  Hajar [19:04]

• “We’re all stitches in our own way... It doesn’t make sense to come in and only make it academic because we’re not a still community. We’re a very vibrant community.”
  Hajar [27:09]

• “Collecting rainwater is illegal in Gaza.”
  Hajar [30:41]

• “The lack of an international community is still a presence of an international community, just not in the ideal way.”
  Hajar [38:40]

• “When you think of it as we’re all part of different stitches... coming together to make the whole idea of a taub, it’s a lot easier to feel connected.”
  Hajar [44:41]

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic Description | |-----------|--------------------------| | 00:15 | Opening reflection on the “weave” of community | | 02:31 | Hajar’s childhood perception of identity | | 06:51 | Parents’ activism, meeting, and migration story | | 08:21 | Perpetual movement after displacement | | 09:53 | Sense of belonging tied to people versus place; attachment to bodies of water | | 13:28 | Family history of political imprisonment | | 18:17 | Motivation for anthropological research; challenges documenting oral history | | 22:24 | Hajar’s Bedouin grandmother’s story—humor and poetry | | 25:04 | The importance of art and poetry in resistance | | 29:30 | “Everything is political”—from food to rainwater | | 32:38 | Research in Athens; building Arabella’s character | | 38:40 | Community fragmentation and unity in diaspora | | 43:34 | Embroidery (tatreez) as cultural and personal anchor | | 45:24 | Learning to embroider to preserve family tradition | | 46:52 | Explanation of the taub (traditional dress) | | 48:39 | Next steps: Documenting village stories and rebuilding community |

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Tone and Language

The episode is heartfelt, reflective, and poetic—mirroring the cultural form and content under discussion. Hajar’s language is thoughtful and at times gently humorous, filled with longing for connection and a fierce desire to document and honor her heritage. Stephen’s approach is empathetic, inquisitive, and informed, drawing out the deeper stories and connections in Hajar’s narrative.

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Conclusion

“One Stitch – A World of Meaning” is a tapestry of personal and collective memory, loss and resilience, and the ongoing act of stitching together identity in exile. Hajar’s journey—her activism, research, and art—highlight how storytelling, in every form, is a powerful tool for resistance, healing, and the weaving of new belonging out of displacement.

Ending Note:
Hajar’s next step is to document the ongoing story of her village in southern Lebanon, rebuilding its memory “physically, spiritually, academically, just absolutely in any possible way.” [48:39]

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Images referenced:

• Hajar promises to send photos of embroidered taubs, including one belonging to her grandmother and one with her by the Lebanese sea, symbolizing unity of identity (see [47:29] – [48:25]).

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to another episode of Migrant Odyssey.

[C]

I'm Stephen Barton.

[B]

Migrants, refugees, exiles don't just lose their homes, their loved ones, their communities and countries. They're in danger of losing their weave. Not just the food, music and language either, but the threads that braid them together to make a community. The eccentricities of the family next door, the fury of the old guy when he discovered I'd stolen his oranges or mangoes from his garden just as he was about to pick them. Stories are not just about our history. They're about the intimacy, the tenderness, the irritation we share with those who come from the same ground and go back into it. Those who wage war to expel others from their homes seek not just to kill people, but to unravel what I call the carpet of fine threads that gave them their belonging. And the more I do this podcast series, the more I realize that its value, if it has any at all, is not to tell the sagas of suffering or, God forbid, victimhood, but to listen to the stories of the weaving of these carpets, that tenderness with which they were stitched together, and to encourage them to continue to be woven. Today's story has a lot of weaving and stitching, and for me, heart aching tenderness. My guest today is Hajar, a young woman who seeks not only the stories of her Lebanese and Palestinian people, but those of her own family and community.

[C]

I was going to say she has.

[B]

The heart of a poet and the mind of an anthropologist. But as you'll hear, the heart and the mind in this case are very closely stitched together.

[C]

Aja, hi and thank you very much for being with us.

[A]

Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to speak with you.

[C]

I thought everyone was Palestinian. When we did our pre recording chat last week, I think it was, you said to me, up until a certain age you thought everyone was Palestinian. Tell me something about that.

