If Anyone Asks, I’m Palestinian: Admissions of a Mixed Child

Admission: I often question where my identity lies as a mixed child.

In the UAE, I have always looked too Russian. In Russia, I have always been a foreigner. That came with its own set of labels. Being Russian in the Middle East meant being a whore, submissive, a gold-digger, an easy-catch for the brooding male gaze. Being Arab in Eastern Europe meant being close-minded, too conservative - whatever that meant - and even the softest of words that escaped my lips were often translated mid-air into the language of an extremist.

I have a limited understanding of my childhood. My memory is hardly intact, a result of trauma endured at a young age. Perhaps, I was channelling Danny from Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep. Chef Hallorann teaches young Danny to “imprison the ghosts in lockboxes inside his mind”, a modern psychological technique people use all the time. You segment damaging thoughts and hide them away in a generally inaccessible place to encourage healing. Back then, little did I know that locking memories away carried two grave consequences: I could not be selective, and I would eventually lose the key.

I was born on the 14th of April 2001, in Sharjah, UAE, to a Russian mother, Natalia, and Palestinian father, Mohammad. Right at birth, I was told I looked Arab, a copy of “Mohammad!”, excitedly announced by my teta (Palestinian for ‘grandma’), Samira. Throughout my childhood, though, I’d have people praise my resemblance to my mother. However, without my similarly tall and slim physique, we could’ve been easily mistaken for strangers.

Eventually, my mixed features began getting acknowledged. “Mixed children take all the best [qualities] from both nationalities. They are usually very talented and very beautiful, and I’m not the only one that thinks so”, shared my babulya (Russian for ‘grandma’). Russians and Europeans called me Eastern beauty and Eastern princess, while people of colour admired my fair skin. Simultaneously, my social life presented rejections by my dual communities, claiming I was never enough to fit into both, and in Russia and Europe, extra security checks and stops by the police became frequent.

Community isolation is not uncommon for children in mixed marriages, even though in theory and in law, they may deserve to belong within and beyond borders. According to Karen Knop’s concept of relational nationality (2001), dual nationalities contribute to an enriched life experience, tied with the access to various countries, cultures and accompanying identities. However, not everyone shares the privilege of dual citizenships, and especially in the case of refugees living in the age of a political hierarchy of nationalities, maintaining kin ties across borders and embracing a solid identity becomes far more difficult (de Hart, 2021).

My mother was born in 1973 in a closed Soviet city located 420 km east of Moscow, called Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod). Growing up, Natalia felt as Russian as the children around her. Life seemed simple, satisfactory. “I just lived and lived in the Soviet Union. No one knew anything, everyone just lived. We had a wonderful life, and I was not aware of or bothered by other lives existing parallel to mine, especially as a child”, she shared during our interview, sprawled across the couch in our living room in Sharjah. Cravings for a taste of global culture came only later, when she had turned 19 and found herself at London’s Heathrow airport, jumping into a car headed for Oxford, UK. Natalia’s visit to the UK marked the first of many adventures abroad.

Over the course of the five years she spent at university, Natalia’s friendships with exchange students allowed her to taste the exotic flavours of life beyond the iron curtain. Travelling across the European and North American continents, which included a visit to The Golden City, San Francisco, was where she knew that her life in Russia had come to an end.

Once she had graduated, the family’s next-door neighbour arrived with news of a job opportunity in an unknown desert town called Dubai. With less than a day to think through her decision and an itch for change, Natalia packed her life into a suitcase. And so, in 1997, her plane landed on the burning asphalt in Dubai, UAE, where not long after, two people with very different worlds would come together, and their collision would form a 21st-century mixed family.

In 1948, the Naqba took place. On May 15th of that year, only a day after [the state of] Israel became a country, the “catastrophe” that defines Palestinian identity launched a refugee crisis following the mass eviction of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. Today, there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world, carrying the labels of ‘victims of 1948’ and their descendants (Vox, 2018), fuelling the malicious narrative of “us vs them” — a key factor in the correlation between identity issues and inter-group conflicts (Kriesberg, 2003). Attempting to share the geographical coordinates while arguing territorial and religious roots further provokes an already-existing fear of dominance among Israelis and Palestinians, hence residents of that land feel so strongly about making their roots the foundation of their identity (Newman, 2001).

n the 28th of May 2021, I got on a plane to Russia and took to the skies for the first time in nearly two years. Across the world in Palestine, history repeated itself more than 70 years later, and rockets rained down on Palestinian citizens. Following eight months of protests against the evictions in the predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, Israeli police stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque. 11 days of violence ensued, and more than 250 Palestinians were killed, along with 2000 wounded (Council on Foreign Relations, 2021).

