I AM ONE OF THEM.
I was born in Roskilde in 1974. The ancient Viking city where Danish Kings and Queens are buried.
30 min. after my birth, I was transferred to Rigshospitalet, a highly specialized facility in Copenhagen. I was born with an umbilical hernia and needed immediate surgery.
The surgery was carried out by a Greek surgeon. A refugee who had escaped the Junta in Greece. My parents are from Türkiye, and they were nervous. At the time there were political tensions between Greece and Türkiye.
Surgery went well and I spent a couple of months in an incubator. My Mom commuted every day between Roskilde and Copenhagen. She stayed with me from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. In the evening, she would return home to her sleepless nights in Roskilde.
My Mom would cry and I would cry when I for unknown reasons didn’t want to latch on to her breasts. Sometimes babies just want to be listened to and witnessed. I stayed in the incubator overnight knowing I was not home. I felt it in every cell in my tiny body. I was not in a bad place. I felt warmth and friendliness from the strange faces and voices around me, but I was not where I was supposed to be. I was in the wrong place.
A couple of months later, the Greek Doctor told my mom that she was going to receive an Easter gift. I was fully recovered and my Mom could finally bring me home.
In 2012, I was a fully grown woman in my late 30's. I was about to embark on a four-week journey to the West Bank, Palestine, when my Mom told me the story of the Palestinian nurse. All those years ago when I was a tiny baby in an incubator, he had given me comfort and care in a rough and vulnerable time. He tried so hard to give me a sense of safety and feeling of home. All those years later my Mom still remembered.
My journey to Palestine was a creative art project supported by a Danish non-governmental organisation. We were going to run computer game workshops for teenage girls in three cities in the West Bank, teaching them how to make computer games based on their own stories and experiences. In our project application we had emphasised the importance of being female role models in a male-dominated industry. That women can create computer games, be creative and solve hard technical problems, as long as they have a safe environment of support.
I was going with a group of White industry colleagues. I was full of curiosity. As a group we were all very excited. The extra hours we had put into the project, simultaneously with our busy careers, was finally going to be realised. We were prepared to the best of our ability.
After a nerve-wrecking immigration entrance at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, we hopped into a pre-arranged taxi with a license number plate that was allowed to drive in both Israel and Palestine. We were nervous. At the checkpoints between Israel and Palestine we would have to show our passports again and be ready to answer questions about why we were here. Luckily, the Palestinian taxi driver knew a small road through the border fence that didn’t have any security that day.
Upon arrival in Ramallah, West Bank, we had to buy local SIM cards for our phones. The salespeople in the shop were friendly and asked us where we were from. When we said Denmark, they were fascinated, because Denmark is a small country far up in the North. My White colleague was sure that the salesman was flirting with her. She thought that he was “suspiciously friendly and curious” with her. I was completely unconvinced about that for three reasons: Firstly, she seemed to think that everybody who was nice to her was flirting with her. Secondly, in my opinion he was just friendly. He is used White people working for non-governmental organizations entering the West Bank, and leaving again. Thirdly, my Mom had reminded me how Palestinians are friendly people.
When our phones were ready to use, I received the warmest welcome in a text message. I can't remember the complete message, so I am paraphrasing here. It said something along the lines of
"Welcome to Palestine. The land of delicious olives and the smell of jasmine flowers".
I was taken by surprise. What a heartfelt message to send through a piece of cold technology. Technology, or any system for that matter, can be a transactional experience, like “give us your data, and we give you free products”. I understood that is not the case in Palestine. Palestinians genuinely want people to feel welcome and at home, which is remarkable because they themselves are consistently denied a home. What a breathtaking message to send, when they themselves are refugees in their own homeland.
We ran three big workshops across the West Bank, in the cities of Ramallah, Tulkarm, and Nablus. It was in Nablus, in the Balata refugee camp, that I started to question the validity of the workshops we were running.
As a child of the 1st generation of Turkish “guest workers” in Denmark, I grew up in White Danish culture. I don't feel at home in Denmark, but at the same time, that is all I have ever known. I have navigated in Whiteness all of my life. I looked at my White colleagues and started to question my presence as a ”role model” in the project. Am I One Of Them? Or am I just a token for diversity? And I looked at the Palestinian girls and wondered, if I was one of them because of our shared cultural history.
