What's in a Flag?

Identity, ancestry, belonging, past, roots, pride, political stance, home.

Here in the United States of America, we each identify with at least one flag, many of us two or more, with the exception of Native Americans, the original owners of this land,  who would fly a flag for their individual nation/tribe. In short, most of us are American and…something else. I hold three flags: American, Lebanese, and Palestinian. Born here, this was my first flag, though only by birth and for the first two years of my life, after which I went back to my home, Lebanon, the second flag I hold.

When I was a child, I learned from my grandmother, my Téta Julia, my father‘s mother, who came to live with us toward the end of her life, that I also belong to another ancestry, my third flag, Palestine, specifically from Jaffa.

I was still in elementary school when my Téta Julia was living with us. However, I still remember her gentle eyes, soft voice and delicate frame,  all in black, because in those days if you were widowed, no matter at what age, black became your only color for the rest of your life. Her snow white hair neatly combed into a bun, a stark contrast to the black that enveloped the rest of her, she would often motion me to sit by her on the couch so that she could eagerly recount to me her memories of  Jaffa in her soft voice. She would do this often, describing the waves of the Mediterranean lapping onto the shore, “tish, tish…” ,  her eyes gazing into the distance, gone to Jaffa, with the orange grove fields that stretched out from the back of her home all the way to the sea. She would recount the smell of the orange blossom flowers in the spring, inhaling their imagined fragrance as she closed her eyes and exhaled, “Mmmm…”, and the big stone house that my father grew up in. After a moment of silence, her face would change,her smile disappearing from her face,  and she would tell us of the fated day in 1947 when the British soldiers came knocking loudly on her door to inform her that the family must leave “for a little while, maybe a week, for her safety,  due to skirmishes we’re predicting…” “Nothing to worry about,” they said, “but you should definitely leave now”. She would then tell us, intermittently cursing under her breath,  how she packed up a suitcase, and left the house hurriedly  with my two uncles Nicholas and George, young men at the time, thinking that she would be back in a week or two. With a heavy sigh,  she would then flatly  tell us  that she was never able to go back. This is where her story ended every time. Almost everyday, the same story. 

My father told me years later that she went to Lebanon to be with her daughters, my aunt Georgette and Yvonne and to be close to my father, her “micho”, who was the baby of the family and a teenaged college student at the time;  one of her sons, Nicholas, would go to Egypt and her oldest son George, would go to Iraq where he eventually settled down as a doctor with his family. Nicholas eventually joined my father and sisters in Lebanon after he married. My Téta Julia died when I was still very young, maybe 10 years old at the most.  With her death,  her stories of Jaffa ended,  and I didn’t hear of Palestine until The Civil War in Lebanon, which began in 1975. I was a teenager then. 

A few weeks before the Civil War started,  US citizens were being evacuated from Lebanon, and I received a phone call from the US State Department asking me if I wanted to be evacuated as a US citizen or stay as a Lebanese. I was 15 years old. Of course I chose to stay with my family as a Lebanese citizen. I held a US citizenship by birthright but my roots were in Lebanon.

What I learned during the war about being Palestinian, however,  is that you must keep quiet and hide your origins, your homeland, your identity. Otherwise, you will be persecuted and discriminated against at the least, or killed for speaking in a Palestinian dialect at the most. Nevertheless, my father held on to his Palestinian identity in the dialect that he refused to change, which could be fatal to him at an unfortunate checkpoint. So my mother insisted that he stay silent any time we were stopped at a checkpoint, not knowing who was on the other end. My father, proud of his Palestinian dialect, would smile meekly and consent, though he sat up straight, looking the militia straight in their eyes. 

Children listen; children observe and children learn. What I learned was that being Palestinian was shameful, dangerous, disrespected. The Israeli invasion of Beirut Lebanon in 1982 and the massacre of the Sabra/Chatila Palestinian refugee camps by Christian militia confirmed it all to me.

