Dipping bread, fresh from the oven

Olives, from our garden, pressed to oil

Biting goat cheese

And chilled watermelon

Red, White, Green, and Black

Palestinian evening

Growing up, the subject of my heritage seemed taboo and shameful. Not because being Palestinian is any of these things, but because the prevalent sense in the schoolyard was to belong, not to be different. People did not understand Palestine; where is that, why have I never heard of it?

I am a child of unknown descent.

Innocent

of the condescending fashion

that you be asking me

questioning me

wondering ’bout my ethnicity,

making me aware…

On September 18, 2005, the Palestine House had a cultural picnic in Mississauga and celebrated it as a fundraiser for Palestinian children. It was a time for getting together with family and friends. I invited an Italian friend and a Barbadian friend to come along and, as I realized later, to “watch.” There were two underlying themes to this event.

By Yousef Bashir

When the Intifada started in 2000, I was only in the 6th grade. Kids my age did not go to watch movies or travel with their parents for the summer time. Instead, we watched the young men throwing rocks at soldiers who were sitting behind strong, safe walls. Some soldiers used to beg the teenagers to go home and not waste their time. Collecting Israeli bullets was also a very cool thing to do or even waiting for an Israeli tank to get closer and then run away. This is what I used to do for fun when I was a kid. I also loved playing soccer in the street even though the ball was older than me.

I was born in the West Bank; the first born child to my parents. As I was growing up, nothing around me seemed out of the ordinary or even remotely remarkable. Sound of bullets, kids discussing politics, destroyed buildings, masked men in funerals, checkpoints, a disproportionate number of handicapped youth, and the fact that we had to be home every night before the 6 o’clock curfew- all these were facts of a life that was, to me, completely normal. I did not know any better.