Home.

I sit on the floor of my room in Bethlehem, with the fruit trees and kids playing soccer outside, carefully packing my suitcase to head home. Some things will return with me, in roughly the same condition as when I first packed them many months ago. Wedged in between are new things I have picked up on this journey. Some things no longer fit, so I make the decision not to carry them further.

I'm not sure how I feel, but that has come to be expected in this land of contradictions. I can't wait to hug my family, to reunite with friends, to rest in the comfort of all things familiar. Yet I am fearful of difficulties as well, wondering how I will handle such a sharp transition between here and there--after all that I have seen, all the ways I have changed. There is sadness also, for goodbyes are never easy--especially to places that hold such meaning, people that I hold so dear.

I am realizing in my leaving that I have found home here too in Palestine, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. In the friendly shopkeeper's greeting each morning. In crowded taxis and yateek alafiyas. In warm falafel sandwiches and tiny cups of strong coffee. In homes tucked inside east Jerusalem neighborhoods, with families that make me feel like one of their own. In university classrooms, with professors and students who challenge me to think in new ways, fostering my critical mind. In a coffee shop in Beit Sahur, where I have spent many afternoons studying or conversing about the complexities of life. In the presence of friends who listen well, celebrate challenges overcome, and care in moments of need.

I walk down a foreign street now familiar and slip inside the shawarma place with the owner who always smiles. "Marhaba! Keefik?" He greets me, encouraging me to speak in Arabic with his patience, just as he always does. I tell him of my soon-approaching departure, and he insists I sit down to share a meal together, on the house. Through our conversation, I feel like I've been given the gift of such genuine kindness, offered without asking anything in return. I feel welcomed, pushing past the barrier of foreigner towards friendship. This is the Palestine I will truly miss, I think to myself. He asks me what I have really thought of this place, how I feel about returning home. I know he can see on my face that the answers to these questions are not simple. Before I leave, between goodbyes and well-wishes, he looks me in the eyes and says, "anti qawia." You are strong.

I doubt this for a minute, but then I decide to believe him. Of course I have weaknesses, but maybe I am stronger than I think, stronger than I was before coming to this place.

I feel that in many ways, Palestine has taught me about life. Here I learned about layers of injustice, and the deep meaning of home. About the binding love of family, biological or not. About figuring things out alone, and also reaching out for help. I learned to be more okay with uncertainty. To try to hold together many perspectives, stories, and experiences at once. To let the harsh realities of this world bother me, but not so much that I can no longer act. To not give up on the things that matter. And finally, I think I have learned not to come to conclusions, apart from concluding to keep searching.

I think about this as I board the plane--about strength and a desire for justice, about endings and where to go from here. I consider what has happened around me, and its effect on who I am now. I remember a Frantz Fanon quote that resonated with me during these months, and it feels fitting for this moment of transition:

"It is through the effort to recapture the self and to scrutinize the self, it is through the lasting tension of their freedom that men will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence for a human world...

At the conclusion of this study, I want the world to recognize, with me, the open door of every consciousness.

My final prayer: O my body, make of me always a man who questions!"

May these be my words at the conclusion of my own study, as I travel back to a place called home--the same, but not the same. Home, no longer so easily defined: perhaps somewhere we belong, a place for finding answers, growing up. It seems that home is somehow always shifting; not replacing, but adding. Maybe home is something that travels with us, in our constant becoming.

a goodbye to Beit Laham