Olive to Cedar Trees
Thanks for joining us, Hanin,
I’m excited to hear you speak.
But one more thing before you go,
I’d like a short bio.
Maybe a small paragraph or two,
I said, “I’ll try to condense it down for you.”
“You can take a seat right here,” she said,
“We’ll come up with one together.
And you can tell me more about you; it helps me know
you a bit better.”
I sighed, as a familiar sense of dread washed over my brain
"It didn't start with me, you see.”
I continued despite having to
re-explain
my life story,
yet again.
“In Palestine, it started with the father of the father of my mother.”
Her head tilted, puzzled,
holding her ballpoint like a cigarette,
perfusely tapping it on her lower lip
“Oh, I thought you said it was Lebanon.”
I took another sigh, a longer one this time.
“Yeah… Annexation, occupation… one thing leads to another.
But you don’t have to put that down,
Or the fact that we were run over and shot at.”
“Like I said, one thing leads to another,
and history saw that.
Or you could say how many years we got bombed and how
the water was just-”
With a pause, I held back the back-burner pot in me that I'd forgotten was still boiling.
“You know what, scratch that.”
I took a deep breath.
“Just say I’m from Lebanon and we can move past that.
Because I will not be able to remain calm
When I remember that I had a pregnant mom
of eight months in 2006
Limping to a bomb shelter; doesn’t it make you sick?
I was only at the age of two,
But years went by and then I grew.
When I stepped outside,
And had to scootch
my stomach through
A narrow opening of the refugee camp like a coin slot,
I saw the soldiers, and then I knew.
It was going to be question after question after question
until I could get through.
And surely enough, I was asked for an ID.
In three chunks he spoke, glancing at me,
‘REF. U. GEE.’
I shook my head out of the memory.
“Anyways, just say I like poetry or something like that.”
“Hanin, just to make your bio stronger,
tell me more and we can make it a bit longer.”
I felt the back-burner pot rise to the brim.
“Look, the idea is not that hard to grasp.
No need for my whole Palestinian name,
just use my first and last.
No need to introduce the olive trees
or the destruction on every home,
For those need no introduction;
everyone should already know
of the boys holding slingshots and stones,
and the ice cream trucks with bodies instead of cones.
It’s a conversation beyond old,
But not as old
as Palestinian bones.
Generation after generation
and later down the line,
a cousin of my mother's
went back to Palestine.
Never in my life did it cross my mind
that there’s something worse than torture and death
combined.
When I heard about my home in Akka, Palestine,
It sent chills—no, no—daggers down my spine.
My home was not destroyed.
My home took no strike.
My home was not cleansed.
But my home did cry… when they made it a museum,
Framed it as history for their kind.
Furniture, clothes, pots, and pans
were in the very fingertips of their hands,
photographed by foreigners right in my own land.
As a settler gives a tour about our food and our dance,
going on about their culture, so exotic,
so grand!
So authentic,
that it was Balfour planned.
So when I tell you about expulsion,
What don’t you understand?
I’m not just born in Lebanon.
I’m born from acre upon acre upon acre of stolen land.
But if you need something written down for me,
Southern Lebanon, I was born and raised,
But be very sure to mention,
that my home is not that place.
I’m a Palestinian refugee attempted to be erased.
I’m a Palestinian refugee,
and my roots belong to the Akka sand.
From the freshest rivers to the saltiest seas,
That’s still my home and that’s still my land.
So please don’t mistake me for Lebanese
because I fled from the olive to the cedar trees.
We, matter of fact,
had to pull ourselves up from the straps of our boots,
Because we are Palestinian,
We are not from Beirut.
She said, “Hanin, the details bring your story to life,
But to fit all that in a bio is going to be tough.”
A stoic face molded across my tawny complexion.
“Just say I’m a refugee; that should suffice.
And a Palestinian refugee
should be more
than enough.”
I wrote "Olive to Cedar Trees" after being asked to perform a piece about my experience as a refugee in Lebanon. I thought, what better way to explain my life than by imagining someone who knows nothing about it trying to help me write my bio? A bio is supposed to sum up who you are in just a few sentences, but the poem uncovers the depth behind those few lines, helping the reader see why there’s so much to unpack. It's hard to condense all that history and emotion into a tiny paragraph, and that’s what inspired this poem—the idea of sharing everything I usually leave out, revealing my identity as a Palestinian refugee in a way that's deeper than what’s typically omitted.
Born and raised in Southern Lebanon, Hanin Moussa's love for poetry pulls her back to her Palestinian roots in Akka. Currently a junior in college, Hanin is pursuing a degree in Psychology with an aim to embark as a licensed therapist.