[A]

So I, I was born in Canada and I came to Lebanon and being in Canada, I was used to everyone being half, half something because of the diversity there. And then coming to Lebanon, we're half Palestinian. And my mother, even though she's Lebanese and from the south China, she's very, very into Palestine and activism and everything. And so is her family. And I just assumed that everyone around us is either half Palestinian, Palestinian or just has someone in their family that's Palestinian. It just, it felt so unfathomable to me that someone would just be fully from one place, their entire life in one place, fully DNA from one place. It felt impossible to. To grasp until one time in middle school someone found out I'm Palestinian, called me out in class and they're like, oh, you're Palestinian. With so much disgust in their tone. And I was so confused because it's like what do you mean? Is it everyone? But then I found out that he's half Palestinian as well, which is very, very interesting because that's also when I found out that people view being Palestinian is about. Which is also unfathomably crazy to me. I couldn't understand it.

[C]

Yeah, interesting. That person thought Palestinian being Palestinian bad and so therefore he thought there was a sort of self hate about him. Is that right or so.

[A]

Yeah, that's the thing. I think there's a lot of told experiences in regards of having bad experiences being Palestinian, especially in Lebanon or I'm not going to speak of other places, but specifically Lebanon. I think a lot of people speak about having racist encounters, but I can't say I didn't have them. I just, I, all I can say is I, I never noticed and we spoke about this earlier before is I, I live in my entire, in my own bubble. And so whatever that does not serve me any good purpose, I automatically dismiss it. And so people speaking badly about being Palestinian, I either just take it as a joke because I think they're actually joking or I just ignore it. And so I've never really had any like racist encounter here, but also never had a racist encounter in Canada. But that's also because I'm very careful with who I surround myself with and I just ignore things to an extreme.

[C]

So yeah, yeah, I get it in the interesting thing about, about you know, that being in Canada. So you were, you were born in Canada, correct? That was that. That's right. Because your parents took you there when you were, when you're in mummy's tummy sort of thing. But interesting thing about this, this that you assumed everybody was from different places, if you like. There were, there wasn't this, you know, know I was this nativist thing. I was born here, brought up here, lived here, etc. And I, I had a, you know, similar sort of thing and I still get it now funny enough because you know, I was as, I, as I think we discussed, my, my parents were Greek, separate from, from, from Cyprus. I was born in, in Africa, in East Africa, moved to South Africa, then, you know, then to Britain, et cetera, et cetera. So when people say to me, as they do in Europe quite a lot, so where are you from? I say, you know, don't ask because.

[A]

It'S always a difficult conversation.

[C]

Yeah, you're going to get the full story, which goes on forever. But your parents politically active. You said to me, father Palestinian, is that correct? Mother from the south of Lebanon.

[A]

Correct, yes.

[C]

And, and, and how did they, just briefly, how did they meet? Where did they meet?

[A]

So they met at a pan Arabism conference. Well, actually, their friends met through the conference and they introduced them to each other. So my mother went to the Egypt conference and my father went to the Tunis and Nairobi conference, and their friends just decided they had to meet. So they did meet and they got married, I think, a year after, and they lived in Jordan for a bit and then went to Canada because my father, being Palestinian, he could never give us his papers. And even if he did, what would we possibly do with Palestinian identity papers? And my mother, as a Lebanese mother, cannot give us the Palestinian passport, the Lebanese passport, so we would just end up stateless, I guess. So the first thing they did together as a couple was to apply to Canada. Actually, my father already had his application open.

[B]

So.

[C]

Yes. You all have Canadian citizenship, is that right?

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

Oh, that's great.

[C]

That's great. Canada, of course, was only part of the story. Then you, then you moved about all over the place, didn't you?

[A]

Yes. So then they moved to Kuwait and then Lebanon. My father went to KSA at the time, so Saudi Arabia, and then we stayed in Lebanon. He went to Australia, then back to the Gulf area, and then we all went to Canada and then back to the Gulf area in Lebanon, and then I left for university in Canada, so.

[C]

Right. And.

