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As a migrant whose travels have taken me to live in several
countries and regions, I have found an interesting pattern:
the re-creation and reconstruction of a migrant’s motherland
is a process that begins in the adopted homeland. This is
true despite the fact that the new surfaces of an adopted
home do not hold a memory of one’s history. There is
no comfort in place, and there are no visual clues to trigger
one’s sense of identity and culture, a fact that can
ultimately foster as much alienation as comfort.
Those who immigrated to lands starkly
different from where they were born or raised in, even for
brief periods, seem most attached to reconstructing a present
memory of culture and identity in their new locations, often
by recreating situations and contexts that emulate elements
of their homeland, even at the risk of ridicule or persecution.
Those like myself, who by chance or intention migrated to
lands whose physicality reflects the motherland, find profound
comfort in place and our senses of identity not as troubled
by location and relocation. The landscape breeds a security
that has provided me with the much-needed reassurance of coming
home.
My homelands of historical Palestine
and Iraq, as well as the other countries I’ve lived
in as a child (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Jordan)
are all similar to the landscape of the Southwest. Indeed,
the land here holds my memory; it reflects my identity in
the presence of red earth, sandy dunes, warm gulf waters,
rocks, shrubs, cacti, palm trees, sweltering sun, big starry
sky nights, and vast spaces. These are journeyed by pilgrims
and tourists en route to ancient ruins and significant spiritual
destinations, as well as those looping on the crossroads of
utilitarian borderlands. From this utopian position, I reflect
the landscape and the earth, in return, remembers me.
As
a migrant from third world states adversarial to the US and
Israel, my body’s presence at their borders causes a
predictable disturbance. Similarly, my body’s presence
at the borders of Arab countries raises suspicion due to my
US nationality and the stamps of numerous Israeli entry and
exit visas. The honest answers to questions about my travels
are always unsatisfying, and my presence is disconcerting
to those who police these boundaries. Like many immigrants,
my life will always reflect the crossings back and forth between
motherland and new land as I attempt to remain close and connected
to my culture, family, and friends. But for first world nations,
my passport reads like the story of a shifty wanderer, a hyphenated
profile that doesn’t fit in tidy spectrums of security
risks. Like many, I simply don’t fit into polarized
binaries that shape the perceptions of border agents.
I am Palestinian, Iraqi, naturalized
American who is Muslim, married to a Christian African American.
I travel alone, with professional photography equipment, but
I am not a journalist or a protesting activist. I am a professor,
a mother, a possessor of an American accent, without hijab.
I speak English well, I know my rights, and I am unafraid.
The layers of questions, interrogation, and intimidation directed
at me by borderland officials are false displays of security
tactics. The existence of these images in this exhibition
makes clear two simple facts; borders are negotiated and they
are porous. In them, my own multiplicitous and shifting identity
exposes the theatre of borderlands. From this anti-utopic
position, I also reflect the landscape, divided and guarded.
Nationalist security projects aimed
at protecting homogeneity are caught in a vortex; they fail
to erase or eradicate the undesirable and questionable diasporic
body or hyphenated identity from the land, in fact they are
producers of them. My work is a journey through this paradox;
in my images, my body performs trajectories of the orientalist,
colonizer, refugee, native, nationalist, alien, illegal, settler,
Sephardi, Muslim, Palestinian, Iraqi, Arab, beduin, etc. on
the site of investigation. Space, distance, proximity and
access suggest an awkward synthesis that has become my hyphenated
identity.
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