Thread by @iyad_elbaghdadi

Here's a painful topic that I've been thinking about for many years, about the lifelong state of disconnection that diaspora Palestinian refugees live in. Let me start with a story from 2014

It's the summer of 2014, I've been summarily expelled from my lifelong home in the UAE. After some time in prison and some time living in an airport under threat of further deportation, I'm in Malaysia. To set the stage, I have to explain a bit about my state at the time.

I had been allowed to temporarily enter Malaysia after a month in the airport. Right before that, I was driven from a prison in Abu Dhabi to its airport, hands and feet in chains. I had told the prison authorities to send me to Malaysia to avoid deportation to Egypt

Like the rest of my family, I had refugee travel documents issued by Egypt (where my father's family fled after the Nakba). We were legally stateless, and did not have an automatic right to live in any country. Read that again, we have no automatic right to *exist* anywhere

This was 2014 and a few months after Sisi was "elected" to his first term. I was a loud and well known dissident, and my comrades in Egypt, whoever didn't manage to leave the country, were getting picked up and imprisoned one by one. To be sent back to Egypt = I'd be disappeared.

I was 37. I had never lived anywhere other than the UAE. I didn't even travel much. My son was weeks old and I had no idea when or how I'll meet him. My family in the UAE were living the terror of expecting to be asked to leave at any time. They too have literally nowhere to go.

That's the setup. So I'm visiting the Palestinian embassy in Kuala Lumpur for some paperwork I don't remember. But I remember sitting in the waiting room and listening to a couple elderly Palestinian men wearing traditional clothes, having a conversation across from me.

The men said they were from Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip. I don't remember what their reasons for visiting Malaysia was, but it was for necessity. They were talking about how they just can't wait to go back home to their families and to their wives' and daughters' cooking

They talked about how intimidated they were by Kuala Lumpur, how they couldn't stomach Malaysian fast food, and how difficult it was for them to be here when they can't speak any English. "There's nothing like home", they said, as they spoke lovingly about their orchards.

I sat across from them. I wore Western-style clothing. I spoke perfect English. I had tens of thousands of followers on Twitter. I grew up in the urban marvel that is the UAE. By some standards I was much more privileged than them. But they were going back home. I had none.

I was privileged in certain ways but crushingly marginalized in others. I was crushingly marginalized in certain ways but privileged in others. They couldn't wait to go home and sit in the shade of the trees in their farms. I had never experienced stepping on land that's mine.

On the way back the taxi driver asks me where I'm from. "Palestine". He then asks how the weather in Palestine is, the food, what kind of infrastructure we have there and how the economy is. I told him I've never been. He was confused. I didn't know how to explain it to him.

It's 7 years later and I can't get that feeling out of my chest and I'm no closer to describing it. To be Palestinian has become a category of oppression. For those who survived on our land, it's occupation and apartheid. For those expelled, it's a life of eternal dislocation.

Years later, I shed a few tears while giving a lecture in Italy about exile. After the talk a woman berated me for saying I missed my childhood friends and streets in the UAE. "A Palestinian should only ever miss Palestine". I asked her where she's from. She had two citizenship.

I explained to her, in Arabic. I still don't know how to translate it.
المرء تواق إلى ما لم ينل. ليست دموعي اشتياقا لوطن أعرفه، بل إنتقاص لوطن لم يسمح لي أن أعرفه. أنا لا أشتاق لفلسطين بل أتوق لفلسطين.

There's this deep existential disconnect when I talk to Palestinians in Palestine. A feeling of intense familiarity and intense alienation. A deep resentment. A deep anger that we were so broken. A desire to take them in my arms and hug them so tight that we become one, again.

Now I'm going to go pray and confess my pain to my beloved

Note: Some pro-Israel people read this and can't help but be moved. But then they try to blame it on the legal concept of statelessness. So let me make this clear, the source of our pain isn't our refugee documents. The source of our pain is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.