How can one remember somewhere they've never really been? That question is central to author/educator Elena Dudum's work creating an archive of her ancestral home, Palestine, and writing about the diaspora experience and fight for Palestinian liberation.
In her debut memoir, They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful, she reflects on her family's history, from their days as successful orange grove farmers to their 1948 immigration to San Francisco to growing up with a father who taught her to value where she came from. She also explores her own radicalization, after a visit to a modern, occupied Palestine led her to carry on her father's research about what the nation was like before it was colonized.
Before her highly anticipated book hits shelves on October 27, Dudum shares an exclusive excerpt with Marie Claire about the emotional labor of her research and how she became committed to writing about Palestine.
I missed back home. Not San Francisco, but Palestine. It had been 10 years since I’d traveled from one holy site to the next. I decided to visit in my own way, on Google Maps. Click by click, I walked through the streets of Ramallah, past banks, jewelry stores, markets, and followed the path down the main road toward Rukab’s Ice Cream, known throughout the West Bank for its stretchy, mastic-laced scoops. When Taita does speak about Palestine, she most often talks about missing the texture of this ice cream.
My blinking cursor hovered over the storefront’s hot-pink awning, which read Rukab’s Ice Cream, Since 1941. It’s my family’s frayed claim to fame back home. Rukab was our original last name before our family tree split after my great-great-grandfather, perhaps great-great-great-grandfather, adopted a nickname that somehow morphed into Dudum. As always, there are three versions of the story and nobody ever agrees which one is correct—something about bloodshot eyes that weep, or a drunken relative high from eating fermented grapes, or seeds from a tree used as gambling chips. No story adds up—except the bloodshot eyes. A friend looked into it for me and found that the word Dudum in Arabic refers to a red sap that comes from a tree indigenous to Palestine. When the tree’s bark is cut or wounded, it exudes a thick reddish resin, as if the tree itself is crying tears of blood. Like the tree, Dudum men have been known to weep, leaving their eyes bloodshot and glazed. Siddi would cry when watching his grandsons play mediocre high school basketball or when all of us grandchildren wore matching pajamas on Christmas morning. The sheer fact of our existence made his eyes well.
I clicked on. I typed Gaza into my Google Maps page and landed on a deserted playground. Like a video game with a hard edge to its map, the program allowed me to click only one step past the slide before I was forced to click back toward the swings. Apparently, Google needs permission to bring its camera cars into this “conflict zone.” Israel has never agreed.
After weeks of sleepless nights, the only person I wanted to talk to was my father. I wanted to tell him that he was right. That it wasn’t paranoia, the not-seeing had been enforced, all the way down to the street view of a playground in Gaza. But I knew the moment I did engage I’d receive an explosion of information or fear or enthusiasm. I didn’t know which I dreaded more: his guarded silence, or the avalanche he’d unleash the moment he sensed I was ready to join him. Even the simplest of questions could lead to an argument, because when it came to Palestine, one of his children was always going about it the wrong way. There was also the shame. Who was I to ask for all his resources now after thirty years of avoidance? Still, I needed answers. During a phone call, when my father appeared in a pleasant mood, I delicately asked him what he loved most about our time in Palestine.
“That young boy winning Arab Idol. Do you remember?” he began. “I was very, very proud that night. I was so happy for everyone. They were vindicated. And we were there.” He paused.
“The orange groves, of course. But visiting my father’s house. That was remarkable. All of us came from one small home where four families and three generations lived together. And here we are.” I hummed in agreement. “Their house is on a street named after my grandfather, Jiries. Remember? I have a photo of the street sign and it says ‘Jeries the Teacher,’” he said. I knew the photo he was referring to. I’d recently tried to locate the house in Ramallah and found that the street had been renamed. I also knew, after some research, that the street had not been named after our Jiries, the one who died in the orange groves. He was not a teacher. He was a man of the land. I softly explained to him that I didn’t think it was his grandfather; I had already looked into it for him. My father was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know.” He sounded dazed. We weren’t FaceTiming, but I was sure he was looking up at the sky. “I’d like to think he was a teacher, though. Because I’d like to think of myself as a teacher. And I think I’m a lot like my grandfather.” I didn’t want to argue with him. So I changed the topic.
