S3E25: Leen - Erased Realities of a Hidden Voice

Leen: This daylights saving situation has me all sorts . . .

Lina: I almost missed my flight because of daylight savings. It was a mess.

Leen: Girl . . .

Chloe: You were on an airplane?

Leen: She's like, "I'm very glad I didn't shake your hands today." It's fine. I mean, we're in a hospital. You're on a plane. We're just bound to get Corona eventually.

Lina: I'm like, "Do I have a fever or am I just blushing right now?" because . . .

Leen: Yeah. It's a mess. So we have Leen and Lena in the studio today talking about our identity for this special episode in "The Bundle of Hers" Identity Series. We're here to talk about pretty much all our Palestinian-ness. It's going to be [foreign language 00:00:36], but it's okay. It's going to be good.

Lina: I like that word.

Leen: [Foreign language 00:00:40], a mess. It's going to be a hot mess, but it's going to be good. So Harjit came up to me, and she's like, "Leen, there's a Palestinian girl in the new incoming class." Do you remember how we met? I don't remember.

Lina: I think you added me on Facebook, and you were like, "Hey, you're Palestinian."

Leen: And what happened after that?

Lina: "We're going to be friends now."

Leen: Yeah. That was pretty much it. We've got to keep it going. So we're both from Palestine. I come from the West Bank, which is on the Western side of Palestine.

Lina: I come from Gaza, which is on the, I guess, Eastern side. It's the one that faces the Mediterranean Sea.

Leen: One thing that draws us to medicine is not just our Palestinian culture, but I think a big part of it is the conflict and how it's shaped our culture as Palestinians, especially as Palestinian-Americans nowadays.

Lina: I remember we talked about this once, about why we started to go into medicine, and I remember listening to you on one episode from "The Bundle of Hers," and you were just talking about, basically, what started your interest into medicine. And I was like, "Oh, my God. That's like the same thing." I was very excited to learn that someone had a very similar background, a very similar kind of life to how we got into this. And it's kind of the same thing, living in Gaza and experiencing that culture, that level of conflict, and that level of healthcare and wanting to be, "Oh, I want to be the change."

Leen: Yeah. I think a big part of the issue is the occupation and how it's shaped our access to healthcare and how it's affected us personally abroad and when we're over there, as well as our family. And I think we both have that in common. So every time we're in medicine, and we see some type of injustice, our Palestinian side comes out. Yeah.

Lina: It definitely makes you more aware of, like you said, the injustices happening around you, the inequalities happening if the minority groups around you as well. It makes you more aware. It makes, at least me, more aware and more just kind of open to making a change, I don't know, giving myself the power, I guess, and giving other people that power and change.

Leen: One thing growing up as a Palestinian is we know what it feels like to be the underdog, but also to be not heard in the media, and nobody knows our story. And it's just such a big trauma and such a big issue globally, but nobody knows our story.

Lina: I know. That still shocks me to this day when . . . I always introduce myself as Palestinian. It'll always be a thing for me, as I'm sure it is a thing for you too. But what shocks me is people are always like, "Oh, okay." And then that's all.

Leen: "Where's that?"

Lina: "Where is that?" or . . .

Leen: It's like, "Are you kidding me?"

Lina: Or, "What's really going on?" "Oh, you must visit home a lot." And I really haven't been home in . . .

Leen: Or, "Wait, Pakistan?"

Lina: Yeah, which is shocking. And you realize more how much your identity is always being attacked or trying to be hidden, just kept into this box, which is just in Palestine and nowhere else.

Leen: Right. Yeah, it feels like everything around you goes back and plays into the subduing of being Palestinian, right?

Lina: Mm-hmm.

Leen: I know growing up I was terrified to say I was Palestinian.

Lina: Same.

Leen: I remember even when we had to do global . . . we had to choose a country and we did global presentations on these countries, and I was terrified. I was like, "No. I'm going to do Egypt. There is no way they'll judge me." I was scared. I didn't realize this until I got to college, but I guess what clicked in my mind was, "It's not fair that I have to be scared of my country because of its current history and forget all the generations and millennia." I don't know how long it's been around, but the history of the Holy Land, right?

