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to resist and to exist, Nadia Hasan's story

Dear All,
A young woman has decided to do what millions of other young (and not so young) men and women around the world do each and every day. She has decided to live her life in the place she desires. To make her future in the place that she knows and feels as her true home. She is a Palestinian woman with a Chilean passport. She is an intelligent, funny, sensitive and courageous young woman named Nadia Hasan. She has beautiful blog in Spanish http://palestinaresiste2.blogspot.com/ called Palestina Resiste.
 
The other day, she wrote to her many friends and other people who care about the Palestinians and told us of her experiences when she left Jordan to go to Nablus, where she had friends waiting for her. Here is that letter:
 
Not only did they give Nadia a humiliating third degree (why don't you change your name, where's your other passport among the absurd questions) they strip searched her, scrutinised her baggage down to every particle, and then.... sent her back to Jordan. The reason for this denial to her was because she is Palestinian. She is not a criminal, she is not a danger to anyone. She was sent away because she is not the "right" ethnic group and is unwanted, even as a tourist. Other individuals obtained a tourist visa in a matter of minutes. The discriminating factor is because of racism and prejudice.
 
Nadia knew they had just created a person who would not be defeated as she was forced to leave and to play out a destiny cruel persons mete out to her, not one of her own choosing. She will not run back to Chile with her head hanging, but proudly, she has become more determined to live according to her goals, to take charge of her life and not let this defeat challenge her.
 
This is her second letter:
March 30, 2006
Today is my first day in Amman, well, today its the first of many days that I will have to live in this city. I am a little paralyzed, i dont know from where I should begin, i dont know to where I should go neither what I have to do.
I am clear, in the relative clarity that we can have about an uncertain future that I will stay here the time that is necessary, I will build myself a new life until being able to recover my life, the life that I want, the one that they forced me to leave. Today I add myself to the millions of Palestinian who lives outside of Palestine, who have been displaced, who have been expelled of their homes, to those who have been denied the basic right of belonging, of being linked with a physical space, denied to founding roots and to see them to grow and to settle. The life is about that, right?, of looking for a place where you feel that you belong?, where your feet recognize the streets, and do the streets recognize your footfalls? We can be born in a certain country, to live half life in it, but your dreams and looks point to another place, to a distant space where your face feels part, where it is recognized, where it melts with the other ones, where you belong.
Jordan is the country of those displaced, of the refugees, of the Palestinian outside of Palestine. Where fictitious borders prohibit them the step, where apartheid limits castrate their return dreams, dreams of belong.
It paralyzes me the fear, the fear to melt in this mass of indifference. It paralyzes me the single possibility to assume a reality that I don't like, that disgusts me, a reality that I refuse to accept. The Palestinian outside of Palestine don't live in a place, since no place is for they own. They live in the time, their life is determined by political, economic circumstances or of any nature, that show them the path that they must to follow. They build houses, they find works, they form families, with the intention of continuing, of continuing walking, but in each one of them the word waits have a deeper sense, a wait that they dream can transform the time in place, they hope to stop to live in the time and to live in Palestine, live in their place.
Today I will begin to look for a house, to look for a work, to build a new life, but i am clear that the feeling that levies me is that of the wait, waiting that my footfalls will recognize the land that they touch, waiting that my face will melts with familiar faces again. But in this wait the strugle is bigger, the challenge imposed by the Occupation is even bigger, because we should challenge the memory, we cannot forget, we cannot allow to conquer ourselves for the indifference, we cannot forget. To conserve the scents, flavors, colors of our place will always be the best fight that we can give, to challenge to the forgetfulness and to win to the weapons, to stop to be the children of an idea of Palestine to become the children of Palestine, because while there are memories Palestine Exists and Palestine Resists!
Nadia
 
Now, I ask you, anyone who listens to your heart, if anyone at all is able in some way to help Nadia. So many of us are or have been immigrants. So many of us know what that means and how difficult it is. Nadia hasn't asked for a single thing, but I'm an immigrant. I know what she is going through in some small way, and I ask that if there is anyone near 'Amman who can show solidarity to her at this time? You will know what needs to be done. I can give you Nadia's email, and you can get in contact with her. Even meeting her or sending her a letter of solidarity is going to help a lot.
 
To everyone else, think about how Jewish people around the world are allowed to make Aliyah. Nadia's connection to her homeland is fresh, passionate and the separation from it is painful. She is a Palestinian who is attempting to exercise her right to her homeland, and she is not allowed to do this, not even as a tourist! She is one of millions who is denied their identity and self-realisation, while others are given it on a plate. Whoever can diffuse her story, sharing it with others, especially with those are sensitive to the fact that there is a generation of Palestinians, young men and women, who will not renounce their dreams and hopes. They are doing the most natural thing in the world, trying to build their own future in the land that they recognise as one they belong to, preserving their culture and history, bringing new lifeblood gained from years of life in other countries. They deserve all the support we can give them.
 
Tlaxcala (the network of translators for linguistic diversity) is also translating and diffusing this story in several languages, so should anyone wish to diffuse it further, we can send you versions in Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Swedish. We welcome anyone who may wish to translate it and spread it into other languages to do so.
 
thanks and hoping this message is spread widely,
mary