Immigration to the Corner

By Sana Saeed*

The American narrative is closely intertwined, irrevocably, with the narrative of The Immigrant. The foundation of this country has been built upon the backs and sustained through the efforts of The Immigrant – be it forced or voluntarily. And yet while the narrative and the contributions of The Immigrant – especially of The Immigrant of the past – have been celebrated, the ugliness that was a part of the experience and persists till this day is oft-ignored or, at best, given a simple superficial nod of acknowledgment. Cultivation of the fine arts, cuisine and of the economy is always at the forefront of the mainstream discourse on The Immigrant. The cultural jolts, the legal messes, the bureaucratic faults and the financial instability and uncertainty, however, are rarely.

On August 4th, as a part of the Jerusalem Fund’s summer film series, we showed Katherine Bruens’ documentary Corner Store, a work still in progress, which touches upon the narrative of The Immigrant in a unique light. The turnout to the film was considerable and reception to the film manifested itself with drawn out conversations between audience members long after the credits had ended rolling.

The documentary focuses on the story of Yousef Elhaj, “a beloved shop owner, Palestinian immigrant, and long-distance father.” Set in San Francisco and Bethlehem, the film surveys Yousef’s struggle in the United States to seek and attain success defined as a better life for a family from whom he has been separated for over ten years. The film follows the Palestinian corner store owner as he finally receives his Green Card and is able to get a visa to go visit his family after a decade of separation.

Upon returning to Palestine, Elhaj is struck with overwhelming emotion: for his family, for his people and for his homeland. The striking uniqueness of Corner Store, as a film about the Hyphenated-American Immigrant experience is that it is not about life in a “new country.” Rather, the film’s focus is about “back home” – about the sort of changes that can overcome both familial and spatial relations. Elhaj’s children were merely young children when he first left, having now grown into young adults. His oldest son, 8 years old when Elhaj left for the United States, is shown in the film as a young man at 18 years, forced to take over the role of father in his household. His ‘self-reliance’ creates a strong resistance to the idea of moving to the United States and starting his life over, with a dependence on a father absent for most of his life.

The Occupation, in particular, serves as a both strong and distant background for the struggles of the Elhaj family. While the Occupation has rendered any hope for financial stability and even general day-to-day well-being almost useless, creating an increasingly worsening situation which forced Yousef Elhaj to leave his family in an effort to fulfill his duties towards them, the greatest struggle remains the separation. The Occupation is real, but the separation that occurs as a result of it between the Elhaj’s – including the extended family, which has also relocated to the United States – is the greater source of pain; the reality of separation from loved ones is a far more real experience, highlighting the pervasiveness of the Occupation in all aspects of Palestinian life. Elhaj, himself, struggles with wanting to stay in Bethlehem, with his people, his language, in the home his father built but is forced to realize that the Occupation creates conditions that hinder the sort of good life he seeks for his family and their well-being.

While the film tests the patience of the audience at times, with drawn out slow scenes peppered throughout, it inspires both an array of emotions and reflection on the sort of stories that may exist right around the corner from where we live in our neighborhoods. The context for every immigrant – and subsequently for the narrative of The Immigrant – is layered. There is the immigrant’s smaller context as an immigrant in a new country, struggling to make ends meet and struggling to adjust to a new life filled with new mores and values. Then there is the greater context which is often overlooked: the greater political and cultural settings which force individuals to make tough decisions, such as Yousef Elhaj’s. A greater context often, if not always, effects our personal contexts and the film does an excellent job of highlighting this inseparable relationship.

The Occupation of the Palestinian Territories serves a particularly unique example of an American immigrant’s greater context given the “sacrosanct” bond proclaimed between the United States and Israel and given the mainstream representation of the Palestinian people. Very rarely is the Palestinian humanized and portrayed in the United States in the way that is offered by Corner Store, which takes your friendly local corner liquor store and deli owner and makes him into a manifestation of the results of the illegal, continued and expanding Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.


*Sana Saeed is a 2010 Summer Intern at the Jerusalem Fund

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