In 1944, my great grandfather, Khalil Issa Jadallah was an importer, one of many immigrants from Ramallah, Palestine operating the then Ramallah Wholesale in San Francisco, California. On March 3, 1944, he enlisted in the United States Naval Service and became an active duty serviceman in the Pacific during WWII. He was honorably discharged on November 5, 1945, allowing him to bring his wife and 4 children from Palestine to the United States. 

In December 1945, my great grandmother, Zarifeh Omran Jadallah, boarded a naval ship with her three sons and one daughter, my grandmother, Tete Leila, and departed the Port of Haifa, Palestine to the USA.

When Tete Zarifeh passed away in 2001, among her belongings was an old family photo album, rich with photos of our extended families in Palestine and the USA, many dating back to at least the 1930s. Included in the album were newspaper clippings of my grandmother, Leila, on a street float for the Pacific Far East Line, Inc as part of the San Francisco National Maritime Parade on May 21, 1949. The sign above my Palestinian grandmother's head reads "Persian Gulf". In the caption she is "Miss Arabia: Miss Leila Jadallah". My Tete’s identity was reduced to an Orientalist spectacle for shipping companies profiting from the region. This is something my family saw as a source of pride, and in some ways we still do; she is a small piece of San Francisco history, and we hold on to the newspaper clipping with her image and still show it off today.

Her brother, who passed shortly after the making of this piece, tells us that Tete Leila ended up on this float through the families that worked and operated the Ramallah Wholesale in the 40s. As importers and wholesalers, dealings with shipping lines like the PFEL was a regular occurrence for the Ramallah Wholesale, so when approached for a female to represent their new shipping routes into the "Orient", Tete Leila happened to be the only girl among the families and became this small part of San Francisco Maritime History.

The thobe Tete Leila wore in that parade was not hers, but one borrowed from Nabiha Totah Dudum, another Palestinian woman in our Bay Area community. This borrowed thobe was lovingly preserved by Nabiha’s granddaughter and shared with me so I could copy it. This chain of care across generations defines my practice: we rely on each other to survive, celebrate and to preserve our identity when geography, politics, and propaganda try to strip it away.

It took me four days to meticulously copy the qabbeh (chest panel) so I could start painting it on large slabs, later cutting them into fragmented tiles with each piece representing a different aspect of our journeys as Palestinians in the United States of America. This art piece explores how our immigration from home and into this country presented both profound challenges and unexpected opportunities: it ripped us apart geographically and culturally and attempted to strip us of our identity. Nothing ever really succeeded in doing so or breaking us as a people.

The tiles represent this fragmentation and transformation, while their collective presence suggests the enduring wholeness and expansion of our stories, preserved not by bloodline alone, but by the shared love and care that has bound our Palestinian community through generations.

This piece rewrites those orientalist labels for my Tete. It takes an identity often viewed through lenses of exoticism or erasure, and presents our humanity, our grief, and our continuity on our own terms. It is an act of visibility that asserts we are the authors of our own stories, not merely subjects of someone else’s history or fantasy.

This piece has been on display at

Palestine: Grief & Connection Through Clay
Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI 2026

Arrivals - ArtSpan San Francisco
San Francisco Ferry Building, 2026

Currently on display:

Siy Gallery, San Bruno, CA