[A]

But I think that's just, in my opinion, that's just the diary of once you're out of the homeland, you're never going to come back fully. You're always going to be moving somehow. And I think that's just part of the story for us.

[C]

Yeah. Do you think that's part of the.

[B]

Story for, for all.

[C]

Displaced, migrant people, whether they are. Is that.

[A]

I think so, honestly, because recently I've been very interested in the idea of land and not land in a specific idea of homeland, but rather than where you get to experience geographic land, that's where you're going to get attached to the place. And so realistically, we all belong to Earth. Yes. There's the idea of, like, nations and borders, and I belong to this specific country, but the idea is we belong, we belong more to the geographic places where I go to. And I think once you're in the diaspora, once you start getting attached to other places, of land and have more stories and connections to these spaces, It's a bit more difficult to get over them and stay in one place. So, for example, for me, I. I definitely have a lack of stability when it comes to stuff like this, But I took it from a positive angle where I just. I love to travel and I love to see different places, and it feels impossible to just stay in one place forever because there's so much more to see and do.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Where is your heart? Where does your heart feel at the moment? Not tomorrow, not yesterday. Where does your heart feel? You can exhale.

[A]

So my mother used to always say the. A mother's heart belongs to the sick child until he's better and traveling child until he's back. And I think right now the south is definitely the sick child that my heart aches for all the time. And we've been basically displaced from the south of Lebanon for almost a year and a half now. And it's been the longest time we have not been to the. To our village because we used to go every single weekend. So, for sure, my heart is there, but at the end of the day, I think Palestine being my ultimate compass in life, I can't also say that it's not part of my heart always. I can't ever take it out of my heart.

[C]

Yeah, I think different experiences, but I think, like, you spent a lot of time traveling all over the place and really, really a lot of places. And I think it wasn't the land that I felt at home with. It was the people that I felt at home with. When I felt. When there were people that I cared about and remembered, then, yes, that was my home. But I knew, and I think that's what you're saying as well. I knew that would. It would be in my heart. That place. A place may be in my heart, but it was not going to be necessarily the home. The home, the single home.

[A]

No, definitely. I think. I think that's definitely part of it. But I think it's also. I think it's an interesting thing. Having traveled so much. I don't think I've had lifelong attachments in one place. So all the people that I've met, I absolutely adore, and they're people that I would definitely travel simply to see. But also, I think me being the way I am and being so in my bubble at all times, very isolated, it is genuinely the geographic places that I miss because I get very attached to the streets and the scenes and the sky and the water and all these places. Have had some sort of moving body of water or salt water in some sort. And I've gotten incredibly attached to all of these bodies of water. So I think. Yeah, I think honestly, I measure geographic places by the bodies of water and the places, because I'm so attached to it.

[C]

To the water. To the actual water?

[A]

Yes, to the actual water.

[C]

To the. It's the flow, isn't it? It's the flow, yeah.

[A]

It's the. The water, the soil, just absolutely everything.

[C]

Yeah, it's. It's the one place that. That you can actually feel at home with because it flows. It flows everywhere. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Which is. Which is so interesting that people have so many different diary experiences, let's say, with salt water.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, very much so.

[A]

So.

[C]

Your uncles, you told me, were also very active and they were in and out of prison for a long time of Israeli prisons, is that right?

[A]

Yes, yes. I have an uncle that spent 11 years in and out of Israeli prison and several others. But him being the oldest, we speak of him the most. And there's also, I believe, an uncle that spent seven years and actually, no, I think a lot less. But I haven't met him because when he got out of prison, Israeli prison, the first thing he did was get on a plane to Amsterdam and then go down to South Africa and get married, have kids and just kind of leave. And they joke that when he left, Israelis had a party because he had caused them so much trouble with his activism and his constant worrying them. So. So, yes, I think it is a bit off the tangent, but with political prisons, I feel like they genuinely. They're more a psychological thing like political prisons, but also they. They tear families apart. They actually tear families apart because when people come out of these prisons, they're not the same as before. And. And we've seen that happen with my grandfather and my missing uncle being in Sednaya or Syrian prisons, and we have no idea of the abuse they endured. And when it comes to my father's brothers coming out of Israeli prisons and then leaving, because I actually have no idea what the endurance. I just got to meet his kids. And if seeing them be almost 30 and me just crossing 20 felt so crazy that I missed out on having such a connection in my life with family, because I think also being in the diaspora or like also not being in the homeland, I've always felt like I was missing out on family connections or family experiences or anecdotes that they say, because I'm just never going to be able to live in Palestine. The way they were able to live in Palestine. And I think that really put everything to perspective.