And I think that's when it just snapped and I said, "I'm sick of hiding my identity. I'm sick of being self-conscious about my identity. I am Palestinian. I've never been anything else. That's all I know. I can try to be Egyptian, but it's not going to work. I'm not Egyptian." And I think that's when it snapped, and that's when I started wearing the Palestinian scarf everywhere, and I said, "Yeah. I'm going to just show people, like, 'Look.'"

Lina: But it needs to be shared. The stories need to be told. People need to know what's happening over there. I mean, same for me, it wasn't until college that I started being like, "Oh, no, I need to share. I need to make people know what's happening." But it took me a while.

Leen: Where do you think that fear stemmed from? What was your fear in not saying that you were Palestinian?

Lina: I guess the U.S. is very pro-Israeli, and there's a lot of negativity and misconceptions about who a Palestinian is or what's going on over there. People only know about one side of the story, if they even know the story. I was afraid of the stereotypes being put on me. I was afraid of the stigma being put on me. I mean, I've experienced a little bit of it growing up that I just did not want . . . I mean, we all want to fit in, in middle school and high school. We don't want to be different. I was called a foreigner in high school.

Leen: Yeah. Same.

Lina: And we don't want to be different. So it's that fear that stopped me from being Palestinian. I only went to high school here one year, but when we went back to Palestine and then when I came back for college, I was more aware of how much it can hurt for people to not know.

Maybe because it was during that time back that I actually experienced more wars, experienced kind of . . . the siege on Gaza got worse, so I just experienced more of that life there that when I got back and I saw the difference, and then I saw how much it hurt that people didn't know what was happening . . . because I was in that situation where I was in the middle of those wars. I was like, "The world should know." But the world doesn't know because you're not sharing it outside of Gaza, Lena. So I started sharing more of it.

Leen: Yeah. I think, honestly, I remember being there in 2014, and I was getting so many messages, and people were saying, "Oh, Leen, we hope you're safe. This is so scary." And I remember messaging them back, saying, "Strangely, I've never felt more alive being in a situation like this." Because you truly get to see what life is about. You truly value what is life in the moment, right? When it can be taken from you at any moment, what are the important things of it? And then you come back here, and it's like you get distracted with the everyday privileges of having a free airspace, for one. And driving around safely. There are no checkpoints. You don't have to carry your ID everywhere.

Lina: Every time I cross a border, I'm like, "Wait. Is this normal?" It's a very foreign idea.

Leen: And it's saddening.

Lina: It's very sad. Cairo is four hours away from Gaza, yet it took my mom four days to get to it. The whole border situation on Gaza's side . . .

Leen: It's a whole different life.

Lina: . . . the whole checkpoint situation on your side.

Leen: So I knew I wanted to be a doctor from a young age. It was during the second intifada. An intifada is a Palestinian uprising. I remember seeing people in white coats. This is all I remember. It's not a really good memory, I guess. But I remember seeing people in white coats on the TV running around in this really small cement-built ER, I guess. They don't really have emergency rooms, [inaudible 00:07:03] hospital. And there were kids among them that were dead. There were dead kids. And I remember thinking, "Oh, my gosh, kids can die."

That was the first instance that it hit me kids can actually die. "I'm 5 years old. I can die." That's such a strange thing. For other people to not have realized for me when I was a kid . . . and I realized this is something Palestinian kids, I think . . .

Lina: I didn't realize it was . . .

Leen: . . . we all pretty much share.

Lina: . . . strange until I got here, and then people were like, "You have a weird childhood." I'm like, "Yeah."

Leen: It's a little depressing, but we value life a lot. And I think that's when I realized it. It was like, "Oh, my gosh, who are the people who are actually trying to do something?" It was those people in the white coats, right? I was like, "I'm going to be a doctor. This is it." And I found that medicine is the one field that you can be equal to everybody and actually you can genuinely be a good person to help out. And we need more of that, especially in the situation that we're in. We just have so much negativity. There has to be something beautiful come out of it, right?

It makes me sad thinking about our beautiful culture. Nobody knows about our dances. Nobody knows about our food. Nobody knows about our traditional dresses. But you see it everywhere you go. During Christmas time, you see Mary wearing the scarf on her head kind of the way a traditional Palestinian dress does it.