“Andrew told me you have a transcript from when Siddi was interviewed by the Department of Justice,” I said, opening a conversation I knew would likely go sideways. As with his collection of magazines, he’d always been protective of these documents. He’d led a Freedom of Information Act request after Siddi’s death and didn’t like being asked for things as if his hard work were nothing.
“Yes,” he said, his tone shifting from its dreamy haze. “It’s very interesting.” I perked up. I wanted to see what the federal examiners had asked my grandfather during his immigration interview.
“Why?” I asked.
“It proves everything,” he said. “There is some nasty stuff in there . . .”
I grabbed my laptop, opened a blank document, and began typing.
When he heard my keyboard’s click-clack, his voice sharpened.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Just taking some notes.”
“Are you writing about us?”
“No, no. I’m just doing some research.”
“About what?”
Where to begin? I could have said.
“Something about Palestine.”
“Well, leave us out of it.”
A family photograph of Dudum's grandfather.
After we hung up, I received a text from him about his collection of magazines, which I had continued asking about.
I shared them with you. No one else is likely to ever look at them. They’re yours.
I took this to mean that whatever I was working on, I should keep going.
In a folder titled “Palestine Old Magazines & Dad’s Book Excerpts,” I found hundreds of scanned documents going back to 1783. His collection circled one idea: Palestine existed, Palestinians existed, and here was the proof that this land had never been empty. Like me, he was consumed by the question of whether Zionism could be considered a colonial project. His magazines, most of which were dated before 1948, outlined how the new Jewish population enjoyed its first taste of colonial enterprise. In a 1938 issue of LIFE magazine, one article read: “The Jews, a race supremely adaptable to city civilization, have taken on their first colonizing job in Palestine. They could not have picked a tougher spot to begin.” Another article read:
“The Jews who have succeeded in settling in Palestine have had to overcome fantastically difficult obstacles of climate and terrain as well as politics . . . By intensive agriculture and massive irrigation programs they have made Palestine’s arid soil bloom with vast citrus groves . . . But an even more courageous and dangerous job was the carving of small communal outposts out of hostile territory where guards, stockades and watchtowers are still necessary protection against Arab raiders.”
Across my father’s archive, the story was almost disarmingly simple. Headline after headline described the Jewish immigrants as colonizers, pioneers, or modernizers forging bright futures—efforts, the magazines claimed, financed by outside capital, particularly from the United States. The truth was laid bare in black and white decades before the world learned to call it “complicated.”
Palestine and its people were presented as a challenge to overcome. One magazine stated: “The Arabs are still struggling up from medievalism.” The language was unmistakable—half wonder, half warning. Palestine was described as a place of “wandering tribes” and “ancient customs.” The journalists who wrote about Palestine sounded like the missionaries and surveyors who once wrote about the American West. They were romantic when describing the land and dismissive when describing its people. To them, the Arabs there were both relics and obstacles, proof of what progress must replace. In some instances, the magazines countered their own accounts.
One issue called the settlers pioneers, the next called them terrorists. The tone shifted only when the bombs landed too close to the British, most notably after the King David Hotel bombing. Before 1948, journalists used the word “terrorist” freely to describe the Jewish underground—the Irgun, the Stern Gang, the Haganah—names printed in LIFE and TIME beside images of smoke and rubble and dismembered body parts. But once the state of Israel was declared, the language changed. Terrorism became liberation. The vocabulary flipped overnight, and history pretended not to notice.
In every sentence my father underlined, every word he highlighted, every exclamation point he scribbled in the margins, I saw myself. And there was the proof, all of it, right here.
In every sentence my father underlined, every word he highlighted, every exclamation point he scribbled in the margins, I saw myself.
