I had a considerably traumatic early few years of my life. At the age of 11, my Mother decided to take my brother and I back to her home country of Palestine after the death of my father. As you can imagine having lived my whole life in the United States this was a tremendously traumatic proposition. Not only had my father just died but I was now faced with the prospect of having to leave my friends and home to move to a new country. The close proximity of these two hardships was what made it particularly difficult. Having lost my father, the subsequent move, and the obvious trauma associated with the two is something no one should experience at such a young age.
Losing my father was immensely traumatic for my little brother and I. Especially
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The main reason was that she wanted to move closer to her family who were mostly in Palestine after my father's death. But just because it was necessary does not mean that it was easy. Having recently lost my father I didn't think anything else could happen that would make things worse. I, of course, was woefully wrong. The first year of living in Palestine was one of the worst years of my life even without the obvious reasons. My mother planning to eventually bring us back to the states enrolled us in a private American school called Al-Najah. Being a new student in any school is hard enough let alone a foreign one. Thankfully, I did speak Arabic quite fluently and didn't run into many language barriers. My biggest issues came in the form of cultural differences. Having lived in the U.S.A my whole life I didn't understand any aspect of the Palestinian culture. As you would imagine this made it very difficult to make friends and do anything but stay at home. I remember one time this kid I had just met at my school was asking me if I wanted to go to something called a "Sahra". I had no idea what that was at the time, so naturally, I decided to act as if I couldn't make it. This made miss out on an opportunity to meet friends just because I didn't know what a word meant. I later came to know that a Sahra was simply a late night outdoor dance party prospective grooms would have the night