It's so weird. It's such a strange feeling to see your culture portrayed in a very stereotypical way, but nobody knows that that's your culture in the first place. And so I thought, "Okay, I have to do something that's going to bring good to everybody, and people will know."

Lina: Definitely growing up in Gaza . . . I mean, we always joke around how everyone says you either have to be an engineer or a doctor. So it was just an idea first, but then kind of moving back and forth between Gaza and the U.S. and just realizing the amount of difference someone's health makes and also being exposed to such a low quality of health, I guess, in the Gaza Strip and the power that difference can make. When you just know more, you can help more going through medicine and getting that knowledge, getting that education. I was like, "I want to be that change." And potentially, I want to go back and help create that change. I don't know how yet, and I don't know when, but it's there.

Leen: Yeah. One of my biggest things is I want to establish an American-based ER/urgent care clinic because over there, the doctor has this little office and there's no waiting room, and everybody walks in on all the exams, and you're like, "Get out."

Lina: No HIPAA.

Leen: There is no HIPAA. Because they're a very nervous population, I think, when it comes to health. It's kind of strange. You'd think we'd be used . . . we're kind of used to all the trauma, but in a sense, we're even more nervous than ever of keeping onto life in such a perfect way.

And so I remember like . . . oh, man, I just remember working at a community clinic there, and people were walking in and out because they were scared. They're like, "No. No. I have to see the doctor now. There's no waiting in the waiting room. What's a waiting room?"

Lina: I feel like there are two extremes. Either they never want to see the doctor, and they refuse to see the doctor . . .

Leen: And then there's that.

Lina: . . . and then there's the extreme opposite, where, "I'm barging in, and I'm seeing the doctor now."

Leen: Right? Oh, my goodness. It really made me value kind of the setup we have here. But I think that continuity of knowing that they have this private room the doctor will come in and see them in and that they're being monitored, I think that gives people a lot of relaxation for a bit, I think.

Lina: Or even just the aspect of privacy, I think it's a big deal. A lot of people don't want to go to the doctor because they don't want people to know that something is wrong with them.

Leen: Right. And especially, I think with women . . .

Lina: Especially with women, yeah.

Leen: You know when they tell us their problems, they don't say it in the clinic. It's around teatime at, like, 9:00 p.m. at night when we're all hanging out, and they're like, "So I have this thing growing on me." And you're like, "No . . ."

Lina: It's like, "Did you talk to the doctor?" "No. What doctor?"

Leen: "No. I'm talking to you." Right? Yeah, the minute you declare you're pre-med, they're like, "Duktur, we know you're a doctor."

Lina: All the women in my family are . . . they keep messaging me, and they're like, "So when are you coming back, because I have a list of things to ask you about?" I'm like, "What about the doctors over there?" And they're like, "No. No. No. We have to talk to you."

Leen: Right. And there's also . . . like there's a trust. They say, "No. No. But you're the doctor of the family."

Lina: Yeah. Exactly.

Leen: "You're the doctor of the family." And even people who are . . .

Lina: "I'm a first-year, but okay."

Leen: None of us have degrees, but they still come to us like that, right? Once they have this established connection, they're like, "Oh, my gosh, there's someone who we know, and we know their entire background. This is someone we can trust."

I think one thing we can relate to, honestly, I think being Palestinian in the U.S. and then Palestinian in medicine . . . Palestinian women in medicine, let's add that in because that's a whole different subsection of itself. The hardest thing with stereotypes in medical school is, before medical school, I was vocal. I was like, "I am Palestinian." I'm wearing the scarf. I'm walking around telling people. I'm constantly telling people our story.

Then I get to medical school, and I started out that way. It's many factors. I think the stress of medical school, I think the stress of the hierarchy, the stress of my parents saying, "Don't say you're a Palestinian, because they'll take it away from you," really took that flame and just dulled it down a lot. And it was a struggle for me to get that back.

And I think stereotypes coming from both my cultures, being American and Palestinian, there were stereotypes on both ends that were affecting us. On the Palestinian side, a lot of the stereotypes of being a woman, and a lot of the gender roles and things that we necessarily . . . I think going through medicine has taught me how equal people are, at the same time how different people are. But then also seeing the stereotypes on the American side. At one instance, I was told if I had a vest underneath my OR gown . . . I was really taken aback by that.

