Unlearning colonisation: land and mind

“I am from there. I am from here.
I am not there and I am not here.
I have two names, which meet and part,
and I have two languages.
I forget which of them I dream in.”
— Mahmoud Darwish, “Antithesis,” Dedicated to the memory of Edward Said.

Mahmoud Darwish captures what it means to be Arab today, whether in the homeland, the diaspora, or in exile. Many of us carry multiple identities that shift depending on where we are and who we speak to. We move between languages, cultures, and geographies, constantly translating parts of ourselves to fit in.

In the last line, Darwish wonders which language he dreams in. Dreams reveal what lies beneath consciousness. If he no longer knows which language he dreams in, it suggests something profound, that the coloniser’s tongue has reached the subconscious. It has become part of his mental landscape, shaping how he feels, thinks, and imagines. That’s how deeply colonial power can infiltrate: when it doesn’t just control your land, but your very imagination.

Growing up between Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon, I came to recognise this double colonisation, the visible occupation of land, and the invisible colonisation of thought and identity. In Palestine, it was checkpoints, walls, soldiers, and the slow erasure of homes and people, the occupation you could photograph and name: apartheid, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism.

But the second form was quieter, more insidious. It lived in our schools, our homes, our relationships, and our beliefs. It sounded like mocking Arabic music as nawari, or assuming that “Western” meant “better.” It was the internalised belief that freedom exists elsewhere, that success requires leaving, that modernity means being less Arab. This is when I began to feel the psychological weight of colonial control, the slow detachment from culture, language, and belonging.

“Culture is not a power, but it is a source of power.”

— Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism

The first time I became aware of it was through culture and specifically language, or rather, through its loss. At the French schools I attended in Jordan and Lebanon, Arabic was reduced to an afterthought, taught superficially and treated as a subject of little value. It became something unworthy of effort. I grew up speaking my mother tongue awkwardly, reading it with hesitation, writing it with mistakes. English has even become the language I use to denounce colonisation, a paradox that exposes how deeply its power extends. Language is not just communication. It is belonging. Without it, we lose access to our humour, pain, and collective memory. We lose the bridge to our poets, our philosophers, our ancestors’ wisdom. We become strangers in our own homes.

This detachment is not accidental. It is deliberate, a slow, calculated process designed to make us easier to shape and control. Colonialism was never only about land. It was, and remains, about the mind. It persists through politics, economics, and culture. It seeps into our schools, our desires, our values. It teaches us to glorify the coloniser’s worldview and to distrust our own.

It began with the British mandate in Palestine and Jordan, and the French mandate in Lebanon, with consequences that still shape us today. Lebanon remains largely French-speaking, with a majority of French schools, while Jordan has become predominantly English-speaking, with British and international institutions.

Today, these mandates have evolved into American imperialism, colonising through culture: movies, series, music, language, and the seductive myth of the American Dream. It instils capitalist values; individualism over solidarity, competition over community, self-interest over collective strength. These values fracture us. We leave home searching for a “better life,” and in the process, we lose interest in building back. We lose language, disconnect from culture, and grow distant from those who remain.

Our identities and realities fracture: the Palestinian in Palestine and the Palestinian in the United States struggle to relate; The Jordanian and the Lebanese believe they have nothing in common. The one in diaspora wants to return; the one at home wants to leave. Others want to stay abroad, because they don’t feel like they belong back home.

These divisions reveal how deeply fragmentation has been internalised. Over time, this silent occupation does more than control our environment; they shape how we see ourselves, how we relate to each other, and even how we imagine liberation. This is how colonisation operates: it breeds division, dependence and helplessness. Until one day, when genocide is broadcast in real time, the illusion finally shatters. The mask of “democracy,” “development,” and “peace” falls, revealing the same imperial machinery in full force. What we are witnessing today, from the occupation of Palestine to the live-streamed genocide, is not new. It is the visible tip of a much older and deeper system of control.

That’s when I began to ask myself: who are we seeking justice and freedom from?

Who do we expect to grant us freedom, the same Western powers that enabled and sustained our oppression for seventy-seven years? Liberation will never come as a gift from the coloniser.

I realised: no one will free us except us.

The colonised subject’s struggle for liberation is not only political; it is about reclaiming being, identity, and agency. When I lost touch with my roots, my language, my history, my culture, I began to drift away not just from home, but from myself. My connection weakened, and with it, my sense of purpose.

Our weakness today is not innate; it is engineered. As Haiti’s national motto reminds us, L’union fait la force, unity makes strength. And the imperialist knows this well. That’s why they’ve made it their mission to keep us fragmented. In our narratives, our visions, our dreams for the future. Division has always been the oppressor’s most powerful weapon; “divide and conquer”.

Fragmentation is a colonial design, not a cultural flaw. Recognising this is the first step toward dismantling it.

So the question becomes: how do we build something that heals, that liberates, that does not reproduce the same colonial and imperial values we inherited?

We begin by unlearning. Before we can rebuild, we must strip away what colonisation taught us to believe, about ourselves, about power, about each other. It is the first act of reclaiming agency, unity, and future. Embodying the freedom we demand. If our movements for liberation reproduce systems of oppression, what kind of freedom are we really fighting for?

And more importantly: what does justice and freedom mean in the context of Palestine and the Arab world? What might they look like? And how do we get there together?

We continue by learning about colonialism, its impact on our identities, behaviours, and societies. Awareness itself is resistance; it is what allows us to imagine and build a future for us, by us - mena w fina.

Without confronting the deeper layers, the systems that divide, the structures that sustain dependency, and the mental models that glorify Western validation we risk rebuilding the same hierarchies we claim to dismantle. True freedom begins not only with dismantling the coloniser’s institutions, but with removing their presence within us: unlearning the belief that worth depends on others’ recognition, and rebuilding community, language, and imagination on our own terms.

Written by Lena Boudart