Fakhri Abukhater Memorial Scholarship

One might argue that the most fluctuating aspect of our lives is our sense of identity. While we cannot change where we come from or who our families are, our personalities, beliefs, wisdom, and maturity are constantly evolving. Our sense of identity is a mosaic made up of both significant and seemingly trivial experiences. The way I speak and joke was shaped by middle school friends I have not seen in years, my sense of style has been influenced by strangers I have only briefly passed, and I wear funky jewelry because I was once intrigued by a girl on the internet wearing strange earrings. Still, there is nothing more significant to my identity than the country that lives in my dreams, my duas, my hopes, and my soul: Palestine. I have lived in the West my entire life. In Arabic, anywhere outside of your homeland is called الغربة, pronounced al ghurba, meaning “the foreign.” I have been a foreigner in the place I grew up, in the place I was born, and in every place I have ever visited. I have never been able to call one place home without hesitation. From the moment I could form coherent sentences, I was taught my history, my language, and my roots. As a child, I was aware of the genocide taking place in Palestine, but I did not fully understand its extent. That understanding deepened as I grew older, through my parents’ teachings and through my own research. As I matured, I became more outspoken. I gave two speeches at the Indio City Council challenging a discriminatory resolution, wrote an article titled “Unseen Terror: The Palestinian Genocide” for my high school newspaper, and used social media to educate my peers on political and moral issues often omitted from school curricula. Although I have never set foot in the land of my ancestors, Palestine, I feel that the blood running through my veins acts as an invisible string connecting me to the olive trees that once stood beside the towns where my grandparents were raised, beside the home that no longer belongs to us. No matter how old I get, my love and pride have never wavered, and that connection has shaped every part of who I am. It is something I carry with me openly and unapologetically. My name is Lana Al Kiswani, and I am eighteen years old, currently in my third year at Arizona State University. I graduated high school a year early and began dual enrollment during my junior year, so by the time my peers graduated, I had already earned my Associate’s degree. I also spent a year in Guangzhou, China, attending a language program at South China University of Technology to study Mandarin. Oddly enough, I have found that the further I am from home, the closer it sits in my heart. I am studying psychology, and I hope to specialize in neuropsychology. The brain and all of its tiny neural connections have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I plan to continue my education and eventually earn a PhD. I want to contribute to research, but I also want to become a therapist for Muslim immigrant women. That goal is deeply personal to me. One fear that always stopped me from seeking therapy was the fear of not being understood, of having my culture, religion, and worldview misunderstood or flattened. The United States is a deeply individualistic society, while Palestinians are part of an intensely collectivistic one. Family and community are not side aspects of our lives. They are everything. I want to give future generations what I always wished I could have: the feeling of being understood. I want to help little Muslim girls who feel that they could never truly belong, and immigrant mothers who feel as if they have landed on a foreign planet. I want them to feel seen, understood, and at ease in a world that so often asks them to explain themselves before it offers them compassion. My Palestinian heritage is not simply a background detail of my life. It is the foundation beneath so much of who I am, what I value, and what I hope to become.