Oftentimes, you'll get the story where, as you tell the Palestinian narrative, it's a dismissed narrative. It's like, "Oh, but that's not what we hear on the news. That's not what we've learned." And as much as you try to teach people, people keep resorting back to what they hear on the news. And that's just super frustrating. It's like . . .

Lina: As if you living your whole life, or at least in my sake living my whole life, there is not a story to be told because that's not what the news says.

Leen: Right. And I've actually been told, "Oh, you're just emotional, and that's why it's not valid."

Lina: Or, "You've been brainwashed." I feel like we've talked about this. There are definitely stereotypes on both sides. You constantly feel like an outsider. I think also being from Gaza, there's a lot more misconceptions about Gaza. I've been told, "Oh, there's a lot of terrorist groups over there. Glad you're here away from those groups or those people. Don't you feel safe now?" I'm like, "Okay, there's . . ."

Leen: It's not about that.

Lina: There are a lot of things that are wrong about that question or those questions, and you can fight them, but suddenly . . .

Leen: Especially if you're coming back . . .

Lina: . . . it's your job to fix those misconceptions or explain yourself, and you're constantly trying to explain yourself, and it gets exhausting. How much do I have to teach you to explain? And you're still going to dismiss that story.

Leen: Right. And when you come back the next day, it's like I told you nothing.

Lina: Or, "She's the good one."

Leen: "She's the good one." Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Lina: "Not the ones we hear about in the news."

Leen: The moderate one.

Lina: "You're the moderate one." And that's also a whole other thing. I don't know. If I say I miss home, there's a lot of, "Wait. Really? Why? Why do you miss home?" Suddenly you're looked as like you miss bad things. But I do miss home, and I wish people could realize what I do miss.

Leen: And I don't think a lot of people realize . . . a lot of our classmates travel back to Palestine, to areas that we are never allowed to enter. And I think that's also a very strange feeling as well. When a lot of my classmates say, "Oh, I've totally been to Palestine. I went here and here and here." And I said, "Oh, I actually am not allowed in those areas," even though I'm American, right?

Lina: I'm constantly being questioned. It's like, "Oh, how much do you visit home?" And I'm like, "Well, I have not visited for six and a half years now, and I don't know when I can visit." I can't visit the West Bank. I don't think I can . . .

Leen: I can't visit Gaza I think.

Lina: . . . any time soon. This last summer, I think, was the hardest of realizing the hardships of that. My grandmother passed away, and I haven't had seen her for six and a half years now. And I think it was just so heartbreaking because it's this diaspora that a lot of Palestinians live in, and I think we related on that because your grandmother also had passed away without you having seen her for a while. And it's just . . .

Leen: Yeah. It's a very common narrative.

Lina: So you never get . . . or I will never get the . . .

Leen: The last time you leave could be the last time you see them . . .

Lina: Exactly. Yeah. And that's why people, when they say goodbye . . .

Leen: . . . for a very long time.

Lina: Even people in Gaza itself, when you say goodbye, you're just like, "This could be the last time. This could be the last goodbye," because you never know with life over there.

Leen: And I remember telling my parents, I was like, "Why do all our goodbyes feel like death?" And my mom is like, "What do you mean? You never know if you're going to see them again." I hated that thought. But definitely it's always been on my mind.

Lina: But that's what you get used to. I don't know. I was more used to it when I was in Gaza. It's definitely been harder here, and it goes back to the distractions that you live in here. I call it a bubble because you live life here, and suddenly you're in this bubble, and it's just not the same life as that in Palestine.

Leen: People only hear the bad things. People hear the traumas. They don't realize that there's actually a culture there that is striving to live.

Lina: Like, "Have you tried our Maqlooba?"

Leen: Like hummus. How do we say it in English? Hummus? That's a Palestinian food. Falafel, that's a Palestinian food. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Lina: Our dances, our weddings.

Leen: Exactly. Circling back to keeping that flame alive and not being afraid of who we are and where we come from. It's hard when you're far away from the conflict, and you have to focus on medical school, right? But I remember it was right after the elections, I was just so frustrated with the lack of depth that people wanted to learn about both sides. And I'm only speaking from the Palestinian narrative in this aspect, and I'm speaking from my experience. But I remember posting this poem on Facebook in my frustration. This is like a response to my frustration.

