Nawal-Ramla

During my first year studying in Tel Aviv I felt lonely.
There is a big gap between the world, of an Arab who grew up in Ramla, and the world of my secular schoolmates from Tel Aviv.
Most of them are already renting flats in the big city, I’m coming back and forth to my family’s house in Ramla everyday.I’m the only Arab in the class.
Eventually, I became close friends with a boy from my class, a former Hassidic religious Jew.
I guess our different backgrounds brought us together.

I live in Ramla, a mixed town of Jews and Arabs in the center of Israel.
It is a nice place to live and everyone knows everyone. But Ramla also has a dangerous side: crime, mafias, and street gangs. When I was eleven, my father was shot and injured. No one in my family talks of this incident.

My brother Ezo, big sister Toha, my little sister Arkan and I (clockwise).

I AM AN
ARAB WOMAN
THAT DOESN’T KNOW
HOW TO COOK!

-illustration by michal tamir

-illustration by michal tamir

i m a graphic designer and this is a School Project callled: Women in the Hijab