Mahmoud was the director of the cultural center, where we were running the workshop. Mahmoud was born in Balata Refugee Camp. A refugee in his own homeland. He was fortunate to escape the refugee camp, get an education and work abroad. He had a good IT career in the US, but decided to return home and establish the cultural center in his native refugee camp. He wanted to give back to his people.
During the workshop, I had observed how the young girls struggled to learn and complete the most simple tasks. They struggled to stay focused and work independently. I tried my best with Google translating my English to Arabic. The translations sucked, but they understood the meaning I wanted to convey. The girls wanted me to sit with them until the task was done. I had to guide them at every micro step of the way to complete the tasks in the computer programs. I was puzzled and asked Mahmoud.
He reminded me that the young girls are all suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Mahmoud told me that the girls have never had a full night's sleep since birth. Every night they are terrorized by the Israeli Occupation Forces. Gunshots, loud voices and screams. The Israeli Occupation Forces break into homes in the middle of the night and randomly ask for ID cards. They threaten families. Abduct children, men and women and put them in administrative detention and isolation without trial. For weeks, months and years. All the young girls have continuous traumatic stress. Every girl in the workshop has lost a brother, sister, father, mother, uncle or aunt. The stress is never “post”. You would not know that, observing them from a distance. They were laughing and giggling like normal teenagers. Wearing colorful clothes and make up. Listening to music and chatting away on their phones. It wasn’t until I sat with them, that I understood they had difficulties learning. Terror and displacement is in the air they breathe.
I thought about the story my Mom had told me about the Palestinian nurse. The nurse that made me feel safe, while being away from home. And here I was, as a “foreigner from a small, privileged country far up in the North”. Standing in the middle of a group of young Palestinian women that needed and deserved all the safety, dignity and care in the world that I couldn’t give them.
It was also in Nablus I learned that I was “one of them”. When the girls learned that I had a Turkish, non-Western cultural background like them, they changed their behavior like I wasn’t anything “special” like my White colleagues.
At the time I understood it as "I was no longer an interesting person" as we had similarities in our cultural heritage and history. The Palestinians had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, and eventually, the empire collapsed. The Ottomans were also colonisers, so I was confused.
What I noticed was their full attention on the White "role models". The White "role models" that continuously displace them as an indigenous People. The White "role models" who keep stealing their land, resources, and culture. The White "role models" that preach and talk about human rights, and at the same time sell out the indigenous people of Palestine.
Today, when I reflect back perhaps the girl's indifferent behaviour towards me actually meant that they felt safe. I wasn't a threat. They didn't have to justify or explain their customs or culture to me.
I was one of them.
Today I realise that the workshops we ran across the West Bank were just another White Coloniser project. The girls had fun, no doubt about it, but the narrative of White Saviorism that has been forced upon me since my childhood growing up in Denmark, I was now imposing on another indigenous People.
The whole premise of being a team of all-White Women (including me and my internalised Whiteness) going to the West Bank to be "role models" for young girls who have generational traumas of land theft, apartheid, dehumanisation, war, and socio-economic struggles, is pure White Saviorism. It is ongoing colonialism.
We were “the cool Western role models” who had no experience nor understanding of their trauma. Nor the humility to learn their true history. We arrived with the little knowledge we had consumed through Western media and white-washed history written by colonisers.
As the genocide in Gaza unfolds for open cameras, I am witnessing and grieving. I feel powerless, as I observe the void of denial around White friends here in Denmark. Many look away. They say “It’s complicated.” I can not look away nor stay silent. I feel like an outsider again. Would they stay silent too, if something happened to me?
I am grieving the suffering of my Palestinian brothers and sisters. I wonder what happened to the Palestinian nurse and his family. Is he and his loved ones safe? And I am thinking about the young girls, and wonder how their lives unfolded since our brief encounter in 2012. No computer game experience can make them feel safe right now.
Here in Denmark, where I sleep through the night, all I hear are my own inner voices and memories reverberating hauntingly back to me.
I AM ONE OF THEM.