[C]

Did you say one of, one of the uncles was, had also been in a Syrian prison? Is that right or wasn't is in a Syrian prison?

[A]

So, Syrian prison. My mother's side, it is her brother, we have no idea where he is. But also my grandfather was in Sydney, I think late 90s, early 2000, I think late 90s, actually. My mother was 18 years old because I remember she would tell us stories of how at 18, she was the one that was physically able in the household because my grandmother was sick. She had cancer and she had just finished through cancer and was pregnant and her other brothers were too young and one of them was in the army, so they couldn't really do much. So at 18, as a woman on her own, she was going to all these police political prisons and looking for my grandfather. And I think that of itself, she has so many stories of political abuse that she endured and all the stories of anyone that would ever help her, they would just suddenly disappear because they're not allowed to get anyone out of these prisons. So.

[C]

And your grandfather, did he disappear? Was he, I mean, did you ever get him out?

[A]

No, my grandfather is alive and well. He's, he's here. He's. Alhamdulillah is here. He's, he's also very, very active in our lives. He's currently teaching everyone driving.

[C]

Yeah, you're absolutely, of course, you're absolutely correct. You're living example of, of, of families being completely disrupted. And it's, and you know, it's not only the, the abuse and the torture that people endure when they go into these political prisons, but, but what happens to the people who, who are outside and, and are then ostracized, threatened, and just this huge gap. One of the things that people that.

[B]

That, that.

[C]

Genocide, going through obliteration or attempted obliteration is that the obliterator tries to remove their memories and tries to remove the story of them. Right. And one of the things we were talking about is you're trying to find something about your Bedouin grandmother. Is that correct? I got it right. And yes, yes, and you very kindly sent me. So I'm going to play a tape of a recording that you sent me. But before we do that, can you tell me something about just what you've been able to find out about your, your grandmother and why was it so important for you when you discovered this.

[B]

This, this sound tape?

[A]

So I went into anthropology as a form of spite. It really Bothered me how undocumented our experiences were. So as a community, we focus a lot more on or in history. And it irked me to know that we don't have anything documented. We don't have any history books or storybooks. I've been able to find a bit about family lineages and dating back family names, but the. The questions that genuinely interested me, I couldn't find anything about them. And I tried to go through my cousins and just ask every single one of them about these questions. And my father and my uncle, my aunts and everyone and whoever was able to help me, they could only help me a little bit further. So it really bothered me. And I went into anthropology also as a political stand against Israel being the one that graduates anthropologists the most. And so I really wanted to be able to document these stories. I really wanted to document the oral history. I had a lot of questions about her tribal tattoos, and I couldn't find absolutely anything about the specific symbols that she had on. And everyone in the family was. Was also not aware of these details, and I was very confused. So I really wanted to look into it a bit further. But due to the situation, I have not been able to yet. So that's part of it. And also I really had not met her.

[C]

So she was your mother's. Your mother's mother.

[A]

My father's. My father's mother. So in Palestine. So there's also that issue. Yes, so, yeah, so there's an issue of. Of getting in contact with people for details. And I just barely met her maybe twice because of the limitations of entering and all that comes with it. So I was able to find this voice message from my cousin, and she had recorded it on WhatsApp and just kept forwarding it to people in the family. And my grandmother has passed away when I was, I think 12 or 11, so I don't really recall her much. So the voice message, actually, there's a funny story to it. I sent it to you thinking it's poetry, because it sounded like poetry. So I continued asking because I really. I didn't want to just put it in without really explaining it. So I kept looking around for what it could possibly mean, and they told me it was a joke. My grandma used to say, and it's not at all poetry, but she says it in a way that's like, poetic. So I asked a bit further, and it turns out she's telling a story. So the story is supposed to be. She says it in a funny way, apparently, like she says it as a Joke. But it's not supposed to be a joke. It's just that if you want, after, I'll explain it, and then you see what I.