In 1986, my parents and baby sister finally joined my younger sister and me  to settle in the United States. As an American, I was able to sponsor my whole family to get their citizenship. When my parents went to get their first passport, my father listed his birthplace as Jaffa. The customs official at the time, puzzled at my father‘s choice of words,  said to him, “ Sir, Jaffa, doesn’t exist. You mean to say Israel.”  My father gently looked straight into the customs official’s eyes, and smiling in his soft spoken way told him, “I was born in Jaffa.” My mother nudged him under the table, whispering under her breath in Arabic that he should change it. He did not reply. He just sat there, still and smiling. To this day, his passport says born in Jaffa.

My father was a healer, gentle, compassionate, curious and humble. He called himself a student of life. He was a world renowned, pediatric cardiovascular surgeon, and when he came to New York to  practice medicine,  his most popular clients were orthodox Jews, who asked for him in person. My father did not have a bone of resentment, anger or revenge in him even though he never got to see his home again. He treated everyone who came to him with equal compassion and humanity. In his eyes, everyone is to be respected as a human being.

He was in college studying to be a doctor when his family left their home in Jaffa. He never got to go back.  So when he finally retired from surgery at 80 years of age, he and I spent many nights at the dining room table dreaming up our plans to return to Jaffa to find his home again.  His nephew's wife, Nadia, had gone with her mother at one point and found that her parents’ home had been converted to a home for Israeli elderly, and yet when she knocked on the door and asked if she could walk around the property, explaining that this used to be her family's home,  they promptly shut the door in her face before she could finish her sentence. Her grandparents’ home had 4 Israeli families living there.

Unfortunately, dad and I never realized our dream of returning home because shortly after he retired, he had a massive stroke which he survived for two years, lying in bed. In the end, he was unable to speak or move, except for his eyes, which expressed everything.  I needed him with me to guide me to his family home, and now I will never know. But I will be returning someday, in his memory. I will take some of his ashes with me and spread them in the Mediterranean sea in Jaffa, our ancestral home.

Now when I raise my flags, all three of them, I especially raise the Palestinian flag in honor of my father, my roots, my people, and in protest against the ongoing genocide for over seven decades. This flag, my flag, will no longer be silenced.

Julie Slim - 6-9-24Identity, ancestry, belonging, past, roots, pride, political stance, home.

Here in the United States of America, we each identify with at least one flag, many of us two or more, with the exception of Native Americans, the original owners of this land,  who would fly a flag for their individual nation/tribe. In short, most of us are American and…something else. I hold three flags: American, Lebanese, and Palestinian. Born here, this was my first flag, though only by birth and for the first two years of my life, after which I went back to my home, Lebanon, the second flag I hold.

When I was a child, I learned from my grandmother, my Téta Julia, my father‘s mother, who came to live with us toward the end of her life, that I also belong to another ancestry, my third flag, Palestine, specifically from Jaffa.

I was still in elementary school when my Téta Julia was living with us. However, I still remember her gentle eyes, soft voice and delicate frame,  all in black, because in those days if you were widowed, no matter at what age, black became your only color for the rest of your life. Her snow white hair neatly combed into a bun, a stark contrast to the black that enveloped the rest of her, she would often motion me to sit by her on the couch so that she could eagerly recount to me her memories of  Jaffa in her soft voice. She would do this often, describing the waves of the Mediterranean lapping onto the shore, “tish, tish…” ,  her eyes gazing into the distance, gone to Jaffa, with the orange grove fields that stretched out from the back of her home all the way to the sea. She would recount the smell of the orange blossom flowers in the spring, inhaling their imagined fragrance as she closed her eyes and exhaled, “Mmmm…”, and the big stone house that my father grew up in. After a moment of silence, her face would change,her smile disappearing from her face,  and she would tell us of the fated day in 1947 when the British soldiers came knocking loudly on her door to inform her that the family must leave “for a little while, maybe a week, for her safety,  due to skirmishes we’re predicting…” “Nothing to worry about,” they said, “but you should definitely leave now”. She would then tell us, intermittently cursing under her breath,  how she packed up a suitcase, and left the house hurriedly  with my two uncles Nicholas and George, young men at the time, thinking that she would be back in a week or two. With a heavy sigh,  she would then flatly  tell us  that she was never able to go back. This is where her story ended every time. Almost everyday, the same story. 

