Loving Home

Love is our Land

After leaving my house for 10 months to seek immigration in Germany, now I passed the border with Jordan to come back home to Palestine. I never expected to be so lucky with the people around me, to find a cousin waiting for me with his car to take me back to Dura, so I didn’t have to get more exhausting travelling with my bags in taxis and buses was a surprise. The cousin insisted that I rested in that small simple canteen in the bus station in Jericho and to drink with him a cup of coffee. I started to ask him about the family and friends and all the events that happened in my absence. I told him a little about my experience and how I couldn’t wait to end my journey and go back where my family needed me.

Dura

We started driving to Dura, it’s almost 4 hours from Jericho, the first Palestinian city after the borders between Jordan and the West Bank, until Dura, in the south of West Bank. I was not patient enough to wait those only 4 hours to get home after two days traveling from Germany, so I took my cousin’s mobile to call my house to let my Mother know that I was really getting closer to her. As I arrived home many kids from the family were waiting outside checking the cars to be the first ones to see me when I arrive. Some kids kindly came to me, to help me carrying my bags and others ran to inform all the family and the neighbors around us that I was finally there. I never noticed how beautiful our house was and how its stones give a great feeling of security and belonging. I went fast upstairs to hug my Mother whose blessing never left my mind all those days and nights faraway in Germany. My older sister, Klashina, couldn’t wait until I got to the third floor where my Mother chose to live in our 3 flours house, so she went down to meet me in the middle of the stairs. Love all what I missed in Germany and how the destiny saved my right to love those moments. I ran to hug my Mother and to hold her hands, I told her that my promise to come back whenever she asked me to was the holiest commitment in my life. How I could I not do that for the woman that was always the candle that burn itself to light her kids’ life…

Love all what I felt, this love that keeps showing you how beautiful and hopeful our life is. The women from the family and the neighbors came to congratulate my Mother. All of them kept thanking me for coming back. My Mother kept telling them that she had always trusted my promise to come back to her when she asked for that and that she was so lucky that I didn’t have a bad time in Germany and that I gained more weight as she was always worried about my life in there. My Mother kept asking me if I had eaten well and if I had had health problems.

More cousins continued coming to congratulate my mother and I can’t describe how happy I was for that. Giving my Mother a better feeling after we lost our sister and to see people coming to our house for good news. I can’t understand that some men still oppress and intentionally hurt women, don’t they have mothers? Haven’t they ever understood their loving role in our lives? What rewards can we give back to our Mothers if we don’t feel and show how important they are for us?

Where my Mother is, and where your Mother is, there’s our land, this is what I tell to my Palestinian and Israeli friends: here we shall live in peace and love. Our home is nowhere else, and no one else can give us more love and warmness as we can give to each other here. We don’t need to study history, political theory or international human rights to get a justification for our right to live in this land. Our choice to provide a better life for all of us is the strongest help we can get to move forward and end this conflict.

My Mother sends all her affection and thanks for all our friends who show their support in our hard moments; she believes that we are closer to our dream than the media transmits to us with all those bad news from politicians who keep reminding us how hopeless they are.

Love for you all!

Hamze Awawde

YaLa Young Leaders