[C]

All right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play, then I'm gonna play, and then I'll. Then I'll sort of dip it down a bit. Play a few second, then I'll dip it down a bit, and then you can. You can turn. Okay, here we go. Let's see what's.

[A]

Let me get the translation out.

[C]

All right, here we go. So what is she saying there?

[A]

So she is, basically. I couldn't understand what she was saying, so I really had to ask my dad and ask everyone. And turns out she's telling a story of someone. His. His friend came up to him and said, I want. Sorry. His friend went to a woman and was like, my friend really would like to marry you. And I'm kind of in between. So what do you think? And she said, I'll take him, but only if he kicks his mother out. So his mother is not living with us. So he responds with this poetry house. Basically, how am I going to kick my mother out when she's the one that cared for me the most and she's the one that breastfed me until I was too old and she helped me be the person I wanted to be. She's like, I would never take you just because you said this, actually, like, just because you said, you don't want my mother here, then I'm not gonna marry you. And I take back my proposal. And then she apparently replied, my father continued the story that apparently she replied with, I would only marry this guy because the love and care he has for his mother is hopefully the same love and care my son would have for me. And so I would only take someone with the same belief system as him or heart as him. So that was very interesting.

[C]

Yeah. I was wondering, because there was a lot of the repetition of the.

[B]

Almost.

[C]

The same words. Yeah, I saw that. That's wonderful. But there's also the color, there's the food, there's the memories. There's the. There's the rogues, the good people, the bad people. There's all of that, which Palestinians are very rich in. But I don't see possibly my own. In fact, very much my own ignorance. I don't see those transmitted into the general public, if you like, outside them.

[A]

So I think. I think it's definitely becoming more common now. And I think it's because my generation is so understanding of how important culture is and narratives are in regards of resistance. But that's not to blame the previous generations, because genuinely seeing it from their. Their perspective, what they did is what they thought they needed to do for survival. And that is very fair and that's very understandable because the idea of resisting and further than just weapons is now taking on a different definition, I think. But they've always had the idea of the sword and the pen. And so we've always had poets and we've always had writers. But these writers and these poets were using art as resistance, which has always been. Been around. What I would hope to see more of is seeing us in academic spaces with the same techniques or the same ways they use to write about us and change our narrative. I would hope to see us reclaim our narrative in these specific places. And by reclaiming that narrative, I don't think we should all only do what they do and kind of like match them at that level, but also exceed at what we do. And that's why we were talking about my research in Athens and how I did not write in an academic way at all, because it felt very dismissive of the previous generations. And I speak of the latter, the generation ladder of what gets us to this point in the paper, they. They put in a lot of work and they really used the pen and the sword to all the. The extremes before. And they needed that for survival and they needed that for conveying what they wanted to convey. And so I couldn't take art and poetry out of my research because that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to weave a story between everyone. We're all stitches in our own way to make the final patriarchy embodiment. It doesn't make sense to come in and only make it academic because we're not a still community. We're a very vibrant community, and we like to speak with poetry. We like to explain our feelings, which a lot of these poets were men, which I also would like to say on a tangent is our men are full of emotions and they're so vivid. And they've been portrayed as very still terrorists that have no feelings. But our men, especially our Muslim men, they're full of love and they're full of gratitude. Adhan just started playing. But they're full of love and they're full of gratitude. And it would be very dismissive to look at these histories without understanding that these poets put part of their heart on their sleeve and they showed it to us to explain what they're experiencing in regards to war and displacement and heartache for the homeland. So that's what I wanted to do with my research. I didn't want to take it from an academic perspective that is so still and stagnant, because our strengths are not only words like or in history should be conveyed in different points and styles as well.

