THINKING ABOUT HERITAGE

The world is a puzzle in itself and I have found it hard to pin down the exact meaning of the world. I am not talking about the linguistic meaning, as simply the dictionary states that heritage;


“features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages,
or buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance”.
-Cambridge Dictionary


So, we can say heritage is something that has been inherited from the past and still holds its value in the present day. This has raised a question in my mind; are all the objects we inherit, whether tangible or not, of equal importance? I don't believe so, but before me explaining this why, let me tell you a story…


The cotton bag tagged with blue


Back in 2004, I was eight years old and I was playing at my grandfather’s house. The aim of this story is not to argue that grandfather’s house was a significant place or one that should be preserved, so please don’t jump to conclusions bear with me for a little bit longer. In his house, my grandfather stored old things under the staircase, in a converted storage room diverting from its original purpose. Nothing was interesting under the staircase beside a few old floppy computer disks, not the ones that look like the save icon the one with a hole in the middle of it.

My brother and I used as frisbees in the hill which was at the front of the house. As a young child, the storage room was such a mystery to me, and I was always very eager to know what lay behind its door. But since my earliest memories, the room was always locked shut. One day my grandfather opened this mysterious room and took out an old briefcase covered in dust. While he took the briefcase to the living room which was the farthest room away from the store, the storeroom door lay wide open. During this brief opportunity, I snuck into the room, and as I had imagined it was filled with old objects. But there was one object that caught my eye, it was a cotton bag with a blue logo on it. The logo had the words “not for sale or exchange” under it and the bag was covered with a transparent plastic bag.

At the time, I wasn’t capable of reading the English letters, and my grandfather explained what they meant later on. I took the cotton bag out of the plastic wrap and ran out of the room, as quickly as I could get my legs to carry me. It's not that I was afraid, but rather the excitement of a new cape made me run so fast. So, I wore the cotton bag and imagined it as a cape and ran around the house.

At this point, my grandmother saw me, and I saw a weird look in her eyes, one that described a sense of joy mixed with grief.

She then asked me,

“where did you get this bag from,
the one on your back?”.
I lied and said I found it outside. She knew that I was lying but continued to speak:

“Your uncle used to carry a bag just like that on his back when he was three years older than you”, she said.
Then I asked her, “why was that?”.
She replayed,

“to bring sugar and other stuff too”
We stayed in silence for a brief second and then my grandmother asks,

“Did you know that we used to live in Palestine?”
And I replayed, “You mean us?”
“No, not you, you weren’t born yet; I mean me and your grandfather and for a short time your uncles too”; she explains.
“Why did you come here?” I asked.
My grandma exclaims,

“We were forced out of our land”

and at that moment the conversation ended as she stood up quickly rushing to the kitchen to check the oven. While I was getting up to start running around again, my grandfather entered the room with wet hands. While looking around the room for something to dry his wet hands-on, he exclaims;

“Come here you little monkey”, smiling kindly, and then used the bag on my back to dry his hands.
He then gave me a challenging stare and said;

“Do you know the English alphabet?”
I didn’t reply.
“Okay, I am going to tell you” he replied.
Pointing at the letters he says, “This is (U), and this is (N), and this is (R), and this (W), and this is (A), and it reads UNRWA”.

Then he smiled at me and told me to put it back where I found it. Once I had resumed running around, he gave a mild slap on my bottom and said lightheartedly

“run you little brat”.


Story’s and heritage

At first, when this story came to my mind, I thought that I should write about the bag itself. How it held importance and was a significant part of the Palestine refugee plight and heritage, even in its small way. But the idea of a UNRWA aid bag as part of the cultural heritage of the Palestine people struck me as absurd. It then hit me, as a kind of eureka moment, it’s not about the bag or the object or the buildings or the traditions themselves, it’s about the story they tell us.

The objects we inherit, whether they are tangible or not, work as a vessel to the story of the past. Therefore, allowing us to judge whether they hold or significant importance or not in our present. As by seeing the values they exceed, in my case as a 3rd generation Palestine refugee, this small bag, that I paid little attention to as a kid shaped my thoughts and feelings regarding the Palestinian crisis. Thus, transforming a small cotton bag into an important piece of cultural heritage, one that helps me as an individual to realize my roots, creating my vision, and paving my road ahead.