So it says, "Did you hear of the days of chaos? It's okay if you didn't, the explosions made no sound. And among the destruction and salvage, cries were quickly drowned. Did you see old photos of a thousand words? No, because they're muzzled when speaking of the past. And what about the etching of golden pens, hastily writing over every story until they erase the very last? And here are the wise ones know to kindly ask, 'Despite the misery, why would you stay without a reason?' I think, 'A world upheaved and accepted with the implementation of oppressive normalization.' But, 'Oh, no reason.'

"From the rubble of a home on an ancient ground, you cannot hear the stones offer themselves as a means of survival. From the depression and suffocation, you cannot hear old songs and stomps of dances yearning for revival. Would you refuse eradication or accept a punishment of the air sucked out of the sky by imperialistic machines? And if [inaudible 00:16:59] is the resonance of resistance, it will be silenced by every threat, arrest, torture, murder, demolition, checkpoint, raid, or by any possible inhumane means.

"The world will stay in fine living, not minding their minds, silently occupied, but the story will not change even if they are fine by stepping aside. Please keep trading life to stay satisfied.

"Greed serves the kings, and it's their greed we worship well. If our siblings suffer, they assure us, 'It's okay. They will quickly meet hell.' Here, they will not see the obvious signs sewn within the hidden lies for us to hear. And again, we say, 'Do not let our sense of right and wrong disappear.'" So I wrote this poem.

Lina: Oh, my God.

Leen: I was pissed.

Lina: It's so beautiful.

Leen: I was so mad that as much as I tried to tell people our story, as much as the world keeps trying to erase our story, this is where this frustration grew.

Lina: I love that. I feel like I want to cry. One of the hardest things is how much our identity is trying to be hidden and erased, and you fighting that is just constant. At least, I don't know, our neighbors or even just Palestinians that their parents who had immigrated before, at least they know about Palestine. But it's erased, or it's being erased so much that there are people that have Palestinian backgrounds but don't know. And it's heartbreaking because that is how it's being erased and this is why we need to constantly stand our ground and fight that.

Leen: There's a motto we use in Palestine, and we say, "To resist is to exist." I've taken that motto for my successes here. That's what's driven me to go to medical school. This is what drives me to become a doctor. This is my resistance. Education is my resistance. Becoming a doctor who can go out there and help is my resistance.

Lina: Exactly.

Leen: Because that is how we exist, despite the whole world trying to erase us.

Lina: I always say life is hard. Even if you're on this side, it still exists, and it still affects your day-to-day life. We have access here. We have a more privileged life here compared to our families in Palestine, but it still doesn't feel right. You're still stressed all the time.

Leen: Exactly. Because everything reminds you of it.

Lina: Not just the, I guess, physical aspect of being in Palestine or the material stuff around, but also the mental and the emotions associated with that. Everything can go away in a second. And it's going back to that conversation about saying goodbyes. Everything can go away in a second.

And I remember we talked about this once, about the different types of trauma, whether being on Gaza side or on the West Bank side. And I talked about airplanes, how our trauma was more on that side and also being in a siege and inside borders all the time. You talked about checkpoints. You talked about ground invasions, which were more common on your side. Even here on the safe side, you still think about that.

Leen: Oh, yeah. Every time a plane passes by me, I still flinch. It's weird. I wouldn't call it PTSD, but at the same time, there's a trauma there, right?

Lina: For me, whenever something is too good, I'm like, "Wait, it doesn't feel right."

Leen: It doesn't belong to me because it feels right. Yeah.

Lina: You've lived a life where it wasn't good for a very long time, and this is too good. It doesn't feel right. And there's also that guilt of, "How can I live a good life here where I have family that is still in that situation?" So you're fighting two emotions on both sides.

Leen: Honestly, going back to the dating life, people will always be like, "It's okay. You can find anybody." And it's like, "You don't understand. For us, passing our culture, passing who we are on is this mode of survival for us." Which makes us super picky sometimes. But it's like that's how much it's embedded into every aspect of our lives. It's not just when I'm thinking about the news, this is when I think about it. It's not that at all. It's in everything we do.