[C]

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I mean, I don't think there is one way, any way of doing, of telling the story. It is a weave. And interesting that you use this weaving if you like, which we'll talk about a little later. But it's a weave, isn't it? You have to have the academic, you have to have the telling the story, you have to have the scientific, you have to have the memories, the human, the poetry, everything together. And woven ropes are the strongest. It's not the single strand that is the strongest.

[A]

No, I think also currently every single thing ever is political. And knowing that everything is political, we need to be political on every single front. Every single aspect of life is a place where you can fight. If you're not fighting for Palestine, you're fighting capitalism, you're fighting imperialism, you're fighting colonialism, you're fighting these things that are genuinely terrible for the human race. I mean, how embarrassing is it that we've had Earth for this long and we've ruined it this much? So everything is political and we need to be active on every single front. And we also need to realize that all of these aspects or all of these angles are part of a whole. And you can't really take politics without the environment. And you can't really take art without taking institutional politics. You can't really look at one thing without looking at everything. Even food has become political.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So, I mean, collecting rainwater is illegal in Gaza, so you can't really talk about anything without mentioning such corporates to any movement.

[C]

Did you say collecting rainwater is illegal in Gaza? Did you say that?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Collecting rainwater is illegal?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Porque, why?

[A]

Yes, Israel has made collecting rainwater illegal for people in Gaza, which I think is not even one of the craziest things Israel has done. And actually I found out the other day about something and it's not specifically in Palestine, and not to take the attention away from Palestine, but I just want to expand the overview on how crazy the world we live in is. I found out that in America, people are not like farmers. They're not allowed to use the crop seeds to plant them again because they're patent. And so it's illegal to recycle the seeds from the same plant, which is essentially what the core being of a farmer is. And so they're supposed to keep buying seeds and throw these away. They're only supposed to use them for, like, house use. And that is so crazy to me because the whole idea of God giving us soil and seeds is for us to keep growing our same foods from the same foods.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was crazy to me.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

As you said earlier on, which I loved.

[A]

Which is it.

[C]

How embarrassing is it that we've been on this planet for this period of time and we've screwed it up?

[A]

Unfathomable to me. It's so unfathomable to me that people would dismiss parts of these, like they're all connected at core, like we have no access to things God gives us for free. This is so crazy.

[C]

Yeah. Okay, so you, you also decided to go, as we, we've referenced, you went to, to Athens, to Exarchia, which is close, very close to the center of Athens, where there is a large Palestinian community. Right. Both refugees and, and, and, and diaspora, as well as others. Exactly. By the way of listeners, is a particularly vibrant place. It's very close to the Polytechnic, which in 1973 was the center of a huge student uprising against the colonels, the military dictatorship which had happened in Greece. The colonels then decided that the. They needed to break this up, and they drove tanks through the gates of the Polytechnic. And although it was claimed that no students were killed, there were students killed, quite a number of students killed, and a lot of civilians were killed as a result of this. Exarche is a place of great activism. It's a place of great food, great color, etc. Etc. And it's interesting because you were talking earlier on about, you know, that we need to make everything political in, in the sense that it is very political. You've got, you know, you've got people of all political persuasions and activism there. So why did you go there? Very briefly. And what did you find, particularly about the Palestinians, those Palestinians living in a very active activist part of, of Greece and, and, and, and how they dealt with being out there.

[A]

So my, I went in for research and my research was about Palestinian identity in Athens and how it is formed, basically. And I essentially, I just wanted to look into how salt water carries stories, basically, and how geographic attachment to land can be imitated in a place that's similar to a place you were in before. And so a lot of the refugees that I talk to are mostly Palestinian refugees that have crossed through Lebanon, Turkey or Syria and have stopped in these places for a while as well. So it wasn't just a path. So they had a lot of stories from all of these different places and a lot of experiences that collected together. Very unique yet. However, despite everyone's unique story, I felt like every single person had a similar story, in a sense of, like, leaving the homeland and the experiences that come with it. So obviously every single experience is very different. But the more I was researching and the more I wanted to protect their identity, obviously, because a lot of them were undocumented, and just for the sake of the project, they had to be anonymous. And so I switched everyone's names into one character, and I made it into a singular character that has all of these experiences. And as I was writing, I noticed I related to it a lot as well.

