To Philly from Gaza: ‘When you’re a refugee, it feels like you don’t belong anywhere’

I was born in 1951 in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and was stateless for most of my life. It’s hard to describe the experience of living under occupation. When you’re a stateless refugee, you have no rights. You’re almost invisible.

Leaving Palestine was difficult; at that time, Palestinians were stateless, so didn’t have a passport. But in 1984, I came to the United States on a student visa to complete a master’s degree at the School for International Training in Vermont. I returned to Palestine after my degree, but in 1991, I was offered a job as a program officer with the American Friends Service Committee, which is headquartered here in Philadelphia. Each time I left Gaza, I got a travel document and a 72-hour transit visa to Cairo from the Egyptian government, which controls one of the border exits from Gaza. I needed to show the Egyptian authorities a letter from my employer or my U.S. student visa to prove that I wasn’t planning to stay in Egypt.

When I arrived in Philadelphia, I was 40, and came with my wife and four children, ages 7, 8, 11, and 12. My colleagues at the American Friends Service Committee helped me figure out all the necessities of life when I arrived, like how to buy a car and rent a house. This was all really helpful, but we would have benefited from some orientation on how to handle the basics of life in Philadelphia, such as how to enroll our kids in school, qualify for a mortgage, and navigate social life. It wasn’t easy to find affordable housing near good schools; in the end, we chose Mount Airy, which was less safe 30 years ago than it is now.

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The Palestinian culture is so different from here in the U.S. Our culture places a lot of value on the role of extended family; here, family is important but everyone is an individual. I was already fluent in English when we arrived, but my wife and children were not, and the language barrier made it hard to connect with people. For a while, we felt isolated from our community. But eventually my wife got a union job at a medicine factory, and with my job, we improved our living conditions. We moved to Andorra in 1995 and purchased our first home in 1997.

Yes, moving to Philadelphia was hard, but the positives have far outweighed any challenges. Living under occupation, I always felt unsafe. I never knew when the Israeli army would impose a curfew or when bombs would start dropping, or whether soldiers would pull me out of my home in the middle of the night. Here, I could sleep in peace.

Living under occupation, I always felt unsafe.

In 1991, I became an American citizen. I’ve been proudly voting ever since, including in the 2022 midterms. This is a dream come true. I feel that the person I voted for represents me, and I’d never had that feeling before becoming an American citizen. You don’t know what having a voice is worth unless you know what it’s like to be deprived of it.

When you’re a refugee, it feels like you don’t belong anywhere. But now I can say I belong here, in Philadelphia.

Atia Moor lives in Roxborough.