Reflections on Palestine from the Italian consulate
Today I went to the consulate to renew my passport. One of my two passports, I should probably say. I was waiting for my name to be called, sitting in the violently neon-lit waiting room with approximately twenty other people. I looked up and stared at the picture of our current president Giorgio Mattarella, hanging above one of the tills I would be called to soon. That is the thing with living abroad and having to visit consulates and embassies: they remind you of who's in charge of your home country when you are so far away you can afford to forget all about it. I am grateful to be able to do so because for some people, where they really come from is the only thing they can’t stop thinking about. It seems to me that the more places you officially belong to on paper, the less you actually engage with your origins.
Sat on an uncomfortably shaky plastic chair, I looked down at my hands holding my two passports, one British and the other Italian. I could not stop thinking of the fact that I have two passports, meaning I can realistically go anywhere in the world, at any point. No questions asked, just the buzzing sound of the eGate between my body and the baggage claim in a foreign land. My reality as a traveller, as a citizen and as a human being is not even remotely comparable to the lived realities of the majority of the world’s population who, due to no fault of their own, have not won the “passport lottery”. One example is the Palestinian refugee population, for decades now living in refugee camps across the Middle East and in the diaspora in the West.
My mind zoned out for a few minutes, bringing me back to a few years back when as part of a University programme, I was sent to Jordan for two weeks. Part of that trip involved visiting a refugee camp, and that is how I found myself in Jerash camp, commonly known by locals as Gaza Camp. The trip from Amman had not been particularly enjoyable and, as there had been a sandstorm just a few hours prior, the sky was half-covered by a thick blanket of sand and fumes. The camp is a few miles away from the historic site of Jerash, which would have been our next stop.
The van turned left abruptly from the main road, and the scene changed completely. No more palms and little shops on either side of the road, just broken-down cars abandoned on the pavements and piles of rubbish in front of dilapidated buildings. All felt as if it had suddenly stopped. Leaving the van, the feeling of uneasiness only grew worse. I knew there had to be a lot of people living in this Camp, but where was everyone? I could hear no voices, no traffic, a far cry from the loud Jordanian cities I had visited just a few days before. A cough here and there from my fellow classmates broke the silence and the utter sense of discomfort we were all clearly feeling.
While waiting for everyone else to leave the van, I locked eyes with a child of about ten, who was holding a white plastic bag. His eyes were inquisitive, probably reflecting his thoughts in asking himself why the hell a group of ten Western people had just arrived in his town. I wasn’t about to speak with him or with his mum next to him, and I would not have been able to anyways: I doubt I could get by with MSA in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. I could obviously not be sure of what he was thinking, but the misery and desperate state of our surroundings seemed to speak for him. I still think of that child every now and then, wondering what happened to him and his mum.
The camp was, well, a refugee camp. Not that I had visited any before then, but it was exactly what I had expected to see. I just did not feel what I had expected to feel. The sand in the air, sparse in the increasingly hot April day made my eyes water, though I often think my tears were due to something else completely, namely the sense of utter powerlessness in the face of such destruction and hopelessness. Not even my totally unearned white privilege can shield me from reality, once I face it. And rightly so.
To this day I am not certain as to why we were taken to Gaza Camp. The group and I played with the local schoolchildren, sometimes barefoot, sometimes only wearing socks. I forgot most of what I was told during the visit, about the camp and its population, all I know is that some of the scenes I saw still haunt me to this day. And to that very day, the day where I found myself sitting in the Italian consulate, about to be called to collect my brand new burgundy passport, knowing that so many people are not allowed to travel a few miles, let alone fly to another country or continent.
What is the meaning of travel when we are aware that these injustices happen every day, in 2024? I asked myself this question when I got called, finally, to the counter. Getting up from the shaky chair, I grabbed my gateway ticket to yet another country, ready to tick off yet another pointless box on my silly bucket list. I want to ask that child what he thinks of me, of the world, of leaving his camp. Does he even know there is a world outside of the dusty streets of Jerash? How did we manage to fail him and his people so deeply? It actually hurts to ask myself that. I hope to see that child become an adult outside of the physical and mental limits of his refugee camp, with a passport in his hand, ready to tick off some destinations off his own bucket list.