[C]

And this is the character. Was this the character Arabella? Is this what you were talking about?

[A]

Yes, that was Arabella.

[C]

Everyone became Arabella. Correct. That's what you.

[A]

Everyone became Arabella. So basically, Arabella was named after Arabella, the song by. I forgot the band. Oh, my God. Oh, Arctic Monkeys. Oh, my God. How could I forget? I had posters all over my room. So it was named after that song because of the Western aspect, but at the same time, it's. Arabella is a reference to Ibid in Jordan, which, ironically, is where my family last name is very present in. And I've never been. Apparently they're a different side of the family. I just never met them, but they're from. And so I really wanted to mix between the west and the east in the name itself. And so everyone became Arabella, in a sense, in the story and. Or technically, it's an article, it's a research paper, but I wrote it in a poetry way because I could not take apart arts and the academics. So I instilled a lot of myself in it as well, because it was such a shared story. And when you read it, even. Even if you're not aware of Arabella being such a mosaic of everyone's stories, it could still stand on her own as a story, because these experiences are so shared and they're so common and they're so felt through the international Palestinian community. And so even though it had so many of our stories, it just. It stood on her own as one story.

[C]

So interesting because you talk in that paper about which. Thank you for sending it to me. You talk about a lack of a collective political community amongst Palestinians in Athens due to sects and sub sects always forming Middle Class, diaspora, class, refugee class, etc.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I think my question there to you.

[C]

Is, does it actually matter?

[A]

I don't think it does matter, actually. I, I really do not think it matters because the lack of something is still a presence of it in a way, and the lack of an international community is still a presence of an international community, just not in the ideal way. And I think it would be detached from reality to assume any, generally, any political or community in general would not have subsects because even in the homeland we have so many subsets. Like, the only thing uniting us right now is the common hatred for Israel. The idea of subsets, I think exist everywhere and all the time that it just, it gets to a point where it doesn't matter because we still, we are existing together. No matter, no matter. All that is happening when, when need be. Everyone is connected and everyone is one community. And I don't think the, the fragmentation of it matters at the end of the day.

[C]

Yeah, I was thinking as well, when you, when, when, when reading your, your stuff, that that in, in all the displaced or exile communities I've seen, there's always been, and I've come across a number of them. There is, there's always been this. Clearly there's going to be class, sex, people are going to be coming out there, you know, who are, who are, who are middle class and fairly affluent. Others are going to be forced out, you know, on, on rubber boats, if you like. So there's that. But there was also this thing of those people who had the chance to experience what was going on back in the homeland fully, and those who didn't, because they were children of exiles. And it became in certain countries, for example, South Africa, which I know quite well, and certainly places, places like Angola and where you had this, this feeling almost of, of I was in there and you were not. You were in exile, comfortably in exile, quote, unquote. Of course, nobody's comfortably in exile, but, you know, so there's that superiority of the locals versus the, versus the, the ones who went out. But actually, at the end of the day, when it comes to, to the nitty gritty, they all join together.

[A]

Zoya, that was on your podcast. I remember we spoke about how. Okay, so for everyone listening, Zoya Mahadi is. She is currently a UN Ambassador of peace and she is a double refugee in a sense of her being a Palestinian refugee and in Lebanon. And also she's half Ukrainian and she left during the Ukrainian war to Switzerland. So she was a refugee twice. And when she started Speaking of her story, everyone, like, she felt like she could share a story because I never experienced things properly the way people that were there did because I was never in Palestine. And people from Palestine were like, actually, no, you. You lived in the refugee camps. That's a lot worse than what we endured. That's not. It's not fine. So, no, you get to share your story just like us and more. And I think even with me, I think with. With being in the diaspora, when I tell my cousins back in the homeland, they're like, oh, my God, that's so difficult. Like, we could never. I'm like, guys, you're enduring a lot worse than me. What are you talking about? So I think. I think there's always this duality to what we're doing. I think there's also. I think also because we see as. As Arabs, we see a lot of violence towards us at all times. And so when. When you're comparing racism to, like, stories of prison and war and displacement and exile and all these things that they endure on the daily. Because. Because for us, we think, okay, we can. We can turn off the screen. We can ignore what's happening. We're always kind of comparing, like, no, their. Their struggle is a lot worse. They get to share their story a lot more. They. They get to do things differently than us. So I think that's 74 to fit.

