The New Yorker: The View from Palestinian America In Kholood Eid’s photographs of Missouri, taken six months into the war in Gaza, the quiet act of documenting life is a kind of protest against erasure. By Zaina Arafat Photography by Kholood Eid

Nida Mutan participates in a march in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 7th. The day marked six months after the October 7th attacks and the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

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In 1987, when Palestinians rose up against the Israeli occupation in what would become known as the first intifada, I was six years old. Each evening, when Peter Jennings delivered the six-thirty news, my family would gather in our wood-panelled basement, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and watch for images of Nablus, where we’re from. We saw young Palestinians, in jeans and bandanas, throwing a seemingly endless supply of stones; Israeli soldiers, in tan uniforms and combat boots, guarding checkpoints, looking both vigilant and bored; coffins shrouded in Palestinian flags. Our lives in America were at a cool remove from the conflict. I spent those evenings spreading Barbies across the floor, and my baby brother spent them in his bouncy chair. My father would pour Doritos into a bowl and argue with the news. Only my mother kept quiet, her eyes fixed on a homeland that seemed to be receding.

Ours was a scene that played out in many Palestinian American families, and it replayed with every flareup and every encroaching Israeli settlement. And yet the images on television did not always match the ones I saw during visits to Palestine: my grandmother laying out sheets of newspaper to roll stuffed grape leaves on the veranda; the call to prayer, and the little green lights shining from every mosque; the zaffe drum procession echoing from outdoor weddings. To be a Palestinian in the diaspora is to miss one’s home, the blād—the mountains and the sea, the family members left behind, the distinct bitterness of our olives and our sumac- and za’atar-dusted mezze spreads—even as one enjoys the privilege of distance from Palestine’s hardships. It is to possess a luxury that is missing from Palestine itself: a choice.

A new series of photographs by Kholood Eid, a New York-based photographer who grew up in Missouri and the West Bank, tries to depict what this tension does to a person. Her photos are full of sharp contrasts: joy and sorrow, light and dark, past and present. In one photograph, a young protester—wearing a kaffiyeh and a T-shirt printed with a watermelon, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity—holds a sunflower. In another, through the railings of a staircase, home-cooked lentils and rice sit on the Eid family’s dining-room table. In a photograph of a framed picture from the late nineteen-eighties, Abdelaziz, Eid’s close childhood friend, clings to her mother’s embroidered thawb at a protest, reminding the viewer of the ongoing nature of Palestinian activism.... READ MORE  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-view-from-palestinian-america

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Abdelaziz  [Eid’s close childhood friend] was about six years old when her mother (left) took her to a protest for Palestinian liberation. “I often tell folks that growing up Palestinian American left me ‘protested out,’ as generations of Palestinians have been calling for liberation,” Eid said. “That said, our resilience has always been a defining characteristic of our people, and there is beauty and strength in perseverance.”