WEEK 4:

AYA & NADA

In this episode, we meet Aya, 22, and Nada, 22. Aya is a Palestinian-American who grew up in the US and Jordan, and Nada is Palestinian-Emirati and grew up in the UAE. The duo met at NYU Abu Dhabi, where this interview takes place. Interviewing each other, they discuss how you know you're Palestinian if you've never been, the decision and narrative around removing the hijab, reputation as a limitation of love, how community love and independence complement each other, prioritizing mental health, chosen family, and pleasure beyond sexual satisfaction.

NADA & HANA

In this episode, we meet Nada, 24, and Hana, 24. Nada and Hana grew up in Amman together and share a 16-year friendship. Interviewing each other, they discuss being Palestinian and never having visited Palestine, claiming their Palestinianness in diaspora, the challenges of finding community outside of Jordan, the hardest part of themselves to love, confronting pain and discomfort to heal generational trauma, and how their families view love and intimacy across generations.

As part of 'Palestine, IN-BETWEEN', we present the LOVE & INTIMACY video series. Over the course of the next several weeks, we’ll be releasing short films that center intergenerational outlooks on love and intimacy in Palestine and the diaspora, with discussions highlighting—but not limited to— disconnects, desires, relationships, trauma, teaching, learning, and beyond. This series includes intimate interviews and conversations held between Palestinians who share a close relationship, including old friends, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, lovers, cousins, and more.

Conversations explore what has been inherited and what is being shed, as well as the ways in which taking care of ourselves and each other is to care for the collective—now and into the future. Dialogue moves beyond topics of love in the human-to-human sense, extending to the deep connections one shares with an object, time, smell, memory, land, and ritual.

For descriptions and links to all of the videos in this series, click here.

'Palestine, IN-BETWEEN' is presented by CPS + LIFTA with Lena Mansour and Cher Asad with support from The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the Center for Archaeology at Columbia University and the Columbia Global Center | Amman.