[C]

Okay, couple. Couple more short questions, if you like. Then we. We need to close off. Tell me about embroidery.

[A]

Oh, it's such a beautiful part of the culture, in my opinion. Embroidery. Palestinian embroidery is called tatris. And so tatriz is cross stitching. And the cross stitching makes a design at the end, and we use them for tobes, which at the time, they used to wear on a daily basis, but for some reason now we've kind of excluded wearing them to only events. They had different taupes for different things, different colors of the stitches for different life events. So there's a mourning taupe, there's a wedding taupe. There's the taupes they would use when they're forming. So embroidery, I think, is so important to our culture, and it's also so important in a spiritual way where it is so easy to forget our belonging to a community when we're outside. When. Outside places. But I think when you think of it as we're all part of different stitches and we're all different communities and all different people coming together to make the whole idea of a taub, it's a lot easier to kind of Keep that in mind. And it's a lot easier to feel connected to these things. And it's just. You can't have a full embroidered Taub without the signature sketch of every single person and their story and their community and their memories and their attachment to the place, because that's how you get the full picture at the end.

[C]

And you learned how to embroider, correct?

[A]

I felt very disconnected from. From community when I was in university because I was. I was in Canada alone, without my family, and I took it upon myself to learn how to embroider because I was so stressed out that my aunt that knows how to border is getting sick. And that community is fading, though the elders are fading and they're tired, and the stories are less vibrant and they're stitching. They can't stitch anymore because their hands are tired. And I just felt the need to learn it. So I immediately ordered a kit and I started embroidering. And right now I'm working on making my first Taube, which I think we joked about before that. I started it with the intention of, when I'm done with my Taub, I'll get married, because I want to make an engagement taupe that has specific stitches and colors and everything. And from everything that happened, I think I shifted along making an intifada taupe, which Palestinians have made during the Intifada when they were not allowed to put Palestinian flags. And so a lot of the Taubes included the flags and the colors and just a lot of revolutionary embroidery.

[C]

So can I ask you a stupid question?

[B]

What is a tob?

[A]

Oh, so a taub is a Palestinian dress. It's a dress that is, I think, three quarters to your arm and up to your ankles. And it has Palestinian embroidery on it, on the chest piece and then on the legs and then the arms and the placement and the colors and the stitches and motives on it change and differ based on the story that the person is trying to tell on the dress itself.

[C]

Will you send me a picture of one and may I use that on the promotional.

[A]

Yes, of course.

[C]

Banner of.

[A]

I'll send you. I'll send you the one I have of my grandma. They. They gave me a. A tube of my grandma. They gave me two, actually. One of them, they put on jeans for me so that it would match my Western identity. And one, they gave me the. The other taupe that my grandma used to wear at home, which is very interesting because it has little stitches on it that are separate to the actual embroidery because it's ripped on the side or she's dropped her cigarettes on a part and they're trying to stitch it so it doesn't like appear. So I'll send you a picture of that. And there's a picture of me wearing it. So I'll send that too. Yes, actually I have a picture with Rania. Motor took it. She's a photographer. She's a well known photographer and it's me wearing it with a kofiye on the salt water in Lebanon. So insaida. So it connects a lot of my identities together. And I will send it to you.

[C]

Okay. Aja, thank you so much. That's been, it's been a joy and I'd love, I'd love talking to you. And what's next? Just one, one question. What's next for you?

[A]

What's next for me is, as I said, to focus on the child that's sick until they're better. And so I will be working on documenting our village story throughout the war and throughout the people that have martyred in the area to kind of have an archive for the village and just kind of rebuilding the village physically, spiritually, academically, just absolutely in any possible way. So for now, I think that's, that's the first big step.

[C]

Thank you. Thank you very much.

[A]

Sa it.