The following are fragments of memory that my mind still retains, forcibly, perhaps. They are scattered between the years 2002 and 2010, revolving around my annual trips to Palestine, or what we refer to as the West Bank. My mother, brother, sister, and I would cross the Palestinian-Jordanian border via the King Hussein Bridge/Al-Karamah Crossing, which we simply called “the bridge”.

I was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1998. My earliest memories started taking shape around the age of four. I’ve chosen the period of 2002-2010 because it represents a phase of my childhood when I interpreted moments of confrontation with the Israeli occupation in a way that went beyond the usual descriptions. I used to observe the details around me, and see them later in my dreams. To me, the space of the “bridge” was always one of fantasy; the meeting point of my diasporic and moored soul, a spatial fracture keeping me from my father, who couldn’t cross the bridge from the East Bank to the West Bank, where my extended family is.

Waiting for some door, any door, to open, our gray Kia Sephia tailed a long queue. It is early in the morning, the sun is yet to rise. The sky is cloaked in a pale shade of blue, and although we are in the midst of July, a cold breeze caresses our skin. I can smell moisture in the air, my stomach is upset, growling. This morning, here on this border, I feel nauseous – as always. As I wait, the queuing cars crawl slowly towards the gates. Luckily, soon they jolted forward, accelerating. We enter through a gargantuan metal gate to a yard overcrowded with cars laden with travelers’ suitcases. My father opens the rear passenger door and says: “hurry up, daughter, we don’t have time. Get off and hold on to your mother’s hand. Never let go!” I leave the car, my father gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. He sits behind the wheels, shifts into first gear and drives away.

I stand with my mom, little sister, and little brother, watching his car fading out of sight. My mother, barely 25 years old, turns her attention to finding a porter who can carry our luggage on a trolley. Someone shows up, he loads the suitcases on a rusted, battered three-wheeler he is barely able to move. My mom tips him with a handful of coins, asking him to take good care of the bags.

We stand in yet another long queue. Dozens line up in front of us. Everything moves according to the slowest rhythm, and soon the July weather starts to get warm. My mother keeps my palm firmly in her hand, streaks of sweat drip from my fingers. There is a fly hovering over my right cheek. It refuses to go away, no matter how hard I swat it away!

My mother guides us, holding hands with my sister, brother, and myself. She insists we keep holding each other’s hands and keeps a watchful eye on the three of us. In the waiting room at the Jordan border, she asks us to rest on the metal seating. She takes a few steps to fetch some white card she needs to fill out. She reaches for her bag to find a pen. My mother starts writing numbers and letters on the white paper. She takes out her passport, her green ID, and an orange Israeli permit that has the photos of my siblings and me on it. I watch and watch, waiting.

A few minutes pass before my mother is finally done going through the documents. An elderly woman approaches us, asking for her pen to borrow. She, too, has her life to list on such a piece of paper. My mother gives her the pen, and waits while the woman takes her time finishing her writing. Eventually, mama tells her to keep the pen and, holding our hands, heads off to catch the buses sitting outside.

On our yearly travels, I start noticing how this routine labor at the border-space weighs heavily on the young woman my mother was. She has to watch for us children, while her eyes scan that metal cage where travelers' suitcases are tossed after searching. We have grown accustomed. Once we reach the transitional area between the Israeli and the Jordanian border, we quickly find the closest seats, not moving unless mother tells as so. Mother moves about quickly, fetching our suitcases, filling-out the documents, all the while muttering her favorite prayer: “Oh God, return to me what I lost.” For her, all the suitcases are lost, only until their owners reclaim them.

My siblings and I sit there waiting as mother goes to what I always imagined as a big cage: a green mesh of iron wall separating us from her. My mother stands accompanied by a sweating porter. She hands him his tip, asking him to look for what I remember to be a dark-brown leather bag on which my mother scribbled “Rabah Barghouti - Deir Ghassaneh.” As I watch her, I think how much I hated this space, where I am torn between Deir Ghassaneh, the home with which I am bitterly parting, and the East Bank I so long for where the promise of seeing my father lies in Jordan.

When I was in the fifth grade, my uncle gifted me a silver necklace in the shape of a heart. It was the first piece of silver-jewelry I owned, and had my name engraved on it. I loved it so dearly.

Once on a trip back from Deir Ghassaneh, we were again at the Israeli-Jordanian border in 2008. In the waiting room, my mother had me and my siblings sitting on metal chairs that faced the faces of young men in a picture. Looking from that poster on the wall, they seemed young, barely in their mid-twenties. Scribbled in red over their faces was an ominous message: "Palestinians wanted since the eighties!" A handsome financial reward was promised to anyone who would approach the occupation with the whereabouts of these now-grown up, perhaps dead, men. I remember staring at their faces trying to calculate how much time had elapsed since the two young men joined the ever-growing list of wanted Palestinian men. Could they still be alive? I wondered.

My thoughts were interrupted by my mother’s voice, asking that I follow her to the next checkpoint. After crossing the Israeli border and reaching the Jordanian border, I realized that the bag I had at the start of the trip, where I had my beloved necklace and pieces of clothes for my little sister, was missing. I looked around and asked people, but alas, it was nowhere to be found. I had a painful sore throat and an overwhelming urge to cry, feelings that have stayed with me to this day.

Once upon a crossing, in the summer of 2008, we found ourselves stuck in the Israeli waiting room with hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow travelers. The Israeli border control decided to close the border gates, expel the Palestinian workers, and herd all the travelers into a vast waiting room. No one knew why. All we understood was that the soldiers suspected an explosive device might be in some traveler’s suitcase. We had to wait for hours, but even though I despise that space and the time wasted shuffling between “here” and “there”, it was not the bitter cold, not the thought of the supposed-bomb, but rather the chattering of teeth that I remember the most. It was again the middle of July, but somehow the waiting room resembled a freezer. I remember rubbing my hands and feet the entire time, shaking in my summer dress. Three hours passed before it finally dawned on the Israelis that the suspect device was merely a copper pot someone would use to make his Egyptian coffee!

At the Israeli border outside the main compound, we, arrivals, stood in line. We were way into Ramadan, that Muslim month of fasting, and we suffocated from the heat. I remember the sudden sprinkles of cold water sprayed on my face. I remember looking around to see where it came from, and seeing a huge fan with sprinklers attached to it. I was taken aback by the sight, especially when I noticed an Israeli soldier holding his M-16 directed towards us, keeping an ever-suspicious eye on the bodies queued up in line. One of these soldiers opened a bottle of water and started drinking from it. I remember looking at the sight, at the absurdity of it all, how strict-policing goes with fleeting gestures of the oppressor’s kindness. I remember someone remarking from the back, “the Jews are more compassionate towards the Arabs than Arabs are to their folk.”

Raneem Ayyad is an architect, researcher and an artist. Her research focuses on the correlation between the built environment and socioeconomic dynamics with an interest in Palestine and Jordan. She holds an MA degree in Human Rights and Arts from Bard College-New York (2022-2024) and a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural engineering from Birzeit University (2021).