Raja Shahadeh

In 48, in April, the Hergun, the terrorist organization, started bombing Jaffa.

They bombed the center of Jaffa, and it was getting dangerous, but they decided to stay.

And then Jewish terrorists started bombing the Manshi, which is a suburb of Jaffa.

And it became very dangerous, and they had a three-year-old daughter, and they decided that they would leave to Ramallah, where they had a summer house, because Jaffa in the summer is very humid and hot.

So they left on the 28th of April to Ramallah, and they were never able to return.

Well, I grew up in Ramallah with an exiled family.

And my grandmother was always yearning for Jaffa.

And they were looking at the horizon and seeing the lights of Tel Aviv, really, and thinking that this is Jaffa.

And so I learned to look at the horizons also and think that I'm looking at Jaffa.

Although I had never been to Jaffa, of course, because I was born after the Nakba, after 1948.

And so I had a sense of Ramallah was not the real home.

It was just a temporary home.

And it was an exile's consciousness.

The expectation was always that we will be returning.

I would characterize it by the feeling that where you are is not home.

Where you are is temporary.

And the real home is somewhere else, where you came from.

You don't feel you belong to the place that you are in.

I think anger is a very negative thing, and I've been always careful not to resort to anger.

And I feel that always there's hope and there's a possibility out, and anger is a dead end.