Zeina Azzam, a Palestinian American who is poet laureate of Alexandria, writes longingly about her ancestral home in Palestine while celebrating her American identity, often peppering her English poetry with Arabic. Azzam, 68, came to the U.S. at the age of 10 after living in Homs, Syria and Beirut.

Her parents fled their home in Haifa in 1948 when Zionist paramilitary forces drove more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to establish the Israeli state. The Zionists were largely European Jews who themselves suffered through centuries of displacement, antisemitism, and genocide.

This mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians is called Al Nakba, or The Catastrophe, and ignited a refugee crisis that’s lasted decades. Today, Israeli settlements continue to displace Palestinians in the West Bank. This history has fueled both Israel and Hamas to conduct violent strikes and retaliations.

Next month, VCIJ at WHRO will profile an Israeli-American.

Azzam has made a colorful and happy home in Alexandria, decorated with cultural emblems from the Arab World, fig trees and jasmine plants.

Her poem, “Write My Name,” has gone viral with its vivid description of children surviving in war-torn Gaza. Azzam read the poem before the United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee, and the verse has been translated into multiple languages.

Speaking independently, not as the Poet Laureate of Alexandria, she shared stories about her life as a child of refugees in America, Al Nakba, the Israeli-Hamas War and her hope for the future.