And so I think we should wear our dresses and we should be proud of our dresses, and we should teach people about our embroidery. We should wear our scarves because our scarves were never . . . they didn't start out being a symbol of resistance. They were a symbol of the old man who goes out and does farming, right? That's the [foreign language 00:20:55]. Each Arab culture has a different form of a [foreign language 00:20:57], and this was our symbol, and now it's a form of resistance.

So a lot of our cultural things have now become forms of resistance. But I think it's also good to remember what they were, [foreign language 00:21:06], in their origin, right?

Lina: Yeah.

Leen: It's hard to have hope for the future, but we have it because we wouldn't be resisting if we weren't.

Lina: No. We all have it. Even at the worst of situations, even in Gaza 2014, people had hope. People will always have hope. It's part of how you live life. I mean, how do you live life there, at least, without having a little bit of hope in yourself?

Leen: Enjoying our olive oil.

Lina: I hope to carry that in myself even through life here. I hope to carry that to people I meet, to patients . . .

Leen: Absolutely.

Lina: . . . and I hope that the Palestinian story keeps spreading and people learn about it, and people know about it. I have had a lot of people around me that as soon as they've understood the story or what's going on, they've fought for Palestine more than me.

Leen: Yeah.

Lina: Harder than me.

Leen: Palestinians say this a lot, actually.

Lina: Because we still have that fear . . .

Leen: Once we tell people . . .

Lina: . . . where we're like, "Oh, I don't want to talk. I don't want to seem that person. I don't want to fight."

Leen: There's a lot of risk.

Lina: Because we get what is . . .

Leen: Collective punishment is so real.

Lina: Or what's the word, reprimanded? For our resistance.

Leen: Yeah, we do get reprimanded.

Lina: But then other people are like, "No, I can fight."

Leen: Hey, you do you.

Lina: And they want to. And I hope that that keeps spreading. Always teach people about Palestine. I hope that keeps going on.

Leen: I'm a religious person, so I believe every person has a right to exist in the way God created them, right? The mentality that comes with their identity, what they identify as, who they identify as, whatever, I feel like everybody has that right and . . .

Lina: One big thing I have learned . . .

Leen: It's being human.

Lina: . . . from me being Palestinian and me also being in medical school is the amount of power you give someone when you allow them to represent their identity. There is so much power and so much strength when you allow someone to live their identity in its full proportion. And as much as I want to give every Palestinian all their power, I want to give everyone their power.

Leen: I hope that we can also, from the Palestinian aspect, bring a lot of positive change to our culture back home. I hope to show them what strong women living in the U.S. are able to bring back to their loved ones there.

I feel like, through medicine, you can make such a direct impact that's so positive. And just seeing that one instance of positivity and relaxation and peace of mind means the world to me.

Lina: We hope to make the change. We hope to make the impact.

Leen: I feel like politics is too slow for me. I need medicine. Medicine is just faster.

Lina: And we will have that power.

Leen: Exactly.

Lina: And we want to use that power to create that change. Oh, my gosh.

Leen: [Foreign language 00:23:23].

Lina: I can't wait to go back to Palestine with you.

Leen: Oh, my gosh.

Lina: Let's do that.

Leen: I don't think Palestine can handle the both of us in that country at the same time.

Lina: Yeah, but you're in the West Bank. I'm in Gaza. We'll figure it out.

Leen: There's a reason it's balanced still on earth. It hasn't sunk in into the water. It's because we're both there.

Lina: But we still need to keep this trend going. So any Palestinians who want to apply, we have to keep it going.

Leen: Yeah. We're here for mentorship. I'm serious. I will reach out. And it doesn't even have to be Palestinians. Anyone who identifies with our story, people, please.

Lina: People . . .

Leen: Well, shukran for listening, everybody. Shukran means "thank you," just if . . . yeah.

Lina: Thank you for having me. She's my role model. I love you guys.

Leen: Lena, you make me so . . .

Lina: It's been an honor being on here.

Leen: . . . cheesy feely. Oh, my God. On that note, thanks for listening, everyone. Shukran kteer. This is our Identity Series on "The Bundle of Hers." Be sure to tune in next week to hear Margaux's Identity Series episode. Until next time . . .

Lina: Bye.

Leen: . . . [foreign language 00:24:23]. I'm adding in little cute Arab words.