My Palestinian grandmother grew up in the economy of war, she taught me how recipes were resistance. Her guidance prepared me to fight for my people.

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AMMAN, JORDAN — My grandmother cooked her first meal at 8 years old in her home in the old city of Jerusalem. Her mother had received word that a relative had fallen ill in the Palestinian town of Khalil, our family’s place of origin, and had to leave urgently. That evening, Teta Rashida made mahashi warak ‘enab — Palestinian stuffed grape leaves, eggplants, and zucchini. She remembered being unsure what to do with torn leaves and, in her uncertainty, went next door to ask her neighbor. “Stack them on top of each other,” her neighbor advised, the same trick she would later teach me and my cousins when we were learning to roll grape leaves ourselves. “You never let a leaf go to waste.”

This simple trick — passed through generations from my great-grandmother’s neighbor to my grandmother to my aunts and now to me and my cousins — became a quiet inheritance. I know it will be passed down to my children and my cousins’ children, too.

In 2016, as I prepared to leave for my bachelor’s degree in Washington, Pennsylvania — my first time living abroad — I asked my grandmother to teach me how to cook. I remember her guiding me through the basics of every type of dish: yogurt- and tomato-based stews, chicken and lamb, rice and bread. Each time we prepared a dish together, she would say, “‘Eedi a’ ‘eedek (إيدي على إيدك ).” My hand over your hand, meaning whatever I do, I have her strength to support me. She told me her mother had said the same words to her when she first learned to cook.

In the kitchen with my grandmother, I was learning more than recipes. Over a frying pan, she would tell me of her teenage years under occupation in Palestine, of hiding from the Israeli army in the ‘60s, of how her political ideology grew from her love for family and country. Teta seemed most alive while cooking, her movements free and fluid as she danced while mixing ingredients, her hands following rhythms learned over generations. Cooking gave her freedom.

Teta told me about her father, Abu Rawhi, a musician in Jerusalem, who played the violin for her when she was a child. In a softened tone, she recalled her second memory of him: he had told her, “Our land is occupied, and no dignified person, who is worthy, allows their country to be occupied without fighting for it, without fighting for freedom.”

She carried these words with her, just as I carry her words with me. إيدي على إيدك. My hand is over your hand. “My father planted in me a love for Palestine, a love for freedom,” she said. And in the kitchen, with her guidance — asking me to check the salt, pass the sumac, or adjust the heat under the musakhan — she planted that same love within me.

When I was in middle and high school, I wrote poems about freedom, inspired by stories of how Teta and my grandfather met and fell in love. “You must not just watch the news,” they would say over the dinner table. “You must make the news, in your actions, in your own fight against occupation.” I pieced together my family’s history in Palestine, collecting bits of their stories like precious stones — from my grandparents and parents, from friends and strangers.

Growing up in Amman, the reality of occupation was never far away, though I didn’t live under Israeli rule as so many of my family did. My father and aunt spent a good part of their childhood in Lebanon. My grandparents once described shielding my father with a winter coat from debris falling after an Israeli attack as they walked the streets. My grandmother even taught me to cook totmajeh, a Palestinian take on horaa osbae, a meal she once prepared for an entire building of displaced people left hungry after an Israeli assault on Lebanon.

Despite the hardships, my family’s love for Palestine never faltered. When I was in New York City last year covering the Columbia “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” I would video call my grandparents. They were watching with me as students laid down the banner renaming Hamilton Hall, “Hind’s Hall.” Teta, over the phone, said: “They said the old would die, and the young would forget — the young did not forget.” My grandfather, Jido Subhi, said: “Tell them (the students) I say ‘Free, free Palestine’.”

My sentiments about Palestine were shaped by my surroundings. At 17, as I was on my way to my grandmother's house, a taxi driver asked me where I was from. I said Khalil, though I had never set foot there and had only seen it through family videos and scattered YouTube footage. He pressed on, asking, “What fruit is Khalil known for? What is its main dish?” When I could not answer, he left me with words that guide me to this day: “My dear, you love Palestine, but you do not adore it. Because if you adored it, you would learn everything you can about it.”

I was not offended. His statement was a gift. There was a stark difference between being from Palestine and being Palestinian, the latter being a universe of an identity, requiring work and dedication to remember it. The former was something I simply was; I had almost no power over how I felt about that identity.

My conversation with him, and cooking with my grandmother became part of the tapestry of experiences — alongside darker ones like watching the continuous massacres in Gaza, forced displacement in the West Bank, the deaths of girls my age at the hands of the occupation — that crystallized the importance of always carrying my Palestinian identity, of letting it shape everything I do.

