Rula and Sima by Amanda Fawadleh
Parallel Story #8
Rula & Sima Kuhail سيما كحيل
Palestine to Canada
Palestine to UAE
This parallel story was put forward by the Jerusalem Center for Women for Movement
Both Rula and Sima are originally from cities that suffer greatly from the Israeli Occupation, which played a significant role in their emigration stories. In fact, Sima and Rula have many things in common, the two of them were born in Jerusalem. However, Sima is originally from Gaza. Both of them got married and left Palestine with their husbands. Moreover, both Sima and Rula are extremely ambitious self-made women, who studied and worked abroad. And finally, the two women always wanted to return to their homeland; Rula now lives in Palestine, whereas Sima is working towards becoming a licensed landscape architect in Canada, hoping one day to return to Palestine and utilize her experience towards building a free Palestine.
Rula’s story is first. To skip to Sima’s story click here.
Rula’s Story
A Palestinian Jerusalemite, who was born in Jerusalem in 1968.
Studied sociology at Birzeit University.
Before the end of Rula’s first year of university, the first intifada had begun. Universities and educational institutions were completely closed by an Israeli military order, and the entire Palestinian territories have become a war zone. During this period and at the beginning of her second year, she traveled to Britain and Norway to represent her university, and participate in student conferences in order to raise awareness on the policy of ignorance that Israel is trying to impose on Palestinians by closing universities and educational institutions.
Rula met a Palestinian student who studied electronic engineering in Britain. They agreed to stay in contact.
Upon her return from Britain, and due to the closure of universities, she volunteered in a media institution. After nearly two years she became a correspondent for one of the Arab radio stations. Rula learned a lot from everyone around her, and after the reopening of Palestinian universities, she studied and worked at the same time.
In her third year of university, the young man whom she met in Britain proposed to her. Due to his father’s migration to an Arab country at the end of the 1950s, he was born and raised in that country. Neither of his parents was allowed to visit Palestine. Rula got engaged and after a year got married in Jordan, she moved to Dubai with her husband. It was very difficult for her to work there, as the visa she got didn’t allow her to, she tried hard to find a job, but to no avail.
Rula got pregnant with her only child after three years of marriage, and decided to go back to her family in Jerusalem to give birth to her child there, in order to be able to obtain an Israeli ID number for him. She used to hear a lot about the suffering of children who are born outside Palestine or Jerusalem in particular, as we are under the Israeli occupation and Israel's ultimate goal is to expel Jerusalemites in particular and Palestinians in general from the Palestinian lands.
She gave birth to her son in 1997, and here her real suffering began. The occupation did not allow her husband to enter Jerusalem. Moreover, the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem refused to issue a birth certificate for her child, as his father didn’t have a Palestinian hawiya (identity card).
For more than six months, she had been trying to obtain a birth certificate for her child so that they could travel and see his father. Yet all attempts were unsuccessful, until her lawyer told her that she could use her child’s birth notification to travel with him until the age of five. After that her child would not be able to enter or leave Jerusalem.
She traveled several times before her child reached the age of three, after that she returned to start the procedures for obtaining a birth certificate, and the suffering continued for more than two year. She and her child were in Jerusalem, while her husband was in the UAE waiting for them to come back. The occupier also denied her husband a visa to enter Palestine even for several days.
Her husband started persuading her to give up on the identity and the birth certificate, whereas she insisted on keeping her identity and demanding a birth certificate for her child who was born in Jerusalem.
Rula says: “We learned our biggest lesson as Palestinians when we left Jaffa and Haifa under the occupiers’ threat in 1948, as a result we became refugees all over the world”.
As a mother, Rula chose her child and his future over her husband. She got divorced and stayed in Jerusalem with her child.