That summer, I visited my grandmother in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. I walked the streets that seemed so familiar, yet so distant. The city held on to remnants of the Soviet Era, a city frozen in time. Each landmark, building and alleyway guided you deeper into the past, deeper into Russian history. Yet, that summer, in that very Russian city, I never felt more Palestinian.

My father’s family is originally Palestinian, from Yaffa (now Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel). However, born and raised in the UAE, two years after the country was established. Growing up in a newly established country was an experience unfamiliar to most. A melting pot of nationalities came together, some forming a new identity — Emiratis.

His parents fled Palestine in the 1960s. The land they called home. The land that forever engulfed their brothers, sisters, guardians, and friends. Their escape led them to Jordan, one of the few countries whose familiar culture tempted Palestinian refugees with promised hope of a fresh start. Of course, promises are seldom kept. My father’s family received the Jordanian passport, the legal documentation that would secure their rights as citizens, but there was a catch. Yes, Palestinian refugees could be given a passport, but a special one meant just for them. A Jordanian passport that would make very clear that you were a product of the war, an escapee – a Palestinian refugee. So, they moved on to a Sheikhdom made up of desert settlements by the sea.

I recall conversations with my Russian relatives, even recently, that although occurred regularly, never failed to shock me. ‘I’m so glad we don’t have Black people here, and we don’t have to deal with all that’, my third cousin said referring to the death of George Floyd and the events that transpired in the USA that year. ‘Indians, come get my laundry’, mocked another relative. In these moments, I wondered whether they’d forgotten of my mixed background and their family members who weren’t their ideal formula of white.

My mother’s husband is a dark-skinned Arab. Her children are Arab. She, however, persisted: “I never even think about my children being Arab. They are just my children.” Though, my mother always made an effort to connect us with our mixed identity. At birth, my brother and I were introduced to our parents’ mother tongues through speech and books. At the age of 2, I spoke both languages (and English) freely, simultaneously navigating multilingual conversations with ease — something many found quite amusing.

Traditions in my household were all a confusing formula of interesting, but not quite complimentary ingredients. My brother and I would spend Eid gatherings and Ramadan iftars at our grandparents’. Our thousands of cousins, aunts and uncles would fill the guest areas of the house, fragrant aromas of oud and Palestinian delicacies performing a hypnotising waltz across the rooms. New Year’s Eve, the Russian equivalent of Christmas, was spent at home watching reruns of the same holiday films looping on the Russian channels, feasting on traditional dishes and during the early years of our childhood, my father dressed as Ded Moroz (Father Christmas), listening to me recite Pushkin’s greatest work that I was forced to memorise as part of the gift-giving ceremony — and that he didn’t understand.

When asked about the blending of cultures within my family, my mother shared: “You saw this since birth. When you were around 6 months old, we lived at your teta’s for two months. You saw this your whole life, it was normal — just like breathing. For example, in Russia, we ate okroshka (Russian cold soup). Here, we ate wara anab (Palestinian stuffed grape leaves). It was just a part of life. And for me, both [sides] always existed equally. However, in my mind, your Russian side was more superior, not because of the culture but simply because we were more educated. I came from a more educated background, so in Russia, I could give you more.”

Despite growing up in the same household, my brother, Adel, and I drifted towards opposite ends of our cultural poles. He spoke Arabic more fluently, yet he could barely hold a conversation in Russian. With time, he transformed into someone closely in touch with their Arab identity, while I took on the weight of the world in search of a similar connection. However, my brother now denies his Palestinian heritage and identifies with his Jordanian and Russian citizenships, and his life in the UAE. “Adel always labelled himself as a Muslim and fasted during Ramadan. You would call yourself agnostic but ask to visit all the churches in Russia”, my mother shared, adding that our opposing identities are a direct result of external influence throughout our lives — opinions from people we might not even remember, but whose words infiltrated our subconscious.

Her mother, Larisa, grew fond of our background, despite having envisioned a Russian union for her daughter: “It’s very interesting to have mixed grandchildren - a mixed family - because these are kids who took traditions from both nationalities. I believe that you should be spiritually wealthier than the ‘average mono-national person’.” During our ZOOM call, she commended our knowledge of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, as well as Islam: “You are tolerant. You respect the religion on both your parents’ sides, and it’s good for the world to have people like that, especially in our time.” At the end of our conversation, my grandmother credits our growing up in the UAE and its large population of international families, a sentiment she hadn’t shared with me before.

On the 25th of February 2022, I watched the situation in Ukraine unfold. My heart and mind were pulled in opposite directions, fighting over logic and empathy. I felt ashamed yet proud, fearful yet relieved. My Russian identity felt vulnerable and under threat. I immersed myself in phone calls and texts flowing in from Ukrainian friends and family all while dissecting each comment and statement against my Russo roots. The identity I began creating for myself, even while writing this article, turned back into labels assigned by others for me. I feel once again like a child of the world and a child of no country.