My father told me years later that she went to Lebanon to be with her daughters, my aunt Georgette and Yvonne and to be close to my father, her “micho”, who was the baby of the family and a teenaged college student at the time;  one of her sons, Nicholas, would go to Egypt and her oldest son George, would go to Iraq where he eventually settled down as a doctor with his family. Nicholas eventually joined my father and sisters in Lebanon after he married. My Téta Julia died when I was still very young, maybe 10 years old at the most.  With her death,  her stories of Jaffa ended,  and I didn’t hear of Palestine until The Civil War in Lebanon, which began in 1975. I was a teenager then. 

A few weeks before the Civil War started,  US citizens were being evacuated from Lebanon, and I received a phone call from the US State Department asking me if I wanted to be evacuated as a US citizen or stay as a Lebanese. I was 15 years old. Of course I chose to stay with my family as a Lebanese citizen. I held a US citizenship by birthright but my roots were in Lebanon.

What I learned during the war about being Palestinian, however,  is that you must keep quiet and hide your origins, your homeland, your identity. Otherwise, you will be persecuted and discriminated against at the least, or killed for speaking in a Palestinian dialect at the most. Nevertheless, my father held on to his Palestinian identity in the dialect that he refused to change, which could be fatal to him at an unfortunate checkpoint. So my mother insisted that he stay silent any time we were stopped at a checkpoint, not knowing who was on the other end. My father, proud of his Palestinian dialect, would smile meekly and consent, though he sat up straight, looking the militia straight in their eyes. 

Children listen; children observe and children learn. What I learned was that being Palestinian was shameful, dangerous, disrespected. The Israeli invasion of Beirut Lebanon in 1982 and the massacre of the Sabra/Chatila Palestinian refugee camps by Christian militia confirmed it all to me.

In 1986, my parents and baby sister finally joined my younger sister and me  to settle in the United States. As an American, I was able to sponsor my whole family to get their citizenship. When my parents went to get their first passport, my father listed his birthplace as Jaffa. The customs official at the time, puzzled at my father‘s choice of words,  said to him, “ Sir, Jaffa, doesn’t exist. You mean to say Israel.”  My father gently looked straight into the customs official’s eyes, and smiling in his soft spoken way told him, “I was born in Jaffa.” My mother nudged him under the table, whispering under her breath in Arabic that he should change it. He did not reply. He just sat there, still and smiling. To this day, his passport says born in Jaffa.

My father was a healer, gentle, compassionate, curious and humble. He called himself a student of life. He was a world renowned, pediatric cardiovascular surgeon, and when he came to New York to  practice medicine,  his most popular clients were orthodox Jews, who asked for him in person. My father did not have a bone of resentment, anger or revenge in him even though he never got to see his home again. He treated everyone who came to him with equal compassion and humanity. In his eyes, everyone is to be respected as a human being.

He was in college studying to be a doctor when his family left their home in Jaffa. He never got to go back.  So when he finally retired from surgery at 80 years of age, he and I spent many nights at the dining room table dreaming up our plans to return to Jaffa to find his home again.  His nephew's wife, Nadia, had gone with her mother at one point and found that her parents’ home had been converted to a home for Israeli elderly, and yet when she knocked on the door and asked if she could walk around the property, explaining that this used to be her family's home,  they promptly shut the door in her face before she could finish her sentence. Her grandparents’ home had 4 Israeli families living there.

Unfortunately, dad and I never realized our dream of returning home because shortly after he retired, he had a massive stroke which he survived for two years, lying in bed. In the end, he was unable to speak or move, except for his eyes, which expressed everything.  I needed him with me to guide me to his family home, and now I will never know. But I will be returning someday, in his memory. I will take some of his ashes with me and spread them in the Mediterranean sea in Jaffa, our ancestral home.

Now when I raise my flags, all three of them, I especially raise the Palestinian flag in honor of my father, my roots, my people, and in protest against the ongoing genocide for over seven decades. This flag, my flag, will no longer be silenced.

Julie Slim - 6-9-24