Issues

Palestine

Aseel Elborno

Posted on Saturday June 2, 2007

It’s interesting being a Palestinian because no matter where you go or how long you stay, you remain a Palestinian. I am a Palestinian refugee…twice. My parents had to leave Palestine for Kuwait. I had to leave Kuwait for the US.

My earliest memory of Kuwait is in the pool of our apartment building. I was 5 years old and my brother was still a toddler. He had decided he wanted to go swimming and fell into the pool. My mother had put my brother in my care for the five minutes she needed to talk to the water guy.

In those five minutes, I had managed to let my brother fall into the pool. I ran to get my mother and she came to rescue him. Since then, I think about my life and how it would have been had my brother not survived that fall. Two years after that event, my American-born brother was our savior. It was 1990 and the Gulf War broke out.

I remember crying as I heard bombs flying over our building and hiding under my brother’s crib, proclaiming that I had no intention of dying. A few weeks after the Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait, we received a call from the American Embassy telling us we would be evacuated because of my American brother.

Thank God my mother was smart enough to insist that one of her children be born under the Red, White and Blue. About 100 families boarded the plane that month, not knowing exactly where we were going or for how long.

I like to tell my friends that the plane ‘stopped in Raleigh’ which is how I ended up growing in North Carolina. My father has always been a leader, and so upon arriving to NC, he began organizing paperwork for all those families so that they could apply for political asylum.

We ended up getting citizenship through my father’s job, but there are still families out there who are waiting…waiting…waiting. We came to the US with two suitcases, two toddlers, and a pair of newly weds.

I look back on those days and wonder how my parents managed, how they did not despair and turn right back around. My father ended up getting his Masters in Civil Engineering at NCSU. We blessed the Wolfpacks by sending two more Elbornos after my father.

I earned my BA in Political Science and my brother is currently an undergrad there. I know that everything I will ever accomplish and succeed in will be because I have courageous parents. I’m indebt to my family in so many ways, but mostly for creating so much stability in such an unstable world. Now, I am an Arab-American, a Palestinian-American, a Muslim-American. I am blessed.