My new place

Today, Nami and I signed the lease to our new apartment (!!!). I was surprised by how empowering it felt, to sign my name, claim something as my own, to know that I'm willing and excited to commit myself to another year in this place. I feel grateful to know that I can. Just a few months ago, when my future was even more uncertain than it is now (I can hardly believe that), I remember I sat with Nami at Think, nursing my coffee with one hand and holding hers with the other. We were so upset at the thought that our lives as we knew them could be over.

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I saw a movie this weekend called, "Salt of this Sea"  for the Tribeca Film festival. It's a modern-day take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of one Brooklyn-born Palestinian woman, Soraya (played by one of the most powerful poets I've ever experienced, Suheir Hammad). And back in January I saw the brilliant and moving "Waltz with Bashir." Okay, first thing's first: I don't know enough about the history or politics of these cultures to understand the intensely personal and complicated conflict between them. All I know about either is the friends I've made who happen to be Israeli or Palestinian in heritage. In a lot of ways, seeing films or stories about it makes me feel ignorant and naive; these are histories that have shaped the world as I know it, yet I know so little about them. But sometimes I feel lucky to hear these stories and see these faces with clear eyes. Because I don't know enough to make judgments, I have no biases; they're just people. They're all people who have lost land and lives and stories and heirlooms and time because of... I don't know. Maybe I don't know the reason because there are too many to count; maybe I don't know the reason because there aren't enough.

One thing I've noticed over time, though, is that so many of my friends share this intense sense of belonging to a people and place. My Jewish friends are so closely connected to their heritage that it seems innate; my Palestinian friends voice their ties to their history so fiercely and ardently that it feels like they're defending their mothers. I wondered for a long time how they could be so impassioned by a place many of them had never been to, of a time they never knew. 

But I guess that's what happens when your land, your history, your people have been threatened for as long as you can remember. It's what you've been told since you were a kid: That this is your identity, but some people don't think it belongs to you; That this is your family's house, but not; That this is your homeland, kind of. 

I've never felt tied to my "homeland." I thought that every first-generation experience was like mine-- a limbo between two places you didn't quite belong to. I thought that the fact that I was never quite Indian enough to be Indian or American enough to be American was all part of the motions of assimilation...I had to be a little homeless now so that one day, my kids might completely belong to someplace. But here are people my age who have been born and raised thousands of miles away from their roots and yet feel a sense of belonging that is so foreign to me. It's an amazing thing, to see someone fight for a place she doesn't know but is somehow utterly connected to.

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When I was walking home in the rain the other night, I was thinking about that...and I thought, maybe one day I'll love a place or feel so rooted to a world that I am willing to fight for it, risk for it.  And as I trudged through the rain and headed home to make myself a can of soup for the third night in a row (times are tough; we're in a recession, people!) and email my boss to tell him I'd be at work late and study for another final and call my mom to assure her that I indeed am still alive after another day in this big, bad new york city, I realized that I already do. 

That's why signing that lease for some four-story walk up around the corner matters so much. I'm deciding to belong to someplace...I'm taking what's mine.