Over the next few weeks, without fail, I’d receive a text from him, as if he sensed I was struggling to make my way through the collection: Elena, go through all the links I’ve sent you. It’s page by page for each book and article. Make the comparisons. There’s gold in that material. I’d thumbs-up the message and keep going. By now he had concluded I was writing about Palestine, aimlessly but writing, nonetheless. Though he had recently told me to stop.
“I don’t want you to write about Palestine, I never did,” he said one evening over the phone after I’d asked another question about his father. “You need to be careful.” As always, his mind went to the worst places. Murder, stalking, exile. As if we weren’t already in exile. He once asked me where I learned to catastrophize. I didn’t answer.
“Then why do you keep sending me this material?”
“I have information to share if you ask. It’s your call. But leave my father and me out of it,” he said before hanging up the phone. Every time he told me to stop, he’d text me another article or a memory of how he’d once felt as a young boy trying to engage with his refugee father. Bottom line, he texted me one afternoon, my father did not prepare me. So I went out of my way to prepare you. I never knew what to reply. Sometimes he would text me advice: 3 words 4 ur back pocket: Expansion, Occupation, Provocation. I’d like the message, letting him know I was still listening.
Other times he’d ask me how I was doing, and when I’d reply that I was tired, he would respond: keep writing.
In the spring of 2023, at an art gallery in Chinatown, I met another Palestinian. For years, these encounters had a way of jolting me out of myself, as if I’d come across a mirror. I always imagined other Palestinians would say something I couldn’t say to myself, words that might soothe the ache I felt each time I read a headline about another midnight raid in Gaza, another journalist shot to death, another village burned down.
But this kind of reunion rarely happened. Instead, the Palestinian man asked: “So when did you get angry?” Laughter tore out of me before I could catch it. By now, I’d barely been leaving my house except for the two days a week I needed to commute to Columbia and teach. I was still counting the dead in Palestine, refreshing databases to see the numbers climb month after month. I didn’t know where to start.
“I think I was born angry,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I think there comes a point in every Palestinian’s life where they become angry, and I’m always curious what tips them over the edge.”
I realized then I had lied. I wasn’t born angry, not about Palestine at least. I did have natural tendencies toward anger; my closest friends had grown used to my random primal screams, even when mued by a pillow. But the coals of Palestine, I hadn’t let those burn until recently. I’d been my own kind of occupying force.
I left the art gallery and texted my father. I wanted to know when he started collecting his magazines, where he found them, how he knew where to search. I’d been searching on Google for evidence like a novice. How long had he been piecing this all together, this small pile of history he knew no one cared about?
Years, he replied. I asked again how he found them.
Research. I dig deep. Every possible source.
I told him I was just curious to know what year he started. I wanted to know at what age he too got angry. Had he always been angry? Or was it after reading all of this, searching on eBay and in random used bookstores in Cork, Ireland, that he realized the size of his grief?
My thumbs hovered over my keyboard. I couldn’t ask him any of this. It was too earnest, and I didn’t want to become his therapist. So instead, I asked again what year he started collecting.
Please stop, leave me alone, he replied.
The coals of Palestine, I hadn’t let those burn until recently. I’d been my own kind of occupying force.
Palestine was following me everywhere. In the middle of the night, I’d wake up thinking I needed to call my friend Rayan, though there was no Rayan in my life. For the rest of the day, I’d walk into rooms and forget why I was there. Rayan, Rayan, I need to reach out to my friend Rayan, I kept thinking to myself. A line on a to-do list I could never cross out. It took me a week to realize the Rayan I had been thinking of was the little boy who’d died of a heart attack in front of Israeli soldiers.
On my walk to yoga, I noticed graffiti scribbled at the bottom of a lamppost: Free Palestine. Underneath, someone had added from Hamas, now crossed out and replaced with from Israel. On the subway, when I’d spot someone wearing a keffiyeh, I’d smile—only for them to look bewildered that I was making eye contact. I obviously needed to get out of the house more, so I joined a coworking space.
