Salt of This Sea

For the first time in a long time, I felt a sense of belonging. I cannot believe that a movie would do that, but somehow it touched me enough to have me thinking about issues that I thought that I had long ago abandoned.

I have always struggled with my identity. It is not as if I thought I was German or something. I understood I was a Palestinian who was born in Kuwait and raised in Texas. I understood my culture, and I understood the culture that I had assimilated into, but I didn't always feel comfortable in that environment. Sometimes I attribute that to the fact that my Mother was super social, making it difficult to develop a separate identity outside of her circle, but overall, I never developed a comfort level with Americans, Arabs, or Arab Americans.

This movie expressed all that and more.

Here was this young woman, born and raised in Brooklyn, looking for, and in many ways finding herself, in her home country. She meets a young man who should have been very clear about his identity, I mean why you would question your identity when you are born and raised in your homeland is new to me, yet he is clearly trying to rid himself of what this identity entails.



Their journey is beautiful, because besides their issues with identity, they find love. This is not simple to do in a place that dehumanizes them, humiliates them, and degrades their existence in every way.

At the end of the movie, I looked around to see the same expression on every face on the room. In that brief moment, I felt like I might belong.