Last week Laila El-Haddad's story of trying to get into Gaza to visit her family made its way across the Internet. El-Haddad was detained at the Egyptian border and eventually forced to return to the US without entering Gaza. Part of what made this story notable is that El-Haddad was giving real time updates over Twitter.
El-Haddad has now written up her entire story on her blog Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother. Please go read the incredible post.
Phil has been writing a lot about Kafka lately, but El-Haddad's story takes the cake. Here's one passage:
Officer #1 divided up the room into regions: the 5 or so south Asians
who were there for whatever reason-expired paperwork, illegal
documentation- were referred to as "Pakistan" when their attention was
needed; The snoozing, sleep-talking woman in the back was "Indonesia";
and the impeccably dressed Guinean businessman, fully decked in a sharp
black suit and blue lined tie, was "Kenya" (despite his persistence
please to the contrary). There was a group of Egyptian peasants with
forged, fake, or wrongly filed Id cards and passports: a 54 year old
man whose ID said he was born in 1990; another who left his ID in his
village 5 hours away, and so on.By this point, I had not slept
in 27 hours, 40 if one were to count the plane ride. My patience and my
energy were wearing thing. My children were filthy and tired and
confused; Noor was crying. I tried to set her cot up, but a cell within
a cell did not seem to her liking and she resisted, much as I did.We took the opportunity to chat when officer #1 was away. ""So what did you do?" asked Kenya, the Guinean.
"I
was born Palestinian" I replied. "Everyone in here is being deported
back home for one reason or another right? I bet I am the only one
being deported away from home; the only one denied entry to my home."Officer
#1 returned, this time he asked me to come with him "with or without
your kids". I brought them along, not knowing what was next.
Read the entire story here.
