I Just Want to Kiss the Earth | Rasha Al Jundi
“Simulacrum is a printed magazine. However, this year we will highlight one article online from our newly published issue. For our issue Borders, we have chosen to highlight the article by Rasha Al Jundi.
Simulacrum is een gedrukt tijdschrift. Dit jaar belichten we echter één artikel online uit ons pas verschenen nummer. Voor ons nummer Grenzen hebben we gekozen om het artikel van Rasha Al Jundi uit te lichten.”
My Visual Diary in Occupied Palestine - Rasha Al Jundi
Less than two months before October 7th 2023, I was allowed by the Zionist occupation to make the first, and perhaps only, visit to my homeland: occupied Palestine. The visit was controlled in every way a colonial military system can control one: the entry/exit dates are set, travel dates, duration and entry/exit ports are decided by them. At 39 years of age, I had only seven days and six nights to be Palestinian in [occupied] Palestine.
As a visual storyteller, I decided to document my visit, although I realised afterwards that most of what I ended up with were mental rather than physical images. Yet, I consistently kept a diary, and here I am sharing parts of it with you through Simulacrum.
Before I visited occupied Palestine, I was already in love with the land: as an idea, an image, a video, a culture, a people. After visiting, its beauty struck me in a way that I have been trying to deal with ever since. It became real, tangible, touchable.
I finally found the one place on this whole planet that looks and smells like me. But it was taken away from me forcefully. And I am not allowed to have it back.
When my trip was forced to end on August 27th, I had a clear intention to re-apply for a new permit from the occupation to experience more of my homeland. Little did I know at the time that a full-on vengeful Zionist genocidal campaign, encouraged and materially supported by much of the “civilized” world, would be launched against my people. I never imagined that I would live to witness mass destruction and hourly annihilation of civilians, using the latest artificial intelligence-powered technologies, live-streamed in front of the whole world.
My tears have not dried since my exit date last August, and my rage has reached renewed levels. It is not just the ongoing genocidal campaign against my people that triggers me. It is the deep sense of loss for the love of my life: Falastin.
21 August 2023
Exclamation mark
‘Do you have a weapon in your bag?’
This was the first question that the Israeli occupation border police officer asked me after inquiring if I could speak English or not (my positive answer to this latter question got him to exclaim with open arms to a hall full of people: “FINALLY!”). I was on a bus with approximately 45 other travellers, most of whom were elderly. We were the first “tourist group” of Jordanian passport holders who were given approval by the Zionist occupation to visit our own homeland.
The irony that Big Brother imposes on Palestinians in exile continues with the performance of hypersexualised and condescending border control agents. I was in the middle of the queue for the first officer, so I took my time to calm my pounding heart. It was the first time I came this close to the occupier. My heartbeat and tense jaw reflected my rage, while my deep breaths reflected my control.
While I waited patiently for my turn, I examined the well-constructed hall at the northern Zionist “border” with Jordan. It is famous for being designed for tourist groups crossing by land, hence the fancy airport-like fluorescent-lit structure. My eyes darted from one corner to another, taking in all the details, every camera, sign, and tile. I took in the female agents with full makeup, well-manicured long nails, freshly styled hairdos, and super-tight jeans that accentuated their bodies. I took in the male agents with their tight t-shirts that showed off their constantly flexing chest muscles. I took in every Hebrew yell at an old lady, every smirk, snort, and snicker at anyone who did not place their bag in the correct way on the X-ray belt. I took in their stares, and I stared back.
Questions flowed:
What is your purpose for visiting Israel?
Tourism
Where are you staying?
Metropole hotel
In which city is it?
Jerusalem
{A}. Exclamation Mark: Mannequin in the old city of Nablus, occupied Palestine (August 2023).
After a few more similar questions, a rectangular red sticker from a roll was slapped on my passport with the exclamation mark on it emphasised in blue ink. I was led to wait for a body search. After inspecting my bags, the passport control officer asked me the same questions in English before pausing at my grandfather’s name and wondering out loud, suddenly in Arabic: “Your grandfather’s name is Moses?” After some more waiting on the cold steel chairs, a cat showed up, sat in my lap and purred.
