I am a neuroscientist. I study how memories are formed,
how they guide our behavior.
I study the ways they inform who we love, who we avoid, who we sleep with, who we befriend.
But I don’t know what creative writing means anymore.
I collect data. I analyze. I write dry concluding statements.
I gather signals, shape them into graphs, and call that a story.
I was trained to speak in sentences without breath.
Such as,
“People are more likely to remember emotionally arousing objects at the expense of
remembering their surroundings.”
Neuroscientists are eased by such sterile phrasing – its objectivity, its lack of personal
investment.
But all I think about are the applications of my research.
If I took the above sentence, and turned it into an example about Gaza.
It would be, “A Palestinian mother may remember the blood-stained backpack draped across her
son more clearly than the school behind her that has crumbled into rubble.”
And when I name this truth, the scientific community rushes in with its contradictory cautions:
“We must advocate for science, but we must not engage in politics.”
As if the mind itself is apolitical.
As if trauma asks permission before carving itself into the brain’s deepening folds.
So why do I stay in this field?
Why remain in a profession that fears the world it claims to study?
Why breathe in the dust of a discipline that shuts its eyes?
Because I am waiting for the day that Palestinian universities are rebuilt—
when the rubble is swept from the hallways,
when the classrooms open their doors again,
when young minds wander through the course catalog and see the title,
“The Neuroscience of Trauma.”
A course with radical compassion at its core.
A course that teaches how trauma reshapes neural pathways,
how neurotransmitters surge and flood,
how the brain fights to protect itself in a world that will not protect young minds.
And I will stand in front of those students—
students who have heard drones hum overhead like a second heartbeat—
and explain how trauma can overstimulate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex,
how the low sound of a commercial airplane might spike cortisol because it echoes the drone’s
relentless zanana.
I will teach them models of post-traumatic stress disorder and the Western techniques invented to
treat it.
And they will teach me every place where those models fail.
They will carve new theories from their lived truths.
They will be returned to the Palestinian people, a people neuroscientists never intended to serve.
And I will give them every tool needed to dismantle me—
Because I know that my neuroscience was colonised.
And I will give them the tools they need to prove me wrong.
I will place it in their hands,
and watch them break it open,
liberating our field,
And in their brilliance,
in the beautiful places where I am proven wrong,
my mind will finally thrive.
Because I am living for the day when the universities are rebuilt—
walls rising from rubble, classrooms filling with students who have survived more than
textbooks could ever hold.
And in the catalog, my course will wait for them:
I will stand before them and speak honestly about trauma:
how damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex can blur distinctions,
how the hum of a passing plane can raise cortisol because it rhymes with the drone’s unending
song.
I will teach them Western models of PTSD—
and they will show me every piece of those models that collapses under the weight of their
experience.
They will build theories that fit their realities,
forms of healing that refuse colonial frameworks,
forms of knowing the field has never had the courage to imagine.
And I will give them everything I have—
every method, every critique, every key—
so they can break open the discipline that shaped me.
Because I know the truth:
my neuroscience, as I was taught it, is colonial.
But in their hands, it will not remain that way.