Life was very hard, as the second intifada had begun, and the situation kept worsening. Rula was not able to get a job at the beginning. She started working from home as a news editor. After that she worked as a freelance journalist. Later, RuIa worked as a project coordinator and a media consultant with an American feminist NGO. She also worked in an American NGO specialized in the production of documentary films, after more than three years, Rula became a documentary film producer. A Palestinian TV channel offered Rula an opportunity to present a program that calls to benevolence, and urges social and family solidarity. After years, "Falasteen Al-Khair" became the main Palestinian program. Rula registered it as a non-profit charitable organization that has staff and an elected board of directors. This organization enjoys a good reputation not only in Palestine, but also in many other countries around the world.
Sima’s Story
My name is Sima Kuhail سيما كحيل, and if I was to shortly introduce myself, I would say I’m a Palestinian landscape architect in process, and a mother of two.
There is one question I usually struggle answering: “where are you from?”, although it sounds like a simple question, but its answer carries some layers of complications. When I am in Canada my answer is “I am from Palestine”, as simple as that, or so I think. While some people actually know where Palestine is and know about the Palestinian cause, I find myself either explaining that I am from Palestine not Pakistan, or that no Palestine and Israel are not the same, or actually giving a mini history lesson to the person asking and wanting to know a little bit more. Answering this question wasn’t easy when I used to live in Palestine either. I could not identify as belonging to one specific geographical area. I was born in Jerusalem in the early 80s to a Gazan father and a Hebron mother, I spent my childhood in Hebron, and grew up in Ramallah.
Although I am not a refugee, nor have I experienced their stories, but I can slightly understand their up rootedness. I have no access to Jerusalem the city I was born in, and I lost access to Gaza, my father’s hometown 21 years ago when the second intifada took place. I have just started my freshman year as a student of Architectural Engineering at Birzeit University. Commuting from Ramallah to Birzeit included no daily routine trip, we never knew if the road is blocked or not, whether to drive directly or to take long detours, commute with private cars or rely on public taxis. But for more than two years, all of Palestinian cities and villages were disconnected from one another, and there was no direct access, I remember carrying my final projects’ sheets and scale models in taxis to Surda check point, walk to the other end of Surda checkpoint, around 1 km, and then take another taxi to Birzeit. It didn’t matter whether it was sunshine, rain, or snow, whether the route was blocked by demonstrations, tear gas or simply refusing access by the soldiers at the checkpoints, the projects made their way to studios.
My professional work experience was as risky and full of adventures as my study experience. The thing about living under occupation is that you learn to adapt to any extreme measure by your occupier. I worked for the following 3 years in Ramallah as an architect, after which I married and moved to Riyadh, KSA. At that time women were not allowed to work in architecture, but I was able to work as an interior designer on fine end projects. I worked for a couple of years in firms before I had my first child, I never understood how crippling it is to live in a system that didn’t allow me to continue in a full-time job. Daycares were extremely expensive, the hours didn’t match any of the job’s hours, and I refused give in to the norm in Riyadh and leave my child with a home nanny. A year after I had My second child, I decided to work as a freelancer on private projects, and I was able to work directly with clients in Riyadh and Ramallah.
I immigrated to Canada with my family few years ago, where I pursued a master’s degree in landscape architecture. The study experience was different than that I had while in Birzeit. For starters, there were no checkpoints and military occupation in Canada. Second, I now have 2 kids, and a husband who mostly travels for work. My kids were part of my studio life many times during my 3 year study. They shared my working space, my classes, even my tests – at one occasion-. They shared my research activities, my site visits, and my community meetings. I am hoping that their memories of this time of their lives pushes them to persevere no matter what.
I wrote my thesis during the coronavirus pandemic, while on lockdown during the first wave, I constantly remembered the invasion of Ramallah city during my undergraduate study and the curfew imposed by the Israeli military in 2002. Back then there was no technology capacity to allow for online meetings and classes. Our classes, studios and tests were conducted in Sakakini Cultural Center during the few hours of curfew lifting each week. Thanks for the technological development, I was able to work remotely and defend my master’s thesis virtually. I graduated recently, and I’m working towards becoming a licensed landscape architect in Canada, hoping one day that I return to Palestine and utilize my experience towards building a free Palestine.
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