I started to understand what adoring Palestine meant. It was when a woman from the Palestinian village of Bil’in collected spent tear gas grenade shells in 2014 and transformed them into flowerpots. She created a living memorial in her village of those protesting against the Israeli army and honoring their leader, Bassem Abu Rahmah, who was killed in 2009 when an Israeli-fired tear gas canister struck him in the chest.

Spending time in the kitchen with my grandmother became just one of my ways of adoring Palestine.

Cooking was a link between past and future, living history infused into every grain of rice and every squeeze of lemon. The kitchen became a tactile language, one that resists the constant threat of Israel’s attempted erasure of Palestine. This act of reclaiming space through food was not only about cooking in a Palestinian kitchen but about creating a metaphorical space for dialogue, an act of resistance in and of itself. For Teta, food was more than sustenance; it was an entire world, both culinary and revolutionary, where each step and each ingredient carried deep political weight.

When I asked her why she always invited us to cook with her, she replied, “I wanted you to have agency, a weapon against whatever you’re up against.”

“I had hoped,” she added, “that you would not have to live under occupation, that your life would be more predictable, more stable.” In many ways, my grandmother and parents secured that life for us. My experience was steeped in privileges other members of my family didn’t enjoy — and privileges most Palestinians couldn’t imagine. The dream Teta pursued is one I inherited, extending its implications to every person living under occupation and resisting it.

In 2023, when I moved to New York City to pursue my master’s in journalism, I witnessed the silencing of Palestinian voices in my field. I saw students losing jobs and opportunities simply for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. Even the most basic assurances were stripped from those of us privileged to survive. My grandmother’s dream of equality and freedom, nurtured for so long, has spilled over into me. It remains unfulfilled, but it shapes everything I do. It is no different in the kitchen. My grandmother reminded me that Palestinian cuisine was not just a skill to carry, but a way to fulfill my role in resisting Israel’s relentless attempt at annihilation.

My grandmother grew up with what she called the “economy of war,” a strategy that others have named the “economy of resistance.” This concept is familiar to any colonized people, an unfortunate but necessary form of intersectionality. For Palestinians, it is a means of survival and defiance, a way to achieve economic self-sufficiency while supporting the broader anti-colonial struggle. It was about sustaining our people by ensuring that, at the very least, their need to eat was always met.

Historically, Palestinians practiced agriculture that respected the land, drawing from it without exploitation. Before the Nakba, Palestinian agricultural cooperatives were central to economic and social life. Yet Zionist colonial efforts decimated these systems. With nearly 1 million Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their lands and an 87% decline in agricultural cooperatives, Palestinians had to find new ways to resist, especially through culinary practices. For Palestinians, survival has always meant more than physical endurance; it’s about preserving a way of life, a deep-seated knowledge of who we are in a world that continuously questions our right to exist.

Resourcefulness, in response, became a way of life. “Palestinians were known for the way they stored their greens and dried their tomatoes and fruits,” Teta said. “Necessity is the mother of invention, so we learned to make do with what we had.”

As I learned to cook, I began to see this culture of preservation in every step, from planning meals to storing ingredients, each gesture a quiet act of resilience. Intention guided everything. My grandmother often said the most meaningful gift you could offer those you love was a meal. “Hang your pot every morning,” she would say — a phrase meaning, in essence, to ensure you are always prepared to feed those around you.

For my grandmother, the kitchen was not a place of confinement; it was a place of agency, a battleground for cultural and political survival. She spoke of cooking as an art, not a chore, a process where scarcity could transform into richness. When I questioned whether domesticity confined women within patriarchal norms, she would tell me it was revolutionary, especially in the context of resistance.

In our world, everyone had a role to fulfill, and cooking was one of the most essential, establishing her as a powerful, indispensable part of her community. This tradition gave her agency, and she cherished it. “Cooking was not just for women,” she said, recalling her time in Lebanon when an entire building rallied to prepare a meal. “Men were cutting the dough and boiling the lentils.”

In a broader sense, the Palestinian kitchen embodies a refusal to be erased. The recipes I cook have survived wars, displacement, and exile; they hold immense power. Each time I stand over a stove, and the aroma of my grandmother’s spice blend fills the room, I think of the countless others who have prepared the same dish. Lauded Black American author Toni Morrison spoke of “rememory” — a form of memory that transcends individual recollection, suggesting that past events and traumas persist in the world, ready to be encountered by others. Cooking, I realize, is a form of rememory, a way to summon the enduring impact of collective experiences that survive despite attempts to erase them.

When I moved to America, both in 2016 and in 2023, cooking became a way to share the Palestinian struggle, a bridge to conversations about identity, history, and values. “Food is always a way to start a conversation,” Teta said. “It’s more than nourishment; it has historic, artistic, and creative value.”

