Sabrin Hasbun, born to an Italian mother and a Palestinian father, hails from two distinct worlds, yet this crossing and fusion have resulted in a fiercely honourable legacy.
Sabrin Hasbun's new memoir, Crossing, is not just a chronicle of her parents and her own lives, but a profoundly intimate account that is a gift to the world. It will inspire and leave an indelible mark on all who read it.
Growing up between Italy and Palestine, she writes with candour and acuity, evoking all aspects of living without knowing where one belongs. The nebulous thread that holds her family together is made of a little bit of beauty, resilience, stubbornness, and hope.
This is not simply Sabrin's narrative, but a tribute to her brilliant parents —a testimony to brutal occupation and resistance in art.
Her mother, a woman from an oppressive village in Tuscany, and her father, a reticent Palestinian artist, met when neither could speak the other's language well.
And somehow, fate had that they would become inextricably linked, so much so that Sabrin's mother would adopt Palestine and believe in it until the day she died.
A mother's lontananza
Years later, Sabrin would passionately pen her family's saga as a meditation on identity, her mother's 'lontananza' — the longing for "a larger life" —and the myriad ways resistance manifests itself in the face of horrific violence.
Her mother's passing catalysed Sabrin's journey to reclaim her dual heritage. This memoir was born as a result of that, and so her story begins with her great-grandmother, the formidable Teresina.
It is with her that Sabrin's mother, Anna's fiery desire for 'lontananza', a term that encapsulates the longing for a distant and better life, was kindled. Teresina grew up to witness the rise and fall of the fascist regime in Italy.
Her rugged personality skipped a generation, as Anna's mother, Vittoria, was a timid woman in an abusive marriage.
Anna would inherit these powerful and headstrong characteristics, constantly plotting and envisioning her escape from her hometown of Ventoruccia. She did; she went to Florence to train as a nurse and met Rami, a Palestinian expat and art student. Her dreams slowly become realised, but at a cost she could never foresee.
Their enduring relationship would transcend all the boundaries of language, geopolitics, and culture.
In Palestine, Rami was a young man involved in university demonstrations and protests. Rami desperately wanted to believe in nonviolent resistance. Still, he struggled to reconcile his sentiments of shame, of wanting to free his country and be free from it.
Eventually, Anna helped Rami organise in Italy and brought together artists and activists devoted to liberation. They would marry, Anna would uproot her life and move to Ramallah, and during the first intifada, Sabrin would be born.
Love as a revolutionary act
Throughout her life, the occupation would never cease to brutalise and pillage Palestine, and the people would continue to retaliate. She would grow up witnessing and being a part of endless geopolitical strife.
After years of living in Palestine, her mother would be denied residency and take her children back to the same Italian town she had fled.
Sabrin's childhood is marked by watching her father travelling between his family in Italy and his land, noticing her family and roots fracturing.
She would be bullied for her Arab roots by her Italian peers and stumble upon her Arabic in Palestine. The emotional toll of this separation and vacillation would be insurmountable; consequently, Sabrin would have to navigate her wavering identity for years.
Every word and sentence is crafted with meticulous detail and tender care. Sabrin has explored all the facets of her memories, her cultures, her parents' relationships, and their individuality to weave together the essence of her bicultural identity.
Her parents' love demonstrated that love in itself is a revolutionary act. For years, her father stayed in Italy, learning Anna's language and culture, and she, in turn, would do the same, becoming intimately connected to his land and family.
In the face of a rising occupation, they continued to build their family, gather despite arbitrary restrictions, create art even if it meant arrest, and pass down traditions.
Throughout the narrative, Sabrin draws parallels between the revolutionary struggles of Italy, reminding us that injustice has snaked its insidious head in all our histories.
As she writes, imagining a different version of our parents, one before us, is difficult. But she retraces their life with graceful tact.
The love story of Palestine
Like Sabrin, many in Anna's life have probably wondered what naivety allowed her to follow a man to a place with such instability and oppression? Was it her haunting desire for a larger life, the kindness of the Palestinian people, or the smell of bread in Rami's childhood home?
Regardless, she fell in love with the land as much as with Rami. For Anna, escaping in her village was an act of defiance; in Palestine, simply gathering was.
Like her mother, finding a place in the world was not just being born into it. It was a cathartic and painful discovery.
Anna made Palestine her life's work; there, she recognised herself. She thrust herself into fighting for it. She took Rami's belief in art and beauty as a weapon against ugly occupation and nurtured it with her stubbornness, even when the violence intensified, and they became temporarily demoralised.
Whether it is a comical vignette of Anna fumbling her Arabic in a grocery store or a more somber scene of her as a young mother waiting for Rami to come home every night, terrified he would be taken by the IOF soldiers at checkpoints, Sabrin has made visceral all the emotions of guilt, grief, confusion, and longing through her prose and questioning.
Each of them has experienced the guilt of having safety and stability, the grief of displacement and death, and the despondency that comes with isolation in their unique ways. Yet, they keep on going, finding beauty in skies showered with bombs and family despite the distance.
This love story is not just Anna and Rami's. It is not just a story of Palestine and her glory; it is Sabrin's emotional crossing, which she has allowed us to witness and be a part of.
Without ever naming the occupier, Israel, she has taken back her story and her Palestine. She has exemplified how matriarchs like her mother and grandmother have been the pillars of resilient communities throughout history.
They are the women who carry on traditions, instil strength, and possess obstinate joy.
Honouring her parents, Sabrin reminds us, "The obstinate joy of those who-even under continuous bombing, centuries of oppression, brutality, and genocide - remember and feel that beauty and justice will come."
Noshin Bokth has over six years of experience as a freelance writer. She has covered a wide range of topics and issues, including the implications of the Trump administration on Muslims, the Black Lives Matter movement, travel reviews, book reviews, and op-eds. She is the former Editor in Chief of Ramadan Legacy and the former North American Regional Editor of the Muslim Vibe