Translator: Yahya Mansour Reviewer: omar idmassaoud
When I was eight months old,
and at the time when we were going to my grandfather’s house with my family,
we had to pass a checkpoint called “Halamish Checkpoint”,
located on the lands of the village of Nabi Saleh.
There was a troop of the occupying forces settled at that barrier.
When we arrived, we heard a soldier saying:
“Abdelkareem, step out of the car and handover the girl to her mother.”
Since that day, and for 21 years,
I’m still waiting for my father to come back in that same car.
I stand before you today.
I, Rand, daughter of the detained captive in the occupation prisons for 21 years.
The daughter of Abdelkareem El-Remaway.
I stand before you today, and I grew up on prison messages.
The letters were delivered a month or two after they were written,
not because they were sent by carrier pigeon,
but because we were deprived of having them arrive on time.
I grew up on these letters that shaped my innocent relationship
with my father during his period of detention.
I won’t tell you that my childhood passed so quickly;
not at all.
It passed with contradictions and gaps from its first day till the end of it.
My first day at school, my first steps, my successes at high school
and my birthdays,
were all so empty.
One of my birthdays, the sixth,
was the visiting time for one of the prisons.
I went to prison intending to tell them that I was still five years old.
Because it was the legal age for children to see their captive fathers.
I entered the room where all the prisoners were gathered, and shook hands with them.
When it was my father’s turn, the soldier came and took me out,
“You’re already six years, you’re not allowed to enter,” he said
My childhood was full of questions:
Where’s my father? Why isn’t he around while others have their fathers around?
Why did I get up in the morning to catch the bus
that would take me to the Negev prison, Be’er Sheva, Ofer, Ramon, or Nafkha?
Why me?
My childhood was long, and a great burden was on me,
and it manifested in every letter I received from my father.
He said: “Study hard, Rand, because I want you to be one of the best.”
My shoulders carried the weight of the load, which was increasing
until I graduated from high school with a 3.7 GPA.
This GPA ...
(Applause)
qualified me in the field that I’ve always seen as a reflection of my father;
his reflection to join college, his reflection to take responsibility.
This field was in media,
which my father was unable to finish
because he was arrested during the last year of his studies.
I made the list of honors while I was at university three times.
(Applause)
I believe that the right to education is a state of continuity,
not only for the captive’s family, but for the prisoner himself.
After 21 years, my father was able
to receive a bachelor’s degree in the occupation prisons.
I did receive the certificate only two weeks ago.
(Applause)
All these details led me
to be able to volunteer in the Right to Education on Campus campaign.
This campaign revealed to me many details and the history of the university
through the continuous closures of the occupation,
where the university was closed fifteen times
in order to stop the educational process, but it reopened again anyways.
One of those times,
I was reading a paragraph written on one of the papers, it says:
“It’s not good to see a closed orchard.”
And so was the university.
The outcome of all these years, all this deprivation and all this loss
enabled me to set up my own project at the beginning of my first year
at Birzeit University.
I was sure that this project would be a message
to all prisoners’ children, their mothers, their wives, and everyone
deprived of a deceased or prisoner in the prisons of the occupation
This project is called “Sabar Project”, which is the cultivation of cactuses.
I was able to convey the message that all the captives and their families
are still alive despite deprivation and loss,
and that they live on rays of hope despite all those details.
In conclusion, those twenty-one years,
might for you, seem a short period of time,
but twenty-one years equals my life.
Thank you.