Ahmed Massoud: home – my joy, my soul and my tormentor

The first time I visited Dublin was 10 years ago when I was researching for my PhD on Irish and Palestinian literature. I was searching for similarities between the two nations, trying my best to convince myself that we were not the only nation in the world to have gone through challenges and misconceptions about our identity. I was an enthusiastic young man, wanting to prove that we too had hopes like all others, and that maybe we will, like the Irish, have our identity preserved in some form or another.

Fast forward 10 years and picture me standing on a border check point at the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and Palestine. There was no Palestinian presence as I went through the crossing, armed with a British passport, hoping to enter my homeland to take part in the ninth annual Palestinian Festival of Literature.

I had since abandoned academia and become a playwright and novelist, enthusiastic to see the West Bank for the first time ever. I had never been able to travel there mainly because I am from the besieged Gaza Strip. I hadn’t seen my family in Gaza for over three years since the Rafah border with Egypt has been shut. My parents are ill: they still haven’t met my three-year-old daughter as they are stuck in Gaza – I can’t see them and they can’t come out to see me.

I was not allowed to enter Palestine. The Israeli soldiers kept me for a whole day, questioned me, shouted at me and then stamped my British passport and wrote my Palestinian ID number on it. “Go back to Gaza,” they said. A soldier with a big gun escorted me out and put me on a bus back to the Jordanian side. I cried because I really wanted to take part in a literary festival with my people, I cried because I was only just under a three-hour drive to Gaza yet a world apart.

I came back to London feeling like a complete stranger, still a British person but on paper only. My British passport did not help me to get into Palestine just because I am from Gaza. The rest of the group went through on their American and European passports but my home was my tormentor. Where I came from was stronger than any paper I could hold.

And as I try to find my feet back in London and in the wake of Brexit, I have become a stranger in my own world with no home or past to look back at. The redemption of this injustice came through an email invitation a few weeks later to take part in Palfest Ireland this month, to appear in the Irish National Theatre, to read from the same novel, to feel a normal human being again, a writer who wants to talk about stories and words. I find myself 10 years later still searching, but this time not for my nation, but myself.

Ahmed Masoud’s debut novel is Vanished – The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda. He is a writer and director who grew up in Palestine and moved to the UK in 2002. www.ahmedmasoud.co.uk He will appear with Kila in the Peacock Theatre, 8pm, Friday, July 15th as a PalFest Ireland event www.palfestireland.net. Tickets www.abbeytheatre.ie