From Palestine > Kuwait > Rhode Island
A 'How to Pack' Story
The summer I was six years old, I turned the knob of our wood paneled TV to watch Transformers. It was school break and I had a few more moments of freedom before school started, but something was wrong with our TV. Every station I turned to, the screen filled with colored bars and static, something that never happened. Before I had the chance to complain, our phone rang and mama ran into the living room. It was Khalo Mohammed calling all the way from America, another rare event.
“Yes, we are all fine. I was getting ready for work” Mama said into the phone’s receiver. “Why? Is everything alright with you?”
I could tell from the tone of Mama’s voice that Khalo was worried about something. Our phone was plugged into the wall of the dining room, by the table that hosted dinners and birthday parties since Mama and her siblings were born. This apartment has been our family’s home since Teta and Sido married decades ago.
“Wait, what?” She asked, confused.
Khalo Mohammad said he was currently watching a strange scene unfold on his television.
“I am watching the invasion right now on CNN!” He asserted through the speaker. Iraqi army tanks were rolling through Kuwait’s downtown, right by the bank where Mama worked.
Instead of the usual traffic of civilians, soldiers in sand colored army fatigues filled the streets.
Incredulous and through nervous laughter, Mama asked,“Saddam wants Kuwait’s oil now?”
While our television’s signal was cut, Khalo’s TV in America was live streaming events invisible to us, even though they were occurring only a short drive away.
“Well I guess I don’t have work today.” She responded lightly, the severity of the situation still unclear.
And no Transformers either. I thought as I headed to my room to find a toy to play with, completely unaware how deeply my life was about to change.
Two weeks later, Mama told me it was time to go. The booms and shakes were getting louder and electricity had been out for a while. Mama and I crouched behind the bed and listened to the BBC on a small battery operated radio for days. I couldn’t understand the English language broadcast but since Mama remained calm, I remained unconcerned and put on a shadow puppet show with my hands on the walls instead. Now she was saying that we need to pack and,“we only have room for one toy.”
“Just one?” I asked, shaken. My parents were divorced and I was the only child in both households so I had a lot of toys. I loved them all. How could I possibly just choose one? I had stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes and too many barbies to count. I even had a barbie house that I had been proudly building on for what felt like forever with a fancy kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom set complete with a tiny glow in the dark teddy bear. I had a barbie pool that Mama let me fill with water for Barbie and all her friends to splash around in. I couldn’t imagine leaving all that behind, but at the same time, there was no way I could take it all. I had to decide quickly because Mama said we were leaving soon.
While I knew I would miss my barbies and all their furnishings, I finally settled on Dabdoob, or little bear. He was black and white, his paws were a brown felt-like material that was extra soft to the touch. Dabdoob was a baby and being a panda, he was already far from home. He needed me to feel safe and I still had a lot to show him in the world. That, and it wasn’t practical to take my barbie kitchen-much too bulky.
Mama loaded up the car and I made a comfortable nest for Dabdoob with a pile of clothes and kept him busy with games and books. We joined a caravan of neighbors made family, most we’ve known her since birth. It seemed like everyone packed their entire lives into those cars.
Everyone except us. Mama felt like she would have better luck at the newly installed military checkpoints if it didn’t look like we had anything worth rifling through. She was right because as we inched along with traffic towards the border, Dabdoob and I saw families on the side of the road. I held Dabdoob close and explained what was happening, so he wouldn’t be scared. On the other side of our window, families were standing around cars filled to the brim, with refrigerators and ovens strapped to the top.
“Wow, maybe I should have brought my Barbie kitchen.” I said to Daboob. Like thousands of fleeing families we watched Kuwait City fade into the distance. Like my Teta before me, we left the place of our birth.
Dabdoob and I helped hide Mama’s treasure, piles of shimmering gold wedding jewelry we’d had in our family for generations. She told me we needed to keep it safe because it was going to get us to America.We hid it in a pack of maxi pads knowing soldiers were unlikely to search there. Checkpoint after checkpoint, I trained my eyes away from the Maxi pads on the passenger seat floor. The treasure remained undiscovered.
On our journey through the Iraqi desert to Jordan, mama’s car ran out of gas.
I read Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid to Dabdoob while we waited for friends to bring us a filled gas can. Just as I got to the part about the Little Mermaid’s exile on the moon, the desert sky transformed into an ocean of stars overhead.
I imagined the Little Mermaid waving to us from the crescent moon.
“See? I reminded Dabdoob. No need to fear, we are never alone.”
We met up with my Teta in Amman. she had been visiting her sister in Syria.
When I told her how brave Dabdoob had been, she complimented me for packing light.
While I didn’t know the details as a six year old, I knew Teta had to leave everything behind too. She was in her early twenties during the Nakba when her family was forced out of our ancestral home on the Yaffa coast. Just like me, she needed to pack light. I imagine she wanted to take all her favorite books but likely needed to help her Mama carry her newborn baby sister instead.
Like me, she could only take what she could carry.
About a month later, we landed in New York City. Our final connecting flight to Rhode Island was not until the next day. I screeched with excitement when I noticed tiny boxes of Corn Flakes in the hotel. Cereal was a treat in Kuwait, and here it was everywhere. I couldn’t help but wonder what other treasures this new place held for us. Dabdoob was worn out from traveling but perked up at the sight of the treats. After the cereal, I noticed how cold and wet everything was. My thick curly hair frizzed to new dimensions and I noticed how my lanky limbs outgrew my clothes. It was like I suddenly found myself on the other side of a portal I barely remembered stepping through.
In Rhode Island, Dabdoob and I explored our new surroundings. Apparently, we landed in a type of lush fairy land that I'd only heard about in stories. Here, in the yard surrounding the family friend’s house we lived in for that first year, the damp air was scented with lemony pine, wet earth, and tree bark.The wide expanse of desert I was accustomed to had been replaced by canopies of abundant greenery. Instead of playing between Kuwait’s towering sand colored buildings and dusty parking garages, Dabdoob and I scampered over oak tree roots and gathered acorns.
The air was always damp, even in the huge cardboard box I repurposed as a playhouse. While my barbie kitchen was left behind, at least I had this playhouse. Dabdoob and I spent hours in that box, decorating the walls with rainbows, scribbling away in English language workbooks, and reluctantly making friends with a spider that decided to move in.
Since I was surrounded by the foreign sounds of the English language, with its hard edges and unusual tones, that cardboard box became my soft landing, my sanctuary. I was learning a lot of new English words, but my own voice sounded unfamiliar. As the only child, I was used to talking aloud to my toys and imaginary friends. In my cardboard playhouse, I could stretch my new vowel sounds and mold my consonants like playdough till they formed the way I liked. I could tell Dabdoob and our spider my favorite stories and make up new ones. I could practice and experiment and play in the language of my choosing, sometimes that was 3arby layered with English, or Inglisee sprinkled into Arabic, but often, it was something else.
Something new.
I recently took part in a storytelling show called “Land Line” with Back Pocket Media, where along with other artists, I told this story live. Check them out!
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