At The Center for Fiction in downtown Brooklyn, a British woman named Donna showed me around. She asked what I planned to work on at the Center. I told her it was something to do with Palestine. By now I’d stopped caring about the reactions to my disclosure. She gasped and shared how she had a friend who was Palestinian who recently found an old book with pictures of Jaffa’s orange groves.
“That’s a coincidence,” I said. “I’m actually trying to write about my family’s orange groves in Palestine.”
“You’re Palestinian?” she asked. I nodded.
“Bless you,” she replied. I was confused. I had not sneezed. When I looked at her, I saw she was crying. No. Not crying. Sobbing. I peered into the reading room beside us, hoping someone was catching this exchange.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she kept saying as I patted her on the back like she were a baby who needed to burp.
“It’s okay,” I repeated.
“It’s so awful what’s happening over there.” I agreed, it was awful.
She continued sobbing and apologizing. I wanted to tell her it was not the first time I’d consoled a white woman crying about Palestine. This was becoming a trend; Palestine was frequently in the news after Sheikh Jarrah. I had joked with friends that we were now a trending topic, that our cause was about to go mainstream. They never laughed as I had. Through it all, rarely was I the one to cry about Palestine, because what could I possibly cry about?
She asked how I was doing and I told her the truth. I was exhausted. I immediately regretted this. I should have told her I was gutted, devastated, unraveling. But it all felt meaningless.
“It’s okay, really, it’s okay,” I assured her again. I wasn’t sure what I was saying it’s okay for. That she cried in my presence, that I was taking care of her, or that I was not blaming her, this kind British woman, for the world’s utter lack of humanity? I thought about adding, It’s not like you did it! But that wasn’t exactly accurate in this context either.
“You’re stronger than me,” she said, drying the last of her tears. I smiled because it wasn’t strength. It was something primal. It was anger and compulsion and ache. Most often it was simply numbness.
From then on, every time I walked into The Center for Fiction, Donna would greet me with her sheepish smile, which I always returned. Frankly, there was something soothing about watching a white woman sob over Palestine. Someone had to. Though I quickly concluded I couldn’t continue my daily research on Palestine, counting the dead, amongst the living. I’d arrive in the morning ready to work, but after two hours of clicking from one database to the next, I needed a nap.
I decided a project would do me good, and that project was painting my room the perfect shade of sage green. In line at the hardware store, I noticed Arabic music blasting from the speakers. It was modern and hip, nothing like the old tracks I had heard repeated at family weddings. The man at the counter was bopping his head to the tune and singing along. I suddenly forgot why I was in line or how this was my third time spending money on paint.
“I like the music,” I said when I got to the front. He clacked away at his register.
“Where are you from?” I asked. He looked up from his paperwork and, without giving me a once-over, said, “I’m from Palestine.”
“Me too!” I gushed. “My grandparents were born there—Ramallah and Jaffa.” He kept sorting through his receipts. He was so assured, so certain, so uninterested in this conversation. I pressed on, “What about you?” He told me the name of his village, but all I heard was that it was in a refugee camp in Gaza, which he had escaped seven years earlier. I nodded, immediately ashamed of my life. I changed the subject and told him about my painting dilemma. I just can’t figure out which shade of green! Paint is so hard! What would you do—do you paint? I kept saying, following him down the aisles. I hated myself. It was clear he didn’t like me either, that he thought I was a spoiled Manhattan girl, and there was no use in correcting him because I am a spoiled American.
“Have you ever been back home?” he asked while packing up my purchases.
“Yes, I have”—I was still thinking about Gaza and how he used the word escape—“but it wasn’t what I thought it would be, or as beautiful. It was . . .” I paused, looking for the right word. “Sad.”
He smirked and shook his head, somehow disagreeing with the one thing I knew to be true of Palestine: that its precarious existence was, at the very least, sad.
“No,” he said, “back home is always beautiful.”
Copyright © 2026 by Elena Dudum. From THEY TOLD ME BACK HOME WOULD BE BEAUTIFUL: A Palestinian Memoir by One Signal Publishers, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.