Karim Abuawad

During the six years of my absence, from time to time I have felt that I’m loosing my memories of the place I originated from. This feeling has always troubled me a great deal. However, I discovered recently that what is more important than remembering bits and pieces of a place or an experience is preserving the ideas or concepts that belong to the experience or to the place. This revelation came to me as a divine savior to save me from the depressing solitude that I’ve been plunged into for a while now. It is true that my absence is relatively short comparing to the absences of other Palestinians who have been out of their environment for decades, however I left Palestine when I was eighteen years old and before I can experience the place from an adult perspective, that intensified my voluntarily exile experience and made it more significant. I was born in Ramallah in 1982 and I continued to live in the city until I migrated to the United States upon my graduation from Ramallah High School. I currently live in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois and I am attending school to get a degree in film making.

The one scene that always comes to my mind when I think about Jerusalem is the scene that contains the Dome of the Rock in the background with the small gate along with the guard who stands at that gate in the foreground. I am not sure what exactly that gate is called, but I do remember that it was a dark hallway with small stores on each side; it seemed like a small market. However, the experience of the blinding day light that comes in through the gate into the dark market with the Dome of the Rock in the background has always inspired me. The reason that particular scene is always on my mind is because, to me, this scene or this experience is connected to an idea. The fact that this guard can actually sit there on that gate and decide whether to grant me an access to what essentially belongs to me is an outrageous concept. This is exactly what I meant about remembering the concept rather than the details of a place.