Personal Significance

My parents spent their childhood in Nablus, Palestine, before leaving as adults. Whenever we visited, my mother transformed; her smile would radiate, and the warmth and freedom of the place became tangible. These annual visits allowed her to reconnect with her true self, unknowingly giving me some of the happiest moments of my childhood. Folded in those trips to our hometown was a single visit to Gaza, where my mother’s smile met the sea, creating magic.

As time passed, I saw my mother gradually lose her smile and sense of home. Palestine became fractured and destroyed. Nablus grew distant and unreachable, and Gaza turned into a hell on earth. I moved farther away to the US, and my mother passed. I was left with memories of a pleasant childhood where I felt I belonged, in a foreign land where I now reside but do not feel a sense of belonging.

Finding Ahmed in 2015 was like rediscovering my mother’s abandoned smile in a place that had become inaccessible. Ahmed invited me on his journey, driven by a single dream: he wants to make it to the international scene as a Parkour player. Finding him and following his aspirations felt like unlocking my mother’s smile from where it had been trapped.

Ahmed starts by sharing his passion. I see the city through his “parkour” lens. He takes me to his home in Khan Yunis, to where he and the team practice, to the cemetery, to sandy hills, to an abandoned hall, and finally to the dysfunctional airport.

Up to that point, he has been the one filming and showing me what he wants to show me through his own lens. Ahmed confirmed something that I had spent my life unsure about: the profoundness of my Palestinian identity. With that, I decided to look beyond what he usually displays from Gaza for the outside world. I asked him to show me what I needed to see as an insider, as a Palestinian.

I got a true sense of Ahmed’s challenges and struggles. I felt the prison in which he lives. And I lived his determination to leave. When he speaks of that specific determination, I develop conflicted feelings. I know so well the void that he will have to face leaving Palestine behind. Living in the diaspora is tainted by the guilt that my mother and I have felt for abandoning our hometown and looking for a better future. It is also accompanied by an intangible void and emptiness.

It’s been eleven years since my mother left us: I’m now witnessing the home that we yearn for; generation after generation, torn further apart; more severely than she could have imagined. Her smile had significantly faded by the time she left. Now, I can’t help but wonder how she would have coped with the fresh agony that has been plaguing Gaza and the West Bank. What words might she have shared with a young man retracing the very compulsory steps she once took when she left her homeland?

Background

The Gaza we knew before the current crisis was stifled by a relentless blockade on its land, sea, and air. It had the highest population density in the world - yet its power supply met half of the demand. More than 50% of its labor force was unemployed. 

But Gaza was more than its ever-present despair. The story of Gaza’s people reminds us that Gaza was not only about conflict — its people were full of hope.

I have been following the stories of the Gaza Parkour athletes for over 9 years. I was taken aback by how the blockade had produced a group of young talented athletes so alive, resilient, persuasive, and free. Their devastating circumstances had managed to fuel energy and passion.