Meet the Nomad

So this is it. I’ve started a blog when I said I never would. And I’ve strarted it when the act of blogging seems to be on the down. But then again I’m always the last one to follow the trend…usually when its come and gone I run after the bandwagon thats left about a year ago.
Anyway…who am I?
Well I’m Amaal. I’m effectively an Arab Israeli (although I consider myself Palestinian) having been born in Haifa, Israel. Haifa, built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, with its hot summers and rainy winters and the Carmelit (Israel’s only subway) was home until I was five.
Then we moved all the way across the world to San Francisco, California, the city with the Pacific to the west, the Golden Gate to the north and San Francisco Bay to the east. I felt right at home there. Was it California’s Mediterranean climate, with its mild, wet winters and dry summers that reminded me of Haifa? Maybe.
I formed most of my childhood memories there. Walking along Spreckels Lake on the north edge of Golden Gate Park, paddling in the waters of Aquatic Park, trips to the Museum of Modern Art (baba’s attempts to ‘enlighten’ us) when all my sisters, brother and me wanted to do was chase each other. Where I used to lay awake at night listening to the screen door swing open and shut in the breeze. Where we had countless bbq’s in our small back yard that was dotted with lemon trees in pots and ended in a sun deck and fire pit which somehow accommodated at least twenty people at a time (and twenty was when baba had scaled down).
My parents loved nothing more than to entertain their friends. And they had friends from all over. There was this adoring old American couple who baba always invited. They always brought with them a bottle of Port and gave it to my mother. The first time this happened my mother was slightly confused and offered to pour them a glass each. They smiled cheerfully and told her that they didn’t drink and that it was a present. My mother never had the guts to tell them that we don’t drink either thinking it would appear rude and so she put it to the side. San Francisco was home until I was sixteen. By that time we had accumulated enough bottles of Port wine to get a small fortune. Instead my father got rid of most of them as thank you presents to a whole load of people at work. The rest were left in the kitchen for the next occupants of the house to enjoy
Baba then got a job in London, England. And we moved again. London didn’t sit well with me. It was too gray. It made me depressed. When it rained I missed San Francisco and used stare out of my bedroom window that looked out onto our garden where mama had planted lemon trees in her attempt to recreate our yard back in SF. When the teacher would make a line in a red pen under the words that I used American spelling and would say Its not wrong but…you should try and use the British forms I would grit my teeth and wish I was back in my old school. I missed my old friends, I missed my old life. Two years passed and I was meant to start university. Except I didn’t get the grades. I had messed up but that was because I hadn’t tried.
Instead I took up the offer of a Lebanese pen-pal in Liberia who said I could spend some weeks with her. Weeks turned into months and months turned into years. Two years to be precise. And so Liberia became my home. It became my home in the midst of its second civil war. My mother wailed down the phone telling me to come back to London. I ignored her. London wasn’t for me I told her. Ok, she would say, then go back to SF. SF wasn’t for me anymore either, I said. It had been years and people change and I wasn’t in contact with anyone anymore. I would change the subject and tell her I was working at a school teaching English. And that I was volunteering with a food programme. She ignored me. Travel the world then, why are you staying in that God forsaken place, she would scream. I would ignore her, mumble that I had to go and put down the receiver. When the fighting moved to Monrovia in mid-2003 my mothers cries rang in my ears and I fled to London.
I hadn’t realised how much I missed my parents and my sisters and brother until I saw them at the airport. And so I’ve been here ever since. I actually like the gray skies of London. I re-took my A-Levels, passed with flying colors colours and have earned myself a degree from Oxford. I have just come back from a trip with an NGO working in Liberia to try and support rape victims, a crime that is prevalent there. It was rewarding work, even though at times I was reduced to tears. In September I’ll be starting my MSc at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and well, the world seems a brighter place for me right now…

Anyway people of the blogging world, remember to:
LOVE generously. PRAISE loudly. LIVE fully. - Elias Porter