A privileged teenager found shocking deprivation yet deeper identity in the West Bank.

Evidence

His parents decided that it was time to shake things up for their son, so in the summer of 1998, when Omar was fourteen, they sent him and his brother to the West Bank for three months. Beit Iksa was like nothing he had seen before. Underdeveloped and poor, it was a shock to the young teenager. Even the ghetto parts of Chile had paved roads, he thought. Here they spoke a language he didn’t understand. Everything was alien to him. Even the food was different. And yet, despite being jumped by some local boys on his first day there, he could feel his Palestinian side growing. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 737

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes The Namesake’s themes of second-generation identity negotiated across homelands, and the ‘Palestinian side growing’ against material alienation resonates with Parable of the Sower’s idea of identity forged through hardship.
• SEED: Potential essay: the paradox of diaspora identity strengthening precisely through deprivation and alienation — being jumped by locals yet feeling more connected — as a counterpoint to heritage-tourism narratives of identity.