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.

There's something that scares me. It's the way media in the United States presents the rest of the world. I feel like people in America are getting a completely different picture of what's going on in other countries than what is reality.

The best artists transcend nationality and identity.

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.

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 start questioning yourself: Who am I? Where do I belong? Where am I going? Why is my city divided? Why are we not allowed to enter in certain areas? We used to ask my father why the Christians lived in another neighborhood and didn’t come to our neighborhood. I think my father was trying to avoid having us think about these issues.

My father's biggest achievement with us as children was that he taught us that everyone is human and equal, even your enemy has the same needs and wants that you do: understanding, love, inclusion.