A female traveller fainted. She was Palestinian with an Israeli passport. The officers dragged their feet into responding while other travellers lifted her feet and sprayed water on her face. She eventually got up and was escorted to the seat next to me as she regained her composure. I handed her a small bag with a few leftover nuts.
Another officer walked up to me, this time a woman with a massive smile on her face. She greeted me as if we were long-lost friends and proceeded to inquire about my work (being a photographer stood out the most), my place of domicile, and, eventually, my permanent residency in Germany. The latter got me the needed nod to grant me the final entry approval by the occupier to my homeland.
22 August 2023
Fatima returns
A few months ago, a German friend travelled to the heartland of occupied Palestine to visit a friend of hers. She attempted to document my mother’s depopulated village Beit Dajan, for me and shared the images she made on WhatsApp. The shock of how foreign everything looked on my phone screen stayed with me for several weeks. I could not show the images to my mother.
I did not know, at the time, that I would be making the same trip to Beit Dajan a few months later.
Fatima Returns: Old doors of erased Palestinian homes in the old city of Yafa, occupied Palestine (August 2023).
This time, I confronted the ugliness of erasure myself. A block of identical houses sat neatly next to each other, with a school in the middle of the settlement, now called “Bet Dagan.” Nothing of the Palestinian identity was left in any of what I saw, except for an orange grove at the edge of this alien place. Fenced by grand Palestinian cacti, the land was beautiful, and I heard my mother’s description of her grandfather’s groves in my ears. I asked the taxi driver to stop and wait for me as I stepped out and walked over to the fence. Luckily, I found a big enough dent in the barrier to sneak into the grove. I had planned a symbolic return for my late Grandmother Faima (Umm Ali), since my departure from Amman. With an embroidered purse that she made for me a few years before her death, my grandmother accompanied me throughout this trip.
I took the purse out underneath an orange tree and whispered to her that she was back home now. I will never forget the heaviness in the air, the smell of the orange tree leaves, and the watchfulness of the cacti over me. At that moment, I reclaimed the Palestinian beauty of the land in Beit Dajan in spite of the Israeli ugliness. And I kissed the earth.
27 August 2023
Exit Wounds
‘Do you have a weapon?’
The question that the Zionist entity greeted me with upon my entry is laid out again in front of me. This time, however, to a fellow passenger on the bus at the Sheikh Hussein crossing into Jordan. The Israeli officer stepped onto the bus and selected a passenger at random to ask him this question. Due to his badly pronounced Arabic word for “weapon,” the passenger did not understand the question until we all shouted out the correct pronunciation at him. We just wanted to move on. A simple “No,” followed by a smirk, was enough to get us going.
I remembered what the Palestinian agent told us a week earlier as he wished us a good trip: ‘Remember, this is the state of the one soldier, not the rule of law.’
The air on the bus was heavy with sadness and frustration. Seven days and six nights were a fleeting moment in a sweet dream. One passenger took out his frustration on the travel agent, while another started crying while he recited the traveller’s prayer in the microphone for everyone else. As the man sitting next to me started sharing anecdotes from his family visit, I did not hold back my tears as I listened attentively to him. He silently handed me a napkin.
I cried that this was my first, very short-lived time in the homeland, and it could be my last.
I cried for the love that I lost in Palestine.
I cried for what could have been.
I cried because I did not want to leave.
But they did not want me to stay.
{C}. Exit Wounds: Landscape of the “Arab Beach” in Akka, occupied Palestine (August 2023).
Rasha Al Jundi (1984) is a Palestinian documentary photographer and visual storyteller. Her work generally follows a social documentary pathway. Rasha is the 2022 Ian Parry grant recipient and a graduate from the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York.
Follow her on Instagram: @rashaa_jv, Website: www.rashajundi.com