This past year, in the quiet of my New York City apartment, as news of the genocide in Gaza played and replayed on every screen I owned, cooking became a personal sanctuary and a way to ground myself. One winter evening, my best friend invited me to join a small gathering on Christmas Eve. I had been at a protest earlier, emotions running high, and I welcomed the company as a way to ward off isolation. I made maqlubeh, fatoush, and khiyar bi laban, packed them carefully, and brought them along. As we ate, I shared stories about each dish, recounting how I learned them from Teta. I told them about Palestinians in Gaza, like journalists Motaz Aziza and Hind Khoudary, who, even while enduring the worst of what humanity had to offer, would make maqlubeh and declare, “Maqlubeh is resilience.” They cooked and filmed themselves after months of covering the relentless Israeli bombing campaigns.

These conversations continued, deepening each time. They reminded me of what my grandmother called nafas — a word that translates to "breath" or "spirit" but holds a deeper meaning in Arabic. Teta used to say that nafas was what made each dish unique, a quality of care and intention that could transform simple ingredients into something memorable. It was an energy you could not measure but could feel. For me, nafas became more than a technique — it was a way to bring my heritage into each meal, to remember.

Today, my grandmother is 76 years old, and she often wonders aloud why she is still alive to witness so much suffering. “I thought I would live to see liberation,” she says. “I often ask God why he kept me alive to witness my people being erased, to witness a genocide?”

More than a year has passed of intensified violence and destruction, and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians continues — perpetrated by Israel and backed relentlessly and persistently by the United States. In July 2024, The Lancet, an esteemed medical journal, estimated that deaths in Gaza could reach 186,000 Palestinians as a result of Israel’s ongoing genocide. As I write this in November 2024, mainstream news outlets continue to count the death toll at 50,000. Palestinians have been killed in an endless cycle of aggression that never seems to be enough for Israel and its Western allies, because they refuse to acknowledge the human toll of their policies. But I refuse this dehumanization; I find myself questioning how we can bring Palestine into the most intimate corners of our lives.

I had spent months of this year in New York City. I attended and covered protests, covering the historic Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, where tents were set up on campus in solidarity with those in Gaza who were under siege. In those moments, I found Palestine in both the public and the private — within the crowded streets of the city and in the quietest parts of myself.

I watched footage of tents burning in Rafah on my phone while standing among tents at my university. Israel killed so many of my colleagues in Gaza, while journalism friends and fellow students grappled with the complicity of Western media in covering — or failing to cover — the genocide unfolding before us. I saw people in solidarity with Gaza handing out food and water to protestors, while families in Gaza waited in line with empty pots, hoping to fill them, rarely being able to do so. Food donations arrived steadily at the encampment, yet I could not forget the images of people in Gaza risking their lives to reach flour for a single meal, only to be massacred by Israeli occupation forces.

Moments like these, where distance seemed to collapse, were all-consuming. Watching Israel’s systematic, brutal campaign against Palestinians forced me to reconsider choices I had once taken for granted. To see such calculated cruelty inflicted on people who share my history, my identity, my family’s stories, reestablished my responsibility to act, to fight for freedom. This weight, this responsibility, often feels overwhelming, as though even our collective voices will never be enough. Yet in those moments, I remember my grandmother’s guidance — the quiet resolve she taught me.

I remember watching her in the kitchen, her hands moving instinctively as Al Jazeera played softly in the background. She would explain the news over a meal, weaving her insights, trying to make sense of the pain we watched on our screens. Even when I was thousands of miles away, she guided me, giving advice over the phone as I recreated the meals she taught me. Her insistence that I nurture a deep, unwavering adoration for Palestine — guiding me wherever I am, inspiring me to bring Palestine fully and unapologetically into my life — is something I have carried forward always.

I adore Palestine. My people are my compass, and I carry my rightful land fully into my life, with conviction, and without apology. During my graduation in May, I wore my Palestinian thobe, gifted to me by my mother, instead of my robes. I had the late Roshdi Sarraj and Saeed Al-Taweel’s names on my graduation cap, taking them with me across the stage, as a reminder of our colleagues who have been murdered by Israel.

From the streets to the classroom, and especially in the dining room and onto the plate, I felt it was my responsibility to make Palestine, all of it, my identity, to make my life inseparable from the legacy of my people. Doing so felt like my contribution towards liberation.

I became a hand of Palestine, held by ancestors carrying a past that they refuse to let be erased and holding the hand of those who will carry Palestine forward with me. My hand over theirs and theirs over mine — a reclamation, a declaration, and an intifada. A memory of life before me and a promise of life beyond me.