I was 16 when my father died, and I had a choice to come back and live in his house or I'd stay at the school. But I felt if my father wanted me to go to that school when I was 5, there must have been a reason - and I understood that reason when I was a teenager, because that school became the only place where I was safe.

I think the first time I really felt that I was Palestinian was a time when I was trying to go back to school with my father at night and there was a curfew for Palestinians. My father said, "I will walk first, but you have to understand, the police will not let me go... So keep moving and don't look at me and don't look back."

My first memory as a child growing up is of playing in the gardens, the mosque is really a gigantic garden, probably the biggest in all of East Jerusalem. Our house was about 100 meters from the mosque.

I was protected behind the walls of my house, the walls of the mosque and later, walls of my school. I didn't know that I was Palestinian. I knew that I was a girl, but the identity issues came later when I was 12 or 13 - then, they came in a very strong way.

I hope there's a window that opens in American television where the rest of the world is viewed in a less censored light. There is something about the world outside the United States that is not understood here - that seems threatening to Americans.

My whole childhood was about being in the garden. It wasn't really a religious place to me. The love I felt there... was in contradiction with what I saw in the streets. It was a different world.

You can come from China, Russia, any place, and you can be a New Yorker. You can say what you want to say here, really express yourself.